Why is California’s Air Board Using Chinese Research to Ban Diesel Trucks?
Why is California’s Air Board Using Chinese Research to Ban Diesel Trucks?
CARB used two Chinese studies on Air Pollution and Mortality in the Medicare Population
By Katy Grimes, April 29, 2023
“The California Air Resources Board (CARB) announced on Friday that the sale of all new diesel big rig trucks and buses will be banned in the state starting in 2036, coming in a year after a similar new gas-powered car bar was previously voted on,” the Globe reported Friday.
“In addition to the 2036 sales ban on new diesel trucks and buses, CARB, also announced that all trucks in California are to be zero-emissions by 2042. Under these new regulations, also known as the Advanced Clean Fleets rule, CARB hopes to achieve a total zero-emissions truck and bus fleet by 2045, as well as have at least 1.6 million zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty trucks operating in the state by 2048.”
Why is California’s Air Board using Chinese research to ban diesel trucks in the state? California has record low pollution levels. And CARB admits trucks represent only 6% of the vehicles on California’s roads. Other than further destroying the trucking industry and the businesses of independent owner/operators, what is the purpose of this new law?
The science behind these regulations is not only dubious, it is from China, which has a strong motive to see that the United States succumbs to the climate change movement, much of which is funded by China, as Real Clear Energy reported: “For China, climate change offers a strategic opportunity. Decarbonizing the rest of the world makes China’s economy stronger – it weakens its rivals’ economies, reduces the cost of energy for its hydrocarbon-hungry economy, and sinks energy-poor India as a potential Indo-Pacific rival.”
The US economy is being deliberately held back as China builds 2 new coal power plants per week = 8 new coal plants a month = nearly 100 new coal power plants a year, according to a report by energy data organizations Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. China quadrupled the amount of new coal power approvals in 2022 compared to 2021, NPR recently reported.
Dr. James Enstrom contacted the CARB Board and Research Screening Committee Members about their latest pending decision:
I am a highly accomplished California epidemiologist who has had a 50-year career at UCLA and the Scientific Integrity Institute in Los Angeles. I have published overwhelming epidemiologic evidence that there is NO relationship between PM2.5 and mortality or life expectancy in California. In addition, there is very strong evidence that the current average personal exposure to air pollution in California is below the level of known adverse health effects.
PM2.5 refers to atmospheric particulate matter (PM) that have a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers, which is about 3 percent the diameter of a human hair and can only be detected with an electron microscope. Back to Dr. Enstrom’s letter to CARB:
Thus, the CARB Research Screening Committee (RSC) must reject both the Su Proposal on “Impacts of Air Pollution on Life Expectancy” and the Zhang Proposal on “Characterization of PM2.5 in the San Joaquin Valley”.
The RSC must examine the evidence in my disqualified January 23 Proposal that there has been NO relationship between PM2.5 and mortality or life expectancy in California from 1960 to 2020 (http://scientificintegrityinstitute.org/CARBProp012323.pdf). My proposal has ZERO cost and includes extensive epidemiologic, statistical, and toxicological expertise, as I explained to the RSC on January 26 -(http://scientificintegrityinstitute.org/JEECRSC012623.pdf). All of the null evidence in my proposal has been deliberately ignored by Su and his collaborators Jerrett, McConnell, Burnett, Zhu, Ritz, Ghosh, and others. Detailed research misconduct complaints have previously been filed against Jerrett (http://scientificintegrityinstitute.org/Jerrett040623.pdf) and McConnell (http://scientificintegrityinstitute.org/McConnell040623.pdf).
By evaluating only the Su and Zhang proposals, the RSC is participating in a pre-determined CARB process to improperly award sole-source contracts that deliberately exaggerate PM2.5 health effects in California. In addition, there are many technical problems with these proposals. For instance, Su’s proposed use of Medi-Cal records for air pollution epidemiology is totally inappropriate and violates HIPAA confidentiality requirements. I will strongly oppose approval of the Su proposal by the Human Subjects Review Committees of UC Berkeley and the California Department of Health and Human Services.
In conclusion, these Chinese investigators should be focused on the very high pollution levels in China, not on the record low pollution levels in California. RSC approval of their proposals will be immediately appealed.
Thank you very much for your consideration of my comment.
Sincerely yours, James E. Enstrom, PhD, MPH, FFACE
Retired UCLA Research Professor (Epidemiology)
http://scientificintegrityinstitute.org/biography.html
https://co2coalition.org/teammember/james-enstrom/
Enstrom told the Globe, “This crazy, destructive regulation that has nothing to do with public health. The current personal exposure to AP in CA is below level of proven health effects.”
To no avail. The CARB Board has an obvious mandate. They admit it:
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And the Governor and Legislature allow them to illegally make law based on fraudulent, doctored science from China, a foreign country which says it will “own America” inside the next 15 years.
So is someone at the CARB on China’s payroll? For that matter, who in state government is helping China along with their nefarious goal? How is this information easy for us to find, but the CARB either can’t or won’t.
Remember, this is the same California Air Resources Board which has a rich history of fraudulent diesel emission studies, violations of California’s open meeting act, and even experimented on children with dangerous diesel exhaust. The CARB also launders cap and trade funds extorted from California businesses by way of carbon offset auctions, through Western Climate Initiative, Inc., “WCI Inc.,” a Delaware Corporation formed by the California Air Resources Board under Mary Nichols, CARB Chairwoman.
Additionally, the Globe reported in 2019:
California Globe can report that a number of USC professors in the Department of Preventive Medicine have received at least $268 million in air pollution research funding from the Environmental Protection Agency and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, according to Dr. James Enstrom, who believes that this massive amount of research funding has influenced their research findings and their continuing support for the South Coast Air Quality Management District regulations.
Enstrom says his belief is reinforced by USC Preventive Medicine Professors Duncan C. Thomas and Kiros T. Berhane who have failed to respond to Enstrom’s January 2019 and June 2018 emails, which summarize the latest epidemiologic evidence that PM2.5 does not cause premature deaths and that there is no justification for new SCAQMD regulations.
The Globe also reported:
Tasked with overseeing climate change policy and improving California’s air quality, the California Air Resources Board operates like no other state agency. The rogue agency conducts its business in private, without the scrutiny of the public it is accountable to, despite legislative and public outrage over the shroud of secrecy.
In 2012, the CARB, with help from the Democratic Assembly Speaker, figured out a way to exempt itself from the state’s open meeting act. Government Code 11120, the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act, is explicitly exempted in the language of a 2012 budget trailer bill authored by then-Assembly Speaker John Perez, a Democrat from Los Angeles.
The California Air Resources Board has not played by their own rules for a long time, and even moved the goal line. The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, also known as AB 32, charged the California Air Resources Board with the responsibility of reducing California’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. This represents a 25 percent reduction statewide. However, the CARB took it one step beyond, and instead adopted the United Nation’s goal: “To avert catastrophic warming,” the world’s scientists have concluded we must reduce GHGs to 80 – 90% below 1990 levels by 2050.”
Many believe the motive is entirely economic by the “world’s scientists,” who want to maintain existing funding, as well as keep future funding flowing in. In order to do this, they must go along with the EPA’s and CARB’s goals.
The EPA and the CARB board insist their goals are the protection of the most vulnerable in society. It’s difficult to believe the EPA and the CARB are sincere when the EPA conducted diesel exhaust experiments on children at UCLA and USC, I wrote in 2015. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency paid the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles to conduct experiments on children, to determine whether exposure to diesel exhaust harms humans.
These experiments were illegal under the Nuremberg Code, California state law, and federal regulations, concerning the protection of human subjects in medical research, according to Energy and Environmental Legal Institute attorney David Schnare.
According to the EPA and CARB, smog causes everything from cardiovascular disease, to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma. The big question is how can the UCLA and USC professors be so adamant on the lethality of particulate matter, and then conduct experiments of these particulates on children?
CARB has some explaining to do, and California lawmakers should be first in line with a long list of questions, after having abdicated their exclusive lawmaking authority to CARB.
Katy Grimes, the Editor of the California Globe, is a long-time Investigative Journalist covering the California State Capitol, and the co-author of California's War Against Donald Trump: Who Wins? Who Loses?
