Don’t Breathe In CO2 Says Lancet

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
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By Paul Homewood

I’m not quite sure what the supposedly objective, scientific Lancet is doing publishing a scurrilously partisan report on Trump’s EPA budget cuts, that could just as just as easily have been written by the Democratic party.

This gives a flavour:

The Trump administration’s proposed budget makes large cuts to the US Environmental Protection Agency. Susan Jaffe, The Lancet’s Washington correspondent, reports.

As Oklahoma Attorney General, Scott Pruitt represented his state in more than a dozen lawsuits challenging the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) efforts to limit air and water pollution. Several cases sought to block President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan aimed at reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from coal plants linked to climate change.

The conservative columnist George Will has called Pruitt “one of the Obama administration’s most tenacious tormentors”. And the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, praised Pruitt as “one of America’s most courageous opponents of federal overreach”. Pruitt provided both quotes in a biography attached to his congressional testimony last spring criticising the Clean Power Plan.

Less than a year later, Pruitt and his opponents have switched sides. President Donald Trump appointed Pruitt to lead the EPA and now those opponents accuse the Trump administration of federal over-reach by seeking to undermine key environmental laws.

The administration has already taken steps to begin rolling back some environmental rules issued by the EPA under President Barack Obama

And last week, Trump unveiled his proposed federal budget, which reduces federal non-defence spending by US$54 billion, including a 31% ($2·6 billion) cut in EPA funding—more than any other domestic agency. If Congress approves the Trump spending plan, some 50 EPA programmes would also be eliminated, including the office of environmental justice. One of its founders, Mustafa Ali, resigned in protest 2 weeks ago after 24 years with the agency.

“Literally and figuratively, this budget is a scorched earth budget”, said Gina McCarthy, Obama’s EPA administrator, in a conference call with reporters last week. The cuts include 3200 EPA staff positions, which means one of five people will have to leave the agency next year, she said. “We’re talking about a 45% reduction in state funds and a targeted reduction in our scientists, which means 42% of our Office of Research and Development scientists will have to find other employment.”

But this bit takes the biscuit:

Attention to climate change should not be optional, said Paul Billings, senior vice president of advocacy at the American Lung Association. The Clean Air Act gives the EPA the responsibility to protect the public health and environment by limiting air pollutants including carbon dioxide. ”All inhaled air pollutants have direct respiratory health impacts for the lung because it is the mechanism by which the pollution is absorbed.”

Since when did breathing in CO2 have a direct respiratory health impact?

Welcome to the world of postmodern science.

And they call themselves doctors!