Just how stupid was the Obama EPA mercury rule for coal-fired power plants? You won’t believe it.

The Trump EPA is proposing to repair some of the junk science used to justify the Obama EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standard (MATS), a 2012 rule that imposed stringent mercury emissions standards on coal-fired power plants and that led to the (ongoing) shutdowns of many US coal plants.

You can read about the rule and its history at the EPA web site. But below is today’s point.

The Obama EPA estimated the (power plant compliance) costs of the rule to be about $10 BILLION per year. But the Obama EPA could only estimated a maximum of $6 MILLION in direct benefits from the rules mandated reduction in smokestack mercury emissions.

Since $6 MILLION vs. $10 BILLION is obviously a laughable cost-benefit ratio, the Obama EPA decided to game the cost-benefit analysis by adding in so-called “co-benefits” of reduced mercury emissions. What were these co-benefits?

The Obama EPA figured that since reducing mercury emissions would also reduce particulate (PM2.5) emissions from coal plants (either by improved scrubbing of emissions and/or plant shutdowns), the rule would also be reducing deaths caused by PM2.5. As the Obama EPA valued each of the tends of thousands of lives to be saved by the rule at as much as $9 MILLION, this co-benefit calculation added about $90 BILLION to the benefit side of the Obama EPA’s equation — and $90 BILLION vs. $10 BILLION is clearly a lot more rule friendly than $6 MILLION vs. $10 BILLION.

As JunkScience.com readers know, we have long ago debunked the notion that PM2.5 emissions kill anyone, anywhere. You can read the story in Steve Milloy’s Amazon.com best seller “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fox the EPA” (Bench Press, 2016).

The Trump EPA has now proposed to eliminate the co-benefits from the MATS cost-benefits analysis. So we are back to the $6 MILLION vs. $10 BILLION comparison. As laughable as that is, there is more humor to be found in it.

As the MATS Regulatory Impact Analysis document reveals, the $6 MILLION in benefits arises from the consumption of freshwater fish containing less mercury.

More specifically, the $6 MILLION in benefits comes from higher IQs among individuals eating freshwater fish containing less mercury. Try not to spit up your coffee when you read the the Obama EPA’s description of the estimated IQ benefit.

That’s right. The Obama EPA estimated that the average avoided IQ loss provided by its $10 BILLION-per-year-rule is 0.00209 IQ points. Don’t stop laughing yet. The margin of error on an IQ test is about five points — i.e., 2,392 times greater than the Obama EPA’s estimated avoided IQ loss benefit.

The Obama EPA’s 0.00209-IQ-point-loss-avoidance is so ridiculous on its face that it’s not necessary to even try to explain how EPA calculated it. Who cares? The “supporting” epidemiology is likely confounded by socio-economic factors. Unless someone has consumed a toxic amount of mercury, eating mercury-containing freshwater fish has no detectable health effects.

0.00209 IQ points. LOL. Our (progressive) government at work.

The only thing sadder than this unequivocal agenda-driven corruption is that the coal industry, its trade associations and lobbyists, and the politicians it helped elect stood by and let all this happen to it.