Massaged Truthiness: Policy on waste management in crisis, says April Fools Day Expert.

The Irish Times is again publishing massaged stories dressed up as "expert".  

The spin is possibly again taken directly from the PR officer of the incinerator promoters (who apparently don't answer the phone), an apparent Irish Times practice at the oral hearings.   

 

Irish Times April Fools Day Headline:

Policy on waste management in crisis, says expert 

The Irish Times - Thursday, April 1, 2010.   TIM O'BRIEN.

The newspaper makes no critical observations on the article's curious one-sided claims on behalf of an organisation whose expert-employee was adjudicated to have massaged the truth and to have used undue influence in a public process (Judge McKechnie on DCC's Twomey). 

For instance, Mr Rudden of RPS seems to make uncontested claims about the financial viability of incineration.  

Covanta loudly proclaims the awesome effectiveness of filters on its stacks, but seems to refuse to publish a list of pollutants with quantities.   The promoters refuse to produce a clear diagram claiming its impossible.  Does Covanta always blame-shift to house-persons when explosions occur as in a Covanta facility in USA in March 2010?  Their engineer at the open day in Dublin in January 2010pointed liability at residents instead of at absurd industry gaurantees of no health-damaging air pollution.

Curiously Mr Rudden's April Fools Day article totally omits any mention of the health costs imposed on future generations from premature deaths in polluted Poolbeg.  Poolbeg is already above legal limits: the incinerator itself and the hundreds of additional trucks per day will push the pollutiuon burden, possibly past a critical tipping point. 

The US EPA prices a human life at $8 million.  Mr Rudden's RPS and other 'consultants' have been paid €25 million to spin for incineration.  It is quite likely there is a lucrative construction-phase bonus and a completion bonus on offer.  After that it is well known that Covanta fully legally hires people after they retire from their old public service jobs.   

Is the Irish Times revenue still controlled by the galway tent cabal?  The property boom kept the paper in business, a boom the patriotic paper did not meaningfully investigate.  The cost to Ireland is €80 Billion  (€80,000,000,000).

What is the cost of 100 premature deaths per year for each of twenty five years?   Twenty Billion?  Nobody knows.  Except for people paid by DCC to claim there is not any risk to health.  What did the bankers say about risk?