March 2010

Instead of exercising its “judgment,” as required by Sec. 202 of the Clean Air Act, to determine whether greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions endanger public health and welfare, EPA largely deferred to the judgment of an external agency not subject to U.S. data quality and freedom of information laws — the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The IPCC developed three lines of evidence for its conclusion that GHG emissions are causing dangerous global warming. The first is based on the IPCC’s understanding of the physics of the climate system. The second is the claim that recent decades are unusually warm compared to previous centuries during the current interglacial period known as the Holocene. The third line of evidence is the asserted agreement between observations and computer model simulations.

Peabody Energy’s 240-page petition for reconsideration assesses these lines of evidence in light of new information not in EPA’s possession when it drafted the endangerment finding. Much of this new information is contained in the thousands of emails and other files that produced the Climategate scandal. The files and emails provide an insider’s look at the professional (or unprofessional) behavior of leading climate scientists at the UK’s Climate Research Unit and their colleagues in the United States. This scandal has led to the resignation (allegedly temporary) of Dr. Phil Jones as director of the CRU and an official determination that the CRU violated the UK’s freedom of information act. 

Peabody concludes that the Climategate files undermine each of the IPCC’s principal lines of evidence, and confirm what many climate “skeptics” had long suspected:

The CRU information reveals that many of the principal scientists who authored key chapters of the IPCC scientific assessments were driven by a policy agenda that caused them to cross the line from neutral science to advocacy. Indeed, they went far beyond even what is acceptable as advocacy, as they actively suppressed information that was contrary to the “nice, tidy story” that they wished to present, they refused to disclose underlying data concerning the studies in which they were involved to third parties who might use the information to critique those studies, they engaged in a wide variety of improper and indeed unethical tactics to manipulate the type of scientific information that appeared both in the IPCC reports and in the peer-reviewed scientific journals upon which the IPCC largely relied, and they relied on inaccurate and unverified information from secondary source material that was included anyway to advance the authors’ advocacy agenda. Moreover, the Information Commissioner’s Office of the United Kingdom (“U.K.”), the agency that oversees and enforces the U.K.’s freedom of information laws, after investigation, recently concluded that CRU broke those laws in refusing to respond to information requests.

EPA’s only reasonable course of action, Peabody argues, is to reopen the endangerment proceeding:

EPA has effectively delegated its judgment under section 202(a) of the CAA to an international body that acted contrary to basic U.S. standards of information quality, integrity and transparency. In the interests of good science and policy, and as required by law, EPA must now reconsider its Endangerment Finding in light of the CRU revelations. The importance of low-cost, reliable energy to the economy is too high for EPA to begin regulation based on such an uncertain foundation.

In recent weeks I have penned four columns debunking the smear campaign against Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution of disapproval to stop EPA from dealing itself into a position to make climate and energy policy for the nation — a power Congress never delegated to EPA when it enacted the Clean Air Act.

Climate Politics: When Will the Sanctimony End? (MasterResource.Org, Mar. 2) debunks the calumny that the Murkowski resolution is “polluter-crafted,” and shows that this pejorative accurately applies to the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill — legislation that many Murkowski detractors such as Climate Progress and MoveOn.org enthusiastically support.

MoveOn’s Triple Whopper (Pajamas Media, Feb. 10) shows that MoveOn.org’s TV ad campaign against the Murkowski resolution piles falsehood on top of falsehood on top of falsehood. MoveOn claims the Murkowski resolution would “roll back” the Clean Air Act (it wouldn’t), making it harder for EPA to clean the air (it wouldn’t). We should all be in a panic , MoveOn suggests, because “many Americans smoke the equivalent of a pack a day just from breathing the air.” An outrageous falsehood. According to peer-reviewed scientific research, smoking just one cigarette a day delivers anywhere from 12 to 27 times the daily dose of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) that non-smokers inhale in cities with the highest PM2.5 levels.

The aforementioned piece and two others — Resolution Would Protect the Economy (National Journal, Jan. 27) and Move Afoot in the Senate to Can EPA CO2 Regs (Pajamas Media, Jan. 23) – clarify what the Murkowski resolution is and isn’t.

Contrary to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and other critics, the resolution is not a referendum on EPA’s science. Rather, it is a referendum on the constitutional propriety of unelected bureaucrats, courts, and eco-litigation groups setting climate and energy policy for the nation. The resolution is not an attempt to veto the scientific content of EPA’s endangerment finding. Rather, it would veto the finding’s legal force and effect.

Thus, there is no valid analogy, as Sen. Boxer claims, between the Murkowski resolution and Congress vetoing the Surgeon General’s finding that cigaratte smoking causes cancer. The Surgeon General’s finding was simply that — an assessment of the scientific literature. It did not even presume to offer policy recommendations, much less trigger a host of new regulations Congress never approved, as EPA’s endangerment finding will do if allowed to stand.

The Obama Administration warns that the Murkowski resolution would thrust the distressed U.S. auto industry into regulatory limbo, because the endangerment finding is the trigger for the combined greenhouse gas/fuel economy standards rulemaking scheduled to go into effect later this month or early April.

The National Auto Dealers Association (NADA) respectfully disagrees. In this letter, released today, NADA argues the Murkowski resolution would benefit the auto industry because there would be one less redundant yet potentially conflicting standard (EPA’s) regulating fuel economy and GHG emissions from new motor vehicles.

I’ll have more to say about NADA’s analysis in a later post.