Today the EPA rejected petitions from citizens, groups, and states to reverse its 2009 decision to regulate CO2 as a pollutant.
The states of Virginia and Texas, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, coal giant Peabody Energy Corp. and others sought to reverse the finding.
But the EPA, in rejecting the petitions, specifically cast aside claims that the Climategate e-mails that surfaced late last year have undercut evidence of a warming planet.
Administrator Lisa Jackson said the e-mails and other evidence the petitioners submitted wasn’t convincing. Jackson also made her own attacks on climate skeptics.
“These petitions — based as they are on selectively edited, out-of-context data and a manufactured controversy — provide no evidence to undermine our determination. Excess greenhouse gases are a threat to our health and welfare,” she said in a prepared statement. Jackson claimed that the scientists had been cleared of wrongdoing by multiple whitewashes investigations.
“Defenders of the status quo will try to slow our efforts to get America running on clean energy. A better solution would be to join the vast majority of the American people who want to see more green jobs, more clean energy innovation and an end to the oil addiction that pollutes our planet and jeopardizes our national security,” she added.
Petitioners also included, in addition to the CRUtape Letters, evidence of errors in the IPCC report that the EPA based its original ruling to regulate on. The EPA apparently demonstrating its illiteracy, ignored the dozens of errors and hundreds of non-peer-reviewed references to partisan environmental group propaganda as if they were scientific evidence.
“Of the alleged errors, EPA confirmed only two in a 3,000 page report. The first pertains to the rate of Himalayan glacier melt and second to the percentage of the Netherlands below sea level. IPCC issued correction statements for both of these errors. The errors have no bearing on Administrator Jackson’s decision. None of the errors undermines the basic facts that the climate is changing in ways that threaten our health and welfare,” EPA said in summarizing its rejection of the petitions.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the Senate’s leading climate skeptic, criticized the EPA’s decision. He said the agency failed to allow an “open, transparent” process to look at the implications of the hacked e-mails and “hear scientists of all persuasions.”
“Open and fulsome debate only strengthens the foundations of scientific knowledge. But EPA chose instead to dismiss legitimate concerns about data quality, transparency, and billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded science as products of ‘conspiracies,’” Inhofe said in a statement Thursday.
Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute, one of the special interest advocacy groups cited in the IPCC report, said, “The endangerment finding is a science-based determination, based on a thorough review of current peer-reviewed scientific literature. Ensuring the EPA can act to reduce these harmful emissions is not only responsible, it is necessary. Delaying action on climate change threatens our country’s health and prosperity.”
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What a BIG surprise this is!
I wonder if Ms. Jackson has house plants and if she talks to them to encourage growth? Naaah, probably not but if so, I wonder if she realizes that with each expiration she gives the plants a little extra shot of fertilizer [CO2]?
Sad to say but I think nothing will save us from the EPA except its abolishment.
Mike Ford says:
July 29, 2010 at 4:51 pm
Elections have consequences!
Indeed they do. Remind your campagning choices that the EPA needs some serious reigning-in.
Chris in OZ,
It happened before that: click
“My plan would mean that electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket”. Welcome to the FTA (Fundamentally Transformed America).
Has EPA become a fascio-communistic organization?
Evidence is piling up.
Time to pull the plug.
What the hell do green jobs and oil consumption have to do with regulating CO2!?
I am absolutely on board with creating the high tech jobs of the future and reducing our dependency on foreign oil. I also know that anthropogenic CO2 doesn’t measurably warm the planet.
What is with these people? It’s all or nothing for them.
I wonder if she has a little red book under her pillow?
In Government Comments on the Final Draft of the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM), for Working Group 1 of Assessment Report #4 of the IPCC, the Government of Germany (Reviewer’s comment ID# 2011-35) stated the following (I believe) in reference to a statement in the SPM about proxy reconstructions of past climate (aka the Hockey Stick and its siblings):
In other words, the EPA is basing its finding of endangerment on a report with a 10% chance of being wrong (which is implicit when using a 90% significance level). The significance level is cleverly worded to be 5% to 95%, which, unless you read it carefully, can be mistaken for a significance level of 95% or 2 sigmas (standard deviations). The 5% below 5% and the 5% above 95% add up to the 10% type 1 error or chance that the science is wrong even if statistical tests are significant.
Furthermore, the other thing that the EPA has done recently is to use its regulatory authority to eliminate for all practical purposes the single largest opportunity for both significant CO2 reductions and reducing our dependence on foreign oil by converting to clean diesel.
At the heart of modern diesel emission reductions is the injection of urea in the exhaust stream, otherwise known as “Adblue” or “Diesel Exhaust Fluid” (DEF). The diesel engines that use urea to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions are often called “Bluetec” diesels. The EPA has made such clean diesels in smaller vehicles very difficult to implement technically by requiring that the tank for DEF be sized so that there is enough DEF to last 10,000 miles. The implication is that consumers either are unable or would be unwilling to keep a smaller tank filled. Such a large tank means that only the largest vehicles would have room for it. Even SUVs do not have enough room and typically have to sacrifice the spare tire location for the DEF tank. The result is that the consumer is given a disincentive to buy a clean diesel vehicle because it will not have a spare tire. Smaller vehicles, such as the Smart, will probably never be allowed into the US with a diesel engine because it would be very difficult to find room for such a large tank of DEF. A diesel Smart can have a fuel mileage of around 70 miles per gallon and are available in Canada and Europe.
Converting half of our passenger fleet to diesel could save about 17.8 billion gallons of oil per year. I have not heard of any other proposal that can save that much imported fuel, save that much in CO2 emissions and where all of the technology is proven, available and affordable. By contrast, the Chevy Volt is going to cost around $40,000 and Cap and Trade and similar schemes are designed to drastically increase energy costs, whereas conversion to clean diesel has the potential of actually decreasing energy costs by very significantly reducing the demand of the world’s largest energy consumer: the US.
*shrug* What can you say? The declaration of Independence warned the government would turn this way eventually. It also says its our duty to remove said government. So lets hope we do our job in NOV.
“The endangerment finding is a science-based determination, based on a thorough review of current peer-reviewed scientific literature.”
Excuse me?
Background
On April 2, 2007, in Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007), the Supreme Court found that greenhouse gases are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act. The Court held that the Administrator must determine whether or not emissions of greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles cause or contribute to air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare, or whether the science is too uncertain to make a reasoned decision. In making these decisions, the Administrator is required to follow the language of section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court decision resulted from a petition for rulemaking under section 202(a) filed by more than a dozen environmental, renewable energy, and other organizations.
July is Custer’s last stand. La Nina will knock them off their horse.
Exhaling is breathcrime.
Huuummmmmm… and what will happen next I wonder? We seem to be living in a Clockwork Orange World… tick…tick…tick…
none of this matters the climate will decide so don’t worry LOL
pretty easy to sound like a kook, but for the love of god, the USA has some damned stupid mainstream thought running through it.
andrew revkin linked to this from his dotearth blog – another attempt to woo Conservatives:
27 July: Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs: Robert Stavins: Beware of Scorched-Earth Strategies in Climate Debates
In an op-ed which appeared on July 27th in The Boston Globe (click here for link to the original op-ed), Richard Schmalensee and I commented on this unfortunate outcome of U.S. political debates and described the irony that the attack on cap-and-trade – and carbon-pricing, more broadly – has been led by conservatives, who should take pride as the creators of these cost-effective policy innovations in three Republican administrations…
The Power of Cap-and-Trade
by Richard Schmalensee and Robert Stavins
The Boston Globe, July 27, 2010
In fact, market-based policies should be embraced, not condemned by Republicans (as well as Democrats). After all, these policies were innovations developed by conservatives in the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations (and once strongly condemned by liberals)…
If some conservatives oppose energy or climate policies because of disagreement about the threat of climate change or the costs of those policies, so be it. But in the process of debating risks and costs, there should be no tarnishing of market-based policy instruments. Such a scorched-earth approach will come back to haunt when future environmental policies will not be able to use the power of the marketplace to reduce business costs…
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/analysis/stavins/?p=762
keep your sense of humour, though:
26 July: Aspen Times: Scott Condon: Aspen Institute faces carbon conundrum
The Institute is trying to offset travel-related carbon emissions associated with the Aspen Environment Forum, a conference that started Sunday to examine issues such as climate change. It will purchase carbon offsets on the free market to try to counterbalance the travel effects of the 300-plus attendees and scores of presenters.
David Monsma, executive director of the institute’s energy and environment program, said the staff supplies attendance numbers and an estimate of where attendees are traveling from to a firm called Native Energy. The company calculates the carbon resulting from the travel, charges The Aspen Institute a fee per ton, and invests those funds in renewable energy projects…
The Aspen Institute isn’t working with Native Energy to offset carbon emissions of its other public forums this summer, the Aspen Security Forum and the Aspen Ideas Festival, institute officials said. However, guests who stay at the Aspen Meadows, the accommodations associated with the Institute, are offered the chance to buy carbon offsets to cancel the emissions generated by their travel and stay…
Aspen’s curse, in terms of its contribution to climate change, is that it hosts more private air travel than many other destinations. The institute’s events are a significant contributor to private aviation. The tarmac was lined with immense private jets over the Fourth of July weekend, some no doubt belonging to people attending or presenting information at the Ideas Fest…
Numerous government officials from Washington, D.C., have presented information at the institute’s forums, from Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Director Lisa Jackson. It’s a safe bet they aren’t flying commercial…
Environmentalist Bill McKibben, founder of an organization dedicated to battling climate change, was a speaker at the Ideas Fest. He noted he has a huge carbon footprint because of the traveling he does to promote the cause.
“I offset my plane trips, of course, but I don’t labor under the delusion that that negates the carbon I pour into the atmosphere,” McKibben wrote in an e-mail exchange with The Aspen Times.
“I hope the general task is worth the damage I cause, and I try to choose venues that seem worth it,” he added. “I came to Aspen because I could combine a trip to the Ideas Fest with talks for CORE [the Community Office for Resource Efficiency] and ACES [Aspen Center for Environmental Studies] in the local community.”…
Bottled water policy changes
The use of Fiji bottled water fell from about 500 cases to 50 cases over two Ideas Festivals, Hawk said. The water bottles used to be available to all attendees. This year, it was only made available to speakers…
The issue is delicate because Fiji Water is owned by Stewart and Lynda Resnick, major contributors to The Aspen Institute. Small plastic bottles of their POM Wonderful pomegranate juice and other beverages remained available to the Ideas crowd this year.
http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20100726/NEWS/100729874/1077&ParentProfile=1058
“Administrator Lisa Jackson said the e-mails and other evidence the petitioners submitted wasn’t convincing.”
That’s an argument without an argument.
Where is the evidence that the scientists involved with climategate indeed were unsuccessful manipulating the peer review process?
Obama’s Lisa Jackson has but one agenda kill prosperity in America. There is no science to back up anything she says, except for her power to exert control. I have noticed that NOAA is part of the game, announcing Hottest world ever. Old people like myself will be shown to the showers soon.
Alan Simpson: re: “I am from the UK but, unlike the MSM over here, I don’t think Americans are even slightly stupid.” You are giving my countrymen far too much credit. Believe me, they are beyond stupid. When they are huddling in caves, starving to death, they will still believe our masters in D.C. will be sending food and fuel “real soon now”.
Pollutant C02 is an oxymoron.
Can’t blame Lisa Jackson – she is being paid a hella’va lot of money to support the Obama administration agenda. Imagine waking up each morning and pondering about how many half truths and outright lies you will tell during the course of the working day. Maybe she runs a sweepstake with herself. Hmmm….. $20 bucks says I’ll tell 3 whoppers today and just 1 half truth.
They had made their decision before they accepted complaints. It is court time. Lawsuits.
Lisa Jackson in her rant has not demonstrated the slightest “thread of endangerment”.
@ur momisugly Christopher says:
July 29, 2010 at 5:30 pm
*shrug* What can you say? The declaration of Independence warned the government would turn this way eventually. It also says its our duty to remove said government. So lets hope we do our job in NOV.
It also does not limit our methods to the Ballot Box. In any case it’s not “the government” that is the problem. It’s certain personalities currently occupying various offices in that government that are the problem. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bastards.
pat says:
July 29, 2010 at 5:55 pm
“keep your sense of humour, though:
[…]
“I offset my plane trips, of course, but I don’t labor under the delusion that that negates the carbon I pour into the atmosphere,” McKibben wrote in an e-mail exchange with The Aspen Times.”[…]”
He obviously hasn’t understood the carbon offseting business completely yet. Negating the carbon is the whole point of it, man!
BTW, how many credits do i need if i move real slowly the entire year?
Obama is just finishing off what Clinton started when he dealt the death blow to the Glass Steagall Act in 1999 thus letting the Casino Bankers ruin the US economy – you know – culminating in the sub prime crisis. The US economy is finding it hard enough to recover from that – Barak Obama will lay the economy to rest by closing it down while China and India take over the consumption of energy to be the producers of the world’s goods. The have no trouble in using coal and oil while the good ol’ US of A chases windmills.
Good luck to yo’ all, I’m off the China where they exercise a little pragmatic common sense.
Doug