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.”
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
This administration will rely on end run bureaucratic solutions over the people and around the Congress from here on out.
The decades of Congress choosing to allow unelected bureaucrats make legislative decisions is going to catch up with us.
Destroying our economy by way of CO2 regulation is not the only target of destruction of the Obama administration.
They have a bureaucratic, anti-democratic solution to immigration
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/233793/amnesty-memo-robert-verbruggen
and who knows what else?
Facts, the will of the people, law, science, and the future of America are all roadbumps to Obama.
A classic example of how government bureucrats and ‘scientists’ are a threat to your health and wealth.
We all moan about how difficult it is to get rid of unscrupulous/incompetent/corrupt politicians, but at least it can be done through the democratic proces.
The process of removal is simply not possible for government bureaucrats and scientists of the same ilk – this is what we should be afraid of. The built in system of mutual support and investigative whitewashes ensures the perpetuation of their jobs and bad science.
The position of AGW-skeptics is becoming so weak as to become laughable. They shouldn’t have denied reality. They should have solely pointed out the facts that AGW cannot be stopped in any short term in any way AND that some warming might actually be beneficial for globe, agriculture, society.
Having lost their base in reality, the path is now free for all kinds of CO2 tax terror. Thanx, Watts et al.
Unfortunately, you have dug in too deep to extricate yourselves from it.
“These petitions — based as they are on selectively edited, out-of-context data and a manufactured controversy — provide no evidence to undermine our determination.”
Amazing. I can’t understand why you folks in USA put up with this. Get rid of this monster before it gets rid of you!
It’s the lowest of the low to describe many of the carefully considered petitions a “manufactured controversy”. This is the worst kind of rhetoric. It’s also tantamount to begging the question: we deny there is any controversy (only ‘manufactured’ controversy, which doesn’t count) because we’ve made our minds up.
But leaving that aside, we have Jackson’s confession that “These petitions…provide no evidence to undermine our determination.” Of course not. Her determination is not based on anything that could be addressed by rational argument and evidence. I can well imagine that Hitler, Stalin and Mao, presented with petitions about the damage their genocidal policies were causing, would also have retorted “These petitions provide no evidence to undermine our determination”. Such persons’ determinations cannot be undermined by coming face to face with the truth, it simply makes them hit out against the truth and attempt to destroy the messengers, just as Lisa Jackson and the Obama administration are doing.
I can only repeat my suggestion that those who genuinely believe CO2 is a pollutant should set the rest of us a good example and stop emitting it themselves.
Unfortunately for them there will be a fairly immediate and permanent consequence but at least it would mean there was one piece of bureaucratic idiocy we wouldn’t have to waste time arguing about in the future.
The only experience, being a Brit, that i have with the EPA is the Siumpson’s movie. Seems they may have been close to the mark portraying them if this lady is anything to go by.
Do the EPA carry guns?
Theo Goodwin says:
July 29, 2010 at 7:35 pm
pat writes:
Mike, would you be so kind as to supply some good reading material on the California power market fiasco?
The EPA is becoming a huge liability to the Obama administration. The American people simply do not trust a government body that denies the wishes of the large majority of American citizens.
Obama will be forced to make a choice: knee cap the EPA or be lose any pretense of having the mandate of the people.
In Europe there is a country called Spain, bet you 50,000 to one Lisa has never heard of it, Green jobs ? Ask the Spanish unemployed.
Renewable energy ? ask the Spanish who pays the household energy bills.
November, vote with your mind not your hand.
Brings to mind this speech by a great Statesman. What is old is New again, fascism didn’t die it just changed form.
Listen to this excerpt.
Your either with us or against us, like its a terrorist act. Where have we heard that?
Do you miss our constitution that’s been kicked to the gutter? The common sense trade agreements that protected our jobs and businesses for over 200 years?
Its time to take our country back from these, these… basically corporation/international banker dictatorships that we’ve been handed!
Serious note, I just wish they weren’t steering the military industrial complex of guided missiles, depleted uranium and cluster bombs.
“Oh say does that star spangled banner yet wave,
o’er the land of corporate greed,
and the home of its slaves.”
We can fight back at the ballot box, but where are the quality people to replace these pinheads? Inactive, buried like the presidential decree, Executive Order 11110 and the president who issued it. google it
I don’t know the answer, all I’ve been able to do is vote for third party
[snip – dial it back please – see the cool 50 million post ~mod]
If enough people get active we might slowly start to make a peaceful difference at the ballot box. We only have pea shooters compared to what they have.
“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,” – Lisa Jackson.
Lisa darling, would you please be so kind as to put some verbs in your sentences. Please tell us exactly how you plan to accomplish this noble quest. Unless there are a host of blueprints in your desk drawer, just waiting for a bit of start-up capital to bear fruit, I don’t believe we have either the technology or the know-how at this time, let alone the stupendous amount of capital required. See http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/SecondPage.html . Certainly, we should strive to create a far more energy efficient, less polluted and “secure” society, but I also don’t see a future in being reduced to a hunter-gatherer tribe that cant hunt or gather because both are regulated by the EPA.
Are the EPA investigators and prosecutors going to fine themselves? After all they are polluting the planet with every breath they breathe out!
If they really believe what they say, they should lead by example and stop breathing out. Permanently.
pwl: July 29, 2010 at 10:06 pm
I wonder when the EPA will realize that water vapor, clouds, and droplets form 80-85% of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and want to regulate emissions of water into the atmosphere?
The EPA already knows that, but it doesn’t fit the agenda. The EPA is a *regulatory* agency — it runs on paperwork, not science.
When Lisa Jackson ran New Jersey’s DEP, she single-handedly turned it from a department that worked *with* industry to find solutions into a personal means to attack the industrial base and drive it out-of-state.
One more thread where I have to point out that my two senators, Warner and Webb, voted to let the EPA get away with this crap. They are both ignorant and cowardly.
It’s sickening to see someone like Lisa Jackson in a position of authority. Her attack on skeptics was as irrational as it was unwarranted. She conflates C02 with all greenhouse gasses, with real pollutants, with “green jobs”, energy innovation, and even national security. In short, C02 has become nothing but a convenient scapegoat for those in power who seek to keep or increase that power. Changes are coming, though. Hopefully they’ll be in time.
Ref – Peter Miller says:
July 30, 2010 at 1:35 am
…”The process of removal is simply not possible for government bureaucrats and scientists of the same ilk – this is what we should be afraid of. The built in system of mutual support and investigative whitewashes ensures the perpetuation of their jobs and bad science.”
________________________
Beg to differ. Government employees at all levels are very flexible people. They have to be. After every election there’s a change of the “political hacks” in charge of the system, a change in the “tone and content” of the official message on every subject under the Sun, and a change in Happy Hour location(s) for the senior managers who have to go have fun with the Hacks after work on Friday afternoon.
Government Scientists are more flexible than government employees. In addition to all the items above, government scientists are required to compete for the Weekly “Happy Hour HUYA Award” and kiss the feet, hands, and another body part of the elected gentry where the Sun don’t shine. Government employees aren’t required to do these things, but some do anyway (this strictly ‘voluntary’ behavior is not, in any way, limited to government employees).
Government employees and scientists will say anything you want them to say, and most government scientists will do so much more if they have to.
Lisa Jackson runs the EPA on intuition and not science. The bully is the sierra Club. They have a comprehensive pattern of litigation. As the humans ramp up, we will see voting changes and lawsuits against the EPA. At some point under oath, Jackson will have to defend her superstition and prvoe CO2 is the cause of endangerment. The chickens will come home to roost.
Jackson is just following orders from the chief executive.
Both of these asshats and a lot more will be given their walking papers soon enough.
They won’t be dismissing the petitions we sign at the ballot box.
@ur momisugly Shevva says:
July 30, 2010 at 3:43 am
Do the EPA carry guns?
I expect so, or at least have the authority and budget item to do so. Most US agencies have their own internal security forces, including the Dept. of Education, among others. They generally don’t advertise the fact tho.
In fact, the IPCC did not really correct the 2035 Hialayan glacier melt error — its online statement merely acknowledges that the paragraph containing this prediction contains an assertion that was not properly backed by a reference to a primary source. This leaves open the possibility that the assertion was correct or approximately correct, but that they had merely made the procedural error of taking it from a second hand source instead of digging down to the primary source as they were supposed to.
The 2035 prediction still stands in the online version of AR4 WG1, with no crossout or other indication at the page in question that it has been retracted.
Shevva says:
July 30, 2010 at 3:43 am
“The only experience, being a Brit, that i have with the EPA is the Siumpson’s movie. Seems they may have been close to the mark portraying them if this lady is anything to go by.
Do the EPA carry guns?”
Worse than guns. A bullet would be quick and merciful.
The EPA slowly strangles you with red tape and/or can fine you to death (“you” meaning corporations and individuals).
Oh, I see you’re already on this. Just heard about it. 😀
Myself, I doubt the part of her statement where she says EPA seriously considered the submissions. I am sure that the submissions sat in a dusty pile, and then Lisa Jackson consulted a certain iPhone app…
My vote? No confidence.
Shevva says:
July 30, 2010 at 3:43 am
“The only experience, being a Brit, that i have with the EPA is the Siumpson’s movie. Seems they may have been close to the mark portraying them if this lady is anything to go by”
How prescient Mat Groening is turning out to be.
Peter Miller says:
July 30, 2010 at 1:35 am
“We all moan about how difficult it is to get rid of unscrupulous/incompetent/corrupt politicians, but at least it can be done through the democratic proces.”
It is an interesting dilemma. Can we really get rid of it, when it is in place? To me it seems impossible to get rid of. It reaches a critical mass, and from then on it just grows, and grows. More and more people work for the government, and therefore vote for more government. Now, if there ever was a death spiral, there you have it.
When the Vikings, about a 1000 years ago met every now and then, and voted on serious matters, we had some kind of democracy . But when the day came that someone said ; “We need someone to take care of this decision-business as a full day job for us….. we dont have time for this ourselves…..” . That was a sad day for us all, but probably inevitable.
I wonder how long time after the Vikings this happened, by the way?