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.
As a non American I seem to have more faith in your legal system than than most. I would thik that it matters little what Jackson thinks at this juncture. It still has to go before the court. The above invective , in my mind, would be better directed in a rational rebuttal.
This is more proof that our government is completely out of control. Under our constitution only congress can write laws. And the constitution does not give congress the authority to delegate it’s legislative power to the EPA.
Throwing out the big government Democrats this November is a good idea but it won’t solve anything if we just replace them with big government Republicans. We need to elect people who are committed to the constitution. That may be a ways off because most voters wouldn’t know the constituion if it bit them on the butt. But judging by the mood of the voters at least maybe we’re headed in the right direction.
When is the EPA going to list water as a dangerous environmental pollutant? Look what happened to New Orleans when the levees broke. Water is far more dangerous and destructive than CO2. Water in, excess quantities, kills thousands of people a year. There should be policies in place to limit the amount of water on our planet.
They still have never made an economic proof that reducing CO2 is the best investment for whatever it is going to give us.
Frank K. says:
July 29, 2010 at 8:42 pm
It’s always Marcia, Marcia says:
July 29, 2010 at 7:32 pm
““You voted for these people America. Now you’re stuck with them.”
Sorry IAMM – I didn’t vote for these clowns. But you’re right – we’re stuck with them for another 2+ years…”
I didn’t vote for them either. Its true that we are stuck with some of them for 2+ years. But we can throw a huge monkey wrench into their plans by voting out the Dems in the House of representatives this november. That will stop them from passing more bad legislation. And if we keep then from getting a 2/3 majority in the Senate we can stop any treaties too. At least that will hold them in check for the next two years.
US industrial titan General Electric has agreed to pay over 23 million dollars to settle allegations that it bribed Iraqi officials.
The EPA rulings are feeding and enabling the corruptocrats.
The ScienceDoubters are still beating that “Climategate” dead horse I see.
http://tinyurl.com/496svm
VOTE IN NOVEMBER. Bring three of your friends.
Jack Simmons says:
“Mike, would you be so kind as to supply some good reading material on the California power market fiasco?”
I’m not Mike, but here’s a reference to an excellent summary of the California electricity fiasco that unseated a Governor mid-term and we got Arnold as a replacement.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf65.html
btw, there *is* a practical near-term solution to the power production problem without increasing CO2 output. There are 57 nuke power plants being built around the globe today (none in the US). A higher fraction of neutron derived electricity powering electric cars is technically and economically reasonable. The grid is at maximum capacity during the day, but only about 50% utilized at night when cars would be recharged.
If CO2 is a pollutant and endangers health, does the EPA require that it is removed from the atmosphere? I presume that there is a “safe” level, but I have some difficulty in understanding how one would arrive at this level. If this is truly “pre-industrial”, as the EPA appears to suggest, they must be be truly insane. We are blessed in the UK with an Energy minister who has just stated that there will be large increases in the price of electricity but we will not have power outages as he proposes to build 2 wind turbines a day until 2020. He also stated that these are economically efficient. While free speech is still allowed in the UK, to a point, this appears to be completely insanity. His views support the mantra of the EU commission, which is unaccountable to the electorate and is perhaps a prime example of inefficient bureaucratic government by a self styled elite. Since virtually every major policy proposed by the EU has been disasterous (Agriculture, Fishing, the Euro and climate change), we can expect things to get very much worse before there is an outbreak of reality. Power cuts in increasingly severe winters may focus our minds on climate change.
History has many examples of government by the insane, regretably these have tended to end badly. At least in the US you still have the opportunity to vote for another government and the US congress remains a far more democratic institution than, sadly, we now have in Europe.
David L. says:
July 30, 2010 at 8:41 am
When is the EPA going to list water as a dangerous environmental pollutant? Look what happened to New Orleans when the levees broke. Water is far more dangerous and destructive than CO2. Water in, excess quantities, kills thousands of people a year. There should be policies in place to limit the amount of water on our planet.
______________________________________________________
Careful what you say, “they” are working on that:
California’s San Joaquin Valley is the salad bowl of the world, but is in danger of becoming a dust bowl unless immediate action is taken to change policies that put the needs of fish above the livelihood of people.
California’s Man-Made Drought: The green war against San Joaquin Valley farmers
http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052970204731804574384731898375624.html
trbixler says:
July 29, 2010 at 6:12 pm
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.
_________________________________________________
That is why they passed Obamacare. We can expect implanted RFID chips too to be a requirement for healthcare soon:
Insurers Study Implanting RFID Chips in Patient
“…Earlier this year, four hospitals in Puerto Rico announced plans to implant chips in patients with Alzheimers Disease and other memory problems.
VeriChip has given several New Jersey hospitals—Beth Israel, Clara Maass, Columbus, Hackensack, Kimball, Newark, Ocean and PBI Regional—equipment to read the chips and access the companys database.
Across the country, about 100 hospitals have the appropriate scanning equipment, according to VeriChip.
The chip, about the size of a grain of rice, was approved by the FDA as a medical device in 2004….”
In response to RC Saumarez’s comment: — OSHA regulations set the permissible exposure to CO2 limit in the workplace at 10,000 ppm (time weighted average). OSHA also acknowledges the detection limits as 200 ppm qualitative and 500 ppm quantitative. In that the atmosphere is presently around 390 ppm, barely reaching the quantitative limit of detection, what’s the problem?
rbateman says:
July 30, 2010 at 1:08 am
Cassandra King says:
July 29, 2010 at 10:09 pm
“an end to the oil addiction that pollutes our planet and jeopardizes our national security,” she added.”
An end that will surely devastate the country, not to mention render it defenseless. No other country would be that stupid.
_______________________________________________
I think you forgot Greece, Spain, the UK, Germany, Australia, New Zealand ….Communist China, current home of Maurice Strong of course is exempt.
@ur momisugly Gail Combs says:
July 30, 2010 at 11:33 am
_________________________________________________
That is why they passed Obamacare. We can expect implanted RFID chips too to be a requirement for healthcare soon:
I expect that those who are still young enough, or yet to be born, will no doubt be Borg Drones soon, which will make the One-Worlder types ecstatic.
Whatever to do with the EPA …
The latest from Cartoons by Josh, Surreal Climate #3, has an excellent remedy:
http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com/
KPO says:
July 30, 2010 at 4:20 am
….. 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.
_________________________________________________________________________
Actually the hunter-gatherer tribe is slated to be regulated by Markey’s (of Cap & trade fame) “food safety” bill. That bill, already passed by the House, does to food what the EPA does to energy – strangles it in red tape. Thanks to the commerce clause it includes ALL food including home gardens.
The Obama government is very very dangerous to the continued existence of the USA and the Chinese are waiting in the wings with all those big fat IOUs
To be short and sweet mrs Lisa Jackson will start taxing US citizens for their production of greenhouses gases . Where is the beginning and where is the end ?
Is not taxing a decision by the government which according to the US constitution needs to be granted , ratified and installed by their democratic choosen representatives as prescribed by the Constitution ? Has Lisa Jackson more power than the Constitution ? If Barack Obama is letting this happen after have sworn to respect the Constitution then he is not worth the Presidency over all the governmental institutions and his laisser faire , laisser passer of the EPA actions to start taxing us citizens on a totally at random basis without any democratic control
is in fact the instalment of a totally authoritarian regime and an insult towards the much praised and envied US constisution so carefully designed by its founding fathers . Does Mr Barak Obama respect any father ?
N early
A lways
D ebates
E nvironment
R esponsibly
Better?
Cassandra King says: July 29, 2010 at 10:09 pm
“an end to the oil addiction that pollutes our planet and jeopardizes our national security,” she added.”
Any public servant uttering such stunningly ignorant tosh should be challenged through the courts, it is a partisan statement and thoroughly dangerous.
Our whole industrial society is built on the basis of cheap and reliable energy supplied by fossil fuels, in effect EVERYTHING our civilizsation enjoys comes from fossil fuels and in fact fossil fuels are the very bedrock of our western democratic civilisation.
Cassandra King is right. Obama and this incredibly stupid woman are leading the USA down a path to ruin. Meanwhile, China and India are ‘hell bent’ on cornering the world’s resources to build super economies while the USA is setting about destroying its own. Therein lays madness. And Obama is the leader? These people are not interested in rebuilding the US economy. God only knows what motivates them. Perhaps they see themselves as the ‘saviours of the world’. Perhaps then they should be ‘crucified’ – maybe at the polls?
Doug
Anu says:
July 30, 2010 at 10:41 am
You’re such a joker Anu, that ship was overloaded with global warming.
I don’t see alternate energy and soot removal as having anything to do with CO2 removal.
The first two make sense and are cheap the last one doesn’t and is incredibly expansive .
Denial of Petitions for Reconsideration of the Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act
Action
EPA determined in December 2009 that climate change caused by emissions of greenhouse gases threatens the public’s health and the environment. Since then, EPA received ten petitions challenging this determination. On July 29, 2010, EPA denied these petitions.
The petitions to reconsider EPA’s “Endangerment Finding” claimed that climate science can’t be trusted, and asserted a conspiracy that calls into question the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) , the U.S. National Academy of Sciences , and the U.S. Global Change Research Program. After months of serious consideration of the petitions and of the state of climate change science, EPA found no evidence to support these claims.
The scientific evidence supporting EPA’s finding is robust, voluminous, and compelling. Climate change is happening now, and humans are contributing to it. Multiple lines of evidence show a global warming trend over the past 100 years. Beyond this, melting ice in the Arctic, melting glaciers around the world, increasing ocean temperatures, rising sea levels, altered precipitation patterns, and shifting patterns of ecosystems and wildlife habitats all confirm that our climate is changing.
The nitty-gritty: http://epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment/petitions.html
Don’t forget this investigation
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/04/29/epa-probe-politics-shortages-affect-environmental-agencys-wor/
Jackson says skeptics should join the vast majority of Americans…Lisa, honey, the majority of Americans don’t believe in AGW. Why don’t you join the vast majority of Americans?
Why do people distrust government? Oh, I don’t know….maybe because of blatant manipulation, mistruths and treating us as complete idiots who’ll swallow the BS and go away satisfied. When we don’t, well clearly we’re under the manipulative control of another large entity – in the case of AGW, big oil is apparently the puppet-master pulling our strings.
Time and again government proves itself completely worthy of the contempt and ridicule the citizenry heap upon it. Brava, Ms. Jackson, you are among the frontrunners for a starring role in the future historical investigation of the war against CO2.