It has not been a good week for the EPA. After wide media coverage yesterday put sunlight on the massive fraud of one of their top climate officials, now today, there is a challenge filed in SCOTUS.
I have been given the amici curiae brief. The cover reads:
And the question posed is:
Since the document is password protected, I’m unable to do anything beyond post screencaps and the document itself. The brief was created by several well known climate sceptics, plus a former chairman of the EPA Clean Air Scientific Advisory board.
The arguments are:
Read the entire submission (PDF) here: Amicus_curiae-EF_SC_Merit_12-1146etseq.tsacScientistsFinal_Final
Related articles
- The Power Mad EPA (papundits.wordpress.com)
- ANALYSIS-U.S. air pollution authority faces Supreme Court tests (trust.org)
Steven Mosher says:
December 17, 2013 at 10:19 am
Wow, Mosh. Your comment simply underlines your ignorance of the Clean Air Act and the criteria that is required to make a finding of “endangerment” under the Act. But in the face of what has been happening at the EPA, it is unbecoming of you to make such criminally negligent statements.
Actually, it is called the “substantial evidence” rule in administrative law parlance. You are correct that it is a very deferential standard of review, on the theory that courts are not the experts in scientific questions. That does make it problematic whether EPA’s rules will be overturned. But I have found little in what EPA has ever written on this subject that comprises anything more than surmise or solid evidence of any kind.
Regardless of the result, it is time for Congress to reconsider the review criteria it has established under the Administrative Procedure Act. The substantial evidence rule as a standard of review no longer has much tenability. With regulation increasingly invading larger realms with less and less reliance upon statutory guidance (often such guidance is missing altogether, because Congress has not wanted to take political responsibility for the consequences of its legislation), it has become apparent that regulations such as these are increasingly made on the basis of political judgments instead of sound science. If we want it to be an “endangerment,” we will make it so, come what may.
OK Do all the bottling companies have to stop adding CO2 to their products??
CO2 is a pollutant after all, Short sell CocaCola…….??
No more pop; no more beer; no more dry ice….. sheeesh, how stupid can these people get?
As someone said earlier, if CO2 is a pollutant, then it must be cut down to 1 or 2 ppm,
Then we all die. The Club of Rome will be happy with the decrease if world population.
ferdberple says:
December 17, 2013 at 7:58 pm
thisisnotgoodtogo says:
December 17, 2013 at 10:47 am
How is it that oxygen has not been ruled to be a pollutant?
Look at what damage it can do.
==========
following a heart attack, it is oxygen that does the damage.
I didn’t know that! And I suspect it may not actually be the oxygen itself, but the lack of carbon dioxide in the oxygen tanks used for heart attacks (and other purposes). Animals REQUIRE adequate CO2 in the air for health. Because it is such a trace gas, it tends to be ignored in chemistry equations such as the studies done by medical doctors. But it is central to life and should not be ignored.
Tolerating the political correctness of “global warming” encourages continuing to ignore the effects of carbon dioxide at relevant levels on animal life. Indeed, studies of the medical effects of CO2-free oxygen and other studies of near-atmosphere levels are actively discouraged by today’s national science foundations. Some day, that just might kill you.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
I don’t know if this can do any good, but I know what can. Our Congress must eliminate EPA and repeal the Clean Air Act and other laws providing the standing for environmental regulations. We must enact new laws, targeted and narrow, that will keep us from fouling our nest, but that make sense. ALARA is now more harmful (actually) and dangerous (in potential) than the hazards targeted.
Eliminate EPA and the laws they pretend to stand on; problem solved.
@Lonnie E. Schubert at 4:43 am
I’m with you in sprit, but not tactics.
Eliminating the EPA and repealing the Clean Air Act is a fool’s errand.
Putting the EPA on a legislative leash and a codified corral can be justified with the public. EPA regulations have the force of law. EPA has its own armed agents. It acts as a parallel government insolated from public accountability.
Congress should put its foot down and insist, via the February 2014 that
1: All future EPA regulations have no force of law until they are passed by Congress and signed by the President AS LAW.
2: CO2 and CH2 are not pollutants under the Clean Air Act as written by Congress.
3. All past regulations involving CO2 or CH4 as greenhouse gases or carbon pollution are null and void until they are resubmitted for Congressional approval and signing by the President.
That is a defensible stand. It will take a threat of government shutdown to make it happen.
Whether it be Travis at the Alamo or Chamberlain at Little Round Top will depend upon the metal of the defenders and leadership — a disheartening thought that.
A fight by Congress on this principled stand on Separation of Powers at the same time as SCOTUS hears the EPA Clean Air Act case, is a confluence events that must not be squandered. A simultaneous fight in Congress and SCOTUS against the EPA’s overreach can increase the chances of success of both actions.
Correction to 7:59 am:
Congress should put its foot down and insist, via the February 2014 Debt Ceiling debate and legislation that
CO2’s effects depend on it being a forcing (Arrhenius, etc.)
No forcing is operating to heat the planet (hotspot missing)
CO2 is not heating the planet. QED
The syllogism is simple and clear.
Many of you understand and appreciate the role of EPA. EPA isn’t strict enough. They don’t press criminal charges against the oil, coal or other polluters like the Hanford radioactive waste leaking in Oregon. Like it our not our planet is heating up because you and I sit back and do nothing to stop it. Corporations have a single goal – profits. They will kill every last one of us to get rich.
The brainwashing of the American people is impressive – lulled into playing with our phone, music, bling, eye candy, that shuts ordinarily caring people to shut down and submit to them.
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1754/20122845.full
Tehachapi Gal,
Please take your Chicken Little scares elsewhere. This is a science site, not a wild-eyed scare site. It is you who is being brainwashed, not the rest of us.
Paul Erlich has been thoroughly discredited. Not one single prediction he has ever made over the past 30+ years has happened. Not a single one.
Doesn’t that tell you all you need to know about Erlich? He is selling a book. To make money. His book would not sell, and thus he would make no money, if he told the truth: that there is nothing either unusual or unprecedented happening. Nothing. Everything being observed now has happened before — and to a much greater degree.
Maybe you believe people who have always been 100% wrong. But for the rest of us, that is not the way to bet.
@Tehachapi Gal at 7:03 pm
The brainwashing of the American people is impressive
I can’t argue with that. You are a prime example.
Go back and reread the US Constitution, assuming you read it the first time. Pay particular attention to its Preamble.
“WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
The “Blessings of Liberty” have been brainwashed out of most of the American people. With such brainwashing, the EPA now operates as a shadow government antithetical to the concept of Liberty and outside the clauses of the Constitution.