In a post last week, I gave notice that battle was about to be joined with the EPA over what it claims to be the “science” behind global warming alarm. The case is called the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council (CHECC) v. EPA, now pending in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. CHECC challenges EPA’s 2009 Finding that CO2 and other greenhouse gases constitute a “danger” to human health and welfare. At the outset of the Trump administration, CHECC filed a Petition for reconsideration and rescission of the Endangerment Finding. That Petition was finally denied by EPA on April 20, 2022, more than a year into the Biden administration, and the appeal followed. I am one of the attorneys for CHECC.
The opening Brief on behalf of CHECC was filed on October 14, and a week later on October 21 an amicus curiae brief was filed in support of CHECC by the CO2 Coalition, together with Professors William Happer of Princeton and Richard Lindzen of MIT. I was going to start off with a review of the CHECC brief, which I helped to prepare, but as luck would have it our CHECC brief got “bounced” by the clerks at the DC Circuit. For those of you who have never dealt with court clerks, there is a great resemblance to the DMV, or perhaps to the old Soviet bureaucracy. The alleged ground for bouncing our brief was that we had used too many acronyms — things like EPA, IPCC, GHG (greenhouse gases), GAST (global average surface temperature), and so forth. Our use of such acronyms was somehow deemed excessive, so we need to go back and make some very minor modifications before there is a completely final version of the brief. Rather than confuse things by referring to a brief that will shortly change in minor ways, I’ll start today by covering some of the highlights of the CO2 Coalition amicus brief.
First, we are extremely honored to have such distinguished and serious scientists supporting our position. For those who haven’t heard of them, Professors Happer and Lindzen are, respectively, the senior atmospheric physicists on the faculties of Princeton and MIT. Their lists of titles, awards and honors are almost endless, and occupy several pages in the brief. The CO2 Coalition is a large group of top scientists and people in related fields with specialties related in one way or another to the global warming subject matter, and whose views lean toward skepticism. Happer is the Chair of the CO2 Coalition, and Lindzen is a member.
You might think that tackling the “science” of CO2-driven atmospheric warming is just too heavy a lift to get a court interested, and maybe that’s where this court will end up. But this brief shows why the subject is not really that complicated. At page 18 the brief quotes the famous aphorism of physicist Richard Feynman, “If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.” In other words, it’s just a question of finding a few, or even one, example where the theory relied on by EPA is contradicted by the data.
The brief minces no words in distinguishing real science from the government-dictated orthodoxy and consensus on which EPA relies. This is from the summary of argument:
Scientific knowledge is determined by the scientific method, through which theoretical predictions are validated or rejected by observations. If the theoretical predictions do not work, the theory is rejected. That’s real science. Scientific knowledge is not determined by government-controlled opinions, consensus, peer review, or theoretical models that do not work. Those are false science. This brief applies the scientific method to the Endangerment Findings and its supporting Technical Support Document and demonstrates both are scientifically corrupted and thus must be rescinded .. . . .
In subsequent sections the brief compares IPCC model predictions of catastrophic warming — specifically relied upon by EPA in the Endangerment Finding’s Technical Support Document — to temperature observations thus far in the real world. They include this famous chart from Congressional testimony given by John Christy back in 2017:
From the brief, commenting on the divergence of theory from observations:
We now know the IPCC theoretical climate models, an early version of which was used in the Endangerment Findings and Technical Support Document, fail the basic test of the scientific method and, thus, should not be used. Without a valid theoretical model, the IPCC’s future climate projections and scenarios have no scientific validity. For this reason alone, the Findings and Technical Support Document should be rescinded.
And the brief does not just end after demonstrating that EPA’s theoretical projections of climate catastrophe have been scientifically invalidated. Pages 30-32 are then devoted to a presentation of new work by Professor Happer and co-author William van Wijngaarden demonstrating why the capacity of CO2 and other greenhouse gases to warm the atmosphere is largely saturated at current concentrations, such that further increases in concentrations only have the potential to cause insignificant further warming. The Happer/van Wijngaarden paper is definitely technical and challenging to understand. However, in the context of this dispute, it is just an additional argument not essential to victory. The key point is that EPA’s “science” has been invalidated by evidence.
Full article can be read here.
At page 18 the brief quotes the famous aphorism of physicist Richard Feynman, “If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.” In other words, it’s just a question of finding a few, or even one, example where the theory relied on by EPA is contradicted by the data.
wrong again. see feynman on the problem of solar nuetrinos.
observation found 1/3 of the number predicted by theory
Bahcall: Well, right from the beginning it was apparent that Ray was measuring fewer neutrinos events than I had predicted. He came to Caltech in early 1968 to spend a week with me while he and I wrote our papers up describing for me a refined calculation, for him the first measurement of the rate in his tank. It was clear that the rate that he was getting was a factor of three smaller than I was predicting, and that was a very serious problem.
There was a famous meeting at Caltech, just a few physicists—Dick Feynman, Murray Gell-Mann, Willie Fowler, Bob Christie, and a couple of others—in a small meeting room, where Ray presented his results and I presented my calculations of what he should have measured. There was some discussion of it afterwards, and it was pretty inconclusive. There was a discrepancy; it looked like one of us was wrong.
I was very visibly depressed, I guess, and Dick Feynman asked me after the meeting if I would like to go for a walk. We just went for a walk, and he talked to me about inconsequential things, personal things, which was very unusual for him, to spend his time in quite idle conversation; it never happened to me in the many years that I knew him that he did that before or afterwards. And only toward the end of the walk, which lasted over an hour, he told me, “Look, I saw that after this talk you were depressed, and I just wanted to tell you that I don’t think you have any reason to be depressed. We’ve heard what you did, and nobody’s found anything wrong with your calculations. I don’t know why Davis’s result doesn’t agree with your calculations, but you shouldn’t be discouraged, because maybe you’ve done something important, we don’t know. I don’t know what the explanation is, but you shouldn’t feel discouraged.”
discrepancy means 1 of them is wrong. theory or observation.
they dont know why theory and observation dont match. they dont just reject theory
and if the theory is wrong, one doesnt know WHERE it needs to be modified.
in this case the theory was modified
and we now recognize three types of neutrino
electron neutrino (νe) muon neutrino (νμ) tau neutrino (ντ)
Mr. Mosher,
I’m trying to figure out where you’re going with this. If observations don’t match hypotheses, then investigation of all 3 of your points is demanded. One does not simply affirm both the unmodified hypothesis and the observations. Neither does one arbitrarily accept the hypothesis and use it to enact public policy, which is the point of this litigation.
Cordially,
js
The point is that we need more time and money to keep studying what has been characterized as theory.
February 11, 2021 at 4:21 PM
I have never received an answer to these questions from any Climate Scare Alarmist: What should the earth’s perfect temperature be and has it ever been and for how long; and what should the correct level of CO2 be and do you believe like some that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant, and most important, if so, who amongst us should be forced to hold our breath to stop CO2 from getting into the atmosphere???(considering that we inhale 400ppm and exhale approximately 20,000ppm)
Last but not least, is there a published or otherwise empirical paper or experiment linking CO2 to the Earth’s temperature? I think
NOT. There are papers to the opposite.
Two esteemed scientists only and are they sufficient for the task ahead? I’m sure they are and there are others who would gladly join that list. Including the famous 30,000 list of signatories and the no tricks zone website with their compendium of research papers that would slay Goliath in a trounce.
However the famous ‘mickey mouse’, copyright case that went before the SCOTUS of America, in Eldred v. Ashcroft ended up favouring congress and their laws. In other words the case of CHECC v. EPA could end up favouring the status quo.
The article indicates the right method of dealing with the NWO, WEP, IPCC and certain individuals and their sick sycophantic machinations in trying to destroying the human race.
Regards
Climate Heretic
Only takes one
I don’t think the “Endangerment Finding” was legislation, and as recent events have shown, the SCOTUS is not inclined to have “agencies” making “rules” that are not clearly within the remit of *laws.*
So I think this “finding” gets rightfully thrown out if the SCOTUS gets it.