Charles Rotter
Breaking: Climate Consensus Crusaders Sue to Save the Endangerment Finding From… Skeptics With Opinions
Yesterday, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) stormed into federal court, clutching their pearls and a 40-page complaint, to demand that the EPA and Department of Energy be stopped from—brace yourself—listening to people who don’t think “climate change” is the meteorological equivalent of Armageddon.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, reads like a mashup of Chicken Little’s autobiography and a high-school debate club’s “Appeal to Consensus” handbook. According to the plaintiffs, the great crime here is that Secretary of Energy Christopher Wright dared to assemble five well-known climate skeptics—John Christy, Judith Curry, Steven Koonin, Ross McKitrick, and Roy Spencer—to review the evidence and produce a report questioning the EPA’s 2009 “Endangerment Finding”. That’s the sacred ruling declaring greenhouse gases an official public health menace, without which the climate policy priesthood fears their altar might crumble.
The complaint is a parade of consensus incantations—“overwhelming scientific consensus,” “ocean of evidence,” “confirmed time and again”—interrupted only by ad hominem swipes at the Working Group’s résumés and reading lists. Curry, they note with horror, has criticized the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for “corruption.” Koonin once worked for BP. Spencer testified on behalf of a coal company. In other words, these people are contaminated by thoughtcrime.
EDF and UCS accuse Wright’s Climate Working Group of operating in secret, holding no public meetings, stacking the deck entirely with “contrarians,” and failing to genuflect before the holy consensus. They demand the court erase the group’s report, bar EPA from using it to justify repealing the Endangerment Finding, and—naturally—extend public comment periods until the paperwork gods are appeased.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, for his part, has called the reconsideration “the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States” and a “dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion”—a metaphor that, judging from the plaintiffs’ reaction, hit the bullseye.
In sum, the lawsuit boils down to this: the wrong people were asked the wrong questions and gave the wrong answers. In the plaintiffs’ worldview, “science” is not a method of inquiry but a franchise with exclusive licensing rights. Any unauthorized competition must be shut down, preferably by federal injunction.
One thing’s for sure—this case will test not just the legal durability of the Endangerment Finding, but whether “consensus” has officially replaced “evidence” as the highest standard in American science. And if the complaint’s tone is any clue, the consensus crowd isn’t feeling particularly confident.
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I will bet that the district judge, who was undoubtedly picked for his far leftist politics, will agree with the “plaintiffs”.
It will be up to a court of appeals to remind the district judge that the administrative process is the proper forum for objections to administrative proposals and that district judges should not be involved. The plaintiffs will be told that they can file their appeals after the EPA has ruled, not before then.
I couldn’t see any judge granting it in first place but I guess there are judges with no respect for process out there.That would be how it should play out in any normal world.
In the Soviet Union, judges routinely ruled however the party wanted them to rule.
Those who didn’t were quietly disappeared.
“Koonin once worked for BP. Spencer testified on behalf of a coal company. In other words, these people are contaminated by thoughtcrime.”
Wasn’t the CRU funded by big oil? No one complained about that, did they, because they came up with the “right” answers.
The whole “contamination by who funded them” argument is laughable.
The innuendo is “money corrupts.” But the Eco-Fascist cheerleaders of the climate “cause” have been beneficiaries of trillions from government research grants, many multiples of the relative pittance spent by fossil fuel companies over the same period.
So if the assertion of the alarmist camp is “money corrupts,” then the so-called “scientists” they support are infinitely MORE corrupt.
More like “The Vampire Strikes Back.”
[Begin cartoon Dacula voice]
“What do you mean, I can’t suck you dry any more?! I’ll sue!”
[/cartoon Dracula voice]
Whilst Anthony Watts was speaking on the Climate Realism show, the main screen was scrolling through this document. Part of Paragraph 27 stood out.
Let us follow the Consensus Science on this one. Hansen et al 1988 (the paper behind the 1988 staged event that really launched the global climate hysteria) says greenhouse gases are well-mixed. That means it does not matter where in the world anthropogenic emissions originate; each unit of these trace gases affects the levels in equal measure. Capitalist countries do not emit a more pernicious form of CO2 than, say, Communist ones. So does International Law. Yet, International law related to climate seems to think the contrary. The International Court of Justice in The Hague recently issued a Judgement about this law. Para 179 states
Basically, only developed Western countries have an obligation to cut their emissions in the near future. For instance, Para 4.4 of the Paris Agreement states
Under the UNFCCC Treaty, the developed (or Annex 1) countries include the more developed parts of the former Soviet Union. But Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine have been temporarily excluded for the last 30+ years as “economies in transition”. That leaves the USA, EU, Japan, Canada, Australia, and the UK as the main emissions-cutting countries, along with Mexico and Türkiye, whose emissions are increasing. How does that work out? US CO2 Emissions declined 3% from 1990-2023, but have declined as a share of the global total from 18.5% to 12.0%. The share declined due to CO2 emissions in the “developing countries” increasing during 1990-2023 by 105%. In other words, now seven-eighths of the CO2 “pollution” affecting Americans emanates from outside the USA. These consensus scientists should realise that the EPA is severely limited territorially, therefore is imposing pain for very little gain.