Update see Wil Happer’s editorial in the Wall Street Journal today.

Mr. President the anti-energy, pro radical environmentalism program, failed green agenda will make us more like North Korea than the bustling America of the recent past and South Korea today.

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PRESS RELEASE

Washington, D.C.  - Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, welcomed the news that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) has agreed to his request to investigate EPA’s handling of two advisory committees that have shown a troubling lack of impartiality: the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee (CASAC) and the Advisory Council on Clean Air Compliance Analysis (ACCACA).

Last year, the Republican Environment and Public Works Committee staff uncovered specific areas of concern with EPA’s Clean Air Act Advisory Committees. As a result, Senator Inhofe sent a letter to the Inspector General of the EPA Arthur A. Elkins in August asking that the OIG investigate these concerns.  Importantly, these committees played a key role in the advisory process for the tightening of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for ozone and particulate matter (PM). Of course, the NAAQS for ozone were withdrawn by President Obama, in part, due to concerns over scientific integrity. 

“I am pleased that the EPA IG has agreed to my request to investigate the serious problems that have been uncovered regarding EPA’s handling of scientific information and its decision-making process,” Senator Inhofe said.  “Specifically, the EPA IG will examine EPA’s management of the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee and the Advisory Council on Clean Air Compliance Analysis, which have shown a blatant lack of impartiality, essentially serving as a rubber stamp for EPA’s job-killing agenda.  Fortunately, the EPA IG will look into the five areas that I have identified as the most crucial: 1) balance of committee view points and perspectives, 2) potential conflicts of interest, 3) appearance of impartiality, 4) rotation of members, and 5) peer review.

“The Obama EPA has shown time and time again that the scientific foundation of its regulatory agenda is not sound.  I first requested this investigation due to scientific integrity concerns regarding EPA’s plan to tighten ozone standards.  Of course, President Obama withdrew those standards, and one of the reasons was that the economic and scientific analyses underpinning the decision were deficient.  Then there was the OIG report from last September, which found that EPA cut corners and short-circuited the required peer review process for its December 2009 endangerment finding, which is the basis for EPA’s plan to regulate greenhouse gases; in January, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report confirmed that EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program - which EPA acknowledges is the ‘scientific foundation for decisions’ - is flawed.  And the list goes on, showing that EPA has a dangerous tendency only to consider science that bolsters its political goals.

“Americans can’t afford for EPA to play politics with science as our economy struggles to recover.  EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations alone will cost the American people around $300-$400 billion a year - and this is second only to the Utility Maximum Achievable Control Technology (Utility MACT) rule, which will cost $90 billion a year to comply.  These are just the most expensive of the Obama EPA’s onslaught of regulations that will destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs and raise electricity and gas prices even higher.

“I hope this IG report will help to hold EPA accountable - the best outcome would be if it finally instills a sense of urgency for EPA to reform its ways.”

Background:

This IG investigation will build on the specific areas of concern uncovered by the Republican Environment and Public Works Committee staff.  These include: 

- Lack of Impartiality: EPA has violated its own Peer Review Handbook by selecting members who have publicly taken sides on the issues in question and thus lack the required impartiality. In direct conflict with the recommendations of the National Academies, EPA has also repeatedly asked authors of key studies to opine on their own work by including them on panels that are reviewing reports based on their research.

- Failure to Balance Perspectives: EPA has also violated the requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) by failing to assure the resulting panels are balanced in terms of the viewpoints presented. In the two cases examined, no experts with publications supporting a contrary view were selected to balance the 30 to 40 percent of the members included on the panels who have taken public positions.

- Failure to Rotate Members: EPA has disregarded Administration policy to rotate membership on standing panels to avoid creating “regulars”. On key panels, members are now serving 12 year terms.

- Financial Conflict of Interest: EPA has repeatedly selected panel members who are benefiting from millions of dollars in EPA research grants, creating both the appearance and likelihood of a conflict of interest.

By Harold Ambler, Talking about the Weather

Attention scientists and journalists: I want my word back. You don’t get to use it anymore, unless you want to admit that you are in the business of deceiving people. That word? “Ever.”

I know I’m in for it when I hear this word at home. “You don’t ever...” and “You never” and “You always” - these are statements that I’ve gotten my beloved wife to see seldom accompany truth-telling. What they do accompany is strong feeling.

And you’d need strong feelings to use the word “ever” to describe 150 years in Earth’s history: “Warmest ever,” “third warmest ever,” “hottest ever,” “fifth hottest ever,” “second warmest ever.” Taken as a whole, statements like these, which are found in articles purporting to inform the public, become incantatory, and indeed echo literal hymns sung in literal churches, worldwide: “Forever and ever and ever ...Hallelujah, hallelujah,” and so forth, as set forth in Handel’s Messiah. People have said that global warming is its own religion, and it turns out they may be right.

What do the climax of the Messiah and climate science have to do with each other, if anything? At least a few things, it turns out. The Messiah was written to create a sense of the infinite, of permanence, of completeness, of at-one-ness with God. The narrative of the recent modern warming that began in the mid-19th century has been crafted in such a way as to create the exact opposite sense: of the finite, of the impermanence of the biosphere, of incompleteness, and of separation from Nature, God, and Spirit. I talk a lot more about this narrative in my book.

You could simply say that the narrative of global warming was constructed to induce a state of despair.

You could also say that the narrative has been exceedingly successful in that regard. What sane person, for instance, could hear “warmest ever,” “hottest ever,” dozens and dozens of times, from the twin pulpits of science and journalism, and not conclude that one’s own time on Earth was particularly unfortunate, grim, doomed?

What about this word “ever,” though? Is it a good word to use to describe the last few decades in Earth’s climate history? Well, if you like crazy, it’s a great word! Originally, climate science articles in newspapers and magazines were careful to state that the “third warmest year” was merely the third warmest in the modern record. And some articles do still draw that distinction. What seems to have led to widespread use of the word “ever,” though, was tired, drama-seeking headline writers (I’ve been there), putting the newspaper or magazine together late at night and needing to convey a lot of information in a small number of words. “2010 hottest ever during one climate agency’s century-and-a-half-long instrumental record” doesn’t make a top-shelf headline, not at all. “2010 ranked hottest year ever,” now you’re cooking with gas! That’s a headline. And headlines sell newspapers; they make people feel engaged.

The shortness of the record is an important point, though, because the planet’s climatological past extends back a little bit farther than that! Said past is only knowable by indirect means, by proxy - often through the use of tree rings, ice cores, and lake sediment samples, that sort of thing. But when NASA, and then The New York Times, says that 2010 was the warmest year in the instrumental record, they are ignoring the important proxy record showing temperatures during the ice age that began three million years ago (not long at all, that) to have routinely exceeded the values streaming across television screens, Times Square tickers, and newspaper front pages.

One of the most widely quoted of all climate scientists is Penn State’s Michael Mann. In one interview with NPR, Dr. Mann addressed what climatologists know as the “modern warming,” and the likelihood that it could be part of a natural cycle. It was’’t very likely at all, said Dr. Mann: “There’s no way to explain the changes we’ve seen in terms of any of these natural factors...So in that context, when we talk about recent climate change, we are talking about humans.”

But how can Dr. Mann know this? He is alluding to the idea that the recent temperatures are the “warmest ever,” but temperatures today are cooler than 7,000 years ago, during the Holocene Climactic Optimum; cooler than 115,000 years ago during the Eemian interglacial; cooler than during the three interglacials before that. (Interglacials are interruptions in the widespread glaciation that has characterized the current, three-million-year-old Ice Age.) No self-respecting climatologist, including Dr. Mann, disputes this. The Vostok ice-core record showing our current temperature to be considerably lower than these recent periods during Earth’s history is not in dispute.

Enlarged

When, during the Eemian interglacial that extended from 130,000 years ago and ended about 115,000 years ago, temperatures were one to two degrees Celsius warmer than today, sea level reflected the warm conditions and the glacial melt they generated. It was 15 feet higher than today. Meanwhile, climatologists have convinced the public that current sea level should be considered “normal,” or, even more absurd, “permanent.” Sea level has never been stable, and cannot be stable.

Once you know that that modern temperature is well within the bounds of normal variability for Earth’s climate system, use of the word “ever,” whether by a beleaguered headline-writer or science writer, is revealed to be a piece of anti-science, an assault on reason.

The Holocene is depicted on this graph of Vostok ice core data by Petit et al. The Eemian interglacial is one to the right.

Today is not the hottest, or warmest, or worst time to be alive, on this wonderful planet. It is arguably the best! The Vostok ice core shows our own interglacial, the Holocene, to be the most temperate, the most stable - like a comfy climactic nest, in fact.

Forgive the headline writers and “science” writers, if you desire. I do. They’re human, and crazy comes with being human - sometimes. But listen with special attention to the scientists who have taken up this word “ever” themselves. Being human as well they quickly noted the power that the word “ever” carries with the public, and started to echo the very science articles that once carefully set out their own complete analysis, imperfect as it was. When a climate scientist uses the word “ever,” and they do so routinely and increasingly, understand that this has to do with aesthetics, at a minimum, like those governing Handel’s awesome Messiah, and, potentially, with something less forgivable: a purposeful desire to mislead.

So, journalists, scientists: Why not just give the rest of the world our word back. We know how to use it, which is in domestic disputes where one partner badly needs a snack, a nap, or both.

Harold Ambler is the owner of talkingabouttheweather.com and the author of Don’t Sell Your Coat.

By J.C. Watts

Four years ago, the State Department issued permits authorizing the construction of an oil pipeline that would cross our northern border on its way from Alberta, Canada, down to oil refineries in Texas. Along the way, this pipeline would snake through more than a half-dozen states, creating jobs and contributing to local tax bases. In fact, the pipeline would create tens of thousands of good-paying jobs, which are badly needed during this economic rut.

From all appearances, the Keystone XL pipeline was on track after the State Department’s approval. But the project hit a major snag in July 2010, when the Environmental Protection Agency overstepped its authority and claimed the State Department’s analysis was faulty because it didn’t consider oil-spill response plans, safety issues and greenhouse gas emissions. Despite approvals from states along the pipeline’s route, including my home state of Oklahoma, radical environmentalists began a massive campaign to pressure the White House to pick the EPA’s ruling over the State Department’s analysis.

An independent study estimated that the Keystone XL pipeline would contribute more than $585 million in state and local taxes to states along the route, generate more than $20 billion in new spending for the U.S. economy and significantly reduce our dependence on the Middle East and elsewhere for oil. But the environmentalists argued that the pipeline would pollute air and water supplies and harm migratory birds and other wildlife. Unfortunately for the tens of thousands of Americans who could have good-paying jobs from the Keystone XL pipeline, migratory birds won out.

The EPA’s decision to intervene in this raises some very serious questions about how and why the agency thought it had the muscle to tell the State Department it hadn’t done its job correctly. I was glad to see the Institute for Energy Research submit a Freedom of Information Act request to the EPA to turn over documents related to this decision. We have every reason to demand to know why the EPA sided with radical environmentalists over jobs.

The first elected office I held was a seat on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which regulates oil and gas drilling in the Sooner State. The lessons I learned as a commissioner and the ones I learned as a U.S. representative taught me that the domestic energy sector is a massive job creator and contributes a tremendous amount to our economy. Sadly, the Obama administration is following the EPA’s lead in being openly hostile to this economically valuable industry.

The Keystone XL pipeline would move 700,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada to the U.S. Part of the pipeline would pass through Cushing, Okla., where there is a glut of oil because we don’t have enough pipe to move it. That oil is just sitting there, and the Keystone project is critical to freeing up that oversupply.

Consider this: There already are about 200,000 miles of similar pipeline in the U.S., and TransCanada, the company overseeing the Keystone project, has been building pipelines in North America for more than 50 years. While we should ask hard questions about the safety of the project and how it would impact surrounding areas, TransCanada has said Keystone would include nearly 60 improvements above and beyond the standard requirements of U.S. regulators. There are built-in redundancies throughout the entire pipeline to prevent leaks. Still, this wasn’t good enough for the administration.

The radical environmental groups are running out of excuses to keep killing smart economic projects and are grasping at straws. Take their complaint that the Keystone XL pipeline would be harmful to migratory birds. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that about 33,000 migratory birds are killed each year by wind-turbine rotors, but we don’t see groups marching to outlaw wind turbines.

Instead, the EPA - spurred on by its radical environmental allies - is pushing for more and more job-killing regulations on industries that could play a critical role in our nation’s economic recovery. Through regulatory uncertainty and demands for expensive environmental upgrades, the EPA is slowly but surely trying to drive a nail into the coffin of job creators like those in the energy sector. Three Philadelphia-area oil refineries announced last year that they’re shuttering operations, eliminating about 20,000 direct and indirect jobs, while refiners in other states are keeping an anxious eye on their own ability to continue operating.

The United States is the most prosperous nation in the world. We have an abundance of natural resources that, if we only used them, would reduce our dependence on oil from foreign governments, some of which do not have our best interests at heart. It’s a real shame to see federal officials using political science instead of real science when making decisions on projects that would create good-paying American jobs and help turn our economy around.

J.C. Watts is a former Republican member of the House of Representatives from Oklahoma.