Virginia Attorney General Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II on Wednesday blasted the Environmental Protection Agency in the wake of a recent inspector general’s report that found it failed to follow federal rules in its process of using climate change data to conclude greenhouse gases are a threat to human health.

Mr. Cuccinelli, a global warming skeptic, first petitioned the EPA in February 2010 to convene and reconsider its conclusion and filed a lawsuit in federal court in the wake of the “Climategate” scandal, in which researchers from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia were accused of manipulating climate data based on a number of stolen emails. A handful of investigations have cleared scientists of wrongdoing.

The agency noted that the report did not address the science at hand, merely processes and procedures.

“I fully expected supporters of the greenhouse gas endangerment finding would argue and will continue to argue that the violations identified in the investigation are only technicalities,” Mr. Cuccinelli said. “But these rules were put in place to guarantee that the regulatory process was not hijacked by a political agenda - by either party. Both scientists and government officials should operate in transparent ways, and the rules that the EPA failed to follow were designed to guarantee such transparency and to make certain that its conclusions were sound and based on the best available scientific data.”

Among a number of shortcomings, the report concluded that rather than performing its own research, the EPA relied on work done by others and did not determine whether the data met its own quality guidelines before distributing it.

The peer review panel also did not meet independence requirements because one of the panelists was an EPA employee, and the EPA did not adequately identify the level of scientific information it was using to support its action, the report said.

Some prominent and well-meaning liberal evangelicals are targeting House Republicans with radio spots that claim the congressmen want to “delay” and “disarm” Environmental Protection Agency regulations that the Evangelical Environmental Network asserts would safeguard the health and neurological development of unborn children, by reducing mercury emissions from power plants

There is no scientific or health basis for these claims. Moreover, the activists express panic over speculative or imagined risks to American children, even as they condemn legions of Third World children to death from real diseases that the simplest of modern technologies and living standards would prevent.

Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr. and his colleagues cannot let these EEN claims go unchallenged.

Thank you for considering his eloquent and passionate response to the EEN - to help set the record straight and bring a measure of true ethics and justice to this environmental debate. We hope you will post it, quote from it, and forward it to friends, colleagues and bloggers.

Sincerely,

Paul Driessen, Advisor to the Affordable Power Alliance

Our children are at risk

Evangelical Environmental Network needs to get it right, before it preaches to others

Bishop Harry R. Jackson, Jr.

Once again, partisan political activists are defending job-killing regulations that will harm the most vulnerable people, while providing no demonstrable environmental benefits. Unfortunately, these activists are also working hard to seduce sincere church leaders.

Well-meaning prominent liberal evangelicals are using radio spots to target Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. We know and respect several of these leaders. Yet the activists’ panic over speculative or imagined risks to American children dominates their proclamations, even as they condemn legions of Third World children to death from real diseases that the simplest of modern technologies and living standards would prevent.

The Evangelical Environmental Network’s ads claim the congressmen want to “delay” and “disarm” Environmental Protection Agency regulations that the EEN asserts would safeguard the health and neurological development of unborn children, by reducing mercury emissions from power plants.

In our opinion, this is another misinformation campaign.

As pastors and parents, we stand tall in protecting children. But as concerned civic leaders actively engaged in energy and environmental discussions, we know the EEN radio spots are partisan and misleading. We cannot leave them unchallenged.

First, we must look at the facts. There is no credible evidence that American children are born with dangerous levels of mercury in their blood, or have impaired mental or neurological abilities due to mercury. The Centers for Disease Control says mercury in US children is well below even EPA’s “safe” levels.

The Food and Drug Administration, US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and World Health Organization have all established risk levels that are 2-3 times less restrictive than EPA’s. Under those guidelines no American children, in the womb or otherwise, are remotely at risk from mercury from power plants, fish or other sources.

As independent natural scientist Dr. Willie Soon has documented (read his report at www.AffordablePowerAlliance.org), US power plant emissions account for barely 0.5% of mercury in America’s air. The rest comes from forest fires, volcanoes and other sources. Even closing every US power plant will not make us safer than we already are.

Disregarding these facts, EPA’s proposed mercury, cross-state pollution and “maximum achievable control technology” rules for major power plants and other generating systems will increase electricity prices by up to 24% in just a few years, NERA Economic Consultants and other experts predict. That means factories, schools, offices, shops and hospitals will be forced to raise prices, cut services and lay people off.

The result will be more families unable to afford proper heating, air conditioning, nutrition, healthcare and prenatal care, or even pay their rent or mortgage. More children will have trouble in school and suffer impaired mental, physical and emotional well-being. 

The EEN religious leaders claim they want to “protect life,” and “believe children are entitled to abundant life.” However, their actions, alliances and political agendas violate those proclaimed beliefs at every turn.

Christian organizations need to balance their concern for the environment with a healthy concern for human life. In our book, Personal Faith Public Policy, Tony Perkins and I note:

“Unfortunately, a number of religious leaders have joined the alarmist crusade and are attempting to make the environment the most important issue in the church. In some ways they are correct in pushing for the church to get involved. In other ways, many of them are like the young prophet who ran to King David before he heard the message. (See 2 Samuel 18:22–28.) They have zeal and a desire to change things, but they do not have the message the church needs at this time.”

A million abortions are performed in the United States every year, according to the “pro-abortion rights” Guttmacher Institute. Hispanic women are 2.7 times more likely than non-Hispanic white women to have an abortion, while Black women are four times more likely.

Can EEN cite even one instance where it expressed outrage or even concern about these deaths? Can it cite one instance when it criticized abortionists, or supported calls to reduce federal funding from abortion clinics that end so many minority lives?

In poor, tropical regions, hundreds of thousands of children die in agony every year from preventable insect-borne diseases. But radical environmentalists campaign against the use of insecticides and the powerful insect repellant DDT - ensuring that the carnage continues.

Environmentalists also oppose hydroelectric, coal, nuclear and natural gas for generating abundant, reliable, affordable electricity. Yet hundreds of thousands of children die every year from lung diseases, caused by breathing toxic pollutants from heating and cooking fires, and from intestinal diseases resulting from spoiled food and unsafe water - because their communities lack electricity.

Can the EEN cite one instance when its belief that “children are entitled to abundant life” caused it to condemn these radical green policies...or resulted in a call for access to insecticides and plentiful, dependable, affordable electricity?

Our children are at risk, but not from mercury. They are at risk from policies defended and promoted by the EEN and other partisan political activists.

The EEN should proclaim a universal right of access to modern, life-enhancing, life-saving technologies. It needs to recognize that regulations too often impose unacceptable costs on the poorest and most powerless among us. It needs to terminate its alliances with groups whose policies result in imposed poverty and racial genocide.

Until then, EEN’s warnings, advice and radio spots should be taken with a shovel of salt.

Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr. of Beltsville, Maryland is Chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition and co-chair of the Affordable Power Alliance.

What was different about this year was that the temperatures were low enough to generate ozone-depleting forms of chlorine for a much longer period of time. And it is worth noting that the “unprecedented” only applies to the short satellite record. There were no measurements of any kind prior to about 1979.

From the University of Toronto and NASA JPL

Left: Ozone in Earth’s stratosphere at an altitude of approximately 12 miles (20 kilometers) in mid-March 2011, near the peak of the 2011 Arctic ozone loss. Red colors represent high levels of ozone, while purple and grey colors (over the north polar region) represent very small ozone amounts. Right: chlorine monoxide - the primary agent of chemical ozone destruction in the cold polar lower stratosphere - for the same day and altitude. Light blue and green colors represent small amounts of chlorine monoxide, while dark blue and black colors represent very large chlorine monoxide amounts. The white line marks the area within which the chemical ozone destruction took place. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Unprecedented Arctic ozone loss occurred last winter

U of Toronto physicists play key role in international study

A NASA-led study has documented an unprecedented depletion of the Earth’s protective ozone layer above the Arctic last winter and spring that was caused by an unusually prolonged period of extremely low temperatures in the stratosphere. University of Toronto physicist Kaley Walker was part of the international team behind the study to be published online Sunday, October 2 in Nature.

The researchers found the amount of ozone destroyed in the Arctic in 2011 was comparable to that seen in some years in the Antarctic, where an ozone “hole” has formed each spring since the mid 1980s. The stratospheric ozone layer, extending from about 15 to 35 kilometres above the surface, protects life on Earth from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays.

The scientists found that at some altitudes, the cold period in the Arctic lasted more than 30 days longer in 2011 than in any previously studied Arctic winter, leading to the unprecedented ozone loss. Further studies are needed to determine what factors caused the cold period to last so long.

The Antarctic ozone hole forms when extremely cold conditions, common in the winter Antarctic stratosphere, trigger reactions that convert atmospheric chlorine from human-produced chemicals into forms that destroy ozone. While the same ozone-loss processes occur each winter in the Arctic, the generally warmer stratospheric conditions there limit the area affected and the time frame during which the chemical reactions occur. This means there is generally far less ozone loss in most years in the Arctic than in the Antarctic.

To investigate the 2011 Arctic ozone loss, Walker and scientists from 18 other institutions in nine countries (United States, Germany, The Netherlands, Russia, Finland, Denmark, Japan and Spain) analyzed a comprehensive set of measurements. These included daily global observations of trace gases and clouds from NASA’s Aura and CALIPSO spacecraft; ozone measured by instrumented balloons; meteorological data and atmospheric models. The University of Toronto team contributed to the balloon-borne data with measurements from Eureka, Nunavut, located at 80 ºN (1,100 km from the North Pole). The team was participating in a Canadian Space Agency-funded project making springtime measurements to verify the performance of a Canadian satellite called the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment (ACE).

“In the 2010-11 Arctic winter, we did not have temperatures that were lower than in the previous cold Arctic winters,” said Walker. “What was different about this year was that the temperatures were low enough to generate ozone-depleting forms of chlorine for a much longer period of time. Arctic ozone loss events such as those observed this year could become more frequent if winter Arctic stratospheric temperatures decrease in future as the Earth’s climate changes.

The 2011 Arctic ozone loss occurred over an area considerably smaller than that of the Antarctic ozone holes. This is because the Arctic polar vortex, a persistent large-scale cyclone within which the ozone loss takes place, was about 40 percent smaller than a typical Antarctic vortex. While smaller and shorter-lived than its Antarctic counterpart, the Arctic polar vortex is more mobile, often moving over densely-populated northern regions. Decreases in overhead ozone lead to increases in surface ultraviolet radiation, which are known to have adverse effects on humans and other life forms.

Although the total amount of Arctic ozone measured was much more than twice that typically seen in an Antarctic spring, the amount destroyed was comparable to that in some previous Antarctic ozone holes. This is because ozone levels at the beginning of Arctic winter are typically much greater than those at the beginning of Antarctic winter.

The scientists noted that without the 1989 Montreal Protocol, an international treaty limiting production of ozone-depleting substances, chlorine levels already would be so high that an Arctic ozone hole would form every spring. The long atmospheric lifetimes of ozone-depleting chemicals already in the atmosphere mean that Antarctic ozone holes, and the possibility of future severe Arctic ozone loss, will continue for decades.

“Each of the balloon and satellite measurements included in this study were absolutely necessary to understand the ozone depletion we observed this past winter,” Walker said. “To be able to predict future Arctic ozone loss reliably in a changing climate, it is crucial that we maintain our atmospheric measurement capabilities.”

From NASA JPL:

October 02, 2011

PASADENA, Calif. - A NASA-led study has documented an unprecedented depletion of Earth’s protective ozone layer above the Arctic last winter and spring caused by an unusually prolonged period of extremely low temperatures in the stratosphere.

The study, published online Sunday, Oct. 2, in the journal Nature, finds the amount of ozone destroyed in the Arctic in 2011 was comparable to that seen in some years in the Antarctic, where an ozone “hole” has formed each spring since the mid-1980s. The stratospheric ozone layer, extending from about 10 to 20 miles (15 to 35 kilometers) above the surface, protects life on Earth from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays.

The Antarctic ozone hole forms when extremely cold conditions, common in the winter Antarctic stratosphere, trigger reactions that convert atmospheric chlorine from human-produced chemicals into forms that destroy ozone. The same ozone-loss processes occur each winter in the Arctic. However, the generally warmer stratospheric conditions there limit the area affected and the time frame during which the chemical reactions occur, resulting in far less ozone loss in most years in the Arctic than in the Antarctic.

To investigate the 2011 Arctic ozone loss, scientists from 19 institutions in nine countries (United States, Germany, The Netherlands, Canada, Russia, Finland, Denmark, Japan and Spain) analyzed a comprehensive set of measurements. These included daily global observations of trace gases and clouds from NASA’s Aura and CALIPSO spacecraft; ozone measured by instrumented balloons; meteorological data and atmospheric models. The scientists found that at some altitudes, the cold period in the Arctic lasted more than 30 days longer in 2011 than in any previously studied Arctic winter, leading to the unprecedented ozone loss. Further studies are needed to determine what factors caused the cold period to last so long.

“Day-to-day temperatures in the 2010-11 Arctic winter did not reach lower values than in previous cold Arctic winters,” said lead author Gloria Manney of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro. “The difference from previous winters is that temperatures were low enough to produce ozone-destroying forms of chlorine for a much longer time. This implies that if winter Arctic stratospheric temperatures drop just slightly in the future, for example as a result of climate change, then severe Arctic ozone loss may occur more frequently.”

The 2011 Arctic ozone loss occurred over an area considerably smaller than that of the Antarctic ozone holes. This is because the Arctic polar vortex, a persistent large-scale cyclone within which the ozone loss takes place, was about 40 percent smaller than a typical Antarctic vortex. While smaller and shorter-lived than its Antarctic counterpart, the Arctic polar vortex is more mobile, often moving over densely populated northern regions. Decreases in overhead ozone lead to increases in surface ultraviolet radiation, which are known to have adverse effects on humans and other life forms.

Although the total amount of Arctic ozone measured was much more than twice that typically seen in an Antarctic spring, the amount destroyed was comparable to that in some previous Antarctic ozone holes. This is because ozone levels at the beginning of Arctic winter are typically much greater than those at the beginning of Antarctic winter.

Manney said that without the 1989 Montreal Protocol, an international treaty limiting production of ozone-depleting substances, chlorine levels already would be so high that an Arctic ozone hole would form every spring. The long atmospheric lifetimes of ozone-depleting chemicals already in the atmosphere mean that Antarctic ozone holes, and the possibility of future severe Arctic ozone loss, will continue for decades.

“Our ability to quantify polar ozone loss and associated processes will be reduced in the future when NASA’s Aura and CALIPSO spacecraft, whose trace gas and cloud measurements were central to this study, reach the end of their operational lifetimes,” Manney said. “It is imperative that this capability be maintained if we are to reliably predict future ozone loss in a changing climate.”

ICECAP Note:Again a natural phenomenon from swings in the arctic oscillation.

The cross section last winter showed the strong rebound from very warm stratosphere and very negative AO that had prevailed the prior winter. The swings may have been related to rebounds from prior three years of high latitude volcanoes and very low solar.
. And it is unprecedented only as far back as 1979 when monitoring began.