Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, AMS Fellow
Update: James Delingpole has also posted on the EF invalidity and the need for the EPA to revoke it based on peer reviewed scientific findings. The Endangerment Finding is the basis for all the EPA’s overreaching regulations.
The story below was picked up by Michael Bastasch at the Daily Caller.
Immediately below you will find a summary of the rationale for our Petition to EPA to begin a formal Reconsideration of its January 15, 2009 CO2 Endangerment Finding:
The Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council Calls on President Trump and EPA to Revisit and Revoke the Scientifically Invalid CO2 Endangerment Finding
Key Points:
1. If the Endangerment Finding is not vacated, whether the current administration likes it or not, it is certain that electric utilities and many other industries will face ongoing EPA CO2 regulation.
2. This regulation will raise energy prices thereby reducing economic growth and jobs.
3. New research findings make it all but certain that CO2 is not a pollutant but rather a beneficial gas that should not be regulated.
As you may recall, recent research findings have now made it very clear to many climate scientists, not blurry-eyed by funding issues or their own past published alarmists claims, that there is no mathematically proper validated proof that CO2 has had, or ever will have, a statistically significant impact on global average surface temperatures. This means that until proven otherwise, CO2 MUST BE considered a beneficial gas. Distinguished climate scientists, such as Will Happer of Princeton and Dick Lindzen of MIT, have recently publicly endorsed CO2’s overall beneficial properties as have many other scientists.
The failure of the Trump Administration to move immediately forward with a formal reconsideration of the Endangerment Finding has left a very dangerous opening for bad ideas to now be given very serous consideration by members of the Trump Administration, ideas such as Carbon Taxes and the U.S. remaining committed to the Paris Agreement. Because of the extremely negative consequences of the U.S. staying on the Green Train to Energy Poverty (amply demonstrated by skyrocketing electricity prices and blackouts or near blackouts in today’s Germany, UK and Southern Australia,) we think this topic is of critical importance to the American People - right now. We hope you agree.
Note that CA and many Northeastern States have already gotten on this Green Train and the impact in their well above average electricity prices is evident in the table below.
Enlarged
Source: EIA
The Trump administration has put out a guidance letter telling States they are not obligated to abide by the Clean Power Plan while the Supreme Court’s Stay remains in effect. Ironically, CA, 10 of the Northeast States and 6 others are now suing before the DC Circuit Court to preserve their rights to continue on a path to even higher energy prices and to force all other States to do the same. States continuing to follow CPP CO2 emission reduction goals, using Germany as an example, would find their average electricity prices 2 to 3 times higher than States that choose not to enforce the regulations and instead treat CO2 as the beneficial gas that it is. Another taxpayer cost relates to the higher taxes required to pay for the subsidy payments for renewables, a double whammy.
A very recent Rasmussen poll reported that “The emphasis on stopping global warming is the highest it’s ever been since regular surveying on the question began in 2014.” and that “45% of Likely U.S. Voters now think taking steps to stop global warming is more important than creating jobs.” But do they have the facts?
This research report as all the comments, analyses and petitions were done pro bono and peer reviewed by 11 distinguished scientists.
The entire Press Release and its URL may be found here:
The Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council Calls on President Trump and EPA to Revisit and Revoke the Scientifically Invalid CO2 Endangerment Finding
Key Points:
1. If the Endangerment Finding is not vacated, whether the current administration likes it or not, it is certain that electric utilities and many other industries will face ongoing EPA CO2 regulation.
2. This regulation will raise energy prices thereby reducing economic growth and jobs.
3. New research findings make it all but certain that CO2 is not a pollutant but rather a beneficial gas that should not be regulated.
April 9, 2017
The Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council today praised President Trump for his recent Executive Order on climate and energy policy. However, the Council further called on the President and EPA, as part of the process initiated by the Executive Order, to revisit and revoke the scientifically invalid Endangerment Finding on which Obama-era greenhouse gas regulations are based.
On Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017, the Council submitted a Petition to EPA, (here) demanding that it revisit and revoke the Endangerment Finding because that Finding has been scientifically invalidated. The Petition demonstrates that the Endangerment Finding is nothing more than a scientific hypothesis that has been disproved by the best empirical evidence from the real world.
The Endangerment Finding is the fundamental foundation on which all greenhouse gas policy and regulation of the Obama era rest - including the Clean Power Plan and U.S. involvement in the Paris Climate Accord. The Endangerment Finding purported to “find” that human-generated greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, constitute a “danger” to human health and welfare because of their effect in warming the atmosphere. However, the Endangerment Finding has been invalidated, and with it the foundation for regulation. As a result, there exists no scientific basis for any of ex-President Obama’s greenhouse gas-restricting policies or regulations.
The Council Petition to EPA is based in part on the September 21, 2016 Research Report by James Wallace, John Christy and Joseph D’Aleo. That Report demonstrated by clear scientific proof the invalidation of each of the three lines of evidence on which EPA relied in the Endangerment Finding to attribute global warming to human emissions of greenhouse gases. The Research Report can be found here.
The Research Report was peer-reviewed by eleven eminent and highly qualified scientists, engineers and economists, all of whom agreed with its conclusion. Those conclusions are definitive and unequivocal. As stated in the Research Report itself, “[T]his analysis failed to find that the steadily rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations have had a statistically significant impact on any of the 13 critically important temperature time series data analyzed.”
In testimony before Congress on March 29, 2017, Dr. Christy reiterated the key findings of the Research Report. Dr. Christy stated:
”
The IPCC climate models performed best versus observations when they did not include extra GHGs [anthropogenic greenhouse gases]. . . . The basic result of this report is that the temperature trend of several datasets since {1959/} 1979 can be explained by variations in the components that naturally affect the climate [that is, excluding anthropogenic greenhouse gases] . . . .”
The scientific invalidity of the Endangerment Finding is now obvious, undeniable and easily demonstrated. It is time for an honest and rigorous scientific re-evaluation of this Obama-era political document. We have been taken down a tragically foolish path of pointless regulations and wasteful mal-investments to “solve” a problem which does not actually exist. Our leaders must summon the courage to acknowledge the truth and act accordingly.
The Council brought its Petition because the Obama-era greenhouse gas regulations threaten, as President Obama himself conceded, to make the price of electricity “skyrocket.” All Americans will benefit from a new era of regulation where the cheapest sources of energy can also compete and prevail in the marketplace.
For more information, contact:
Francis Menton
Law Office of Francis Menton
85 Broad Street, 18th floor
New York, New York 10004
(212) 627-1796
fmenton@manhattancontrarian.com
My good friend and TWC founder John Coleman still gets it right. And below Dr. Patrick Moore the co-founder of Greenpeace does too.
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John Hinderaker, Powerline Blog
It is increasingly clear that the battle over global warming consists of science on side, and politically-motivated dogma on the other. Ken Haapala of the Science and Environmental Policy Project offers historical context:
In the 30 years between the 1979 Charney report to the National Academy of Sciences on an investigation of the possible effects of increased carbon dioxide on the earth’s temperatures to the 2009 EPA’s finding that carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases, endanger human health and welfare, government-funded Climate Studies have largely turned from empirical science to dogma - a belief system unsubstantiated by physical evidence.
The Charney report included some of the nation’s best meteorologists and climate researchers and the report recognized that laboratory tests demonstrated that the direct influence on global temperatures from doubling carbon dioxide would be minor - possibly unmeasurable.
The report also identified educated guesses - estimates [ that the CO2 influence might be greatly enhanced by increases in water vapor - the dominant greenhouse gas. If correct, this positive feedback would greatly multiply any increase from CO2. The report recognized that the warming would occur in the atmosphere, and that we did not have comprehensive measurements of atmospheric temperatures. Thus, the hypothesis of significant atmospheric warming from increased water vapor could not be tested.
Now, of course, it can be, and is, being tested.
In March 1990, Science Magazine published a paper by Roy Spencer and John Christy describing a method of using data collected from NOAA polar orbiting weather satellites to comprehensively calculate atmospheric temperatures for virtually the entire globe, except for the extreme poles. These data cover about 97 to 98 percent of the globe, including oceans, deserts, mountain ranges, jungles, etc. where there are few surface instruments. Initially, certain small errors in calculation were discovered, including orbital decay. These were acknowledged and corrected. This is how science advances.
These data, published monthly, are independently calculated by two other entities and are independently verified by four sets of weather balloon data using different instruments. The government-sponsored United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), and the EPA largely ignore the atmospheric data, which is far more comprehensive and better tested than surface data.
Not only are the satellite data more comprehensive and better tested than surface data, they haven’t been tampered with. Government-funded warmists at NOAA and other agencies have systematically altered historical surface temperature data by lowering temperatures that were recorded decades ago, and raising temperatures that have been reported recently. The surface temperature record has been so badly corrupted that it is doubtful whether it can be used to prove anything at all. Yet government-funded warmists rely on it to the exclusion of the transparent satellite data.
Unfortunately, subsequent government-funded research went from properly testing the educated guesses (hypotheses) in the Charney Report to using them to create fear of global warming, now called climate change. Economically drastic programs and government policies have been justified based on these untested guesses.
From 1993 to 2016, the US government spent over $40 Billion on what government entities classify Climate Science - and has produced no refinement to the 1979 Charney Report.
Where did that $40 billion go? It didn’t buy any battleships, or pay for the construction of transcontinental highways. An enormous portion of it must have gone into the pockets of “scientists” who were generating the scary reports that left-wing government agencies wanted.
Independent scientists and climate researchers have produced far better estimates of the influence of CO2, based on empirical (scientific) observations. But that research is not included in official government publications.
Public policies on energy and the environment should be based on the best available empirical science, not on incomplete studies, which have become dogma.
On March 29, the U.S. House Committee on Science Space & and Technology held a hearing titled “Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications, and the Scientific Method” featuring climate scientists John Christy, Judith Curry, Michael Mann, and Roger Pielke Jr., who recently left the field, in part because of abusive tactics by certain members of Congress. Comparing the written testimony of John Christy with that of Michael Mann provides a stark illustration of the difference between empirical science and scientific dogma.
Follow the link for more. You will wonder, as I do, why anyone classifies the vicious Michael Mann - author of the fraudulent “hockey stick” as a scientist.
A daughter can make a man do almost anything. I know: I’ve got one and I am putty in her hands.
If she wants a pony and bats her eyelashes at me, I’ll be off in a trice to buy her a herd. Baby unicorn ponies, if that’s what she prefers. With jewels inlaid in their spiral horns and maybe some magical attachment that plays the collected works of Taylor Swift while she rides.
So I totally get where President Trump is coming from when I read reports that, under the influence of Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, he has toned the phrasing of an Executive Order so that it no longer includes derogatory comments about the utterly useless and pointless climate deal signed in Paris in 2015 by Barack Obama.
Kushner and Ivanka “intervened to strike language about the climate deal from an earlier draft of the executive order,” sources familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.
Ivanka and her husband “have been considered a moderating influence on the White House’s position on climate change and environmental issues,” WSJ reports. Now, the executive order will have no mention of the so-called Paris agreement.
If it’s just a case of casual daughter-pleasing, fine. But if he actually means it than we should all start to worry.
I’ve said it before but it’s worth saying again: if President Trump proves to be as radical on energy and climate as he promised to be on the campaign trail, then this, even if he achieves nothing else, will more than qualify him for a place next to the greats on Mt Rushmore.
He will go down in history as the hero who slew ManBearPig: the president who, unlike his pusillanimous, career-safe, Establishment predecessors from Clinton and the Bushes to the ultimate horror that was Obama, finally had the courage, integrity and honesty to point out that the Climate Emperor is wearing no clothes; the guy who brought to the end the greatest scientific scandal ever; who saved Western Industrial Civilisation from the Watermelons.
But it’s all very well having good instincts and good intentions. The hard part will be dealing with all the obstacles thrown in his way by the monstrously large group of special interests sometimes known as the Green Blob and sometimes as the Climate Industrial Complex.
Ivanka and Jared Kushner are part of that Green Blob. So is Hollywood. So is most of the mainstream media. So are most of the colleges, corporations, law firms, NGOs, local governments, schoolteachers, and even significant elements of the Republican party, like the GOP grandees currently agitating to introduce a Carbon Tax.
To get an idea of how big the problem is you should have been there at CPAC at the weekend, as I was, when Scott Pruitt - the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, was asked what he thought about man-made climate change.
He just didn’t dare say.
Here he was, in the seductive and friendly company of conservative interviewer Dr Gina Loudon, in front of a 100 per cent sympathetic audience of GOP faithful, and still he fudged the question with a waffling, awkward, embarrassed, fence-sitting, evasive, non-answer.
And Scott Pruitt is one of the good guys - as we know from the fact that one of the main things he was known for doing when he was Oklahoma attorney general was suing the Agency of which he is now the head. I’ve little doubt that he will do sterling work reining in the EPA’s excesses and unravelling the environmentalists’ anti-business, anti-property-rights, anti-liberty agenda. But judging on his public appearances in the fortnight since he was confirmed in the post, I’d say he’s sounding too much the cautious, career-safe politician and not enough the fearless and refreshing Trump-style radical.
His first speech as administrator was all about what a thorough and competent technocrat he’s going to be.
“Regulations ought to make things regular,” said Mr. Pruitt, repeating a line he used at his confirmation hearing in January. “Those that we regulate ought to know what they can expect from us.”
At CPAC, his main theme was the importance of restoring federalism and states’ rights.
All sensible stuff. But if this Administration is really serious about slaying the Green Blob it’s going to have to do better than merely hiding behind the Constitution and due process. It’s going to need make a convincing case as to why all this stuff needs doing. Otherwise, the Trump Administration’s best efforts are going to be swamped by green propaganda aimed at making it look uncaring and anti-environment and unscientific.
What’s so stupid is that making this case is really, really easy.
I know because I did it at my three speaker events at CPAC. And if I can do it, anyone can.
First, was this brilliant panel, expertly moderated by John Fund, in which blogger Tony Heller (aka Steven Goddard) and lawyer, blogger and EPA scourge Steve Milloy dealt with the basics: the climate data has been rigged by a corrupt, untrustworthy scientific establishment; there has been little global warming and what there has been is entirely within natural boundaries; the reason that this global scam appeals to so many different interest groups - politicians, activists, (mostly second-rate) scientists, rent-seekers etc - is that it caters to such a variety of motivations (political; religious; follow-the-money).
Second was a talk on energy economics with the fascinating Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute who explained why renewables are such an inadequate and unnecessarily expensive response to the massively increasing global demand for energy; and why fossil fuels - especially shale gas and oil - are by far the most effective solution for at least the next few hundred years.
Third was an equally enlightening talk with Dr Craig Idso of the Energy & Environment Legal Institute on how increased atmospheric CO2 is greening the planet - thus more than counteracting all the disasters the greenies have been predicting as CO2 levels rise.
So to recap:
Man-made global warming is evidently and demonstrably not a problem.
The people who pretend otherwise are crooks, liars, idiots or shills.
CO2 does far more good than harm.
Fossil fuels aren’t running out - especially not now we’ve discovered the game-changing technology of hydraulic fracturing - and are the ideal solution to our energy needs.
Renewables are a waste of everyone’s time - and always will be.
There is copious evidence to support all these statements and it’s really about time those of us on the winning side of the argument stopped pussyfooting around and apologizing for being 100 per cent right. That should include everyone in the Trump administration.
No more cautious speeches equivocating as to whether carbon dioxide is a problem or not, and whether we ought to have more renewables in the mix.
This is a revolution; we’ve got truth and justice on our side; we owe the enemy nothing - and we really shouldn’t count our job done till we’ve crushed them, seen them driven before us and heard the lamentations of their women.