The class action suit brought by residents from southern Mississippi, which was ravaged by hurricane-force winds and driving rains, was first filed just weeks after the August 2005 storm hit.   ”The plaintiffs allege that defendants’ operation of energy, fossil fuels, and chemical industries in the United States caused the emission of greenhouse gasses that contributed to global warming,” say the documents seen by AFP.

The attorneys have the audacity to claim:

The increase in global surface air and water temperatures “in turn caused a rise in sea levels and added to the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina, which combined to destroy the plaintiffs’ private property, as well as public property useful to them.”

Evidently you don’t need any real scientific proof to file a a lawsuit, you just cite Al Gore’s BS, cast aspersions about global warming and let the judicial system have at it.  ”Damn the torpedos!  Full steam ahead!”

This one lawsuit is going to cost many millions to litigate something that isn’t even scientifically proven.  It’s costing all of the following companies money and you can bet you’ll see the effect upon the price of what they sell.

The suit, claiming compensation and punitive damages from multinational companies including Shell, ExxonMobile, BP and Chevron, has already passed several key legal hurdles, after initially being knocked back by the lowest court.

It gets worse.  This isn’t the only lawsuit being filed about global warming.  AGW has the insurance companies nervous about whether they’re liable for alleged global warming damges caused by their clients.

The Insurance Journal has an article titled Global Warming Litigation Just Getting Started; Costs Will Be Significant.

The article cites several court rulings that opened the door for lawsuits over global warming to proceed.

This is one example from the article:

The Alaskan Village of Kivalina sued ExxonMobil and numerous other oil and gas companies alleging that the defendants caused harm to their village by contributing to global warming. The district court dismissed the suit for lack of standing and for raising a non-justiciable political question. The case is now on appeal to the Ninth Circuit.

The potential liability for insurance companies has prompted one insurer to sue over whether they are liable to defend suits about global warming:

Steadfast Insurance Company filed a declaratory judgment action asking a Virginia state court to rule that the commercial general liability (CGL) policy it issued to AES did not provide coverage of the global warming claims asserted against AES in the Village of Kivalina lawsuit and that it was not required to defend AES against that lawsuit.

In its declaratory judgment action, Steadfast asserts that its CGL policy does not cover global warming claims for three reasons: (1) the damages allegedly caused by global warming were not caused by an “occurrence” within the meaning of the CGL policy, (2) since the damages allegedly caused by global warming began prior to the date the policy was issued, the “loss in progress” endorsement excluded coverage and (3) coverage is excluded under the policy’s pollution exclusion.

We aren’t only facing getting screwed by cap-and-trade schemes, we now need to worry about how much more the cost of these lawsuits will be taken out of the consumers’ (our) pockets.

Indeed, to the extent proof of the existence of global warming and the causation of damages by global warming are issues, the pre-trial proceedings in such cases are likely to take years and require expensive expert testimony. Thus, coverage issues will be front and center as insurers are presented with claims arising out of or related to global warming.

Seems AGW is good for the lawyers, too.  This prompts me to wonder if any of these companies will soon see fit to start suing all the people responsible for this post-normal science?  That is something I’d pay good money to see.

An EPA press release states:

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today that 20 U.S. communities, including two Indian Tribes, will receive $7.8 million in grants for projects that will reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs). The funds will help Climate Showcase Communities increase energy efficiency, saving consumers money and reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

Ahem!

“These communities see the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change and are working with EPA to fight back,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “We’re working on innovative, win-win strategies that reduce greenhouse gases and cut energy bills for families and businesses — strategies that can be put in place to fight climate change in communities from Utah and Ohio to China and India.”

Giggle, giggle. Overwhelming evidence? Phil Jones isn’t even using that one anymore.

Preliminary calculations by the grant applicants estimate that by 2012 the projects will reduce about 135,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually—equivalent to the emissions from 25,000 passenger vehicles or 12,000 homes and save more than $4.5 million per year in energy costs. Several projects are expected to create or maintain jobs and provide green job training.

Sounds like this may stop global warming single-handedly! Or, they plan on nuking an entire mid-sized town someplace in the midwest.

…..and if that’s not enough….they plan on throwing more money out the window!

EPA will monitor the progress of grant recipients and will post quarterly updates about each recipient online. An additional $2.2 million is still under review and is expected to be awarded in the next few months to five additional local and tribal governments.

I think I’m sending a letter in that I am planning on not farting anymore and see if I can get some money to implement my plan…..a few million should do it…and my wife will be much happier..

This all started last year over a report that was concealed by the EPA so they could get their Endangerment Finding about CO2.  Had this information been taken into account it would have stopped the Endagerment Finding that CO2 is a danger.

The concealed report, e-mails, and the original petition are not fresh news, but I’ll give a quick rehash to bring those up to date who may be unaware of what has transpired.

E-Mails were sent back and forth, the gist of as follows:

• One from a superior forbidding the author to speak to anyone outside NCEE on endangerment issues.
• One back from the author to his superior regarding the report being sent to the EPA’s office of Air and Radiaton.
• A reply from his superior advising it wouldn’t be sent (i.e. suppressed)
• A second e-mail sent by his superior 8 minutes later stating “I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change.” (In other words STFU).

Here are some highlights from the suppressed document the e-mails discuss, taken from the comments in the executive summary:

The current draft TSD is based largely on the IPCC AR4 report, which is at best 3 years out of date in a rapidly changing field.  There have been important developments in areas that deserve careful attention in this draft.  The list includes the following 5:

Global temperatures have declined-extending the current downtrend to 11 years with a particularly rapid decline in 1907-8; in addition, the PDO went negative in September, 2007 and the AMO in January, 2009 respectively.  At the same time atmospheric CO2 levels have continued to increase and CO2 emissions have accelerated.

The consensus on past, present and future Atlantic hurricane behavior has changed.  Initially, it tilted towards the idea that anthropogenic global warming is leading to (and will lead to) to more frequent and intense storms.  Now the consensus is much more neutral, arguing that future Atlantic tropical cyclones will be little different than those of the past.

The idea that warming temperatures will cause Greenland to shed its ice has been greatly diminished by new results indicating little evidence for the operation of such processes.

One of the worst economic depressions since World War II has greatly decreased GHG emissions compared to the assumptions made by the IPCC.  To the extent that ambient GHG levels are relevant for future global temperatures, these emission reductions should greatly influence the adverse effects of these emissions on public health and welfare.  The current draft TSD does not reflect the changes that have already occurred nor those that are likely to occur in in the future as a result of recession.  In fact the topic is not even discussed to our knowledge.

A new paper finds that the crucial assumption in the GCM models used by the IPCC concerning strongly positive feedback from water vapor is not supported by empirical evidence and that the feedback is strongly negative.

A new 2009 paper by Scafetta and West suggests that the IPCC used faulty solar data in dismissing the direct affect of  solar variability on global temperatures.  Their research suggests that

Solar variability could account for up to 68% of the increase in the Earth’s global temperatures.

Based upon the above, I’d say you can see why they wanted to hide this study and keep it out of their Endangerment TSD.

The document also notes the following deficiencies:

• Based on old science, no longer appropriate
• Science of TSD out of date
• Disturbing inconsistencies
• Temperature and other scientific data and the GHG/CO2 hypothesis need to be carefully explained and explored if the draft TSD is to be credible

It even notes that following are not explained in the TSD and the author feels they should be included.

• Variations in PDO/ENSO
• The association between solar sunspots/irradiance and global temperature fluctuations
• That changes in GHD appear to have so little effect that it is difficult to find any effect in the satellite temperature record, which started in 1978.
• Surface measurements more ambiguous than satellite measurements. Difference could be due to increased urbanization and UHI.
• Almost all fluctuations appear to be due to natural causes, not human caused pollution
• Possible causes they do not understand

It also notes:  ”Given the downward trend in temperatures since 1998 (which some think will continue until 2030) there is no particular reason to rush  into decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data.”

The initial filing June 23, 2009:

CEI’s filing requests that EPA make the suppressed study public, place it into the endangerment docket, and extend the comment period to allow public response to the new information. CEI is also requesting that EPA publicly declare that it will engage in no reprisals against the study’s author, a senior analyst who has worked at EPA for over 35 years.

CEI also filed a petition on 10/5/2009 due to Climategate the the missing data.  I am not having any luck finding it for review.

These were both ignored and on 12/7/2009 the EPA issued their Endangerment finding in spite of all the damning evidence in the report and in spite of Climategate.

On 2/12/10 CEI filed a petition for reconsideration based upon:

• The IPPC report and the EPA’s proposal and TSD suffered from major flaws
• That new developments (Climategate) happened after their finding and are important enough to warrant reconsideration
• That the EPA’s claim of unequivocal warming is scientifically indefensible
• There is new evidence that scientific studies that undercut global warming claims were repressed
• Recent disclosures make it clear that unscientific claims and reports were utilized by the IPCC
• Contrary to the EPA’s high praise for it, the IPCC report has been revealed to be a political document, not a scientific one

On February 16, 2010 CEI filed a supplemental petition based upon:

• Dr. Phil Jones’ latest statements undercut EPA’s endangerment finding
• The IPCC’s claims regarding hurricanes, adopted by EPA,  are now in even more serious doubt
• EPA’s highly questionable use of the absurdity canon in its proposed tailoring rule requires that the agency reconsider its endangerment finding

On February 16, 2010 they also filed a lawsuit with the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for a review of the EPA’s endangerment finding.

This was obviously not an Endangerment Finding that was based upon science.  I feel the decision was a result of the Obama Administration being frustrated about not being able to get Cap and Trade going in Congress and deciding to ram this through in an effort to get us all paying taxes on Carbon, getting carbon credit trading going so Al Gore and his buddies can get filthy rich, and getting with the green agenda to keep his ecotard followers happy.

To give credit where credit is due, the author of the EPA document that was suppressed is Mr. Alan Carlin.  He has his own website, and has his own take on the EPA and this decision, information you will probably find to be interesting.

I’m no lawyer so I’ll defer to John O’Sullivan on the technical legal aspects of this.  I have to wonder and hope that there’s a legal basis for going after the people who suppressed this information.

An article in the New York Times Friday said the EPA is overstepping their bounds with their new finding about CO2 and are attempting to do an end run around Congress.  It is a blatant move that usurps Congressional powers, so blatant that even Democrats are stepping up to the plate to put an end to this.

Two top House Democrats introduced a measure yesterday aimed at blocking U.S. EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, mirroring the controversial effort launched on the Senate side by Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

The measure from Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson (Minn.) and Missouri’s Ike Skelton was also co-sponsored by Missouri Republican Jo Ann Emerson. Their resolution (pdf)aims to use the Congressional Review Act to effectively veto EPA’s finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare.

“When Congress passed the Clean Air Act, it never gave EPA the explicit authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions for the purpose of stopping global climate change,” Skelton said in a statement. “But, that is exactly what EPA has proposed to do.”

Democrats Travis Childers of Mississippi and Charlie Wilson of Ohio signed on as co-sponsors after the measure was introduced, Skelton spokesman William Chapman said.

But many observers say efforts to block EPA using the Congressional Review Act would face a tough battle clearing the Democratic-led Congress and would face a veto from President Obama.

This all sounds good, but the reality of the situation is you have a President who still believes in Anthropogenic Global Warming and many Democrats in both the House and Senate who feel the same way:

“Right now, this is a symbolic act by these House members,” Weiss said. Even if they somehow got a vote in the House and cleared the Senate, the president would veto the measure, and proponents are not going to get the two-thirds majority needed, he added.

There are other moves afoot to stop the EPA:

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) announced last week that he will introduce a more limited legislative plan that would delay EPA’s stationary source regulations for six to 12 months beyond what the agency is planning.

And in the House, Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) has introduced a bill(pdf) to strip EPA of its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions unless it receives explicit authority to do so by Congress.

I sincerely hope that the Congress will awaken and see the EPA’s move for what it is, which is another power grab by a government agency.

I am happy to see that the MSM is starting to see there is a problem and starting to report on these things.

Shows Scientists Violated Ethics, Reveals Major Disagreements on Climate Science

Link to EPW Minority Report on CRU Controversy
Link to a Sampling of CRU Emails
Link: IPCC Gets the Science Wrong
Link: Endangerment Finding Based on Flawed Science

Washington, D.C.-The Minority Staff of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works released a report today titled, “‘Consensus’ Exposed: The CRU Controversy.” The report covers the controversy surrounding emails and documents released from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU). It examines the extent to which those emails and documents affect the scientific work of the UN’s IPCC, and how revelations of the IPCC’s flawed science impacts the EPA’s endangerment finding for greenhouse gases.

The report finds that some of the scientists involved in the CRU controversy violated ethical principles governing taxpayer-funded research and possibly federal laws. In addition, the Minority Staff believes the emails and accompanying documents seriously compromise the IPCC-based “consensus” and its central conclusion that anthropogenic emissions are inexorably leading to environmental catastrophes.

In its examination of the controversy, the Minority Staff found that the scientists:

• Obstructed release of damaging data and information;
• Manipulated data to reach preconceived conclusions;
• Colluded to pressure journal editors who published work questioning the climate science “consensus”; and
• Assumed activist roles to influence the political process.

“This EPW Minority Report shows that the CRU controversy is about far more than just scientists who lack interpersonal skills, or a little email squabble,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. “It’s about unethical and potentially illegal behavior by some the world’s leading climate scientists.

“The report also shows the world’s leading climate scientists acting like political scientists, with an agenda disconnected from the principles of good science. And it shows that there is no consensus-except that there are significant gaps in what scientists know about the climate system. It’s time for the Obama Administration to recognize this. Its endangerment finding for greenhouse gases rests on bad science. It should throw out that finding and abandon greenhouse gas regulation under the Clean Air Act-a policy that will mean fewer jobs, higher taxes and economic decline.”

Contact:
Matt Dempsey Matt_Dempsey@epw.senate.gov (202) 224-9797
David Lungren David_Lungren@epw.senate.gov (202) 224-5642

Source: US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced the recipients of more than $17 million in federal grant money to be used to study the impacts of climate change.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was awarded grant money for three projects while a researcher at St. Louis University got $246,149 in grant money to study climate modeling.

One of the more interesting Illinois research projects involved looking at the protecting drinking water by reducing the uncertainties connected to carbon sequestration in certain aquifers. That project received $897,225.

EPA gave out grants for research in four areas: climate change and air quality; climate change and water quality; climate change and allergies and climate change in carbon sequestration.

Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

It’s a good thing President Obama has our budget under control so we can afford these things.

This week, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli filed a petition that challenges the EPA’s recent finding that CO2 and other greenhouse gases conttibute to alleged climate change. Way to go Virginia. Let’s see more states step up and fight this out of control Obama Administration EPA.

The petition must be answered and covers the entire body of leaked emails from ‘Climategate’ as well as those other ‘gate’ revelations including the frauds allegedly perpetrated under such sub-headings as ‘Himalayan Glaciers,’ ‘African Agricultural Production,’ ‘Amazon Rain Forests,’ ‘Melting Mountain Ice,’ ‘Netherlands Below Sea Level’ as well as those much-publicized abuses of the peer-review literature and so called ‘gray literature.’ These powerful litigants also draw attention to the proven criminal conduct by climate scientists in refusing to honor Freedom of Information law (FOIA) requests.

Peabody is, in effect, challenging the right of the current U.S. federal government to introduce cap and trade regulations by the ‘back door.’ In this article we summarize Peabody’s legal writ.

PEC has pulled out all the stops to overturn the EPA findings ‘Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act’ made on December 7, 2009. Those findings were in turn premised on the Supreme Court decision of April 2, 2007 of Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007), where the court ruled that greenhouse gases are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act.

PEC argues inter alia that the law requires that the federal agency must articulate a “rational connection between the facts found and the choice made” as per the case of Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass’n of the United States, Inc. v. State Farm Mutual Auto Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 43 (1983).

The PEC arguments are based primarily on the release of email and other information from the University of East Anglia (“UEA”) Climatic Research Unit (“CRU”) in November of last year. Their civil action lists most of the principle scientists such as Professor Phil Jones, of the UK’s Climatic Research Unit, who recently admitted there has been no ‘statistically significant’ global warming for 15 years and agreed the Medieval Warm Period may have been just as warm, if not warmer than current global temperatures.

The petition argues the EPA must reconsider its Endangerment Finding based on all the new material from Climategate that was not available during the original EPA ‘comment period’ and which is central to the outcome that EPA reached in promulgating its Endangerment Finding.

The petition further states that the EPA failed to properly exercise its judgment as required by the Clean Air Act (“CAA”) and acted in an “arbitrary and capricious” fashion by relying almost exclusively on flawed reports of the IPCC in attributing climate change to anthropogenic greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions and which were influenced by political rather than scientific concerns.

Among their submissions the PEC legal team attacks the “Nice Tidy Story of Unprecedented 20th Century Warmth” using emails written while climatologists were making preparations for the Third IPCC report. Among them Keith Briffa stated that:

“I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite so simple.” [CRU email 938018124.txt (Sep. 22, 1999)]

Briffa went on to say that:

“I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago.” [CRU email 938018124.txt (Sep. 22, 1999)]

The PEC legal eagles then cite another key researcher, Ed Cook, who in a lengthy email bristles at the effort to eliminate the MWP and wrote:

“I do find the dismissal of the Medieval Warm Period as a meaningful global event to be grossly premature and probably wrong.”

[CRU email 988831541.txt (May 2, 2001)]

The PEC action criticizes the discredited IPCC reports that were not the product of a rigorous, transparent and neutral scientific process. PEC argues:

“The CRU information reveals that many of the principal scientists who authored key chapters of the IPCC scientific assessments were driven by a policy agenda that caused them to cross the line from neutral science to advocacy.”

As an example of bias, Dr. Kevin Trenberth – Senior Scientist, Head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research is cited for his admission:

“I tried hard to balance the needs of the science and the IPCC, which were not always the same.”

Hide the Decline

The coal company’s lawyers argue that to hide the decline in the correlation between recent temperatures and what was showing in the proxy data, Professor Michael Mann and then Phil Jones unethically and fraudulently grafted on actual temperature data to the end of their proxy reconstructions rather than using the same proxy data as had been used throughout the reconstruction.

By this ‘trick’ they made the graphic presentations of the proxy reconstructions misleading, since the effect is to make it seem as if the proxy data shows rising 20th century warming when it doesn’t. But the real deception in the trick was in hiding what became known as the “divergence” problem.

The divergence problem is where the proxy data are contradicted by actual data, as they are for a significant period of the time when direct temperature measurements exist, the accuracy of the proxy data over the entire period of the proxy reconstruction is called into question so that the science cannot be determined to be “settled.”

In a robust attack lawyers for the PEC further assert:

“Moreover, the Information Commissioner’s Office of the United Kingdom (“U.K.”), the agency that oversees and enforces the U.K.’s freedom of information laws, after investigation, recently concluded that CRU broke those laws in refusing to respond to information requests.”

The petition concludes that:

“In sum, given the seriousness of the flaws that the CRU material and other information reveal in the development of the IPCC reports, the Agency must reexamine the Endangerment Finding. The Agency can no longer have confidence that those reports present a fair, unbiased and accurate assessment of climate science.”

Moreover, PEC is demanding that the EPA shall convene a full evidentiary hearing as a part of such reconsideration. If this element of the petition were granted it is highly probable that the weight of the new evidence now freely available since Climategate would expose the criminal and fraudulent component within the science of man-made global warming, and would likely succeed in having all the EPA’s findings on carbon dioxide invalidated.

Thereby, from accomplishing their civil task Peabody will lend further weight to the likelihood of criminal charges being brought against those individuals implicated in international fraud on the largest scale ever known.

Our good friends at AlGoreLied.com have picked up on the growing skeptic mood among Utah’s political elite. Common sense holds sway in this state with the sixth most urbanized population in the U.S., legislators have now voted with a single voice to say, “No thanks!” to further regulations on carbon dioxide.

Representative, Kerry Gibson, R-Ogden,who sponsored the measure said, “We are responsible to look at the big picture, the economy is as important as the environment.”

Fueled by concerns over devastating impacts to Utah’s farmers, ranchers, mining industry, businesses and consumers, HJR12 is intended to send a message to the federal government that the regulation of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas is fraught with economic impracticalities and based on unproven global warming theory.

Representative Mike Noel (R-Kanab), arguing forcefully on behalf of the resolution chose to cite from the medical profession’s Hippocratic oath, said “Sometimes when we don’t have all the answers, we need to have the courage to do nothing. As policymakers, we should first do no harm.”

The Utah legislature urged the United States Environmental Protection Agency to immediately halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs and withdraw its “Endangerment Finding” and related regulations until a full and independent investigation of the climate data conspiracy and global warming science can be substantiated.

Representative Phil Riesen (D-Salt Lake City) summed up the democrat argument perfectly in the video: “Clean air at any cost.” Forget the fact that now that the air is cleaner than it been in decades, it’s the at any cost that realy tell’s the cap-and-trade backers’ story. Any cost. No matter what. Even if you have to destroy industry and put more people into poverty to do it.

Here is the text of the bill:

CLIMATE CHANGE JOINT RESOLUTION
2010 GENERAL SESSION
STATE OF UTAH
Chief Sponsor: Kerry W. Gibson
Senate Sponsor: ____________

General Description:

This joint resolution of the Legislature urges the United States Environmental Protection Agency to cease its carbon dioxide reduction policies, programs, and regulations until climate data and global warming science are substantiated.
Highlighted Provisions:

This resolution:

urges the United States Environmental Protection Agency to immediately halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs and withdraw its “Endangerment Finding” and related regulations until a full and independent investigation of the climate data conspiracy and global warming science can be substantiated.

Special Clauses:

None

Be it resolved by the Legislature of the state of Utah:

WHEREAS, proposed cap and trade legislation before the United States Congress, together with potential state actions to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2), would result in significantly higher energy costs to American consumers, business, and industry;

WHEREAS, the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “Endangerment Finding” and proposed action to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act is based on flawed climate data and would place significant regulatory and financial burdens on all sectors of the nation’s economy at a time when the nation’s unemployment rate exceeds 10%;

WHEREAS, global temperatures have been level and declining in some areas over the past 12 years;

WHEREAS, the “hockey stick” global warming assertion has been discredited and climate alarmists’ carbon dioxide-related global warming hypothesis is unable to account for the current downturn in global temperatures;

WHEREAS, there is a statistically more direct correlation between twentieth century temperature rise and Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere than CO2;

WHEREAS, outlawed and largely phased out by 1978, in the year 2000 CFC’s began to decline at approximately the same time as global temperatures began to decline;

WHEREAS, emails and other communications between climate researchers around the globe, referred to as “Climategate,” indicate a well organized and ongoing effort to manipulate and incorporate “tricks” related to global temperature data in order to produce a global warming outcome;

WHEREAS, there has been a concerted effort by climate change alarmists to marginalize those in the scientific community who are skeptical of global warming by manipulating or pressuring peer-reviewed publications to keep contrary or competing scientific viewpoints and findings on global warming from being reviewed and published;

WHEREAS, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a blend of government officials and scientists, does no independent climate research but relies on global climate researchers;

WHEREAS, Earth’s climate is constantly changing with recent warming potentially an indication of a return to more normal temperatures following a prolonged cooling period from 1250 to 1860 called the “Little Ice Age”;

WHEREAS, the climate change “gravy train,” estimated at more than $7 billion annually in federal government grants, may have influenced the climate research focus and findings that have produced a “scientific consensus” at research institutions and universities;

WHEREAS, the recently completed Copenhagen climate change summit resulted in little agreement, especially among growing CO2-emitting nations like China and India, and calls on the United States to pay billions of dollars to developing countries to reduce CO2 emissions at a time when the United States’ national debt will exceed $12 trillion;

WHEREAS, the United States Department of Agriculture estimates that current legislation providing agriculture offsets and carbon credits to reduce CO2 emissions would result in tree planting on 59 million acres of crop and pasture land, damaging America’s food security and rural communities;

WHEREAS, according to the World Health Organization, 1.6 billion people do not have adequate food and clean water; and

WHEREAS, global governance related to global warming and reduction of CO2 would ultimately lock billions of human beings into long-term poverty:

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Legislature of the state of Utah urges the United States Environmental Protection Agency to immediately halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs and withdraw its “Endangerment Finding” and related regulations until a full and independent investigation of the climate data conspiracy and global warming science can be substantiated.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that a copy of this resolution be sent to the United States Environmental Protection Agency and to the members of Utah’s congressional delegation.

Legislative Review Note
as of 1-21-10 10:43 AM

Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel

UN claim of Himalayan glaciers disappearing in 25 years reportedly came from activists

Press Release
February 4, 2010

WASHINGTON – U.S. Reps. Joe Barton, R-Texas, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Greg Walden, R-Ore., ranking member of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, today wrote to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson asking her for information related to the peer-review process and scientific objectivity underpinning the agency’s endangerment finding on greenhouse gases.

In a response to the lawmakers last year, Jackson said that the EPA placed great weight upon the assessment literature of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. However, the agency’s reliance on the IPCC’s work “has been criticized on the grounds that the agency did not follow its own internal guidelines and traditional science assessment practices as it sought to expedite its endangerment determination,” Barton and Walden wrote. “The agency has defended its reliance on the IPCC assessments, stating that IPCC reports ‘undergo a rigorous and exacting standard of peer review’ and that EPA could rely upon the quality of these reports as a substitute for its own internal analysis of the relevant science.”

Recent published reports put a dent in that “exacting standard of peer review” when a lead author for the IPCC’s Working Group II report admitted to publishing an unsubstantiated claim that Himalayan glaciers may vanish in 25 years at current rates of global warming. Available evidence suggests the claim was off by 300 years.

“This claim, drawn reportedly from the World Wildlife Fund environmental advocacy group, survived the IPCC’s source requirements and its peer review process, including presumably any EPA reviewers participating in the process. Multiple questions raised during the review process, according to attached news reports, were ignored by IPCC,” the lawmakers wrote. “Moreover, the author of this claim states he knew it did not rest on peer-reviewed literature, but that he and his co-authors kept it in the assessment because ‘we thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policymakers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.’

“We believe this error raises questions about whether EPA’s due diligence and review of the IPCC assessments has been sufficiently rigorous,” Barton and Walden wrote. “Aside from EPA’s own participation in the development and review of the Working Group II report, in its comments on the endangerment finding EPA pointed to published IPCC guidelines and procedures to demonstrate the quality of the process. Yet, we see no evidence that EPA has examined whether and how the IPCC implements and adheres to these procedures.”

The lawmakers asked Jackson to respond to the following questions:

1.    What did EPA do, and when, to evaluate the IPCC source requirements or peer-review procedures to determine if such requirements and procedures comply with OMB data quality guidelines or EPA’s own peer review guidelines?

2.    Explain how EPA evaluated and determined that IPCC considered full information and all scientific viewpoints relating to climate change.

3.    Explain how EPA verified that IPCC actually implemented and followed its published policies and procedures regarding review and comments on its published reports?

a.    Did EPA evaluate the IPCC peer review record?
b.    Did EPA evaluate the credibility or quality of IPCC author responses to comments?
c.    Please provide all documents relating to any such verification of IPCC implementation of its policies.

4.    Did EPA consider the technical support document for the endangerment finding as a candidate for peer review, as required by EPA’s Peer Review Handbook?

5.    In recent years, the National Research Council has criticized EPA’s implementation of its peer review procedures, noting that EPA should more strictly separate the management of the work product from the peer review of that work product to ensure greater independence of peer review from the control of program managers. (See Strengthen Science at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, NRC 2000.) Please identify who managed the peer review or review process for the technical support document for the endangerment finding and whether the individual(s) adhered to EPA peer review guidelines or the recommendations of the National Research Council.

6.    Regarding the EPA’s Action Development Process for developing the endangerment finding, please provide any preliminary analytic blueprint and detailed analytic blueprint prepared for or relating to the endangerment finding or its technical support document.

7.    Did EPA contractors participate in the analysis of or preparation for the responses to public comments on the endangerment finding or evaluation of the quality, rigor, or transparency of the science assessments EPA relied upon?

A copy of the letter can be found here.