Feb
Two U.S. Congressmen go after EPA on reliance on UN’s climate panel
Barton, Walden Ask EPA to Explain Reliance On Dubious Reports in Endangerment Finding
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.
Possibly related posts:
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- IPCC apologizes for Himalayan glacier meltdown exaggeration, sort of
- World’s biggest coal company brings U.S. government to court in climate fraud
- India wants climate science, not climate evangelism. Will create own climate change panel.
- Series complete: How ‘Climategate’ Marks the Maturing of a New Science Movement
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Is global warming man made?
Joe Barton has been in this for a longtime. He’s ready for some payback.
[...] Two U.S. Congressmen go after EPA on reliance on UN’s climate panel [...]
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