Feb
World’s biggest coal company brings U.S. government to court in climate fraud
The world’s largest private sector coal business, the Peabody Energy Company (PEC) has filed a mammoth 240-page “Petition for Reconsideration,” a full-blown legal challenge against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
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.
Possibly related posts:
I think a whale just fell on the elephant in the room.
Heh.
Per this article they have 16 Endangerment Lawsuits filed by the deadline. That should keep them busy-busy doing something besides creating solutions to non-existent problems.
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/02/17/17greenwire-16-endangerment-lawsuits-filed-against-epa-bef-74640.html
spot on, JOHN , great link
I can see testicles within the thermomonger community starting a slow and deliberate ascent up into warmer protective areas of their neighbouring anatomies!
[...] (HT: Climategate) [...]
It doesn’t surprise me that it would take something independent of the IPCC, the CRU, GISS etc to out the alarmists.
This is awesome but let’s wait and see if the climategate info will be admissible in court. If the lawyers are smart they would record all the emails with the county clerk so the government cannot cry foul and get the evidence dismissed on grounds it was acquired illegally. Once recorded with the county in question it is then the burden of the opposing party to disprove legitimacy since now they are a matter of record.
But it’s good to see the floodgates open too, everyone of those big corporations that were harmed by EPA’s illegal ruling should have their day in court. I’m glad they are all taking this stance and wish them well.
nes718, the facts don’t support any inadmissibility motions by defendants. The Climategate emails were subjected to numerous FOIA requests that were refused. Thereafter, the UK govt, ruled the emails had been withheld unlawfully by corrupt climatologists and the preponderance of the evidence points to a leak and not a hack – but for the criminal breach of the FOIA the emails would be in the public domain now- so it would be unconscionable for a court to rule them inadmissible.
Lord Monckton, (for one) assured us that this day would come.
Let us hope there is somone in the EPA that is held personally responsible. Sue them of their personal wealth before we tax payers tender the awards for damages.
I work bio labs. This crap the church of global warming folks are calling science is a total joke. Not one of their papers or research projects can pass the standard of the “Scientific Method” of doing research. Every research project must be written up exactly as it was done with full disclosure of each and every fact. Facts determined from that research must be defined. Facts determined by other research must be identified, cited, and linked. No secrets, no grey areas, no hiding information that may lead to other conclusions.
These people have outright lied, withheld pertinent data, and made things up to ensure continued funding and to support the scam of global warming. They should be prosecuted and sent to prison. They have compromised everything that scientific professional esthetics demand.
What, the cite’s to Wikipedia, Popular Science, The New York Times, etc. etc. are not good enough?
[...] Big Coal, Peabody Energy Takes U.S. Government to Court in Climate Fraud Filed under: Global Warming — aconservativeedge @ 11:46 pm Tags: climategate, company, court, Energy, fraud, Global Warming, government, hoax, peabody, peabody energy, pec, scam, sue, us World’s biggest coal company brings U.S. government to court in climate fraud | CLIMATEGATE. [...]
[...] like we’ve got a heavyweight contest on our hands. The world’s largest private sector coal business, the Peabody [...]
“Papa,won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County,
Down by the Green River where paradise lay?
Well,I’m sorry,my son,but you’re too late in asking,
Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.”
….I always thought that song was a whiny ’60′s lefty fraud…and now I’m sure of it.
As an attorney, I would be interested in obtaining a copy of the 240 page petition.
RStein, you can read all 240 pages from this link- I’d very much welcome your thoughts on it:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/no_legal_option.pdf
If we had Xanaxed the entire environ mentalist movement the global warming hoax would never have happened.
The real believers are full of fear. Everywhere we turn these cowardly people are screaming “But we have to do something”. “What is that something?” “Not sure, but we have to do something”. Oh, ok. The human race is not allowed to believe that everything can be normal anymore.
Mad Hansen, Jock strap Mann, Gavin putrid Schmidt and Phil fear Jones, all inadequate delusional men looking for the limelight, that Hollywood leading role moment, where they defend us all from the attack of global warming and lead us to the promised land where climate is constant. Not a single woman climate scientist among them.
But the blogosphere is starting to do a good job of returning normality to it’s place in society, where women and men are able to voice concern and add reason to the delusional world of climate science.
It’s heartening to see some big guns coming out and arguing from the skeptics’ perspective.
We can only hope that many others will do the same. I look forward to warmist agencies being bombarded with similar writs.
I’m all for having clean air – hell, that’s what keeps us alive, but I’ve always believed that “global warming” was nothing more than natural climate change that occurs naturally in cycles.
Michael Crichton summed this up quite neatly back in 2005: http://www.crichton-official.com/speech-ourenvironmentalfuture.html
Hooray for Peabody! I’ve felt right along that we would need to bring these scumbags to court and put them under oath. No predictable outcome; just a chance to make them tell the frigging truth or lie under oath. Link this with the post about the oil companies bailing on the Climate Change Coalition and you see the battlelines shaping up. Let me be in the front rank when the clash comes. F-ing “denier” BS.
Don’t know if this has been previously noted, but Lake Erie (1 of the Great Lakes, of course), has frozen over completely. First time in 14 years, according to The Weather Channel. Hmmm…
[...] for Desert: A massive filing against the EPA. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)AGW Twofer: CBS Reports The CRU Scandal [...]
[...] The legal war begins [...]
[...] made my own study of PEC the legal challenge earlier this week over at Climategate.com and it is a gold mine for litigants looking for a ready template for a detailed lawsuit to defeat [...]
[...] More details in World’s biggest coal company brings U.S. government to court in climate fraud [...]
Climate Cultists’ Green Gang has always depended in large part on blocking dissenters’ access to relevant data bases, deceitfully obscuring spurious evaluative techniques, issuing willfully prevaricated claims with no basis in objective, rational, scientific method whatsoever– their so-called “peer review” is equivalent to self-auditing by Bernie Madoff.
Now that a deep-pockets corporate interest such as Peabody has finally resolved to blast EPA usurpation at the root, perhaps a goodly number of other aggrieved parties will find voice. May Warmists’ orange jumpsuit brigade eventually include not merely Pachauri but Briffa, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Trenberth et al. as well as enviro-wackos of every sort and kind.
Anyone notice that Algore was not included??? I would pay to see him squirm while being grilled on the witness stand.
Will buy Peabody when market opens tomorrow.
Thank you Harry Truman for breaking UMW way back when.
[...] http://www.climategate.com/worlds-biggest-coal-company-brings-us-government-to-court-in-climate-fraud [...]