New Lawsuit, Petition Challenge EPA Global Warming Regulations

New Lawsuit, Petition Challenge EPA Global Warming Regulations After Lead Global Warming Scientist Admits Data Sloppiness, No Warming

CEI, Allies Urge Reconsideration of Economy-Crushing Regulations
Washington, D.C.,

Feb. 16, 2010 – In two separate filings Tuesday, the Competitive Enterprise Institute challenged massive energy regulations forthcoming from the Environmental Protection Agency. The actions come in the wake of damaging disclosures this week by Phil Jones, head of the disgraced British Climate Research Unit, who reversed himself on several basic issues in a BBC interview.

CEI, along with nonprofit ally FreedomWorks and the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), filed a lawsuit in federal appeals court challenging EPA plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. The lawsuit asks the court to review the EPA’s regulation.

In addition, CEI joined with SEPP and the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change in updating its petition demanding that EPA reconsider its decision.
Even though the petition was only filed this past Friday, events over the weekend warranted a new supplement. In a weekend interview with the BBC, Phil Jones admitted that there’s been no statistically significant warming over the past 15 years and that, in fact, there’s been some cooling over the last eight years. He also acknowledged that a big chunk of original historical climate data has been lost. And a new study released Tuesday found no increase in storms over the last 60 years.

The new filing with EPA on Tuesday, hours before the deadline for such petitions, formally brought these late-breaking events into the legal debate.
“EPA states that ‘the greatest warming occur[ed] over the last 30 years,’” the petitioners state. “But according to Dr. [Phil] Jones, for the periods 1860-1880, 1910-1940, 1975-1998, and 1975-2009, the warming rates did not show any accelerating trends. In his words, ‘the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.’"
“If there has been no change in warming rates, this contradicts one of EPA’s basic contentions,” the petitioners point out.

Last Friday CEI, together with the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change and the Science and Environmental Policy Project, petitioned EPA to reconsider its Endangerment Finding. Climategate has severely undermined EPA’s alleged justification for regulating carbon dioxide, but events since then have done still more damage to EPA’s case. Apparently, those events show no signs of letting up.

>View the lawsuit + supplemental petition to EPA (both filed February 16, 2010)

>View the original petition to EPA (filed February 12, 2010)