CEI, Science Groups Petition EPA to Reconsider Increasingly Dubious Global Warming “Endangerment” Finding

Regulation Would Bring Economy-Crushing Regulations Based on Shoddy Science

Washington, D.C., Feb. 12, 2009 – Two science groups joined with the Competitive Enterprise Institute on Friday to petition the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its December  decision to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

In the wake of new disclosures and studies, some as recent as last week, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change and the Science and Environmental Policy Project joined with CEI to formally petition the agency to reconsider its rule.

EPA on December 7 issued its finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare and therefore must be regulated under the Clean Air Act.  The agency acted despite the revelations of Climategate.  But even after Climategate, new disclosures and studies have shown, among other things, that 1) the IPCC report, the major international study relied on by EPA, is an unscientific political document;  and 2) the major data sets have undergone so much manipulation that they are totally unreliable.

“EPA’s Endangerment Finding is based on non-scientific reports by the IPCC and scientifically indefensible global temperature datasets,” the petitioners charge in the February 12 EPA filing.

In fact, “all three data sets used by the EPA to conclude that warming is unequivocal have been highly compromised, all three are likely to contain strong warming biases of unknown magnitude, and none of the three have been independently verified,” the petition charges.

Kenneth Haapala, Executive Vice President of SEPP, stated: “EPA refuses to recognize that the IPCC is a political organization, not a scientific one. EPA’s Endangerment Finding is based on politics, not science. It is time to see the rigorous physical science, rather than speculation from computer models.”

CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman stated:  “As damaging as Climategate was, it has been followed by newer, equally damaging developments for global warming alarmists.  EPA has a legal duty to get its head out of the sand and take account of what’s happening.”

If EPA proceeds with its plans, under the Clean Air Act it will automatically trigger costly and time-consuming permitting requirements for tens of thousands of previously unregulated small businesses.

On October 5, CEI petitioned EPA to reopen the Endangerment Proceeding because of a disclosure by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, now at the epicenter of Climategate, that it had destroyed the raw data for its data set of global surface temperatures.