“The science behind climate change is settled, and human activity is responsible for global warming. That conclusion is not a partisan one.” – Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson.
Forget being partisan or not. That conclusion of settled science isn’t existent. It hasn’t been for a long time, but they are especially bold words in light of the climate scandal involving the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and the flaws uncovered in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Yesterday, the Senate Minority Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW) released a new report that scrutinizes the climate scandal and CRU and its connection with the IPCC and U.S. government policy.
The report delves into the email trail, the IPCC consensus of “unequivocal warming”, the legal and policy issues of Climategate and the EPA’s reliance on the IPCC to make regulatory decisions in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The EPA’s endangerment finding, which took effect January 14, gives the EPA authority under section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act (CAA) to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs). Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said:
“So this administration has said, “All right. We couldn’t go it legislatively so we’re going to do it on our own. We’re going to do the damage, inflict the economic damage to this country that would have come under cap and trade the same as if we had been able to pass it.” Now, I think that’s interesting. I would like to say this one thing. The chairman made the statement that the Supreme Court’s mandating this stuff. They’re not mandating a thing. The Supreme Court said you have three choices. You can either, well, either find an endangerment finding or do not find it, or you can say that the science is uncertain.
And I think what we’re going to be asking you to do, during the question and answer time is to find that it’s not certain. You can have an endangerment finding. That can change because you didn’t know at the time that you were basing this on the IPCC flawed science, that the science was flawed. You didn’t believe that, but nonetheless that’s where we are today. We’re going to be making the request, Madam Chairman, that we go back, relook at this and also that — that — and the EPA have their I.G. (Inspector General)looking into this just the same as all the other nations are doing at this time all throughout Europe.”
You can find the full report here. What’s most interesting is that it’s the politicians arguing that the science is settled while the climatologists suggest otherwise. Even Phil Jones, former director of the East Anglia’s CRU admitted, “I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well.”
The EPA needs to reevaluate the science before it moves forward on a long road of expensive and expansive environmental regulations.
Despite claims that the theory of global warming is “irrefutable,” the science behind this theory is now being called into question. Al Gore and all the others who wanted the world to take the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report as untouchable science now have a problem as reports of flaws in both the methods and the data keep on coming.
The Washington Post laid out yesterday multiple flaws in the IPCC report. These include everything from misreporting critical dates, sloppy sourcing—including the use of anecdotal evidence from mountain climbers and a student’s dissertation – to the erroneous assertion that 55% of the Netherlands is below sea levels, when only 26% of the country is. Among the many travesties is that the Environmental Protection Agency used the IPCC to justify its recent ruling on CO2 emissions posing a danger.
And on that same day, the very scientist at the center of the “Climategate” affair, Phil Jones admitted to the UK’s Daily Mail that he has lost track of his data and that his lack of organization has made him reluctant to share his data with critics. So much for the scientific method.
Oh, and Jones also admitted that in the past 15 years there has not been any “statistically significant” global warming. This is the irrefutable evidence of global warming?
As Sens. James Inhofe (R-OK) and John Barrasso (R-WY) have pointed out, these errors are all the more reason to re-examine the evidence and block the mandatory CO2 limits the White House is pushing in the American people. While errors do not disprove a theory, neither does sloppy research buttress a hypothesis, especially when the results could cost our economy millions of lost jobs, our families thousands in disposable income, and our competitive standing in the world.
More than just the integrity of the world’s scientific community is at stake. So is our freedom and economic survival.