EPA Suppression of Endangerment Analysis of Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Sam Kazman, General Counsel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has acquired internal EPA e-mail correspondence showing that the EPA has suppressed an internal report unfavorable to the claim that CO2 should be ruled a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. The report also implies that the science behind the claim that man-made emissions of CO2 gas will cause a catastrophic warming of the planet. The e-mail exchange between the report's principal author Alan Carlin, Senior Operations Research Analyst, National Center for Environmental Economics and Al McGartland, Ph.D., Director, National Center for Environmental Economics, US EPA, makes it quite clear that the EPA decision to declare CO2 a pollutant gas under the Clean Air Act was a purely political decision, which only views the scientific facts as an inconvenience.

The report is entitled Proposed NCEE Comments on Draft Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act and is written by Alan Carlin and John Davidson in what must have been a very courageous act in opposition to the clear political will of EPA management. Among other things the report shows that:

• The EPA and many other agencies and countries have paid too little attention to the science of global warming.
• The EPA decision that CO2 is a pollutant is based on the IPCC AR4 report, which is three years out of date.
• Global temperatures have declined for 11 years, particularly rapidly in 2007 and 2008, even as CO2 emissions increased rapidly.
• The concensus on Atlantic storm severity is now that there will be little change in storm severity.
• There is little evidence in new research results that Greenland will rapidly lose its ice mass.
• One of the worst economic recessions since WWII has greatly decreased CO2 emissions relative to the U.N. estimates.
• The Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the El Nino Southern Oscillation are the best single predictors of global temperature fluctuations.
• There is a strong association between solar sunspots and irradiance and global temperature fluctuations.
• The satellite temperature record starting in 1978 shows that changes in greenhouse gas concentrations have very little effect upon the temperature.
• Surface temperature measurements (HADCRUT) appear more likely due to the influence of the Urban Heat Island Effect than to increased greenhouse gas concentrations.
• The 1998 temperature peak is not understood, though it appears in both the satellite and surface temperature records. What natural effect caused it? When we do not understand such things, how can be assess the comparative effects of CO2 emissions?

It is hardly a wonder that Obama is rushing the Carbon Cap and Trade Bill through Congress. Our evolving knowledge of the global climate science is making it more and more clear that man-made emissions of CO2 are not having a major effect upon the climate, let alone one which could be called catastrophic! This in common with most of his favored new laws is geared to give government maximal control over the lives of every individual in America. The justifications offered for these new programs need have no substance at all. They are just window dressing. The point is to produce a massively socialist government, which will minimize the role of the private sector and the role of individual choice and life self-management.