EPA rejects climate-change deniers’ petitions

A number of people challenge that climate change is real, that it’s due to greenhouse gases released by human activities and that it’s a threat to human health and the environment. On July 29, the Environmental Protection Agency formally rejected those claims as it turned down 10 petitions asking the Obama administration to reconsider EPA’s “endangerment finding.”

That April 7, 2009, finding argued not only that “greenhouse gases contribute to air pollution” but that they also “endanger public health and welfare within the meaning of the Clean Air Act.” Such a decision gave EPA a legal responsibility to begin regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

Eight months later, after reading boatloads of public comment on the decision, EPA reiterated its endangerment assessment.

“The endangerment finding is based on years of science from the United States and around the world,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson today. “These petitions — based as they are on selectively edited, out-of-context data and a manufactured controversy — provide no evidence to undermine our determination.  Excess greenhouse gases are a threat to our health and welfare.”

In arguing that EPA arrived at its endangerment ruling incorrectly, the petitioners claimed:

— that the so-called climate-gate emails leaked from archives at the University of East Anglia’s climate research group constituted evidence of a conspiracy by climatologists to misinterpret global temperature data. Not so, EPA now counters. “EPA reviewed every e-mail and found this was simply a candid discussion of scientists working through issues that arise in compiling and presenting large complex data sets.  Four other independent reviews came to similar conclusions.”

— that recently discovered errors in the most recent climate assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, make the entire document suspect. Although EPA acknowledges the document wasn’t perfect, it “confirmed only two [errors] in a 3,000 page report. The first pertains to the rate of Himalayan glacier melt and second to the percentage of the Netherlands below sea level.” Neither of the errors “undermines the basic facts that the climate is changing in ways that threaten our health and welfare,” the agency now says.

— that pertinent new climate studies were never considered by the IPCC, calling into question its most recent climate assessment. EPA discounts the charge, arguing that indeed, “the studies in question were included.”

— and that during its endangerment deliberations, EPA ignored even newer data than would have been available for the IPCC document — studies that purportedly refute the endangerment finding. No way, EPA maintains: Data referred to by the petitioners were “misinterpreted” in order to come to that conclusion.

Clearly, that won’t be the end of the debate, much as EPA might hope it is. The agency offers more details about responses to the petitions at its website.