EPA Rules … and how they don’t follow their own
Filed Under: Al Gore, Environmental News, Green Politics on October 3, 2011
Most folks would not be surprised if I were to make the claim that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did not properly consider the science when it issued its “Endangerment Finding” saying that CO2 was a pollutant and a danger to humanity. It is that scientifically unsupported finding that allows them to regulate CO2.
And you likely would not be surprised if I made the claim that:
1. The EPA did not release the findings supporting its Technical Support Document (TSD), as is required by law. Instead, it has kept them secret.
2. The EPA was supposed to get a panel of outside scientists to provide an impartial analysis of the science. Instead, it put an EPA employee on the panel. If I were a cynical sort of fellow, I’d say that the employee in question was instructed to find in favor of the Persecution rather than in favor of the Defense …
3. The EPA has different regulations for normal decisions and for a “highly influential scientific assessment”. Anyone with half a brain would certainly say that a ruling that will cost billions and billions of dollars and affect nearly every single business in America is a “highly influential scientific assessment”. However, the half-brains at the EPA says not so, they say it’s just an ordinary old plain vanilla assessment, no need for special caution or extra due diligence …
Most folks know that I’m a climate heretic, so it’s no surprise that I might hold such outrageous views. However, here’s what might surprise you.
Those are not my views. They are the published views of the US EPA Office of the Inspector General, as expressed in their latest official report on the question.
Now, in any well run organization, this official finding by the Inspector General of flagrant flouting of the scientific requirements would call for an immediate do-over … but this is not a well run organization, it is the US Government, sub-species EPA.
So what did the EPA bureaucrats do in response to the IG’s Report?
Well, they promised that they would never, never ever do such a thing again, cross their heart they won’t.
Don’t you feel better now? Good to know that the government has our back.
Hey, if you don’t believe me, read the US EPA Inspector General’s Report (summary andfull report [710 Kb PDF]). As the saying goes … it’s worse than we thought …
And the AGW supports claim that we skeptics are the ones “denying the science”???
