Members of Congress, States, Scientists, Business Groups File Petitions for EPA to Reconsider CO2 Endangerment Finding
Poor Lisa Jackson. The EPA Administrator was required by law to conduct a careful scientific assessment of whether carbon dioxide in the atmosphere poses a risk to human health before her agency issued a “finding” that it does. She decided to take the easy way out. Instead of having the EPA’s capable scientists do the work themselves, she relied on the work of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and various climate research institutions around the world.
Her doing that was contrary to legal requirement regardless, but now it’s turning out, in light of Climategate, that a lot of the “science” that drove the conclusions of those sources on which Jackson depended wasn’t “science” at all but “post-normal science”—ideology masquerading as science, riddled with data fabrication, massaging, suppression, and cherry picking; with intimidation of dissenting scientists; corruption of peer review; secrecy where the canons of science require transparency; even criminal activity.
Now Jackson must be feeling pretty beleaguered. Eight petitions for reconsideration have been filed demanding that the EPA reconsider and reverse its endangerment finding. They’re filled with damning information about the process that yielded the information on which she and her agency relied. And she must know that if EPA refuses to back down, these are going to become the basis of lawsuits that will put her and her agency in court in front of judges who aren’t going to be bamboozled quite so easily as the world’s environmental journalists have been.
Here, from the EPA’s own web page, is a list of the petitions for review filed thus far—by members of Congress, state attorneys general, scientists, specific businesses, industry associations, think tanks, and more. The granddaddy of them all is the one by Peabody Energy Company, but those eager to know the basis of complaints against the endangerment finding will find plenty of good information on the EPA’s legal and scientific failings in any of these.
- Arthur Randol – Petition for Reconsideration (PDF) (12 pp, 169K)
- Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America – Petition for Reconsideration and for Stay Pending Reconsideration (PDF) (38 pp, 120K)
- Coalition for Responsible Regulation et al. – Petition for Reconsideration (PDF) (40 pp, 571K)
- Commonwealth of Virginia – Petition for Reconsideration (PDF) (5 pp, 273K)
- Competitive Enterprise Institute et al. – Petition for Reconsideration (PDF) (13 pp, 3.82MB)
- Pacific Legal Foundation – Petition for Reconsideration (PDF) (58 pp, 461K)
- Peabody Energy Company – Petition for Reconsideration (PDF) (238 pp, 1.04MB)
- Southeastern Legal Foundation et al. – Petition for Reconsideration (PDF) (28 pp, 236K)
- State of Texas – Petition for Reconsideration (PDF) (38 pp, 1.28MB)
- The Ohio Coal Association – Petition for Reconsideration (PDF) (11 pp, 97K)
