Witch hunts seem to be all the current GOP has money or time for. For example, Senator James M. Inhofe (Okla.) — one of the most outspoken climate change deniers in the world — requested a review of the EPA’s greenhouse gas endangerment finding by the Office of Inspector General (IG) recently.
The report from the IG is in. Surprise, surprise.. it found that:
- “EPA met statutory requirements for rulemaking and generally followed
requirements and guidance related to ensuring the quality of the supporting
technical information.“ - “…the TSD was a highly influential scientific assessment
because EPA weighed the strength of the available science by its choices of
information, data, studies, and conclusions included in and excluded from the TSD.“
BUT, the witch hunters are already out spreading nonsense in the media, clinging to a couple points of the review that they can spin to sound worse than they are. They are:
- “EPA had the TSD reviewed by a panel of 12 federal climate change scientists. This review did not meet all OMB requirements for peer review of a highly influential scientific assessment primarily because the review results and EPA’s response were not publicly reported, and because 1 of the 12 reviewers was an EPA employee.”
“This report confirms that the endangerment finding, the very foundation of President Obama’s job-destroying regulatory agenda, was rushed, biased, and flawed,” Inhofe said in a statement. “It calls the scientific integrity of EPA’s decision-making process into question and undermines the credibility of the endangerment finding.”
Hardly!
Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.): “This report raises serious questions that our committee and staff will further review.”
Are you kidding me?!
The review, conducted during the BUSH administration, met all statutory requirements and “followed requirements and guidance related to ensuring the quality of the supporting technical information,” to repeat.
- As EPA spokeswoman Betsaida Alcantara said: “EPA undertook a thorough and deliberate process in the development of this finding, including a careful review of the wide range of peer-reviewed science.”
- As Vermont Law School environmental law professor Patrick A. Parenteau said: “the IG has concluded EPA has followed all the rulemaking procedures, and its decision is supported by the underlying science.”
Did the IG find something that could have been done even better. Maybe. And that is a clear maybe. So the EPA didn’t report the results of the review publicly, and one of its own staff was involved in the review. That is something to be concerned about?
It’s amazing to me that the GOP can complain about wasting taxpayers’ money when it is wasting time and money investigating clear scientific findings that have been backed not only by the EPA but by the following organizations:
- U.S. Agency for International Development
- United States Department of Agriculture
- National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration
- National Institute of Standards and Technology
- United States Department of Defense
- United States Department of Energy
- National Institutes of Health
- United States Department of State
- United States Department of Transportation
- U.S. Geological Survey
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
- University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
- National Center for Atmospheric Research
- National Aeronautics & Space Administration
- National Science Foundation
- Smithsonian Institution
- International Arctic Science Committee
- Arctic Council
- African Academy of Sciences
- Australian Academy of Sciences
- Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts
- Academia Brasileira de Ciéncias
- Cameroon Academy of Sciences
- Royal Society of Canada
- Caribbean Academy of Sciences
- Chinese Academy of Sciences
- Académie des Sciences, France
- Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina of Germany
- Indonesian Academy of Sciences
- Royal Irish Academy
- Accademia nazionale delle scienze of Italy
- Indian National Science Academy
- Science Council of Japan
- Kenya National Academy of Sciences
- Madagascar’s National Academy of Arts, Letters and Sciences
- Academy of Sciences Malaysia
- Academia Mexicana de Ciencias
- Nigerian Academy of Sciences
- Royal Society of New Zealand
- Polish Academy of Sciences
- Russian Academy of Sciences
- l’Académie des Sciences et Techniques du Sénégal
- Academy of Science of South Africa
- Sudan Academy of Sciences
- Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
- Tanzania Academy of Sciences
- Turkish Academy of Sciences
- Uganda National Academy of Sciences
- The Royal Society of the United Kingdom
- National Academy of Sciences, United States
- Zambia Academy of Sciences
- Zimbabwe Academy of Science
- American Academy of Pediatrics
- American Association for the Advancement of Science
- American Association of Wildlife Veterinarians
- American Astronomical Society
- American Chemical Society
- American College of Preventive Medicine
- American Geophysical Union
- American Institute of Physics
- American Medical Association
- American Meteorological Society
- American Physical Society
- American Public Health Association
- American Quaternary Association
- American Institute of Biological Sciences
- American Society of Agronomy
- American Society for Microbiology
- American Society of Plant Biologists
- American Statistical Association
- Association of Ecosystem Research Centers
- Botanical Society of America
- Crop Science Society of America
- Ecological Society of America
- Federation of American Scientists
- Geological Society of America
- National Association of Geoscience Teachers
- Natural Science Collections Alliance
- Organization of Biological Field Stations
- Society of American Foresters
- Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
- Society of Systematic Biologists
- Soil Science Society of America
- Australian Coral Reef Society
- Australian Medical Association
- Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
- Engineers Australia
- Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies
- Geological Society of Australia
- British Antarctic Survey
- Institute of Biology, UK
- Royal Meteorological Society, UK
- Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
- Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
- European Federation of Geologists
- European Geosciences Union
- European Physical Society
- European Science Foundation
- International Association for Great Lakes Research
- International Union for Quaternary Research
- International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
- World Federation of Public Health Associations
- World Health Organization
- World Meteorological Organization
For the full “Procedural Review of EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding Data Quality Processes” check out the link. Here is the summary of what it found from that:
EPA met statutory requirements for rulemaking and generally followed requirements and guidance related to ensuring the quality of the supporting technical information. Whether EPA’s review of its endangerment finding TSD met Office of Management and Budget (OMB) requirements for peer review depends on whether the TSD is considered a highly influential scientific assessment. In our opinion, the TSD was a highly influential scientific assessment because EPA weighed the strength of the available science by its choices of information, data, studies, and conclusions included in and excluded from the TSD. EPA officials told us they did not consider the TSD a highly influential scientific assessment. EPA noted that the TSD consisted only of science that was previously peer reviewed, and that these reviews were deemed adequate under the Agency’s policy. EPA had the TSD reviewed by a panel of 12 federal climate change scientists. This review did not meet all OMB requirements for peer review of a highly influential scientific assessment primarily because the review results and EPA’s response were not publicly reported, and because 1 of the 12 reviewers was an EPA employee.
EPA’s guidance for assessing data generated by other organizations does not include procedures for conducting such assessments or require EPA to document its assessment. EPA provided statements in its final findings notice and supporting TSD that generally addressed the Agency’s assessment factors for evaluating scientific and technical information, and explained its rationale for accepting other organizations’ data. However, no supporting documentation was available to show what analyses the Agency conducted prior to disseminating the information. Our evaluation examined the data quality procedures EPA used in developing the endangerment finding. We did not assess whether the scientific information and data supported the endangerment finding.
If you want to put the strategy of the current GOP on global warming into perspective, check out this video:
Yes, this is what we’re going through with global warming and the clear science telling us to get moving in address the problem. (We have the solutions needed available to us today! We just need to stop halting clean energy progress!.. or, actually, it’s just the GOP that needs to stop doing so.)
