EPA rejects attempts to reconsider endangerment finding

Petitioners misrepresent the science, but EPA knows what it’s talking about.

The EPA recently responded to 10 petitions challenging the historic Endangerment Finding that linked increases in the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases with a decline in human welfare.

The petitioners challenging the Finding - mostly conservative groups including the Ohio Coal Association, the Southeastern Legal Foundation and the State of Texas - argued that the EPA should reconsider based on new evidence found in the CRU emails (aka Climategate), which supposedly call into question the entire scientific basis of climate change.

The EPA’s response(pdf):

None of the issues raised by petitioners pertaining to new science or data that EPA allegedly did not address changes or undermines the scientific basis for EPA’s Findings. In many cases, the issues raised by the petitioners are not new, but were [in] fact raised and addressed during the rule-making. Petitioners have misinterpreted or misrepresented the meaning and significance of the scientific literature, findings, and data they cite, made claims that are not supported by the evidence they rely on, provided incomplete and biased analyses to support their claims, failed to acknowledge or account for important results, and, at times, ignored EPA’s endangerment record.

I’m glad the EPA is mandated to respond to these challenges - even though we’re paying for it with our tax dollars. This response presents crucial information to have when talking about the current state of climate science, the evidence for anthropogenic global warming, and the policy actions we need to take to mitigate the effects of climate change. There are many things we have yet to learn and understand about our planet, but we already have firm knowledge that human-derived greenhouse gases are heating up our atmosphere to levels that endanger human welfare and much of the biotic system on which we rely.