Defending the Science Behind Climate Regulations
On Tuesday,
during a hearing at the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee held to scrutinize President Obama’s $10 billion budget request for the EPA, Senate Republicans jumped on the opportunity to ask pointed questions regarding the science behind the agency’s pending regulations.
Committee Republicans had on that day released a report titled “
‘Consensus' Exposed: The CRU Controversy,” which details the controversy surrounding e-mails and documents released from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU). The e-mails reportedly discussed efforts to prevent certain research from being considered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and to “hide” declining temperature trends from tree ring data that were contradicted by rising thermometer measurements. Climate change skeptics contend the messages are evidence that scientists have falsified data to exaggerate the threat of global warming.
The administration’s fiscal 2011
proposal (PDF) seeks to cut the agency’s total funding by about $300 million from 2010 levels. But it designates some $56 million—$43 million in new funding—for regulatory programs to control GHG emissions. Requested funds include $25 million to aid states in GHG permitting activities under the New Source Review and Title V operating permits programs. The budget also requests $7 million to develop New Source Performance Standards to control GHG emissions from a few categories of major stationary sources.
Ranking minority member Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) lambasted the $43 million in new funding as “seed money for the most economically destructive regulatory initiative in this nation’s history.”
“EPA accepted the IPCC’s erroneous claims wholesale, without doing its own independent review,” he added. “So EPA’s endangerment finding rests on bad science.”
Pointing out that the endangerment finding was based “in large part” on scientific efforts by the Bush administration to determine whether or not GHGs endangered public health and welfare, Jackson told the committee: “The science behind climate change is settled, and human activity is responsible for global warming. That conclusion is not a partisan one.”
Pressing Forward with CAIR
Pressed by the committee to set down a tentative timeline as to when the EPA would propose a Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR)—a cap-and-trade program for controlling fine particulates and smog-causing emissions—Jackson said that the agency hoped to finalize one soon. “Hopefully in the coming months, earlier in the year, not later in the year, because we are without a way to protect against interstate transport,” she said.
Sources:
POWERnews, EPA, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Sen. John Rockefeller, Sen. Lisa Murkowski
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