EPA rejects ‘Climate-gate’ bid to scuttle carbon rules

The U.S. EPA on Thursday rejected petitions from states, conservative activists and business groups to reconsider its 2009 “endangerment finding” that greenhouses gases threaten humans — a finding that provides the legal underpinning for agency climate regulations.

The states of Virginia and Texas, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, coal giant Peabody Energy Corp. and others sought to nix the finding.

But EPA, in rejecting the petitions, specifically cast aside claims that the “Climate-gate” e-mails that surfaced late last year have undercut evidence of a warming planet.

Climate skeptics argue that scores of hacked e-mails among scientists linked to the U.K.’s Climatic Research Unit show researchers squelched data that doesn’t support global warming.

But several inquiries have cleared the scientists of wrongdoing, and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the e-mails and other evidence the petitioners marshaled wasn’t convincing. Jackson also took her own shots at the climate skeptics.

“These petitions — based as they are on selectively edited, out-of-context data and a manufactured controversy — provide no evidence to undermine our determination. Excess greenhouse gases are a threat to our health and welfare,” she said in a prepared statement.

“Defenders of the status quo will try to slow our efforts to get America running on clean energy. A better solution would be to join the vast majority of the American people who want to see more green jobs, more clean energy innovation and an end to the oil addiction that pollutes our planet and jeopardizes our national security,” she added.

In addition to citing the e-mails, the petitioners based their attack on alleged errors in a landmark report on climate change by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and other papers they said cast doubt on global warming.

“Of the alleged errors, EPA confirmed only two in a 3,000 page report. The first pertains to the rate of Himalayan glacier melt and second to the percentage of the Netherlands below sea level. IPCC issued correction statements for both of these errors. The errors have no bearing on Administrator Jackson’s decision. None of the errors undermines the basic facts that the climate is changing in ways that threaten our health and welfare,” EPA said in summarizing its rejection of the petitions.

EPA finalized first-time carbon emissions standards for automobiles this year and is preparing to implement rules limiting emissions from power plants, refineries and other sources.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the Senate’s leading climate skeptic, bashed EPA’s decision. He said the agency failed to allow an “open, transparent” process to look at the implications of the hacked e-mails and “hear scientists of all persuasions.”

"Open and fulsome debate only strengthens the foundations of scientific knowledge. But EPA chose instead to dismiss legitimate concerns about data quality, transparency, and billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded science as products of ‘conspiracies,’” Inhofe said in a statement Thursday.

But the EPA decision drew cheers from advocates of emissions curbs.

“The endangerment finding is a science-based determination, based on a thorough review of current peer-reviewed scientific literature. Ensuring the EPA can act to reduce these harmful emissions is not only responsible, it is necessary. Delaying action on climate change threatens our country's health and prosperity,” said Jennifer Morgan, the climate and energy program director for the World Resources Institute.