Electricity Consumers Group Adds New Study into Their Call for EPA to Reopen Its Endangerment Finding

Three weeks ago I posted information on a new research report authored by Drs. James Wallace III, Joseph d’Aleo, and Craig Idso which concluded that the surface temperature data used by most climate alarmists lack the credibility required for policy making or climate modeling. This includes the repeated claims made by climate alarmists that new average temperature highs have occurred in recent years.

The Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council (CHECC) filed on July 6, 2017 a Second Supplement to the Council’s January 20, 2017 Petition asking the US Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its scientifically invalid Endangerment Finding on which all Obama-era greenhouse gas regulations are based. The Second Supplement to the Petition adds this major new peer reviewed scientific paper by Wallace et al. published in June 2017, to CHECC’s petition originally filed in January, 2017.

The Second Supplement to the CHECC Petition states:

Adjustments that impart an ever-steeper upward trend in the data by removing the natural cyclical temperature patterns present in the data deprive the GAST products from NOAA, NASA and Hadley CRU of the credibility required for policymaking or climate modeling, particularly when they are relied on to drive trillions of dollars in expenditures.

CHECC believes that the invalidation of the adjusted GAST data knocks yet another essential pillar out from under the lines of evidence that are the claimed foundation of the Endangerment Finding. The Second Supplement to the Petition states:

It is therefore inescapable that if the official GAST data from NOAA, NASA and Hadley CRU are invalid, then both the “basic physical understanding” of climate and the climate models will also be invalid.

The CHECC Petition and the new report were prepared on a pro bono basis and submitted in a further effort to encourage the EPA to grant CHECC’s Petition for Reconsideration of its Endangerment Finding. This new Research report provides a separate and distinct invalidation of EPA’s Endangerment Finding beyond the earlier Wallace, d’Aleo, and Christy 2017 report.

PRESS RELEASE

Electricity Consumers File New Study in Their Call for EPA to Reopen its Endangerment Finding

Key Points:
1. Just Released, new research findings demonstrate that adjustments by government agencies to the global average surface temperature (GAST) record render that record totally inconsistent with published credible temperature data sets and useless for any policy purpose.
2. The new results invalidate the claims based on GAST data of “record warming” in recent years, and thereby also invalidate the so-called “lines of evidence” on which EPA claimed to base its 2009 CO₂ Endangerment Finding.
3. If the Endangerment Finding is not vacated, whether the current administration likes it or not, it is certain that electric utility, automotive and many other industries will face ongoing EPA CO₂ regulation.
4. This scientifically illiterate regulation will raise U.S. energy prices thereby reducing economic growth and jobs.

July 24, 2017
The Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council announces that on July 6, 2017 it filed with EPA a Second Supplement to the Council’s January 20, 2017 Petition asking the Agency to reconsider the scientifically invalid Endangerment Finding on which all Obama-era greenhouse gas regulations are based. The Second Supplement to Petition may be found at: https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/ef-gast-data-secondsupplementtopetitionfinal.pdf

The Council’s original Petition (see https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/ef-epa-petitionforreconsiderationof-ef-final-1.pdf) and First Supplement to Petition (see https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/ef-checc-suppl-pfr-of-ef-050817-final.pdf) demonstrated that the Endangerment Finding is nothing more than assumptions that have each been disproved by the most relevant empirical evidence from the real world. The original Petition was substantially based on a major peer-reviewed 2016 scientific paper by James Wallace, John Christy and Joseph D’Aleo (Wallace 2016) that analyzed the best available temperature data sets and “failed to find that the steadily rising atmospheric CO₂ concentrations have had a statistically significant impact on any of the 13 critically important tropical and global temperature time series data sets analyzed.” The full text of Wallace 2016 may be found at: https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/ef-cpp-sc-2016-data-ths-paper-ex-sum-090516v2.pdf .

The First Supplement to Petition was substantially based on a new April 2017 peer reviewed scientific paper, also from the same authors (Wallace 2017A). Wallace 2017A can be found at: https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/ef-data-research-report-second-editionfinal041717-1.pdf . Wallace 2017A concluded that once impacts of natural factors such as solar, volcanic and ENSO activity are accounted for, there is no “natural factor adjusted” warming remaining to be attributed to rising atmospheric CO₂ levels.

The Second Supplement to the Petition now relies on a third new major peer reviewed scientific paper from James Wallace, Joseph D’Aleo and Craig Idso, published in June 2017 (Wallace 2017B). Wallace 2017B analyzes the GAST data issued by U.S. agencies NASA and NOAA, as well as British group Hadley CRU. In this research report past changes in the previously reported historical data are quantified. It was found that each new version of GAST has nearly always exhibited a steeper warming linear trend over its entire history. And, this result was nearly always accomplished by each entity systematically removing the previously existing cyclical temperature pattern. This was true for all three entities providing GAST data measurement, NOAA, NASA and Hadley CRU.

The Second Supplement to Petition states:

Adjustments that impart an ever-steeper upward trend in the data by removing the natural cyclical temperature patterns present in the data deprive the GAST products from NOAA, NASA and Hadley CRU of the credibility required for policymaking or climate modeling, particularly when they are relied on to drive trillions of dollars in expenditures.

The invalidation of the adjusted GAST data knocks yet another essential pillar out from under the lines of evidence that are the claimed foundation of the Endangerment Finding. As the Second Supplement to Petition states:

It is therefore inescapable that if the official GAST data from NOAA, NASA and Hadley CRU are invalid, then both the “basic physical understanding” of climate and the climate models will also be invalid.

The scientific invalidity of the Endangerment Finding becomes more blindingly obvious and undeniable with each day’s accumulation of reliable empirical data. It is time for an honest and rigorous scientific re-evaluation of this Obama-era political document. The nation has been taken down a tragically foolish path of pointless regulations and wasteful mal-investments to “solve” a problem which does not actually exist. Our leaders must summon the courage to acknowledge the truth and act accordingly.

The Council brought its Petition because the Obama-era greenhouse gas regulations threaten, as President Obama himself conceded, to make the price of electricity “skyrocket.” All Americans will benefit from a new era where the cheapest sources of energy can also compete and prevail in the marketplace.

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