Does Climategate Undermine the Scientific Integrity of EPA’s Endangerment Finding?

Instead of exercising its “judgment,” as required by Sec. 202 of the Clean Air Act, to determine whether greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions endanger public health and welfare, EPA largely deferred to the judgment of an external agency not subject to U.S. data quality and freedom of information laws — the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC developed three lines of evidence for its conclusion that GHG emissions are causing dangerous global warming. The first is based on the IPCC’s understanding of the physics of the climate system. The second is the claim that recent decades are unusually warm compared to previous centuries during the current interglacial period known as the Holocene. The third line of evidence is the asserted agreement between observations and computer model simulations. Peabody Energy’s 240-page petition for reconsideration assesses these lines of evidence in light of new information not in EPA’s possession when it published the endangerment finding. Much of this new information is contained in the thousands of emails and other files that produced the Climategate scandal. The files and emails provide an insider’s look at the professional (or unprofessional) behavior of leading climate scientists at the UK’s Climate Research Unit and their colleagues in the United States. This scandal has led to the resignation (allegedly temporary) of Dr. Phil Jones as director of the CRU and an official determination that the CRU violated the UK’s freedom of information act. Peabody concludes that the Climategate files undermines each of the IPCC’s principal lines of evidence, and confirm what many climate “skeptics” had long suspected...read more