The Environmental Protection
Agency’s (EPA) 2009
“Endangerment Finding”
( EF )
is the basis for EPA
regulations of carbon
dioxide emissions
under the
Clean Air Act.
The EF was produced
in response to a 2007
Supreme Court decision,
Massachusetts v. EPA,
that the Clean Air Act
Amendments of 1992
empowered the EPA
to regulate emissions
of carbon dioxide,
if the agency found
that they endangered
human health and welfare.
The case against the EPA
was originally brought by
12 states and several
environmental advocacy
organizations.
The Supreme Court decision,
a narrow 5-4 verdict,
was announced on
April 2, 2007.
The majority held that
the Clean Air Act did grant
the EPA authority to regulate
greenhouse gas emissions
as “air pollutants.”
President Barack Obama's EPA
ssued a final “finding of
endangerment” on
December 7, 2009.
Climate impacts in the EF
are generated by computer
models that, with one exception,
made dramatic errors.
Computer simulations of
global climate, using \
general circulation models
(GCMs)
or Earth system models
(ESMs).
The Obama Administration
justified its interventionist
policies with its calculation
of a figure known as the
Social Cost of Carbon
(SCC).
The SCC is a
monetary estimate
of the damages
supposedly caused
by an incremental
ton of carbon dioxide
(CO2), the
principal contributor
to human-induced
climate change,
emitted in a given year.
Costs are wild guesses
produced by computer
programs called
“integrated assessment
models” (IAMs).
IAMs “integrate” a
speculative model
of how carbon dioxide
emissions will change
the climate, with a
speculative model of
how climate change
will affect consumption,
GDP, and health.
There was no effort made
to include any dissenting
opinions to their declarative
statements, despite the
peer-reviewed literature
being full of legitimate
and applicable reports
that provide contrasting
findings.
Yet the authors claim
to provide its readers
—“U.S. policymakers
and citizens” with the
“best available science.”
In operational weather
forecasting, forecasters
do not simply average
all available models.
They tend to use the output
of a model, or a subset
of models, that has been
shown to perform best.
The Russian INM-CM4
climate model predicts
the least 21st century
warming, projecting only
+1.4 degrees C.
of global warming
for this century,
roughly half the average
of all the other model
The one 'accurate' model
-- the Russian INM-CM4 --
predicts only modest
warming that would
hardly warrant an
endangerment finding.
Climate change, in reality:
People voluntarily expose
themselves to climate changes
throughout their lives that are
much larger, and more sudden ,
than those expected from
greenhouse gases.
The migration of the U.S.
population from the cold North
and East, to the much warmer
South and West, is an example.