This is a direct copy and republication of this article from WUWT:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/28/an-open-letter-challenging-the-epa-on-co2-regulation/
Environmental Protection Agency Seal
In the Washington Examiner today, there is this: Op-Ed: EPA’s carbon regs not based on sound science.
It is published by Joe D’Aleo on behalf of a number of people. A longer more complete version of the essay is below, which could not be published for space reasons. Also included is a list of the 13 signers who drafted it. Please consider widely republishing this essay. – Anthony
EPA’s CO2 Regulations are NOT Based on Sound Science
The Supreme Court, in Mass v. EPA, stated that the EPA must treat CO2 and other Greenhouse Gases (GHGs), as “pollutants” and then carryout an analysis to determine whether the increasing concentrations in atmospheric CO2 may reasonably be anticipated to endanger human health and welfare. The Court did not mandate regulation; rather it mandated that EPA go through an Endangerment Finding process.
EPA did so and on December 15, 2009 issued its ruling that CO2 and other GHGs must be regulated. This EPA finding and associated rulings were immediately challenged in the DC Circuit Court. The DC Circuit ruled in favor of EPA, but given the two dissents from the December 20, 2012 decision denying rehearing en banc, the matter will very likely go to the Supreme Court.
If allowed to stand, the very existence of EPA’s Endangerment Finding requires regulation that significantly increases U.S. fossil fuel and electricity prices–negatively impacting job creation as well as energy, economic and national security.
To many scientists this situation seems incredible given the ample evidence that EPA’s finding is grossly flawed. In its finding, EPA claimed with 90-99% certainty that observed warming in the latter half of the twentieth century resulted from human activity. EPA bases its finding upon Three Lines of Evidence (LoE.)
Using the most credible empirical data available, it is relatively straightforward to soundly reject each of EPA’s Three LoE.
1.) EPA claims that the Global Average Surface Temperature (GAST) has been rising in a dangerous fashion over the last fifty years, in large part due to human- caused increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. But “Global Warming” has not been global and has not set records in the regions where warming has occurred. For example, over this time period, while the Arctic has warmed, the Tropical oceans had a flat trend, and the Antarctic was slightly cooling. The most significant warming during this period occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, north of the Tropics. But, as the figure shows, over the last 130 years, the decade of the 1930’s still has the most U.S. State High Temperatures records. And, over the past 50 years, there were more new State Record Lows set than Record Highs. In fact, roughly 70% of the current State Record Highs were set prior to 1940.
2.) EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Fingerprint Theory is that in the Tropics, the upper troposphere is warming faster than the lower troposphere, and the lower troposphere is warming faster than the surface, all due to rising CO2 concentrations. This is totally at odds with multiple robust, consistent, independently-derived empirical datasets, all showing no statistically significant positive (or negative) trend in temperature and thus, no difference in trend by altitude. Therefore, EPA’s theory as to how CO2 impacts GAST must be rejected.
3.) EPA relied upon Climate Models, all predicated on this Fingerprint Theory, that all fail standard model validation and forecast reliability tests. The models all forecast rising temperatures beyond 2000 although GAST has actually been flat. This is not surprising because EPA never carried out any published forecast reliability tests.
Bottom –Line: No scientist or team of scientists has come up with an empirically validated theory proving that higher Atmospheric CO2 Levels will lead to higher GAST–not EPA’s team and certainly not to the EPA’s 90-99% certainty. Moreover, if the causal link between higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations and higher GAST is broken by invalidating EPA’s Three LoE, then EPA’s claim that higher CO2 concentrations also cause sea level increases and more frequent and severe storms, floods and droughts is also disproved. Such causality claims require a validated theory that higher CO2 concentrations cause increases in GAST. Lacking such a validated theory, EPA’s entire house of cards collapses.
More generally, EPA violated both the scientific method and the Scientific Advisory Board statute intended to enforce the scientific method when it made its highly influential scientific assessment in the Endangerment Finding.
EPA’s own Inspector General stated as follows:
“EPA did not conduct a peer review of the TSD [Technical Support Document] that met all recommended steps in the Peer Review Handbook for peer reviews of influential scientific information or highly influential scientific assessments. {—} The handbook provides examples of ‘independent experts from outside EPA,’ that include NAS, an established Federal Advisory Committee Act mechanism (e.g., Science Advisory Board), and an ad hoc panel of independent experts outside the Agency.”
EPA’s outsourcing of the science to international organizations beyond the reach of U.S. laws has also been challenged. Moreover, the ClimateGate saga is testimony to the dedication of some to subvert the science for their own agenda. And, a Hockey Stick is now famous as a symbol of temperature data manipulated to generate public alarm.
In summary, it is not incorrect to argue that further study of the role GHGs play in climate is in order. However, with what is known now, it certainly seems that a new Endangerment Finding analysis is required, using, for example, the far more rigorous Science Advisory Board process suggested by EPA’s Inspector General. A Remand of EPA’s Endangerment Finding by the U.S. Supreme Court would be appropriate.
Opinion Piece Signer List (alphabetically)
Dr. Timothy Ball
Climatologist & Environmental Consultant
Ph.D. (Faculty of Science), University of London, England
Joseph S. D’Aleo
Chief Meteorologist
WeatherBell Analytics
Dr. Donald Easterbrook (Emeritus)
Professor of Geology
Western Washington University
Dr. Gordon J. Fulks
Astrophysicist
La Center, WA
Dr. Laurence I. Gould
Professor of Physics
University of Hartford
Dr. William M. Gray (Emeritus)
Professor of Atmospheric Science
Colorado State University
Dr. Anthony R. Lupo
Professor of Soil, Environmental, and Atmospheric Sciences
University of Missouri
Dr. Thomas P. Sheahen
Western Technology Inc.
Deer Park Maryland
Dr. S. Fred Singer (Emeritus)
Professor of Environmental Sciences
University of Virginia
George H. Taylor,
Certified Consultant Meteorologist
President, Applied Climate Services
Dr. James P. Wallace III
President, & CEO, Jim Wallace & Associates LLC
Ph.D., Economics, Minor in Engineering, Brown University
M.S., Mechanical Engineering, Brown University
B.S., Aeronautical Engineering, Brown University
Anthony Watts
Former TV Meteorologist and founder of
SurfaceStations.org, Intelliweather, WattsUpWithThat
Musings from the Chiefio 
It was foregone that those would corrupt science, and virtually destroy it, would eventually go too far and here they clearly have, and provably so.
CO2 is a “trace gas” in air, insignificant by definition. It absorbs 1/7th as much IR, heat energy, from sunlight as water vapor which has 80 times as many molecules capturing 560 times as much heat making 99.8% of all “global warming.” CO2 does only 0.2% of it. For this we should destroy our economy?
Carbon combustion generates 80% of our energy. Control and taxing of carbon would give the elected ruling class more power and money than anything since the Magna Carta of 1215 AD.
The effect, or more properly the lack thereof, can be easily demonstrated with three plastic soda bottles, three lab “stick” thermometers, 1/2 cup of water, 1/2 cup of Liquid Plummer, or similar sodium hydroxide drain cleaner and 1/2 cup of Drierite(tm) a commercial dessicant from any scientific supply house. We have complete instructions for this at The Two Minute Conservaitive at http://adrianvance.blogspot.com. See “CO2 is Not Guilty,” or input “CO2” to the search box for serveral pieces on point. If you give us two minutes a day when you speak ladies will swoon and liberal gentlemen will weep.
When the watchdog goes mad, what else can you do?
Fits right in with Stossel’s “No They Can’t”.
I especially like the point made at WUWT, that the court ruling appears to tell the EPA to regulate water vapour.
Perhaps each regulator can tell it to Old Faithful, in person.
The greatest insanity of this is that Jim Hansen will say from any podium that man-made CO2 will stay in the atmosphere for 400 years when Wohler proved in 1832 that all molecules are the same! Hansen will never put this insanity in print and no physical scientist in any audience will ever challenge for the rule of “comity,” i.e. “You ignore my mistake, or skulduggery, and I will overlook yours.” Believe me, as the son of two college professors: Every Ph.D. thinks you scum owe him, or her, a living because they are “real smart.” Well, they are not.
Isn’t the elephant in the room the fact that there is no “global average surface temperature” that has any physical meaning?
Earth does not have a “temperature.” Any day you can find places that are a 100 degrees F and others that will approach -100 degrees F. The Earth temperatures quoted are usually an average over a populated area like the continental US, thus it is statistical. There is great confusion between statistics and science. The political polls, for example, are called “scientific,” and they are not. They are statistical and the difference is profound.
@John Robertson:
Yeah, that’s gonna be a problem ;-)
But technically, if CO2 is bad, then water vapor must be horribly evil… THEIR “science” says so…
@Jeff Alberts:
Yes. I periodically raise the point that temperature is an intensive / intrinsic property and you simply can not make an average of them that means anything. This is well known, and well understood, and taught to me in high school chemistry where we learned that it required mass, specific heat, and potentially latent heat of enthalpy change (vaporization / solidification) before temperature could be turned into the extensive / extrinsic property of heat.
Part of what I find dismaying is the huge number of chemists who ought to know that and be marching in the streets… that instead do nothing, or worse, endorse AGW.
So every so often I point out that the temperature field is fractal, that there are dramatic ranges on any surface (from frozen to 80 F ) and that any attempt to average them is devoid of meaning. (Even have a posting up with pictures of my photographic thermometer on the fence…)
But for reasons I simply can not ken, it doesn’t penetrate or “work” for most folks.
To me, it’s blindingly obvious. The second link, for example, shows steam rising off a fence at 60F while the ‘air temperatures’ is 40F. How can you average those?
So if you can figure out some what to get that understanding into folks heads, I’d love to know it…
@AdrianVance:
I’ve known a lot of smart uneducated people and a lot of dumb educated ones. The two axis are orthogonal. Smart involves being in touch with the world and curious about it, along with some memory and a sense of orderliness in how things ought to fit. Educated involves willing to be out of touch with the world and molded by others uncritically, suppressing your natural curiosity (to better be directed to their ends…) some memory and a suspension of the desire for things to ‘fit’ … (The classical “Just accept this for now. We’ll expand on it later.”…)
Some smart folks manage to get educated. Some dumb folks too… Some smart folks never finish school ( Look at the founders of many major companies… though Woz went back to school later…) and some dumb folks with good degrees make money on salary they could never justify by actually thinking well…
Further, the I.Q. number is not a good measure of thinking ability. It is a good measure of some particular kinds of mental tricks / skills. They help ‘smartness’, but don’t capture all the needed bits. (Look at any Mensa meeting and you find folks that are, um, a bit, er, “odd”…)
Your point on statistical vs scientific is a great one!
The average temperature is a bogus statistic, and anything but scientific. the “warming” being found is 100% an artifact of irrational statistical manipulations and systematic errors.
AdrianVance, Bravo on the “scientific or statistical but not both.” This must almost certainly be true, I’ve never seen it before.
There is great confusion over “science,” which includes observation, data, hypotheses, experiments and publication. Much of what is called “science” is not: medicine, economics, any “social,” “anthropological,” “meteorological,” or “astronomical” study. They are, by and large, statistical or engineering processes.
Mr. Smith: As you may know, I am the son of two college professors and suffered through many social functions populated with Ph.D.s, many times they came at me in pairs! Married yet! I can tell you certainty that some were actually dull people, but they were persistent and leaned how to kiss all the right butts. Alan Greenspan is a good example. It took him 28 years to get his Ph.D. and his lips were virtually “cauliflowered” as a result.
adrianvance,
with Greenspan it was the saxophone
I prefer the butt-kissing hypothesis as I always thought he was an idiot. He could have prevented the “dot-com” crash by raising margin to 50% from 10%. The fools of Wall Street were running up Internet stock on 10% margin purchases and options. When you see that curve exceed 45% the next major move is down. Equities Gravity, the force you cannot see, works as well as the real thing.
Reblogged this on Standard Climate.