The guys over at Chilling Effect offer their take on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s wonderful petition of the EPA demanding a bit of a trial on the premise for its “endangerment” finding that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is real, threatening, and proven — or sufficiently proven to justify regulation, even if nothing the U.S. can do through regulation would do anything about the purported warming.
The EPA is of course ducking the opportunity to finally and for the first time make its case. To this point, they have appealed to authority of the IPCC, which says on its web page that it doesn’t perform any research. That should tell you as much as you need to know about their confidence in the case: it’s nonexistent, and they are filled with terror over the thought of having to defend their stance.
The beauty of the regulatory process for them is the presumption, or “deference,” granted whatever they do. They lose that in a trial, and as a matter of substance, cannot make up for it.
I made this case in my comments to the EPA on its recent Clean Air Act finding, and focused on the inescapable fact that the proposed regulatory (and in fact legislative) agenda is premised on rigged and scientifically unsupportable computer-model projections, which are proven wrong by observations.
They can’t win, which is why they don’t fight. They are cowards, and the more hysterical and threatening their rhetoric gets in the face of this refusal, the more they prove far too much.
The public needs to get the Republican opposition to learn to shoot straight and guarantee that this is an issue in the 2010 elections: promise a vote under the Congressional Review Act to veto any executive-branch effort to slip this agenda into place. At a recent Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, even Richard Lugar vowed support for a measure telling the EPA that it cannot get away with this without Congress having clearly stated that it may, as opposed to leveraging some 5-4 SCOTUS majority to conjure the authority (in what Justice Scalia accurately noted in his dissent was a predetermined conclusion).
Come on, EPA. You say there is overwhelming evidence for AGW. Fight. Put the skepticism to bed.
Or don’t, and give anyone who cares every reason they need to question — and reject — your attempt to ram through the agenda without making your case.