ALEX MILLS: IPCC findings should be scrutinized, questioned

SAN ANGELO, Texas — The basis for governments to restrict the use of fossil fuels comes from a study conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at the United Nations. Even the director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency based her finding that man-made greenhouse gases endanger human life and should be regulated upon the IPCC conclusions.

Since November, the IPCC has been attacked after revelations that some of the scientific leaders “cooked the books” to show that the earth’s temperature was causing all kinds of bad things to happen.
On Tuesday the State of Texas filed a petition with the EPA administrator asking her to “reconsider her Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under the Clean Air Act.”
The petition was filed by the Texas Attorney General’s office on behalf of the governor, commissioner of agriculture, commissioner of the General Land Office, Commission on Environmental Quality and the Public Utility Commission.
“Texas is compelled to take action against EPA’s Endangerment Finding issued on Dec. 15, 2009, because it will lead to unprecedented bureaucratic licensing and regulatory burdens on farmers, ranchers, small businesses, hospitals and even schools,” the petition said.
“ EPA’s administrator relied on a fundamentally flawed and legally unsupported methodology to reach her decision,” the petition continued. “And although the administrator is legally required to undertake a scientific assessment before reaching a decision that is supposed to be based on scientific conclusions, the administrator outsourced the actual scientific study, as well as her required review of the scientific literature necessary to make that assessment. In doing so, EPA relied primarily on the conclusion of outside organizations, particularly the IPCC.”
The petition said the EPA cannot legally support its reliance on the IPCC’s assessment especially because of “troubling revelations about the conduct, objectivity, reliability and propriety of the IPCC’s processes, assessments and contributors have become public.”
What the attorney general is referring to started when e-mails were released that revealed that scientists, who believed that global warming was real and primarily caused by humans burning fossil fuels, had intentionally tried to discredit scientists who disagreed. They allegedly even manipulated data and used questionable studies to support their conclusions. Read more.