Posted on 02/10/2011 9:36:56 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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The question is, are we a country of laws made by our representatives, or a country of laws made by bureaucrats? The constitution provides only one answer, and Ms. Jackson would do well to read it.
Latest News release from the EPA:
CONTACT:
EPA Press Office
press@epa.gov
February 9, 2011
Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, Opening Statement Before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Power
As prepared for delivery – Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to testify about Chairman Upton’s draft bill to eliminate portions of the Clean Air Act, the landmark law that all American children and adults rely on to protect them from harmful air pollution.
The bill appears to be part of a broader effort in this Congress to delay, weaken, or eliminate Clean Air Act protections of the American public. I respectfully ask the members of this Committee to keep in mind that EPA’s implementation of the Clean Air Act saves millions of American children and adults from the debilitating and expensive illnesses that occur when smokestacks and tailpipes release unrestricted amounts of harmful pollution into the air we breathe.
Last year alone, EPA’s implementation of the Clean Air Act saved more than 160,000 American lives; avoided more than 100,000 hospital visits; prevented millions of cases of respiratory illness, including bronchitis and asthma; enhanced American productivity by preventing millions of lost workdays; and kept American kids healthy and in school.
EPA’s implementation of the Act also has contributed to dynamic growth in the U.S. environmental technologies industry and its workforce. In 2008, that industry generated nearly 300 billion dollars in revenues and 44 billion dollars in exports.
Yesterday, the University of Massachusetts and Ceres released an analysis finding that two of the updated Clean Air Act standards EPA is preparing to establish for mercury, soot, smog, and other harmful air pollutants from power plants will create nearly 1.5 million jobs over the next five years.
As you know, Mr. Chairman, the Supreme Court concluded in 2007 that the Clean Air Act’s definition of air pollutant includes greenhouse gas emissions. The Court rejected the EPA Administrator’s refusal to determine whether that pollution endangers Americans’ health and welfare.
Based on the best peer-reviewed science, EPA found in 2009 that manmade greenhouse gas emissions do threaten the health and welfare of the American people.
EPA is not alone in reaching that conclusion. The National Academy of Sciences has stated that there is a strong, credible body of evidence, based on multiple lines of research, documenting that the climate is changing and that the changes are caused in large part by human activities. Eighteen of America’s leading scientific societies have written that multiple lines of evidence show humans are changing the climate, that contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science, and that ongoing climate change will have broad impacts on society, including the global economy and the environment.
Chairman Upton’s bill would, in its own words, repeal that scientific finding. Politicians overruling scientists on a scientific question– that would become part of this Committee’s legacy.
Last April, EPA and the Department of Transportation completed harmonized standards under the Clean Air Act and the Energy Independence and Security Act to decrease the oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of Model Year 2012 through 2016 cars and light trucks sold in the U.S.
Chairman Upton’s bill would block President Obama’s plan to follow up with Clean Air Act standards for cars and light trucks of Model Years 2017 through 2025. Removing the Clean Air Act from the equation would forfeit pollution reductions and oil savings on a massive scale, increasing America’s debilitating oil dependence.
EPA and many of its state partners have now begun implementing safeguards under the Clean Air Act to address carbon pollution from the largest facilities when they are built or expanded. A collection of eleven electric power companies called EPA’s action a reasonable approach focusing on improving the energy efficiency of new power plants and large industrial facilities.
And EPA has announced a schedule to establish uniform Clean Air Act performance standards for limiting carbon pollution at America’s power plants and oil refineries. Those standards will be developed with extensive stakeholder input, including from industry. They will reflect careful consideration of costs and will incorporate compliance flexibility.
Chairman Upton’s bill would block that reasonable approach. The Small Business Majority and the Main Street Alliance have pointed out that such blocking action would have negative implications for many businesses, large and small, that have enacted new practices to reduce their carbon footprint as part of their business models. They also write that it would hamper the growth of the clean energy sector of the U.S. economy, a sector that a majority of small business owners view as essential to their ability to compete.
Chairman Upton’s bill would have additional negative impacts that its drafters might not have intended. For example, it would prohibit EPA from taking further actions to implement the Renewable Fuels Program, which promotes the domestic production of advanced bio-fuels.
I hope this information has been helpful to the Committee, and I look forward to your questions.
____________________________
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h/t to WUWT reader Michael C. Roberts
Ping.
I thought I saw numbers in an EPA minion reply.
Dear EPA...numbers are for grownups with real degrees in science or engineering.
Please step away from the computer and go back to selling burgers.
California Cap and Trade would be a piece....
And you might ask why is CO2 listed as a pollutant....along with soot and NOx?
Well it is about the revenue plan...
I have a question for you, Ms. Jackson.
How long will it take you to clean out your desk?
Give me the names and addresses of 5 of them.
That comment was damn funny.....
She's a Global Warming Hoax Denier!
” EPA responds to congressional attempts to reel in greenhouse gas regulation “
Dear Congress,
It has come to our attention that your organization emits as much CO2-laden hot air as a Pennsylvania Coal-Fired Power Plant...
You are hereby directed to cease all operations until this situation can be rectified, and your Organization re-certified by this Agency...
Yours, for a cleaner environment = for the CHILRUN!!
EPA
OK, how about 4? 3? 2? 1?
Lisa? Did you hear the question?
Man I hope she gets grilled today.
CO2 is NOT capable of increasing the aGreenhouse effect. CO2 cannot hold the amount of heat it is claimed to. CO2 is irrelevant in the greenhouse effect’s equilibrium because Watervapor completely and utterly obliviates everything else, and that single mechanism (while complex) rules the greenhouse effects equilibrium.
CO2 is irrelevant in global climate.
"EPA responds to congressional attempts to reel in greenhouse gas regulation"
Funny how she didn’t allow skeptics to testify before they made their decision:
http://www.brayincandy.com/id148.html
Pray for America
Is she sure it wasn’t only 159,999 lives they saved?
Lying commieprop.
ABSTRACT:
"Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere [historically] is the product of oceanic respiration due to the well-known but under-appreciated solubility pump. Carbon dioxide rises out of warm ocean waters where it is added to the atmosphere. There it is mixed with residual and accidental CO2, and circulated, to be absorbed into the sink of the cold ocean waters. Next the thermohaline circulation carries the CO2-rich sea water deep into the ocean. A millennium later it appears at the surface in warm waters, saturated by lower pressure and higher temperature, to be exhausted back into the atmosphere. Throughout the past 420 millennia, comprising four interglacial periods, the Vostok record of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is imprinted with, and fully characterized by, the physics of the solubility of CO2 in water, along with the lag in the deep ocean circulation.
Notwithstanding that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, atmospheric carbon dioxide has neither caused nor amplified global temperature increases. Increased carbon dioxide has been an effect of global warming, not a cause [historically -etl]. Technically, carbon dioxide is a lagging proxy for ocean temperatures. When global temperature, and along with it, ocean temperature rises, the physics of solubility causes atmospheric CO2 to increase.
If increases in carbon dioxide, or any other greenhouse gas, could have in turn raised global temperatures, the positive feedback would have been catastrophic. While the conditions for such a catastrophe were present in the Vostok record from natural causes, the runaway event did not occur. Carbon dioxide does not accumulate in the atmosphere."
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html
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Wrong. The most important players on the greenhouse stage are water vapor and clouds [clouds of course aren't gas, but high level ones do act to trap heat from escaping, while low-lying cumulus clouds tend to reflect sunlight and thereby help cool the planet -etl]. Carbon dioxide has been increased to about 0.038% of the atmosphere (possibly from about 0.028% pre-Industrial Revolution) while water in its various forms ranges from 0% to 4% of the atmosphere and its properties vary by what form it is in and even at what altitude it is found in the atmosphere.
In simple terms the bulk of Earth's greenhouse effect is due to water vapor by virtue of its abundance. Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect -- perhaps 70% is due to water vapor and about 20% due to clouds (mostly water droplets), some estimates put water as high as 95% of Earth's total tropospheric greenhouse effect (e.g., Freidenreich and Ramaswamy, 'Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models,' Journal of Geophysical Research 98 (1993):7255-7264).
The remaining portion comes from carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, ozone and miscellaneous other 'minor greenhouse gases.' As an example of the relative importance of water it should be noted that changes in the relative humidity on the order of 1.3-4% are equivalent to the effect of doubling CO2.
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/
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Water Vapor Rules the Greenhouse System
Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many 'facts and figures' regarding global warming completely ignore the powerful effects of water vapor in the greenhouse system, carelessly (perhaps, deliberately) overstating human impacts as much as 20-fold.
Water vapor is 99.999% of natural origin. Other atmospheric greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and miscellaneous other gases (CFC's, etc.), are also mostly of natural origin (except for the latter, which is mostly anthropogenic).
Human activities contribute slightly to greenhouse gas concentrations through farming, manufacturing, power generation, and transportation. However, these emissions are so dwarfed in comparison to emissions from natural sources we can do nothing about, that even the most costly efforts to limit human emissions would have a very small-- perhaps undetectable-- effect on global climate.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
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Water Vapor Confirmed As Major Player In Climate Change
ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2008) — Water vapor is known to be Earth's most abundant greenhouse gas, but the extent of its contribution to global warming has been debated. Using recent NASA satellite data, researchers have estimated more precisely than ever the heat-trapping effect of water in the air, validating the role of the gas as a critical component of climate change.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081117193013.htm
I agree. How hard is to understand that IF, IF, IF CO2 somehow caused the surface of the globe to heat up a little bit (and I don't agree), that this would cause more evaporation of water, creating more cloud cover, which cloud cover would reflect more sunlight back into space, leading to a cooler surface temperature? Is it really so hard to understand that the Earth has a self-regulating environment, and that we are about as important to the climate as a gnat on a flea's ass is to an elephant?
I suggest that Lisa Jackson and that rest of the tyrannical, arrogant bureaucraps get out of their cubicles one sunny day at lunch and take a good, long look at the big, yellow orb in the sky to find the source of any possible climate change that we might possibly be experiencing. Let's see them regulate THAT, the @$$holes.
From
2009 - In order to ensure that regulations which reengineer our economy are needed and would ultimately be effective, we are pushing the EPA to reveal the data they used to justify their endangerment proposal. We need to drop the articles of faith and use the entirety of scientific study on the effects of climate change not a sub-set, chosen by the EPA not for its validity but rather on its ability to forward their policy goal — the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. the agency used secondary scientific sources, studies that largely weren’t adequately peer-reviewed and the selective use of scientific studies to justify a policy decision they wanted to make. And in terms of trials based on myth, exactly the opposite — we DON’T want decades of publicly accessible evidence to be ignored. There are many questions to be asked of the EPA, and forgive the Chamber for not accepting “Trust Us” as an answer. To enact effective policy we need transparency and scientific data which is beyond question, not data deemed beyond questioning.
More on our efforts for transparency here
http://www.chamberpost.com/2009/06/transparency-science-and-the-epa.html Congress, not the EPA, is the appropriate authority to deal with such a complex regulatory issue that needs and deserves transparency and rigorous public debate.
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