Coal company to EPA: Explain 'greenhouse' flaws

Prompted by the revelations from the e-mails purloined from the premier climate-research center, the largest private coal company in the world has petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency for a re-examination of the information the agency used to declare greenhouse gases a health danger.

The petition by St. Louis-based Peabody Energy, filed this month, notes the material from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia University revealed the "seriousness of the flaws" in the information used in the development of reports by the U.N. International Panel on Climate Change.

Given the EPA's "extensive reliance on those reports, the "agency has no legal option but to re-examine the Endangerment Finding in light of this new information," the petition said.

University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit

The East Anglia e-mails had references to a "trick" to "hide the [temperature] decline" and indicated skeptical scientists were being marginalized.

The EPA signed two findings regarding greenhouse gases Dec. 7 . The first said, "The administrator finds that the current and projected concentrations of the six key well-mixed greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) – in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations."

The second said, "The administrator finds that the combined emissions of these well-mixed greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines contribute to the greenhouse gas pollution which threatens public health and welfare."

Send President Obama, House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid a Constitution!

WND reported earlier when members of Congress posed the same questions to the EPA.

Peabody's 240-page document charged "the analytical process in which EPA engaged in reaching its Endangerment Finding is so tainted by the flaws now revealed in the IPCC reports that the agency must take the unusual step of convening full evidentiary hearings in order to provide an open and fair reconsideration process."

On its website, the company said the EPA's earlier ruling "could mean regulation of hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of buildings, farms, businesses and other facilities in the U.S."

"Peabody believes that EPA ignored its obligation to render sound judgment and conduct a rigorous review of science, instead relying almost exclusively on the work of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as a major basis for its recent endangerment finding," the company said.

That panel "is not subject to U.S. data quality standards," and further, the EPA "outsourced its scientific obligations to an agency whose work has since been shown to be deeply tainted by flaws, in light of multiple instances of errors, manipulated data and gaps in information that make conclusions unreliable."

At the ClimateGate.com website, commentator John O'Sullivan noted the petition covers the entire body of "leaked e-mails."

Included are questions about "Himalayan Glaciers," "African Agricultural Production," "Amazon Rain Forests," "Melting Mountain Ice," "Netherlands Below Sea Level."

"Peabody is, in effect, challenging the right of the current U.S. federal government to introduce cap and trade regulations by the 'back door,'" O'Sullivan noted.

"[The] civil action lists most of the principle scientists such as Professor Phil Jones, of the U.K.’s Climatic Research Unit, who recently admitted there has been no 'statistically significant' global warming for 15 years and agreed the Medieval Warm Period may have been just as warm, if not warmer than current global temperatures," O'Sullivan said.

He pointed out that the Peabody legal challenge uses e-mails from climatologists to make its points. One, from Keith Briffa, said, "I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards 'apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data' but in reality the situation is not quite so simple."

The e-mail continued, "I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1,000 years ago."

Peabody further noted that officials in the United Kingdom have "concluded that CRU broke [freedom of information] laws in refusing to respond to information requests."

"Given the seriousness of the flaws … the agency can no longer have confidence that those reports present a fair, unbiased and accurate assessment of climate science," Peabody challenged.

Peabody isn't alone.

According to the Dallas Morning News, Texas officials filed a lawsuit accusing the federal government of using "tainted" information to arrive at the EPA conclusion.

The court challenge seeks to set aside the EPA's determination.

"This legal action is being taken to protect the Texas economy and the jobs that go with it and defend Texas' environmental successes against federal overreach," the paper quoted Gov. Rick Perry saying.

And the New York Times reported Virginia's attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, also filed a petition demanding the EPA reconsider its greenhouse gas finding.

The paper reported Cuccinelli called the EPA's decision "an incredibly far-reaching decision" based on uncertain information and a "flawed process."

Meanwhile, the U.N., which has an interest in the financial part of the global climate change concept, has launched a high-level advisory group on the issue.

Ban Ki-Moon named British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to lead the new panel, which must figure out how to raise the first billions of dollars to address the many "global warming" programs the organization seeks.

The state of the issue, however, was highlighted at the U.N.'s climate summit in Copenhagen just before Christmas, when representatives of nations around the globe were unable to reach agreement on any significant steps.

Despite that failure, and the growing issue over apparently falsified or manipulated data, the U.N. is pursuing its various programs to address the issue. It wants to raise $100 billion annually within a few years.

It was U.S. Reps. Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Greg Walden, R-Ore., who wrote to the EPA, demanding an explanation for its decision-making process.

The scientific community actually is anything but unanimous on climate change.

The disunity is documented by the Petition Project, launched some 10 years ago when the first few thousand signatures were gathered. The effort by Art Robinson, a research professor of chemistry and cofounder of the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine in 1973, now lists tens of thousands of qualified scientists who endorse the following statement:

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

Among the original e-mails hacked from East Anglia and posted online was, "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August (Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society) 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate."