Climate testimony by EPA chief light on facts, balance

July 25, 2014
A government official proposing to overhaul energy use should ground arguments in facts and present them with balance.

A government official proposing to overhaul energy use should ground arguments in facts and present them with balance.

Here’s how Gina McCarthy, administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, opened her July 23 testimony at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on proposed regulation of greenhouse gases from power plants:

“Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. It already threatens human health and welfare and economic well-being, and if left unchecked it will have devastating impacts on the United States and the planet.

“The science is clear. The risks are clear. And the high costs of climate inaction are clear. We must act.”

Facts and balance are on limited display here. The demanding conclusion flows from assumptions that are controversial and in some cases wrong, however assuredly McCarthy articulates them.

The administrator asserts alarm most Americans seem not to share. In surveys, climate change consistently ranks near the bottoms of lists of concerns.

And the science of climate change is anything but clear. It remains hazy, for example, on the big question of climate sensitivity, the temperature change likely to result from a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Computer models underlying the supposedly clear science assume strong climate sensitivity and predict far more warming than has been observed. The planet is not following the path toward devastation inscribed by the models and presumed by McCarthy.

Flawed models nevertheless impel proposals, such as EPA’s, for changes in energy use that would cost much and influence temperature little.

Those changes include curtailed use of coal and natural gas in the generation of electrical power.

McCarthy’s hearing testimony deployed a tactic typical of climate activism: coloring questionable presumptions with unrealistic certitude to preclude dissent.

In other words, she was steamrolling.

She was steamrolling on behalf of a policy blitz that should start in Congress, not the federal bureaucracy, and that Americans will reject when costs hit.

Congress needs to stop her.

(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted July 25, 2014; author’s e-mail: [email protected])