WASHINGTON — The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association filed a petition Dec. 23 in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent greenhouse gas (GHG) “endangerment finding” rule.
The endangerment finding does not in and of itself regulate greenhouse gases, but it is a step in the process for GHG regulation under the Clean Air Act.
The rule provides the foundation for EPA for the first time to regulate GHGs from small and large sources throughout the economy, including farms, hospitals, office buildings and schools.
Not science-based
The cattlemen’s association claims EPA’s finding is not based on scientific analysis, “yet it would trigger a cascade of future greenhouse gas regulations with sweeping impacts across the entire U.S. economy,” said Tamara Thies, chief environmental counsel.
“Why the administration decided to move forward on this type of rule when there’s so much uncertainty surrounding humans’ contribution to climate change is perplexing.”
The farm group claims because of this rule, for example, EPA will be able to tell farmers that they can only emit a certain level of GHGs; if they go over that amount, they can incur penalties and be forced to curtail production.
The rule also sets the stage for citizen suits.
“EPA has decided to trump Congress and mandate greenhouse gas regulation under the Clean Air Act,” said Thies. “The act is ill-equipped to address climate change, and Congress never intended for it to be used for that purpose.”
Under the rule, EPA defined air pollution to include six greenhouse gases, and stated that manmade greenhouse gases endanger public health and the environment.
Asking court to overturn
The petition NCBA filed, as part of a coalition of interested parties, is the first step in asking the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn EPA’s rule due to a lack of sound or adequate basis for making the finding of endangerment from anthropogenic GHGs.
EPA estimates
According to the EPA, in 2007, GHG emissions from the entire U.S. agriculture sector represented less than 6 percent of total U.S. GHG emissions, and the livestock industry emitted only 2.8 percent.
At the same time, land use, land use change, and forestry activities resulted in a net carbon sequestration of approximately 17.4 percent of total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, or 14.9 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
STAY INFORMED. SIGN UP!
Up-to-date agriculture news in your inbox!
Thank God for your courage in challenging this insanity. There are many good papers which refute the basic premise of carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Perhaps some would be useful:
GREENHOUSE MISCONCEPTIONS, Tom Kondis. November 2008. (Speculators blame IR absorption by carbon dioxide, approximately 0.035% of the atmosphere, for changing our climate. They haven’t verified their unique viewpoint by utilizing IR radiation, synthetic gas mixtures and temperature measurements independent from the influences of poorly understood and incompletely considered natural forces that do control earth’s climate and weather. Their arguments lack substance and veracity.)
GREENHOUSE GAS FACTS AND FANTASIES, by Tom Kondis. May 21, 2008. (Advocates of man-made global warming have intermingled elements of greenhouse activity and infrared absorption to promote the image that carbon dioxide traps heat near earth’s surface like molecular greenhouses insulating our atmosphere. Their imagery, however, is seriously flawed.)
THE GREAT GLOBAL WARMING HOAX? James A. Peden. (Man’s contribution to Greenhouse Gasses is relatively insignificant. We didn’t cause the recent Global Warming and we cannot stop it.)
GREENHOUSE EFFECT IN SEMI-TRANSPARENT PLANETARY ATMOSPHERES, Dr. Ferenc M. Miskolczi. Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Society, 2007. (Any imbalance [in] CO2 emissions [is] effectively countered by about 1 per cent decrease in the water vapor amount, and the system still fluctuates around its theoretical equilibrium value. [C]alculations on the NASA / NCAR atmospheric database proved that the Earth’s greenhouse effect does not show any steady increase, regardless of our CO2 emissions.)
THE ACQUITTAL OF CARBON DIOXIDE, Jeffrey A. Glassman, PhD. (Carbon dioxide does not accumulate in the atmosphere.)
FALSIFICATION OF THE ATMOSPHERIC CO2 GREENHOUSE EFFECTS WITHIN THE FRAME OF PHYSICS, (Submitted on 8 Jul 2007 (v1), last revised 4 Mar 2009 (this version, v4))
Abstract: The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that many authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier (1824), Tyndall (1861), and Arrhenius (1896), and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 degrees Celsius is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.
CLIMATE SCIENCE: IS IT CURRENTLY DESIGNED TO ANSWER QUESTIONS? Richard S. Lindzen, Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate Massachusetts Institute of Technology, September 27, 2008. (What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet destroying toxin.)
I was researching to make comment on the Notice of Propoosed Rulemaking, EPA–HQ–OAR–2009–0517, when I can upon this. I fully support your effort and would like to be informed of the status of your petition. I will bookmark this web site.