EPA's Greenhouse Gas "Endangerment Finding": Finally Gone

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  • On Thursday (February 12) President Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin held a press briefing at the White House where they announced the issuance of the final rescission of what is known as the “Endangerment Finding” — the 2009 Obama-era regulatory edict purporting to find that CO2 and other “greenhouse gases” are a “danger to human health and welfare.”

  • The regulatory document finalizing the rescission then came out the next day, February 13.

  • The Rescission Document has the title “Rescission of the Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding and Motor Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emission Standards Under the Clean Air Act.” It is 436 pages long. In this version, it appears in standard double-space typed format, with no page numbers. Although there is a table of contents, the lack of associated page numbers makes it extremely difficult to find anything in the Document.

  • Within a few days, the Document will then appear in something called the Federal Register. The text will not be changed (other than that they reserve the right to correct errors); but the format will be substantially different — single-spaced and with multiple columns on a page. Publication in the Federal Register is what starts the clock ticking for deadlines to challenge the rescission in court.

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Don't Forget To RSVP To The February 19 "Net Zero And Freedom" Event

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  • Word on the street is that tomorrow is the big day when the federal government’s phony-baloney greenhouse gas “Endangerment Finding” will finally get rescinded by EPA. It has now been more than 16 years since this idiotic and massive government power grab got foisted on the American people by the Obama EPA in December 2009.

  • I don’t have any good insight into what the rescission documentation will look like. If the people writing it do what is really appropriate, they will heap mounds of scorn, derision and ridicule upon the Finding itself, and upon the legions fools, dopes and grifters who continue to try to support it.

  • While we all hold our breaths for this big moment, I am shamelessly shilling for the February 19 Net Zero Watch in-person event in New York, “Net Zero and Freedom.”

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Would You Trust The National Academies Of Science To Tell You How Science Works?

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  • My last two posts have been about the new Federal Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, just out (December 31) from the Federal Justice Center. The Chair of that Center is U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts. The latest version of the Manual is the Fourth Edition. The prior version in 2011 was the Third Edition; and there were also two prior Editions from 2000 and 1994.

  • In those previous two posts, I principally criticized a newly-added chapter in the Fourth Edition titled “Reference Guide on Climate Science.” Today, I want to take a look at another chapter titled “How Science Works.”

  • There was no such chapter in the First Edition, but a chapter by that title, written by a guy named David Goodstein (an Emeritus Professor at Caltech), was added in the Second Edition. In the Third Edition, Goodstein’s chapter was somewhat modified and slightly expanded (from 16 pages to 18). Goodstein died in 2024, and in the Fourth Edition he has been replaced by Michael Weisberg and Anastasia Thanukos, who have now produced a chapter with the same title, but now running to some 61 pages.

  • In my January 31 post, my comment on the Weisberg/Thanukos work product was that it was “not too terrible,” but that it was “way longer than it needs to be” and “the most important points are buried.” Further comparing this chapter to the chapter on (so-called) “climate science” (which is entirely hoakum) I continue the view that there are some good points here. However, there are also some serious flaws, and I don’t want to move on without pointing some of those out.

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More On The Federal Judicial Center And The Attribution Scam

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  • As discussed in the previous post, the Federal Judicial Center’s recently-updated Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence contains a new chapter on Climate Science. That chapter focuses on the promoting the hocus pocus of “attribution” studies that seek to blame every latest hurricane or flood or drought on human emissions of CO2, and thus on fossil fuel producers in particular.

  • In my post, I characterized the authors’ write-up of the methodology of these attribution studies as relying on “logical fallacy,” and as “double-talk and bafflegab.” But I think that I inadequately articulated the nature of the fallacy. So I will try to correct that here.

  • The heart of the problem is that science is all about hypotheses being subject to empirical test against real world evidence.

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The New Federal Reference Manual On Scientific Evidence: All The Smartest People Get Hoodwinked By The Climate Charlatans

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The New Federal Reference Manual On Scientific Evidence: All The Smartest People Get Hoodwinked By The Climate Charlatans

  • It is truly remarkable how easy it is to fool the smartest people. And especially when you tell them they are helping to save the world.

  • So something called the Federal Judicial Center has just come out with a new edition, the 4th, of something called the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. The publication date appears to be December 31, 2025.

  • The idea that the federal government, and in particular the judiciary, needs a reference manual on scientific evidence seems to date from the 1990s. The courts, then as now, were facing an increasing volume of cases involving complex scientific evidence; and meanwhile almost none of the judges are trained in science. Best to provide them with a good grounding in the basics. Fortunately, back in the 60s Congress had established something called the Federal Judicial Center as a “research and education agency” of the judicial branch. Here was the perfect opportunity for that bureaucracy to expand their mission and budget.

  • In this latest version of the Reference Manual, the FJC has totally lost its way. Somehow, it got captured by a clique of climate charlatans who have inserted a lengthy section that is anti-science and based on logical fallacy. And many dozens of seemingly smart people who were supposedly reviewing this have gotten hoodwinked.

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Do We Really Know That Human Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cause Significant Climate Change?

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Do We Really Know That Human Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cause Significant Climate Change?

  • It’s by far the most important scientific question of our age: Do human emissions of CO2 and other such “greenhouse gases” cause significant global warming, aka “climate change”?

  • Based on the belief that an affirmative answer to that question is a universally accepted truth, our government has embarked on a multi-trillion dollar campaign to transform our economy by, among other things, eliminating hydrocarbon fuels from electricity generation (without any demonstrated workable plan for the replacement), outlawing the kinds of vehicles we currently drive, suppressing fossil fuel extraction, banning pipeline construction, making all your appliances work less well, and much more.

  • Express any doubt about the causal connection between human activities and climate change, and you could very well get labeled as a “climate denier,” fired from your academic job, demonetized by Google or Facebook, or even completely ostracized from polite society.

  • But is there actually any real proof of the proposition at issue? In fact, there is not.

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