[VIDEO] EPA ‘secret science’ under the microscope as GOP lawmakers seek ban

The Environmental Protection Agency for years has issued costly clean air rules based, in part, on two '90s-era studies linking air pollution with death. 

But, critics say, the same agency has stymied efforts to access the data behind them. The transparency concerns have Republican lawmakers on a new campaign to end the use of what they dub "secret science." 

"Why would the EPA want to hide this information from the American people?" House science committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, asked EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy at a hearing last week. 

Smith is among those pushing legislation to bar the use of "secret science" for EPA regulations -- namely, Clean Air Act rules that Republicans say are based on research hidden from public view. The bill has passed the House and now awaits action on the Senate floor. 

"The most expensive rules coming out of the EPA rely on secret science," Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW), said in a statement to FoxNews.com. "Americans deserve to have access to technical information and data being used to develop EPA rules that significantly impact their daily lives." 

For its part, the EPA has argued that releasing the data could compromise confidential personal information, and that it didn't have access to all the research anyway, among other issues. The agency made an effort to contact the original institutions behind the studies in 2013, but Republicans say they again would not hand over everything. 

During last week's hearing, McCarthy questioned why lawmakers have focused on this -- and why anyone would want to seek out this kind of granular information. 

"The EPA totally supports both transparency as well as a strong peer-reviewed independent science process, but the bill I'm afraid I don't think will get us there," she said. "I don't actually need the raw data in order to develop science, that's not how it's done. ... I do not know of what value raw data is to the general public." 

But Smith said the agency "has a responsibility to be open and transparent with the people it serves, and whose money it spends."

Further, Inhofe said the data pertains to everything from forthcoming emissions rules for power plants to mercury rules recently challenged by a major Supreme Court ruling. 

The Republican legislation -- called the Secret Science Reform Act of 2015 -- would bar the EPA from issuing certain rules unless all relevant research is named and publicly available for those who want it. In seeking the change, critics say the EPA's air quality rules for years have relied largely on two studies from the 1990s whose data is not entirely accessible -- including a 1993 Harvard studylinking air pollution and mortality in certain U.S. cities, and another from the American Cancer Society.  

In the mercury case cited by Inhofe, the high court ruled last month that the EPA should have factored in the costs of recent rules targeting mercury and other pollution. McCarthy reportedly has said the "very narrow" ruling won't affect the separate and ongoing effort to draft new power plant emissions rules, which could be completed in a matter of weeks. The White House has taken a similar stance in downplaying the implications of the 5-4 decision. 

But the ruling nevertheless has emboldened critics. And the "secret science" legislation could add to that pressure. 

An EPW committee aide told FoxNews.com the legislation, if approved, potentially could impact both the mercury and greenhouse gas emissions rules. 

"Really, this is just simple transparency," the aide said. 

Via: Fox News

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The EPA Myth of “Clean Power”

There are many things I do not like about the Environmental Protection Agency, but what angers me most are the lies that stream forth from it to justify programs that have no basis in fact or science, and which threaten the economy.

Currently, its “Clean Power” plan is generating its latest and most duplicitous Administer, Gina McCarthy, to go around saying that it will not be costly, nor cost jobs. “Clean Power” is the name given to the EPA policy to reduce overall U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 30% from 2005 levels by 2030. It is requiring each state to cut its emissions by varying amounts using a baseline established by the EPA.

Simply said, there is no need whatever to reduce CO2 emissions. Carbon dioxide is not “a pollutant” as the EPA claims. It is, along with oxygen for all living creatures, vital to the growth of all vegetation. The more CO2 the better crops yields will occur, healthier forests, and greener lawns. From a purely scientific point of view, it is absurd to reduce emissions.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal on April 22,Kenneth C. Hill, Director of the Tennessee Regulatory Authority, said “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) set off a firestorm when he advised states not to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan. Yet that advice isn’t as radical as his detractors make it sound. As a state public utilities commissioner who deals with the effects of federal regulations on a regular basis, I also recommend that states not comply.”

Noting its final due date in June, that refusal would impose a Federal Implementation Plan on states “that risks even greater harm,” said Hill. “But the problem for the EPA is that the federal government lacks the legal authority under either the Constitution or the Clean Air Act to enforce most of the regulation’s ‘building blocks’ without states’ acquiescence.”

As this is being written there is are two joined cases before the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, State of West Virginia v EPA and Murray Energy v EPA. They are a challenge to President Obama’s “War on Coal” and the EPA efforts to regulate its use. Fifteen states, along with select coal companies, have sued for an “extraordinary whit” to prevent the EPA from promulgating the new carbon regulations found it the Clean Power plan.

Via: Canada Free Press

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Obama’s EPA Planning To Crush Coal Industry With Avalanche Of New Regulations After Election…

President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has devoted an unprecedented number of bureaucrats to finalizing new anti-coal regulations that are set to be released at the end of November, according to a source inside the EPA.

More than 50 EPA staff are now crashing to finish greenhouse gas emission standards that would essentially ban all construction of new coal-fired power plants. Never before have so many EPA resources been devoted to a single regulation. The independent and non-partisan Manhattan Institute estimates that the EPA’s greenhouse gas coal regulation will cost the U.S. economy $700 billion.

The rush is a major sign of panic by environmentalists inside the Obama administration. If Obama wins, the EPA would have another four full years to implement their anti-fossil fuel agenda. But if Romney wins, regulators will have a very narrow window to enact a select few costly regulations that would then be very hard for a President Romney to undo.

Environmentalists at the EPA pulled this trick before in 2000 when the Clinton administration rushed out a finding that Mercury emissions from power plants were a growing public health threat pursuant to the Clean Air Act. That finding did not regulate power plants itself, but it did force the Bush administration to begin a lengthy regulatory process. The Obama EPA has estimated that this regulation alone will cost the U.S. economy $10.9 billion a year.

Reached for comment, Romney spokesman Ryan Williams said:

President Obama won’t tell the voters of the Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania the truth about his plans to shut down the coal industry. Even after he loses on Tuesday, it appears that the President will still try to continue his efforts to kill their jobs and drive up their energy prices. Mitt Romney is committed to reversing the damage caused by the Obama Administration’s disastrous liberal agenda as soon as he takes office.

Via: Washington Examiner

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The EPA’s Planned Destruction of the U.S. Economy

If there was no other reason to defeat President Obama in November, it would be the planned destruction of what is left of the U.S. economy by the Environmental Protection Agency.

In “A Look Ahead to EPA Regulations for 2012” the minority staff (Republican) of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has issued a chilling review of a massive rise in the costs of living for all Americans, massive layoffs in all sectors of the economy, and the destruction of the nation’s energy and manufacturing sectors.

The report provides a nightmarish look at the regulations that EPA plans to initiate, having put them under cover prior to Election Day in order to hide President Obama’s agenda of attacking the energy sector and businesses large and small.
Here’s a list of the regulations:

• Greenhouse gas regulation via the Clean Air Act
• An Ozone rule
• Hydraulic Fracturing
• Florida’s Numeric Nutrient Criteria
• EPA’s water guidance under the Clean Water Act
• Stormwater regulation
• Tier II Gas regulations
• Boiler MACT rule
• Cement MACT rule
• 316(b) Cooling Tower rule
• Coal ash
• Farm dust regulation
• Spill prevention control and Countermeasure rule

These proposed regulations in aggregate, if enacted—that is to say if not stopped by congressional action based on Republican control of both the House and Senate—would prove disastrous, starting in 2013.

For example, the utterly bogus greenhouse gas regulations are based on the debunked global warming theory that says too much carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is causing the Earth to heat when, in fact, the Earth has been cooling since 1998 and there is zero evidence that CO2 has any impact on the temperature of the planet.

Via: Canada Free Press

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