Contact:

Matt Dempsey Matt_Dempsey@epw.senate.gov  (202) 224-9797

David Lungren David_Lungren@epw.senate.gov  (202) 224-5642

Inhofe: Climategate Reveals Faulty Science Supporting EPA Endangerment Finding

Washington, D.C.-Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, today released the following YouTube video responding to EPA's finding that greenhouse gases from mobile sources endanger public health and welfare:

 

Hello, I'm Jim Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma. I am the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Today, the Obama administration announced an unprecedented rule, one that will have far-reaching implications for each and every American. The Administration's endangerment finding will lead to a wave of new regulations and bureaucracy that will wreak havoc on the American economy, destroy millions of jobs, and force consumers to pay more for electricity and gasoline.

This bureaucratic nightmare is based on flawed science. Lisa Jackson, Obama's EPA Administrator, admitted to me publicly that EPA based its action today in good measure on the findings of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. She told me that EPA accepted those findings without any serious, independent analysis to see whether they were true. Of course, we now have thousands of emails showing several of the UN's top scientists apparently evading laws requiring transparency, defaming scientists with opposing viewpoints, and manipulating data to fit preconceived opinions. They cooked the science.

For example, some of the scientists involved worked to exclude inconvenient facts -- most notably the fact that there has been no global warming since 1998. The scandal, which has come to be known as "climategate," has rocked the scientific community. The Atlantic Monthly said, "The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering." And the U.K. Telegraph said, "This is the worst scientific scandal of our generation."

The UN is investigating it; leading academic and scientific institutions are investigating it; and I am investigating it. Yet, Democratic leaders in Congress and the Obama Administration have dismissed it. I agree with Sen. Joe Lieberman, who said of climategate, "We ought to be demanding that that be cleaned up. We ought to be angry about it."

The endangerment finding also will have virtually no impact on global warming. That's because India and China, two of the world's leading emitters of CO2, are left out. Of course, next week President Obama will try to spin "commitments" from India and China to address their emissions -- yet these commitments will be effectively meaningless.

So, our jobs and our emissions will move to countries that have few if any environmental requirements. Don't take my word for it; just ask EPA Administrator Jackson, who said "U.S. action alone will not impact world CO2 levels."

So today the American people are getting a raw deal: all cost with no benefit. Yet, the Obama Administration is moving forward anyway. Don't forget that today's action was taken just as the UN's Copenhagen global warming conference gets started. President Obama will attend. He desperately wants to show the world he is doing something about global warming. Yet putting on this show has costs and the American people will pay for it -- many with higher energy bills and many with their jobs.

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