Contact:

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

David Lungren David_Lungren@epw.senate.gov (202) 224-5652

Opening Statement of Senator James M. Inhofe

Ranking Member, Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works

Hearing on the Environmental Protection Agency's FY 2011 Budget

February 23, 2010, 10:00 a.m.

Link to EPW Minority Report on CRU Controversy

Madame Chairman, thank you for calling this hearing today to discuss the EPA's FY 2011 budget. I also thank Administrator Jackson for appearing before us today.

I also want to thank Administrator Jackson for working with me to address the Tar Creek Superfund Site in Oklahoma.  The relocation of the residents is complete and we are continuing work on water quality issues, as well as selling and removing the chat.  I commend your dedication to this important issue and the important work of our friend, Sam Coleman, in the EPA Dallas Office.

Now I want to turn to a different topic.  This morning I am releasing an EPW Minority Report on the scandal known as "Climategate."  The Minority Staff found that some of the world's leading climate scientists engaged in unethical behavior and possibly violated federal laws. 

Many of these scientists appear to have:

  • Manipulated data to fit preconceived conclusions;
  • Obstructed freedom-of-information requests and dissemination of climate data; and
  • Colluded to pressure journal editors against publishing scientific work contrary to their own.

The UK government has already found that scientists from the Climatic Research Unit, or CRU, who are the center of this scandal, violated its Freedom of Information Act. 

Also, the Minority report shows many of the scientists involved in this scandal worked for the UN's IPCC.  They helped compile the IPCC's 2007 Fourth Assessment Report.  That's important because this report is a primary basis for the EPA's endangerment finding for greenhouse gases.  The media has uncovered several errors and mistakes in the report, which undermine the credibility of the IPCC's science. 

Let's take a closer look.  The IPCC said that global warming would:

  • Melt the Himalayan glaciers by 2035-it's not true;
  • Destroy 40 percent of the Amazon rain forest-it's not true;
  • Melt mountain ice in the Andes, Alps, and Africa-it's not true;
  • Drastically increase the cost of climate-related natural disasters-it's not true;
  • Drive 20 to 30 percent of species to extinction-it's not true;
  • Slash crop production by 50 percent in Africa by 2020-it's not true.

And yes, the IPCC said the Netherlands is 55 percent below sea level-that's not true either.  There's more, but I think I've made my point.

EPA accepted the IPCC's erroneous claims wholesale, without doing its own independent review.  So EPA's endangerment finding rests on bad science.  The EPW minority report provides further proof that EPA needs to scrap the endangerment finding and start over again.

But that's not what EPA is doing.  It wants $43.5 million in new funding to regulate greenhouse gases.   This is seed money for the most economically destructive regulatory initiative in this nation's history.  The nation is mired in an unemployment crisis; people need jobs.  Yet once this effort commences, those fortunate to work will be out of work, and those looking for jobs won't find them.

The Obama Administration, however, is pressing ahead. We've been told that the science still stands; we've been told that the IPCC's mistakes are "trivial"; we've been told that Climategate is just gossipy emails between a few scientists.  Yet global warming alarmism has been sold on the very notion that manmade greenhouse gases are causing environmental catastrophes-Himalayan glaciers melting, the Amazon disappearing, polar bears becoming extinct.  But now we know there's no objective basis for these claims. Furthermore, Climategate shows there's no "consensus," the science is far from settled.  The Obama Administration, then, is moving ahead with a massive job-killing tax for no good reason. 

This Minority Report shows the world's leading climate scientists acting like political scientists, with an agenda disconnected from the principles of good science.  It shows that the only consensus we have is that there's a lot we don't know.  It's time for the Obama Administration to recognize this, and abandon a policy that will mean fewer jobs, higher taxes and economic decline.

###