Weekend Review: EPA Smoking Gun
EPA administrator Gina McCarthy admits: we don’t have scientific data to back Clean Air Act.
By Arnold Ahlert
In a stunning admission, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy revealed to House Science, Space and Technology Committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) that the agency neither possesses, nor can produce, all of the scientific data used to justify the rules and regulations they have imposed on Americans via the Clean Air Act. In short, science has been trumped by the radical environmentalist agenda.
The admission follows the issuance of a subpoena by the full Committee last August. It was engendered by two years of EPA stonewalling, apparently aimed at preventing the raw data cited by EPA as the scientific foundation for those rules and regulations from being independently verified. Two studies, the 1993 Harvard Six Cities Study (HSC) and the American Cancer Society’s (ACS) 1995 Cancer Prevention Study II, had verified that fine airborne particles measuring 2.5 micrograms or less were responsible for killing thousands of Americans every year. They became the baseline by which the EPA regulated particulate emissions from power plants, factories and cars. Airborne particles of that size are equivalent to approximately 1/30th the diameter of a human hair. …
After conducting a “diligent search” of the data in their own possession, the agency noted that it also conducted a search for additional data from outside sources, using the Shelby Amendment as the vehicle to obtain that information. They further acknowledged that they have not withheld any data relevant to the subpoena.
Then came the admission. “The EPA acknowledges, however, that the data provided are not sufficient in themselves to replicate the analyses in the epidemiological studies, nor would they allow for the one to one mapping of each pollutant and ecological variable to each subject.” Yet in the very next sentence, the agency remained utterly defiant. “For reasons explained in our previous letters on this topic, these acknowledgments do not call into question the EPA’s reliance on these studies for regulatory actions.”
Really? Why not? The scientific method is all about reproducing reliable data that can be independently verified. The EPA and their leftist allies are essentially saying “trust us,” even as they denigrate climate change skeptics for their failure to embrace “settled science.” Such overt hypocrisy would be laughable were it not for the reality that the EPA is moving forward with even more regulations that could place 90 percent of the American public in "non-attainment" areas. …
It’s time for a thorough cleaning of the EPA itself. It has been polluted by a poisonous ideology for far too long.
