U.S. Court Judges Confess to Bias in Crazy Greenhouse Gas Emissions Case

Three federal judges admit to being biased in favor of a government agency when granting a landmark decision in favor of caps and taxes on “greenhouse gas” emissions. Court rules Earth’s atmosphere does act like a greenhouse after all.

Seal of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

In a shock landmark ruling (June 26, 2012) the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit throws out a key pro-industry petition challenging restrictions on industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases.” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson called the decision a “strong validation” of the approach the agency has taken. In contrast, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) reacted angrily,“The Obama administration is attempting to regulate greenhouse gases in the absence of legislation.”

The 81-page decision affirms that on the science of man-made global warming the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is the one and only arbiter when a case goes to trial. Completely taking the EPA’s word on the science, the court was satisfied that “greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may reasonably be anticipated both to endanger public health and to endanger public welfare.”As such, say the judges, the EPA is not contravening the Clean Air Act by radically limiting industrial emissions of carbon dioxide.

Judges Admit Bias In Favor of EPA Alarmism

Despite the gravity of the case, all three judges involved admit to their utter “bias” in favor of the federal agency on the science. The court panel admits, “we give an extreme degree of deference to the agency when it is evaluating scientific data within its technical expertise.” Crassly, the court further decided that Earth’s atmosphere does act “like a greenhouse” to the consternation of scientists not on the government payroll.

To add salt to the wound, The DC Circuit Court of Appeals actually cited a YouTube cartoon video in its effort to assist EPA break the law with respect to greenhouse gas regulation (H/T: junkscience.com).

The findings have also caught skeptics of man-made global warming off guard at a time when they were still rejoicing at the collapse the Rio+20 Climate Summit last week. If the petitioners had known from the outset that this would be the approach of the judges then they could have saved themselves the time and huge expense.

As such, this breathtaking ruling is set to trigger a backlash among all those opposed to the creeping rise in crippling new environmental regulations. This is because all U.S. courts will be required to recognize the EPA has ultimate “technical expertise” in such matters. As such President Obama has succeeded in bypassing Congress in getting his rubber stamp for more climate taxes and more junk science on the public dole.

The EPA now has the legal green light to pursue those related environmental policies of President Obama. Obama, up for re-election later this year, already failed to drive carbon dioxide (CO2) limiting legislation through Congress earlier in his presidency. Now he has succeeded by other means via the EPA regulations that had previously determined CO2 is a “pollutant” via the Clean Air Act.

On Page 16 the Decision reads, “We begin with a brief primer on greenhouse gases. As their name suggests, when released into the atmosphere, these gases act  “like the ceiling of a greenhouse, trapping solar energy and retarding the escape of reflected heat.”

Repeatedly, the judges employed direct citations from prior related judgments going back to 2007, including Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. at 505 whereby “Many scientists believe that mankind’s greenhouse gas emissions are driving this climate change.” Such citations read like a turgid regurgitation of hackneyed and outmoded alarmist claims painted in a legal gloss.

The “many scientists” appears to be a reference to 53 authority statements explicitly declaring Earth’s atmosphere “acts like a greenhouse” as peddled by those (government-funded) institutions sold on the GHE warming scam as shown here.

The defeated petitioners had argued (rightly) that the Act allows only endangerment issues and cannot be misused by governments to advance government policy. The petition was created by a consortium of business interests identified as the Coalition for Responsible Regulation, Inc. et al. But (according to the court) the petitioners lost because the court did not find that the EPA was using the Clean Air Act for policy purposes.

However, the ruling opens up a can of worms, not just for the EPA but for the federal government as a whole because of the glaring holes in the science presented. For example, of no import in these proceedings was how 400,000 years of Vostok ice core data and three decades of satellite records prove carbon dioxide cannot be shown to drive Earth’s temperatures.

Increasingly, leading climatologists and dozens of other specialist scientists are considering all the evidence that proves that “gas does not equal glass” and thereby discrediting the EPA’s position on “greenhouse” science. But the court stated that such references to skeptical science constituted “ a semantic trick” because the federal court determines it only has to listen to federal (tax payer) bought and paid for science. Debate was never allowed to range outside the closed shop of (government) climatology, an infant field comprised of Earth scientists (aka Environmental scientists) perceived as less academically gifted among those working in the pure sciences of physics, chemistry and medicine – perhaps the staunchest critics of EPA junk science.

In recent years more concerned independent researchers from those biological and chemical sciences have tried to carefully examine how government climatologists arrived at their findings, they have been blocked; while evidence uncovered controverting the alarmist position is routinely ignored. Frustrations grow as real-world evidence proves that rising levels of CO2 are not causing rises in temperatures. But the U.S. government continues apace with it’s revisionism of the history of radiation and the false greenhouse heat trapping paradigm.

Does American Law Now Serve the Government, Not the People?

Inexplicably, the court accepted the right of the EPA to promulgate the Tailoring Rule which is premised on the assertion that “greenhouse gases” (inferring “human” source) are emitted in far greater volumes than “other pollutants.” Such an assertion would be considered arbitrary and capricious to those better versed in the full scientific arguments. While even your average high school student can still correctly identify that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is a mere 0.04 percent and is thus correctly termed a trace gas.

With this ruling another arm of government (the judiciary) joins the EPA looking foolish as it clings onto the “Endangerment Finding” ruling under 74 Fed. Reg. 66,496 (Dec. 15, 2009) which ruled carbon dioxide was an “air pollutant” and thus a “long-lived and directly-emitted greenhouse gas…which is reasonably anticipated to endanger public health and welfare.”

Dismissing the petition this blinkered court added that the EPA had not contravened the Clean Air Act because its measures on CO2 were not “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with the law.” The court accepted the actions of the EPA were reasonable because the “agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute.”

As such, with a sweep of a pen the elite of the American legal system affirms that Earth’s atmosphere simulates the glass barrier of a greenhouse. By contrast, if taxpayers were served by an “unbiased” court we would see honest judges favoring the actual physical evidence rather than closed-minded administrators, self-serving bureaucrats trumpeting dodgy computer models. Instead, the federal court performed a cop out and with extreme bias endorsed a fellow arm of federal government (the EPA) for the sole purpose of harming American industry and raising taxes. This one-sided and pro-alarmist judgment proves once again that the lunatics and tax-craving bureaucrats are running the U.S. government asylum. If we let them get away with this then we can say goodbye to pursuing any civil claim against our biased government. All I can say is, roll on voting day!