Well, they asked for scientific evidence for the skepticism than most people have.
And they’ll ignore it. They’ve already bought into the lie.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (June 7, 2018)
The Heartland Institute today shipped copies of the Climate Change Reconsidered series of reports to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt. An accompanying letter from Heartland Institute President Tim Huelskamp, Ph.D., advises Pruitt to use the 3,000-plus page report containing some 10,000 footnotes to comply with a federal court order to provide “documents that support the conclusion that human activity is not the largest factor driving global climate change.”
Beryl Howell, chief judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ordered EPA on June 1 to back up a statement Pruitt made in a CNBC interview shortly after taking office that “carbon dioxide created by human activity is not the primary driver of global climate change.” She was enforcing a Freedom of Information Act request a group called Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed the day after that television interview.
“We have no doubt that PEER, with the assistance of the judge, is trying to box you in and embarrass you,” Dr. Huelskamp wrote Pruitt. “After all, you were only on the job for a few days and you could not possibly have reviewed all the documents EPA possessed before your confirmation – which would all toe the unscientific, alarmist dogma that marked the Obama years. Fortunately, you do not have to look far to find ‘documents that support the conclusion that human activity is not the largest factor driving global climate change.’”
The Heartland Institute several years ago submitted the Climate Change Reconsidered series to the agency, including digital versions when EPA has called for comments on rulemaking. Climate Change Reconsidered is a years-long scholarship project by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), led by prominent climate scientist Dr. S. Fred Singer. The Heartland Institute publishes and distributes NIPCC’s work.
“In the event an Obama-era ideologue at EPA disposed of or destroyed those volumes, we have enclosed them in this package for your use in answering Judge Howell’s order,” Dr. Huelskamp wrote. “In fact, the Climate Change Reconsidered series stands on its own as the work of a ‘Red Team’ that has been working to critique and correct the work of the ideological alarmists on the ‘Blue Team’ for more than a decade.”
The Heartland letter contains a list of hardly exhaustive examples from the peer-reviewed literature to bolster Pruitt’s point, including:
- empirical data on past temperatures contradicting the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) claim that climate observations during the twentieth century are either unprecedented or provide evidence of an anthropogenic effect on climate. (Climate Change Reconsidered, 2009)
- research by a growing number of scientists who say variations in solar activity, not greenhouse gases, are the true driver of climate change. (Climate Change Reconsidered, 2009
- research published in peer-reviewed science journals indicating the model-derived temperature sensitivity of Earth accepted by the IPCC is too large. (Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science, 2013)
- proof that four specific forecasts made by global climate models have been falsified by real-world data from a wide variety of sources and that there has been no significant global warming for some 20 years. (Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming, 2015)
You can read the whole letter below, or in PDF form on Heartland’s website.
Heartland Institute Provides Science to EPA to Back Up Pruitt’s Climate Change Views
The Heartland Institute today shipped copies of the Climate Change Reconsidered series of reports to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt. An accompanying letter from Heartland Institute President Tim Huelskamp, Ph.D., advises Pruitt to use the 3,000-plus page report containing some 10,000 footnotes to comply with a federal court order to provide “documents that support the conclusion that human activity is not the largest factor driving global climate change.”