The Environmental Protection Agency's internal watchdog said Wednesday the Obama administration cut corners in evaluating the science it used to back up its finding that carbon is a dangerous pollutant that can be regulated under existing federal law.

The report by the EPA's inspector general is certain to be used in court by those seeking to overturn EPA's claim that it can write global-warming rules under existing law and doesn't need new authority from Congress.

Investigators did not evaluate the scientific conclusions. The report said EPA did follow basic rules but didn't treat the finding as seriously as the situation required, and failed to meet administration guidelines for peer review of such a major issue.

"EPA had the [science] reviewed by a panel of 12 federal climate change scientists. However, the panel's findings and EPA's disposition of the findings were not made available to the public as would be required for reviews of highly influential scientific assessments," the investigators said. "Also, this panel did not fully meet the independence requirements for reviews of highly influential scientific assessments because one of the panelists was an EPA employee."

The inspector general said EPA failed from the outset to identify the Technical Support Document, or TSD, as "influential," which would subject it to heightened standards of scientific review.

EPA rejected the report, saying the science it did use was peer-reviewed, and said it based its findings on the work of other major bodies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"No weighing of information, data and studies occurred in the [technical document]," the agency said in its official comment submitted to the report. "That had already occurred in the underlying assessments, where the scientific synthesis occurred and where the state of the science was assessed."
At issue is EPA's claim that it can regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Under its 2009 "endangerment finding" that emitting greenhouse gases poses a threat to human health.

If it stands, that finding means that EPA can use existing laws to control emissions.

But the finding has been challenged in court, with opponents questioning the science EPA used for its finding — and they said the inspector general's report will give them ammunition to use.

Sen. James M. Inhofe, the ranking GOP member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, called for hearings into EPA's decision-making.
"EPA needs to explain to the American people why it blatantly circumvented its own procedures to make what appears to be a predetermined endangerment finding," said Mr. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican.
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On Sep 28, 2011, at 3:59 PM, Roger Cohen wrote:
Yeah.. but I would still like to hear an unspun version since I cannot understand the language. Chuck has already weighed in effectively on this.
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Roger, this report effectively invalidates the process EPA followed to adopt its currently-challenged EPA co2 rules. It sets up some large obstacles EPA will need to get around to proclaim a new rule. While the report is not actually binding on EPA, It will not be able to ignore its own OIG report.
I found much of the language highly technical. The EPA's rules are crucial to the OIG findings, because EPA's failure to follow its own rules for peer review and scientific review, and failure to follow OMB guidelines, underlie the OIG report. The rules, and OIG's discussion, are really complex and it took me 2 or 3 reads to understand what was going on. To make a legal case that the Inspector General's office followed its own guidelines, the report necessarily describes the purposes of the investigation in detail, as well as all the work it did to reach its conclusions. The OIG office spends a lot of word justifying its own conclusions, which is also appropriate. I found the discussion of the various EPA and OMB rules tedious. That discussion was necessary to lay the ground for OIG's conclusions. The conclusions seem to me to be very reasonable in view of the record examined by OIG and the rules as OIG described them. I would trust the OIG's review of the rules, determining that EPA did not follow its own rules. I have only read through the whole report once, and may have overlooked something or misinterpreted it.

(Inhofe's press release does a pretty good job of highlighting the major conclusions.) Here's how I read the report.

1. 1. The EPA relied on its own Technical Support Document (TSD) which reviews prior findings and scientific reports in crafting its agw rules. OIG deems the TSD to be a "highly influential scientific assessment." This identification comes from an Office of Management and Budget rule setting the standards for review of agency rule based on scientific findings. Among other things, the relied-upon report must have substantial consequence. The rule requires independent peer review for such a document before it can be relied on.. The OMB rule for a conclusion the rule has substantial impact is a provision that it causes a minimum financial burden of $500 million nationwide to comply with the rule. Without clearly saying so, the OIG believes that the financial consequences exceed half a billion dollars, and in its review of the draft OIG report, EPA apparently never disagreed with that conclusion.
2. The EPA did not follow its own rules for independent peer review of the TSD. The OMB rule requires peer review of a "highly influential scientific assessment." As the report points out, the EPA chose reviewing peers who were all from federal government offices dealing with "climate change" including an employee of the EPA. OIG clearly disapproves of this "peer" review and demands EPA use OUTSIDE , INDEPENDENT experts to conduct its peer review. It says the EPA employee had a conflict of interest. However, I think that the fact that all the other reviewers came from government climate change agencies was objectionable to the OIG too. I detected a strong implication in the report: having a bunch of government "experts" who are already lined up to support the EPA's findings does not equal independent peer review. The finding of a lack of independence is crucial. That explains to me why OIG rejected the EPA peer review process, and states that EPA needs better rules for peer review.
3. The EPA's reliance on the IPCC reports was dismissed as inadequate because EPA did not conduct a peer review of the IPCC's findings, as required by its own rules.
4. One thing that comes across in the OIG report is the manipulation by the EPA to deal with applications asking for reconsideration. The report details a number of steps which were taken to change some language in the rule, without clearly responding to the reconsideration requests, nor allowing for public comments. As I understand the report, EPA's adoption TSD was not subjected to public comment, either. The reasons for dismissing the requests for reconsideration were never spell out.
5. The OIG found that EPA wrongly failed to recognize the TSD as "influential." EPA said it was mainly a summary of earlier, dependable studies. So it did not have to engage in a scientific peer review of the TSD. The OIG disagreed and maintained its position, even after EPA objected. EPA also did not reveal the details of the "peer review" nor other scientific data the reviewers relied on to reach their conclusions. In other words, the EPA effectively hid the scientific basis for the review that said the proposed rule was justified. If the agw "science" is so good, why did EPA hide it?

The EPA clearly shows itself, at a minimum, guilty of very sloppy work. The report reveals the EPA process to be slap-dash, quickly overlooking its own legal requirements to reach the desired result. I think when the report is digested by people on Capitol Hill, a lot of congressional AGW supporters will be stunned. So, for the White House. (Of course, I thought the CRU-tape emails would have the same effect but they did not.) This report is technical, well-laid out, and will give the warmers a heavier burden than the release of the Cru emails, to deny its significance. Inhofe's request for a committee hearing on the report will be hard to ignore. This report provides our side with hard-to-dismiss arguments, challenging the "undisputed science" behind AGW. At the best, the report could influence the courts to set aside the current rule and require EPA to go back and follow proper procedures to craft a regulation. It will need to adopt another new rule governing its independent, peer review process, first People will watch the EPA like hawks. EPA will have a hard time designing a rule on CO2, if independent peer review is involved. It would be challenged at every step resulting in perhaps a couple years of litigation delaying the adoption of a new rule. There will be a legal fight over whether its new review panel is balanced and independent. That issue alone will take some time to resolve. I expect that the EPA rule will remain suspended through 2012. EPA won't dare touch it before the fall elections to avoid further political damage. The IPCC report itself will be in jeopardy, if an independent review of IPCC science would lead to a rejection of the IPCC report. It will sure give the Republicans a good issue for the 2012 election. The best a Democratic candidate can do is proclaim,

"I'm shocked...shocked! by this report. It may be a good idea to re-study this issue. Now, let me talk about jobs...."

One last point, the EPA has 90 days to respond to the report. I think we can predict, "The BS cometh."

Richard Botteri
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Dear Richard,

Thanks for your thorough review of OIG report. Having the perspective of an attorney is important, having your perspective is invaluable.

Gordon Fulks