People have the right to defend themselves against bad science

June 8, 2018 by David Wojick, Ph.D., 0 Comments @CFACT

 

The Greens have launched a massive and coordinated attack on EPA’s proposed regulation to end the use of “secret science” in Agency rule making. Secret science here simply means research that is not available for public inspection. The proposal is called the Transparency Rule and it is available for public comment here.

The basic principle is that if EPA proposes to regulate the public, then the public ha s a right to inspect the research used to justify that regulation. This seems obviously fair and just but the Greens do not see it that way. They think EPA should be able to do whatever it wants, behind a veil of scientific secrecy.

So the Greens are flooding the EPA comment system with mindless negative comments. At the time of this writing the Agency lists over 150,000 comments, the vast majority of which simply attack EPA for daring to propose transparency. Given that the comment period has been extended to mid-August this number is likely to get much bigger.

This attack is being coordinated by several Green Groups, especially the so-called Environmental Defense Fund. The idea behind regulatory notice and comment is to help the agency gets the rules right. It is not a referendum on the proposal, but that is how EDF sees it. They just want to generate 100,000 or more identical Green comments denouncing this proposal. There is nothing useful here, just the usual loud noises from the left.

EPA says on their comment website that they will only post substantive comments. It is then no wonder that less that 2% of the comments have been publicly posted. Even these are mostly worthless negative attacks.

There is also a green press campaign, in parallel with the personal attacks on EPA Administrator Pruitt. Here the ever-green New York Times has the lead. They have run a series of articles and op-eds attacking both Pruitt and the Transparency Rule.

One particularly silly NYT piece is titled: “Scott Pruitt’s Attack on Science Would Paralyze the E.P.A.” It begins by complaining that the Rule allows the EPA Administrator to exempt and use secret science if it is especially important. The Greens should like this provision, since it is just what they want. Instead the op-ed says that Pruitt is a lawyer, not a scientist, so he is not qualified to make such a decision. In reality this is standard exemption language, so the decision would be made by the regulatory office, including their scientists.

They then go on to say that the peer review of the journal article reporting the research should somehow be enough transparency. This is simply ridiculous, since peer review of an article does not include data analysis, attempted replication, etc., which the Transparency Rule is designed make available. Peer review is not quality control.r />

Thanks to what is called the “reproducibility crisis” we now know that there is a lot of shaky peer reviewed science out there. The US National Academy of Sciences now has a standing Committee on Reproducibility and Replication. This ongoing crisis is not really surprising, given that globally there are millions of scientists burning hundreds of billions of dollars a year in research funding and judged by how many articles they publish. Publishing in a peer reviewed journal does not separate good science from bad science.

The Transparency Rule speaks directly to the reproducibility crisis. I have yet to see an attack piece that even mentions, much less addresses, the fairness principle behind this Transparency Rule. Most of the attacks are nothing more that simple minded anti-Trump diatribes.

The critical few that are thoughtful worry about important research being excluded. This is a genuine concern which the final Rule needs to deal with. But in any case jamming the comment system with hundreds of thousands of worthless attacks is a stupid thing to do.

People have the right to defend themselves against regulations based on bad science.

About the Author: David Wojick, Ph.D.

David Wojick is a journalist and policy analyst. He holds a doctorate in epistemology, specializing in the field of Mathematical Logic and Conceptual Analysis.

WINNING! An astounding document from the EPA: Promises Made, Promises Kept

500 Days of American Greatneess - Promises Made, Promises Kept

Anthony Watts June 5, 2018

1. Withdraw From The Paris Climate Accords
2. Ensure Clean Air & Water
3. Reduce Burdensome Government Regulations
4. Repeal The So Called Clean Power Plan
5. Repeal The Waters of The United States Rule
6. Promote Energy Dominance
7. Promote Science Transparency 8. End Sue &Settle
9. Promote the Auto Industry
I never thought I’d see such a thing, it’s as if the once feared and draconian agency has actually become an ally of the American people, as opposed to an ally for green group special interests.............. Promises Made and Kept (PDF)

EPA opens office of “continuous improvement”

Keeping EPA workers accountable and projects on schedule

May 15, 2018 by Adam Houser, 2 Comments @ CFACT

CFACT attended an event held by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt on Monday, May 14 in Washington DC to finally improve efficiency and accountability at EPA.

“Under budget and ahead of schedule” is the catchphrase used by President Trump to describe his intentions going into business ventures and government initiatives. Unfortunately, EPA has historically fallen well short of this mark.
In the past, the Agency has created a nightmare of bureaucratic red tape and costly mandates to business owners, developers, farmers, and anyone trying to make any sort of positive difference in this country in the private sector.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt may have just placed EPA back in line with President Trump’s ethos of efficiency, however.

At the announcement, which CFACT was invited to and attended, Pruitt announced the opening of the Office of Continuous Improvement, with the sole job of keeping EPA workers accountable and projects on schedule.

“That which is measured, improves,” said Pruitt at the announcement. Going further, Pruitt explained that with the new directives “We set real goals and we track those goals and reach real improvement.”

Further emphasizing the commitment to low costs and efficiency, the new Office of Continuous Improvement will require zero additional resources. According to a press release from EPA, “Through reorganization, EPA is using existing resources to support the Office of Continuous Improvement.”

Hopefully, this will continue to streamline the processes to clean up sites that are a real environmental problem, such as hazardous waste Superfund sites, around the nation.

This initiative comes on the heels of Pruitt announcing an end to “secret science” at EPA, which was notoriously abused by the Obama administration and past administrations to justify economy and freedom killing regulations without having to reveal the data that the regulations were based on.
The ending of secret science and the new office to ensure accountability at EPA have the potential to be a “one-two punch” in the ongoing fight to drain the EPA and climate swamp by Pruitt and President Trump.
                  

About the Author: Adam Houser   

Adam Houser coordinates student leaders for CFACT's collegians program and writes on issues of climate and energy.

The Unscrupulous Critics of Scott Pruitt

They can’t rest until the EPA goes back to the regulatory philosophy of Al Armendariz.

George Neumayr May 11, 2018

Under Obama, the EPA and the Sierra Club might as well have shared offices. EPA staffers would routinely hatch plots to cripple business in the name of this or that “scientific” scam. Al Armendariz, one of Obama’s regional EPA administrators, let the cat out of the bag in 2010 when he admitted that the agency regulated businesses with arbitrary severity. He bragged about this bullying regulation in a speech, likening the EPA’s regulatory regime to that of brutal Roman despots:

 I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting, but I’ll go ahead and tell you what I said. It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them. Then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.

Armendariz quit after these remarks triggered a backlash. But he soon found employment at the Sierra Club. He became a spearhead of its “Beyond Coal” program. Naturally, he is one of Scott Pruitt’s staunchest critics.
 

“Texans should be worried,” he said to Houston Public Media, referring to Pruitt’s proposed cuts to the EPA budget. “I wouldn’t be surprised if some polluters see this as an opportunity to cut corners, to look for loopholes, to try to take shortcuts.… Because they know the environmental cops are not going to be on the beat anymore.”..........To Read More.....

 

The Scott Pruitt Show Trial

His “crime” is that he won’t allow leftists at the EPA to use green ideology to harass business.

George Neumayr

The attacks on Trump cabinet officials intensify in direct proportion to the effectiveness of the policies they advocate. Scott Pruitt, Trump’s EPA administrator, is Exhibit A of this phenomenon. Because he is preventing green ideologues at the EPA from harassing businesses, because he is at the forefront of Trump’s deregulatory successes, the Sierra Club and other left-wing groups organized a smear campaign against him. That campaign has culminated in the show trial of grandstanding Congressmen who feign outrage at Pruitt’s lack of “ethics.”

All of this noise is just an attempt to “derail the president’s agenda,” as Pruitt said to the badgering pols at Thursday’s Congressional hearing. David Horowitz, long a student of the left’s tactics, notes that whatever the left claims is the “issue” represents nothing more than a pretext to advance the real issue, left-wing policies. In Pruitt’s case, this tactic takes the comically ironic form of prodigal Democrats, who spend the public’s money like drunken sailors, faking up outrage at Pruitt’s “spending habits.” ...........To Read More.....  

 

Scott Pruitt proposes a regulation to keep ‘secret science’ out of EPA

April 25, 2018 by Michael Bastasch, 3 Comments @ CFACT

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) plan to end the use of “secret science” to craft regulations will take the form of proposed regulation, making it harder for officials to skirt around or future administrations to repeal, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

Administrator Scott Pruitt first announced his ban on “secret science” in a March interview with TheDCNF. Pruitt will unveil the new policy on Tuesday in the form of a proposed rule, which, if finalized, will make it harder for future administrations to repeal.

“We need to make sure their data and methodology are published as part of the record,” Pruitt told TheDCNF in March. “Otherwise, it’s not transparent. It’s not objectively measured, and that’s important.”

Pruitt is scheduled to announce the data transparency proposal Tuesday afternoon, in the first time releasing specifics of the new policy. A proposed rule must go through a comment period before it can be finalized.

Republicans have pushed for transparency in EPA regulatory science for years, especially in the wake of the Obama administration relying on non-public data to justify billions of dollars in health benefits from reducing certain pollutants.

Pruitt’s proposed rule would apply prospectively to future regulatory actions, TheDCNF has learned, but EPA officials could link the data transparency rule with President Donald Trump’s executive order on regulations issued in 2017.

Trump ordered the creation of task forces to identify existing regulations ripe for repeal or reform.  That order would nicely dovetail with a finalized EPA data transparency rule.

Once finalized, regulations put under review will have the transparency standard applied. That means EPA officials will take a close look at studies and regulatory assessments underlying existing rules, especially those imposed in the Obama years.

The proposal will be similar to Texas Rep. Lamar Smith’s HONEST Act, which passed the House in March 2017. That bill required EPA to only use publicly available data when considering rule making.

Democrats and environmentalists opposed Pruitt’s data transparency plan. Opponents argue the policy would restrict the amount of studies EPA can rely on to craft regulations and could expose legally protected patient health data.

“He and some conservative members of Congress are setting up a nonexistent problem in order to prevent the EPA from using the best available science,” former Obama EPA administrators Gina McCarthy and Janet McCabe wrote in a New York Times op-ed.

“It is his latest effort to cripple the agency,” they argued. Reported benefits from EPA rules are “mostly attributable to the reduction in public exposure to fine particulate matter,” according to the White House Office of Management and Budget report. That’s equivalent to billions of dollars.

Those estimated benefits rely on two studies to regulate on fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, in the 1990s. The studies — by Harvard University and the American Cancer Society — have not publicly released their underlying data. The Obama EPA argued requiring the data be made public would violate the confidentiality of individuals that participated in those studies.

However, EPA’s proposed data transparency rule will provide for privacy concerns and for concerns from industry over releasing confidential business information. Many scientific journals already require data to be made public, meaning researchers have ways of protecting confidential information.

“This sort of data is already routinely made public for research use,” JunkScience.com publisher Steve Milloy wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed.

“In 2012 I was desperate for a way around the Obama EPA’s secrecy on the PM2.5 issue, I found out in 2012 that I could get California death-certificate data in electronic form,” wrote Milloy. “The state’s Health Department calls this sort of data ‘Death Public Use Files.’ They are scrubbed of all personal identifying and private medical information. Some of my colleagues used this data to prepare a 2017 study, which found PM2.5 was not associated with death.”

Follow Michael on Facebook and Twitter

This article originally appeared in The Daily Caller
                  
About the Author: Michael Bastasch   

 

Keep EPA reform alive!

April 10, 2018 by Craig Rucker, 1 Comment  @CFACT



EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is under attack and needs your help!

For years, EPA has been the most heavy-handed, overreaching federal bureaucracy in town. 

President Trump made an excellent choice in assigning Scott Pruitt the task of cleaning up the EPA “swamp” and transforming it into a smart, balanced protector of the environment.

Will you sign the petition right now to keep Scott Pruitt at EPA and keep his reforms alive?

A mob of Greens, Leftists, pressure groups, political partisans, and climate profiteers is engaged in a full-on smear campaign against Pruitt hoping to drive him from office.  They are exaggerating irrelevant, little issues hoping to “nitpick” Pruitt out.

Reform terrifies them.  Pruitt is a master reformer and that’s why they want him stopped!

Will you sign the petition and help CFACT stand up to these bullies?

The Left is shameless.  The same people who covered for Hillary Clinton when she placed national security at risk by using an insecure private email server, and turned the Clinton Foundation into a pay-to-play cash monster, are now shocked… shocked! to learn that Scott Pruitt put on extra security when his life was threatened and rented a condo for $1,500 per month.

Let’s be real: They couldn’t care less where Scott Pruitt lives. What they care mightily about is that he threatens their dreams of unlimited bureaucratic control by asking the tough questions about climate, energy and the environment they would like to keep us in the dark about.

Will you help CFACT stand up to this mob of big government Greens and help Scott Pruitt clean up the agency we rely on to keep our environment clean?

How do these people sleep at night? 

Obama’s EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy spent a whopping $630,000 between 2013 and 2017 for ten international junkets. “No problem.”

Lisa Jackson, Obama’s other EPA administrator, breaks the law setting up a secret email account and then deletes info demanded in a FOIA request? “Yawn … whatever.”

Obama’s EPA conducts “secret science” and refuses to share the scientific data it bases policy on?  “Nothing to see here folks, move along.”

Leave a woman in a submerged car on Chappaquiddick?  “Lion of the Senate."

CFACT has had enough of their smears, false allegations and double standards. We are sure you have too! We’re taking a stand.

Will you stand with us?

Scott Pruitt is a good man doing important work.  We need more like him.

Sign the petition. Forward it to as many friends as you can. 

Keep Scott Pruitt at EPA and keep reform alive!

About the Author: Craig Rucker

 

Craig Rucker is the executive director and co-founder of CFACT.

Don't Let the Left Do It to Pruitt

David Limbaugh Apr 06, 2018

The left's crusade against Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt should be seen for what it is -- a witch hunt. We don't need any more conservatives hanged by leftists who major in criminalizing political differences and minor in slander. How dare a Republican president appoint an environmental heretic to head an administrative agency the left views as its sole, separate and absolute property? This agency exists to serve the deep state -- the entrenched federal government bureaucracy that is tailor-made to advance the left's agenda and operate above accountability.

This conspiratorially organized assault against Pruitt is precisely what Barack Obama and his friends mean by community organizing. It is vicious, relentless street fighting aimed at discrediting Pruitt and taking him down because he is one of the rare administrative officials who won't put politics above the law and will stand up to those who do.....

The energy they are expending on this should tell you how important progressives view unelected, unaccountable administrative agencies in implementing their draconian regulations, which have been choking our individual liberties and wreaking havoc on our economy.

The left is blowing a lot of smoke about alleged improprieties with Pruitt's travel expenses. Thank goodness media conservatives, whose very existence leftists lament every day, are on the case. The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel, in a series of tweets, dismantled this bogus charge simply by comparing Pruitt's travel and security costs with those of his predecessors, whose similar expenses dwarf Pruitt's.

And when you add the disturbing factor that Pruitt has been the target of death threats, which have required greater security measures, the contrast between Pruitt's expenses and those of his dutifully liberal forerunners is even more pronounced. To Read More....

Scott Pruitt will end EPA’s use of ‘secret science’ to justify regulations

March 20, 2018 by Michael Bastasch, 1 Comment

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt will soon end his agency’s use of “secret science” to craft regulations.

“We need to make sure their data and methodology are published as part of the record,” Pruitt said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Otherwise, it’s not transparent. It’s not objectively measured, and that’s important.”

Pruitt will reverse long-standing EPA policy allowing regulators to rely on non-public scientific data in crafting rules. Such studies have been used to justify tens of billions of dollars worth of regulations.

EPA regulators would only be allowed to consider scientific studies that make their data available for public scrutiny under Pruitt’s new policy.  Also, EPA-funded studies would need to make all their data public.

“When we do contract that science out, sometimes the findings are published; we make that part of our rule-making processes, but then we don’t publish the methodology and data that went into those findings because the third party who did the study won’t give it to us,” Pruitt added.

“And we’ve said that’s fine — we’re changing that as well,” Pruitt told TheDCNF.

Conservatives have long criticized EPA for relying on scientific studies that published their findings but not the underlying data. However, Democrats and environmental activists have challenged past attempts to bring transparency to studies used in rule making.

Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith pushed legislation to end the use of what he calls “secret science” at EPA. Pruitt instituted another policy in 2017 backed by Smith against EPA-funded scientists serving on agency advisory boards.

“If we use a third party to engage in scientific review or inquiry, and that’s the basis of rulemaking, you and every American citizen across the country deserve to know what’s the data, what’s the methodology that was used to reach that conclusion that was the underpinning of what — rules that were adopted by this agency,” Pruitt explained.

Pruitt’s pending science transparency policy mirrors Smith’s HONEST Act, which passed the House in March 2017. Smith’s office was pleased to hear Pruitt was adopting another policy the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology chairman championed.

“The chairman has long worked toward a more open and transparent rule-making process at EPA, and he looks forward to any announcement from Administrator Pruitt that would achieve that goal,” committee spokeswoman Thea McDonald told TheDCNF.

Junk science crusader Steve Milloy also called on EPA to end its use of “secret science” in rule making, especially when it comes to studies on the toxicity of fine particulates in the air.

EPA has primarily relied on two 1990s studies linking fine particulate pollution to premature death. Neither studies have made their data public, but EPA used their findings to justify sweeping air quality regulations.

Reported benefits from EPA rules are “mostly attributable to the reduction in public exposure to fine particulate matter,” according to the White House Office of Management and Budget report. That’s equivalent to billions of dollars.

In fact, one of EPA’s most expensive regulation on the books, called MATS, derived most of its estimated benefits from reducing particulates not from reducing mercury, which the rule was ostensibly crafted to address.

EPA estimated MATS would cost $8.2 billion but yield between $28 billion to $77 billion in public health benefits. It’s a similar story for the Clean Power Plan, which EPA estimated would cost $8.4 billion and yield from $14 billion to $34 billion in health and climate benefits.

Democrats and environmentalists have largely opposed attempts to require EPA rely on transparent scientific data. Said data would restrict the amount of studies EPA can use, but a major objection is making data public would reveal confidential patient data, opponents argue.

“A lot of the data that EPA uses to protect public health and ensure that we have clean air and clean water relies on data that cannot be publicly released,” Union of Concerned Scientists representative Yogin Kothari told E&E News.

“It really hamstrings the ability of the EPA to do anything, to fulfill its mission,” Kothari said.
Milloy, however, countered and argued it’s a “red herring” to claim that forcing regulators to use public science data would harm patient privacy.

“The availability of such data sets is nothing new,” said Milloy, publisher of JunkScience.com and senior fellow at the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute.

“The state of California, for example, makes such data available under the moniker, ‘Public Use Death Files,’” Milloy said. “We used such data in the form of over two million anonymized death certificates in our recent California study on particulates and death.”

“Opponents of data transparency are just trying to hide the data from independent scrutiny,” Milloy added. “But the studies that use this data are taxpayer-financed, and they are used to regulate the public.”

Follow Michael on Facebook and Twitter

This article originally appeared in The Daily Caller

  About the Author: Michael Bastasch - Michael Bastasch writes on energy, climate and the environment for the Daily Caller.

Is the Red Team dead? Maybe not

March 16, 2018 by David Wojick, Ph.D., 0 Comments

The ever-green New York Tines is trying to report that the climate change Red Team exercise proposed by EPA Administrator Pruitt is dead. I say “trying” because if you read their long article carefully it may not be so. What is really going on is a bit of a political struggle within the Trump Administration. What eventually happens remains to be seen.

Pruitt has been talking about the Red Team exercise for a long time now. The idea is to have an official public debate over climate science, between alarmists and skeptics. As Pruitt repeatedly says, Americans have a right to know about this deep debate, which was carefully hidden from view by the Obama Administration.

According to the NYT, the Trump White House chief of staff is trying to stop the Red Team exercise. Here is the NYT article’s very first sentence. While long it clearly says the effort is killed:

“John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, has killed an effort by the head of the Environmental Protection Agency to stage public debates challenging climate change science, according to three people familiar with the deliberations, thwarting a plan that had intrigued President Trump even as it set off alarm bells among his top advisers.

My take is that this is an election year and the Trumpers are focused on showing in November that they have helped, not hurt, the Republican Party. That was the focus of the State of the Union speech.

“Don’t rock the boat in an election year” is a political maxim and a Red Team debate would certainly rock a lot of political boats. But the climate change issue is far too important to sweep under the political rug.

In fact the NYT piece mentions toward the very end that Pruitt may well be moving ahead with the exercise. They say this:

“In the weeks since that meeting, however, Mr. Pruitt said the red team, blue team debates were still under consideration. In January, he told Congress that a report in E and E News, a news organization focusing on energy and the environment that first reported that the White House had killed the plan, was false. White House opposition to the debates was “untrue,” he said under questioning by a senator.”

What they fail to mention is that Pruitt and the EPA do not answer to the President. EPA is what is called an “independent agency,” like the Federal Reserve. It is not part of the Trump Cabinet and it does not take orders from the White House chief of staff. So Pruitt can, and may well, go ahead with the Red Team exercise. He might even wait until after the November elections.

 

One wonders how a journalist writing this last paragraph could have written the first. Clearly the real story is about the disagreement between Pruitt and Kelly. Maybe the NYT “buried the lead” because they preferred the possibly false story that the Red Team is dead.

 

The NYT article also talks about having to involve the whole range of federal science agencies in a Red Team exercise, which would certainly then fall under the White House jurisdiction. But in reality EPA is the only federal agency that is truly under the climate change gun.

 

Pruitt is facing the Obama-era EPA false finding that CO2 endangers our health and welfare. This so-called “endangerment finding” requires him to regulate CO2 as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, which it most certainly is not. This forced false move is by far the biggest thing going on at EPA. No other federal agency is facing anything remotely like this, so it makes perfect sense if EPA alone runs the Red Team exercise.

 

In fact the NYT acknowledges this extreme situation, but in passing as usual. They say this of the endangerment finding and the Red Team:

“That finding is the legal backbone for almost all federal climate policy and requires the government to regulate greenhouse gas emissions in some manner. A government critique of climate science could lay the groundwork for challenging the endangerment finding in court.” 

So all things considered it would make perfect sense if EPA Administrator Pruitt told White House chief of staff Kelly “You’re not the boss of me” and went ahead with the Red Team exercise. Let’s hope that he does, even if it means waiting until after the November elections. Climate change alarmism is far too dangerous to simply ignore on political grounds.

 

 

About the Author: David Wojick, Ph.D.   

David Wojick is a journalist and policy analyst. He holds a doctorate in epistemology, specializing in the field of Mathematical Logic and Conceptual Analysis.

So long to 'sue and settle' at the EPA

by Ben Hurst March 13, 2018

“The days of regulation through litigation are over.” So said EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt in October 2017.  His intentions were right, but the bitter aftertaste of "sue and settle" lingers on. In Missouri, we labor still under the yoke of such regulation.

In February 2016, a special interest group filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to order an all-too-willing EPA to promulgate new rules for nutrients in Missouri lakes. In December 2016, the EPA agreed to issue new rules by December 2017 — warp speed for a rulemaking concerning more than 2,482 reservoirs in three different ecoregions — and, as often happens in these cases, paid for the special interest group’s attorneys’ fees to boot. The court blessed the “settlement” and issued an order with the force of law.

So, a special interest group thinks Missouri needs nutrient criteria, and now it will get them, with free two-day shipping.

The problem is that, other than a half dozen activists in St. Louis and one judge in Jefferson City, none of Missouri’s six million citizens ever had any say in the matter. Those remaining six million Missourians have real and substantial interests, both in their waterways and in the use of their other resources that are no less important than those of special interest groups in St. Louis.........To Read More.....

Scott Pruitt is leading the EPA toward greatness

By Former Rep. Tim Huelskamp and H. Sterling Burnett, opinion contributors

In the first season of Donald’s Trump “Presidential Apprentice,” there’s no question who the star hire of his administration has been: EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.

 

As a candidate for president, Trump argued the massive regulatory state headquartered in Washington was destroying jobs, restricting economic growth, and preventing America from becoming great again. Trump particularly directed his condemnation at EPA, which had grossly overstepped its legal authority by imposing regulations that did little to protect human health or the environment, but were costing the United States jobs, undermining our international economic competitiveness, and raising energy prices..............To Read More...

He’s Right! Scott Pruitt Hits Ball Out of the Park on Climate Change

Not only can he take the heat but he can explain it.

Joseph L. Bast @ American Spectator

On February 6, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt was interviewed by Gerard Ramalho on Nevada’s KSNV-TV. What he said about climate change produced the usual cat calls and hisses from liberal environmentalists and their stable of paid pseudo-scientists, but the rest of us recognized it as being a solid-gold presentation.

Pruitt began by acknowledging Earth’s climate is constantly changing and that “we contribute to it.” But measuring the human impact, he said, is very difficult, and whether it constitutes an “existential threat” or a possible benefit to humanity is still unknown.

Surveys and petitions show most scientists and the general public agree with Pruitt, not environmental activists. Elections show most voters in the United States agree with Pruitt, too. His summary of the situation is absolutely correct.

Liberal pundits — most of whom never took a science course in their life (or, like Al Gore, flunked the one course they did take) — dismiss anyone who dissents from their forecasts of environmental catastrophes as ignorant “climate change deniers.” They have it exactly backwards: Climate change skeptics understand the science far better than the alarmists. It’s why they are skeptical.

 

“We know that humans have most flourished during times of… warming trends,” Pruitt also said, adding, “I think there’s assumptions made that because the climate is warming, that that necessarily is a bad thing.”

Again, this is absolutely correct. Historically, warmer periods have been accompanied by higher crop yields and rates of population growth, rising prosperity, and even less conflict and fewer wars. Cold periods or periods with falling temperatures, in contrast, are often accompanied by extreme weather, crop failures, starvation, and armed conflicts.

Environmentalists either know “warmer is better” and seek to hide this inconvenient truth from the public, or the only research they’ve done is reading the fundraising letters of silly alarmist groups such as Greenpeace and Union of Concerned Scientists. They need to get up to speed on this issue before they claim moral and intellectual superiority over climate change “deniers.”

Administrator Pruitt then hit a whopping home run when he asked, “Do we really know what the ideal surface temperature should be in the year 2100 in the year 2018?” The obvious answer is “of course not.” Why assume today’s temperature is ideal or magically perfect when we know human populations (and wildlife) have flourished in other, often warmer conditions? This answer blows away all the groundless speculation about the “social cost of carbon” and what ought to be done today to affect the weather a century from now.

Pruitt’s interview demonstrates he is the best EPA administrator the agency has ever had, and arguably the best cabinet pick President Donald Trump has made in his still-young administration. That Pruitt has the courage to confront environmental activists regarding their lies and misinformation on this key issue is a gift to all the “forgotten Americans” who voted for Donald Trump for president.

Keep it up, Mr. Pruitt! We love you, man!

Joseph Bast (think@heartland.org) is a director and senior fellow with The Heartland Institute, a nonprofit organization he cofounded in 1984 and led as CEO until retiring earlier this year.

Has Scott Pruitt Brought Armageddon to the EPA?

Calvin Beisner

According to two former Administrators, current federal Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has set the agency back by anything from several years to as much as three decades due to “regulatory rollbacks, mass attrition and budget cuts."

That sounds ominous. It isn’t.

At present EPA is operating under FY2017 funding levels. While projected FY2018 funding cuts will be substantial, they have not yet taken place.

The FY2018 budget’s 28% reduction for the Superfund program and $427 million cut to geographic programs such as the Great Lakes, Puget Sound, and Chesapeake Bay are reasons for concern. But EPA is known for its vast labyrinth of complex and convoluted regulations. Like any federal agency, it has bloat and inefficiency, problems endemic to large bureaucracies. So some rollback of regulations is welcome........To Read More....

Scott Pruitt: No More Basting the Gravy Train

Environmental lawyers are furious as their access to easy money runs dry.

Greg Walcher December 13, 2017

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt recently issued a directive to end a 20-year string of “sue and settle” cases that have funneled untold millions of tax dollars to environmental organizations. Predictably, those groups and their allies are apoplectic about it. Many of these groups have grown from grassroots citizen movements to gigantic cash-flush conglomerates, with much of the cash coming from the government they appear to be fighting. Many now have separate legal arms with hundreds of attorneys, whose primary job is to sue the government and keep the cash flowing.

These organizations vehemently object to the phrase “sue and settle,” saying it oversimplifies a very complex legal procedure. But in fact, the strategy isn’t really very complicated at all.

Congress has created a mess, with all sorts of processes and procedures agencies must follow in making rules and decisions. Every step of the way, those decisions are subject to potential lawsuits. For entirely different reasons, Congress also authorized the government to pay the legal bills of people who are forced to sue to defend their interests against government overreach. It didn’t take long for clever organizations, and their allies in government, to figure out how to turn that combination into a massive public policy ATM.........“Sue and settle” is a gravy train never envisioned by Congress, and it cannot withstand public scrutiny. These attorneys ought to recall the ethics of Paper Chase star John Housman, who once touted financial managers who “make money the old fashioned way — they earn it.”...........To Read More.....

Pruitt Is Cleaning Up the EPA

Political Editors · Jul. 18, 2017 

One of the best decisions Donald Trump has made thus far into his presidency was his choice of Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA may prove to be a textbook example of how corruption works to twist an ostensibly apolitical government agency into a primary proponent of a political cause. But Pruitt is taking the bull by the horns.

The Wall Street Journal recently noted that Pruitt has been aggressively working on replacing Barack Obama-era science advisers. In the month of June alone the EPA notified 38 advisers that their committee appointments would not be renewed. While the Left has claimed that Trump is engaged in a “war on science,” the reality is exactly the opposite. A bit of context is needed to better understand the issue at hand.............By reforming this practice, Pruitt is not working to quash science. On the contrary, he’s promoting it by dismantling a rigged system........ To Read More...

My Take - EPA has been a lava flow of scientifically dubious regulations because it was founded in corruption in order to ban DDT and nothing has changed. This is a good first start because as an exterminator involved in my industry's affairs I know scientists who are experts in pest control who speak out against EPA's insane pesticide regulations are deliberately not included in these panels. 

The next step should be the elimination of all....and I mean all..... the regional offices. Every state has an EPA and there's no need for these over staffed, overpaid, over regulating - at times making things up as they go along - activists on government payroll. Cut their budget in half and then in half again until they're gone. Once that happens we won't have to worry about as many activists hunkering down waiting for a new administration so they can get out of control again.

The Sue-and-Settle Racket

An attorney general takes on environmental groups’ war on fossil fuels.

 

By Stephen Moore — March 20, 2014 @ National Review

 

(Editor's Note:  I originally linked this article in 2014, but since that time I met Stephen Moore and asked for permission to publish his works.  Permission he graciously granted.  Since a federal court has ruled the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can list private property as critical habitat even if no members of an endangered species exist on the property, I think it important to publish this now.  RK)

 

For four years now, radical environmental groups have teamed with the Obama administration’s Interior Department and hijacked the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to bottle up development in many areas out West. The big villain that the Left is trying to thwart, of course, is the oil-and-gas industry. The ESA is blocking drilling operations in many prime energy-rich locations.

But now this scam may come to an end. On Monday Oklahoma’s attorney general, Scott Pruitt, filed what could be a landmark lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), arguing that the so-called “sue and settle” procedure for listing animals on the endangered list is a violation of the federal ESA statute. In the complaint, filed on behalf of the State of Oklahoma, Mr. Pruitt charges that “by entering into private settlements with special interest litigants, FWS has attempted to circumvent the legislative and regulatory process and make fundamental changes to its ESA-imposed obligations.”

The State of Oklahoma and energy companies are seeking “injunctive relief” that would overturn the designation of up to several hundred species that have been added to the threatened or endangered list through the “sue and settle” process. Under sue and settle, left-wing environmental groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and WildLife Guardians, petition FWS to list a species as nearing extinction, and then shortly thereafter — sometimes in a matter of days — sue the federal government for inaction. Under the Obama administration, the feds have been increasingly likely to enter into a consent agreement with the environmentalists to fast-forward the decision-making process (see below chart).


Pruitt’s action comes just a week ahead of a widely anticipated ESA listing of the lesser prairie chicken, a range bird the size of a small turkey. This colorful bird is found in states such as Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and New Mexico, and, according to a spokesman at Continental Resources, a major oil-and-gas driller based in Oklahoma, listing it as an endangered species “could disrupt drilling and exploration on hundreds of thousands of very promising oil and gas lands” in the Southwest.

Mr. Pruitt tells me that “the sue-and-settle timelines are way too short for the FWS to make determinations based on a thorough review of the science.” He also claims that the FWS has violated federal law by “ignoring state and local conservation measures” in the affected states despite millions of dollars invested.

Here’s a little secret: This fight isn’t really about saving prairie chickens. Environmental groups like the CBD make no secret on their websites of their desire to shut down local oil and gas drilling in order to combat global climate change. In short, they have in their sights fossil fuels and anything that promotes them. Currently about 250 species are being considered for addition to the endangered-species list thanks to the sue-and-settle racket.

In addition to the prairie chicken, the sage grouse — another pheasant that populates the western states — is also under consideration for inclusion on the ESL. According to the Resources First Foundation, a group that promotes resource conservation and responsible land use, “millions of acres of land could be removed from drilling, farming, ranching, and mining” if these birds are designated as facing extinction. RFF says that the bird populations have fallen in recent years, but because of the drought out West, not private and lawful commerce.

Sue and settle is especially pernicious because it allows the FWS to bypass the normal scientific-inquiry process. Oftentimes cozy relationships between anti-development green groups and Obama-administration bureaucrats grease the process for an endangered listing — whether it is warranted or not.

At stake here is whether millions of acres of some of the most promising oil and gas lands will be opened for production.   Right now some of the ESA rules require a development quarantine zone of four square miles around an area where these birds are discovered. Ranching, farming, and mining would also be prohibited in these areas.  All this purportedly to save a chicken.

Westerners are right to wonder whether this is all part of a “war against the West in Washington.”

 

Conservatives Must Rally Behind Scott Pruitt for EPA

What’s worked in the Sooner State will work everywhere.

Stephen Moore @ American Spectator

Environmental groups have declared war against Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Don’t be surprised if Mr. Pruitt’s nomination hearing this week degenerates into a three-ring circus of obnoxious and disruptive Big Green antics, the new M.O. of the left these days.

Pruitt’s nomination and the case brought against him by the Sierra Club and others have little to do with Mr. Pruitt — whose qualifications for the job having served as two state attorney general in Oklahoma are virtually unchallengeable. What is going on here is the clashing of two opposite philosophies of left and right on how best to safeguard our air and water and our federal lands and what the greens now call “the climate.”

The green belief is that the future of the planet depends on halting all economic projects if they pose the slightest risk to the environment. This zero tolerance lunacy doesn’t balance the economy and ecology, but subjugates‎ jobs and development to environmental purity.

We have seen this position in the extreme in recent years with green groups opposing all fossil fuel development in America under the “leave it in the ground” campaign. That is, no drilling, no mining, no oil or gas development — and certainly no coal. This strategy has already put tens of thousands of American coal miners out of jobs (even as China and India build new coal plants every week) and would put nearly 10 million Americans in oil and gas and related occupations out of jobs.

To the climate change lobby, this is a small price to pay. Once upon a time the left touted no net loss of jobs due to “green jobs,” but those have proven to be a fantasy and it turns out the solar panels are mostly made in China. A lot of good that does the out of work coal miners in West Virginia and Wyoming.
Mr. Pruitt represents a different mindset. He tells me that good environmental policy “can mean a cleaner environment with increased, not reduced economic production.” In other words, a win-win for nature and workers. It may seem pie in the sky, but it’s worked in Oklahoma where oil and gas production surged over the last decade while emissions of pollutants in the Sooner State fell. Pruitt was the attorney general when all of this happened. Yet he is tagged as pro-industry and anti-environment.

Oklahoma was no aberration. Another big energy producing state also doubled oil and gas output while cleaning up the air — with reductions in carbon monoxide, sulfur, lead and other pollutants.
‎
Mr. Pruitt is being used by the radical greens as a piñata. The New York Times says he is unqualified because he dares question the science on global warming. He has thousands of scientists on his side. Big Green wants to derail his nomination not because he is a threat to the environment but because his philosophy is anathema to theirs. They will insist that the head of the EPA must subscribe to their religion on climate change while opposing all fossil fuel production and all development of our tens of millions of acres of federal lands.

That has been the case for eight years with EPA rules becoming a crushing burden on American small businesses and manufacturers. The EPA is now one of America’s leading job killers. It exports jobs to China, India, and Mexico where environmental protections are much worse and carbon emissions are much higher.

Pruitt wants a pro-jobs, pro-environment EPA. The left doesn’t. He wants states to have more control of their resources. The left doesn’t. Mr. Pruitt could be the best head of EPA ever, proving that free markets can lead to a safer environment. That’s what really terrifies the left
.

The Sue-and-Settle Racket

March 20, 2014 By Stephen Moore

For four years now, radical environmental groups have teamed with the Obama administration’s Interior Department and hijacked the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to bottle up development in many areas out West. The big villain that the Left is trying to thwart, of course, is the oil-and-gas industry. The ESA is blocking drilling operations in many prime energy-rich locations.

But now this scam may come to an end. On Monday Oklahoma’s attorney general, Scott Pruitt, filed what could be a landmark lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), arguing that the so-called “sue and settle” procedure for listing animals on the endangered list is a violation of the federal ESA statute. In the complaint, filed on behalf of the State of Oklahoma, Mr. Pruitt charges that “by entering into private settlements with special interest litigants, FWS has attempted to circumvent the legislative and regulatory process and make fundamental changes to its ESA-imposed obligations.”.....

Under sue and settle, left-wing environmental groups......petition FWS to list a species as nearing extinction, and then shortly thereafter — sometimes in a matter of days — sue the federal government for inaction........ Many small towns west of the Mississippi could be economically wiped out by the ESA. That’s why Mr. Pruitt’s suit is so important. If he loses in court, and if the prairie chicken is listed as threatened, the real endangered species will be Americans with good-paying jobs. The scary thing is that might just be the point......To Read More......

My Take - This is a good first step, but the real solution is to repeal the ESA and start over again.  One of the things we need to understand is that when this was first proposed and voted on by the Congress there was little discussion and few negative attitudes about ESA. Most had 'romantic' species such as elk, buffalo and the bald eagle in mind. However the stories about the deliberate decimation of the buffalo and the passenger pigeon were clearly on their minds and they wanted to stop people from deliberately destroying species. They never had a clue what was really behind the ESA. The greenies did.

Please review my articles, ESA Outrages, Part 1, ESA Outrages, Part 2 and ESA Outrages, Part 3.

As for now the ESA is nothing short of a land grab by the federal govenment at the behest of irrational, misanthropic and morally defective nature worshippers in the green movement.  If this is to be fixed the ESA must be repealed and they have to start over again. Amendments to this act and court judgements are like putting a coat of paint on a rotten house and expecting it to be fixed.  While I applaud this effort we must understand - even if the court finds in the state's favor the activists, in and out of government, will either ignore the courts, appeal the decision to death, or find some new 'reasoning' that allow them to continue down their insane path or get the president of issue an order in support of their actions.  Repeal is he only answer.