EPA head: We don’t need to justify our regulations with data

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Examiner.com:

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy took a drumming yesterday when she refused to release the ‘secret science’ her agency used when drafting new regulations. Testifying before the House Science, Space and Technology committee, Rep. Lamar Smith (R) began the Q&A by asking McCarthy why she wouldn’t release the studies and data in which her regulations are based. Rep. Smith told McCarthy that his ‘secret science’ reform act would make the data public without interfering in the EPA’s primary job and maintaining the confidentiality of third parties.

Rep. Smith also quoted Obama’s science adviser, John Holdren, saying “The data on which regulatory decisions are based should be made available to the committee and should be made public. Why don’t you agree with the president’s science adviser?” McCarthy replied that while she supports transparency in the regulatory process, the bill would make public the personal information of the people working on the science.

Smith reiterated that in his secret science reform act, personal information would be redacted but the underlying studies and data that are being used to justify costly regulations would be made public so that other scientists and the American people can review it. This is especially important as the EPA has a 60-day comment period after a new proposal is issued, but the science behind the new regulations is not included. Smith’s new bill would rectify that issue.

McCarthy also said she “doesn’t actually need the raw data in order to develop science. That’s not how it’s done.”

Rep. Smith: “But why don’t you give us the data you have and why can’t you get that data you do have? Surely you have the data that you based the regulations on?”
McCarthy: “EPA actually has the authority and the need to actually get information that we have provided to you.”
Rep. Smith: “You’re saying you can’t give us the information because it is personal and then you’re saying you don’t have the information. Which is it?”
McCarthy: “There is much information we don’t have the authority to release.”

Rep. Smith reiterated again that any personal information would be redacted and once again asked why she won’t release this information after meeting all the criteria McCarthy used to justify not revealing the information. Rep. Smith reminded her that every other agency does this, so why can’t the EPA simply redact this personal information and release the underlying science on which the EPA’s regulations are based?

McCarthy stressed that the science is generated through the peer-reviewed process and not by the agency itself, prompting Rep. Smith to say that by not showing the American people and the Congress the studies and data they used to make new regulations, it looks like the EPA has something to hide. Rep. Smith said there was no good reason other scientists couldn’t review the data, no good reason his committee couldn’t review it, and most important, the American people can’t review it.

Changing topics, Rep. Smith asked McCarthy about the Clean Power Plan, reminding her that after spending enormous amounts of money and implementing burdensome regulations, increasing the costs of electricity that would hurt the poorest Americans, it would only lower global temperatures 1/100 of a degree. “How do you justify such an expensive, burdensome, onerous rule that isn’t going to do much good?…Isn’t this all pain and no gain?”

McCarthy admitted the goal of the Clean Power Plan was to show strong domestic action which can trigger strong global action, e.g., getting other countries to follow our lead. McCarthy refused to say if Rep. Smith’s analysis of the minuscule effect on global temperatures was correct, stating again it was more about leading on a global scale. She also refused to give Rep. Smith a timetable on when he could expect supporting documentation that he had been requesting for months.

Later in the hearing, Rep Dana Rohrabacher (R) was shocked that McCarthy did not have any idea what percentage of the atmosphere was made up of carbon dioxide (CO2). Stunned by this admission, Rohrabacher said, “You’re head of the EPA and you did not know? …Now you are basing policies that impact dramatically on the American people and you didn’t know what the content of CO2 in the atmosphere was… the justification for the very policies you’re talking about?”

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They gotta get their money out of us all before this ‘Maunder minimum’ happens in ~2020-2030.
When that happens the sun’s solar patterns cancel one another out and it gets cold, really cold.
The Thames River freezing cold.
Our planet’s last ‘Maunder minimum’ was 370 years ago.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3156594/Is-mini-ICE-AGE-way-Scientists-warn-sun-sleep-2020-cause-temperatures-plummet.html
No wonder the EPA is sounding desperate.

“We don’t need no stinking data.”

McCarthy: “There is much information we don’t have the authority to release.”

This is complete bullsh*t. It most certainly is NOT how science is conducted.

@DrJohn: How is scientific data which we are to be led to believe presents a dire threat to human kind is secret? Wouldn’t such data CONFIRM what the left is promoting about global warming/climate change?

What Ms. McCarthy is saying is that her agency and the rest of the administration use a different kind of science to make decisions. It’s not physical science. It’s political science. That does not need the support of data.

She sounds just like William Ruckelshaus, the first head of the EPA, when he unilaterally issued the ban on DDT. He had not attended a single one of the hearings on the chemical, which went on over a period of seven months, and issued a report completely refuting all charges of harm caused by it. He banned it anyway and then stonewalled and refused to release any data to support his actions.

@Javapoppa:

Since Ruckelshaus arbitrarily and capriciously banned DDT, an estimated cases of malaria have caused immense suffering and poverty in the developing world.***

Of these largely avoidable cases, people died.****

The asterisks will be filled in live at the link.
http://junksciencearchive.com/malaria_clock.html
It is ever growing.
More people died because of the DDT ban than Hitler and his allies killed in all of WWII.

McCarthy: “There is much information we don’t have the authority to release.”

As the EPA is not part of national defense or national security, there is no reason why they can not release information to the Authority (ie. Congress) that created the agency. Hold this jackass in contempt of Congress, have Ms. McCarthy taken in custody, then bring in the next agency pecking order officer in the chain of command, and ask the same questions. These anal-retentive, arrogant, politically-corrupted bureaucracy worms must be put back in their place.

@Ditto: Well, there is one very sound and valid reason they can’t release their data; it would reveal the lie of “global warming”.

@Bill and Ditto: Ask the Chinese. They are pretty good at hacking into our data. Perhaps they could find out for us.