Congress, Environment, Politics, Society

EPA Moves Toward Limits on Greenhouse Gases

In what could be one of the most significant regulatory changes since its founding, the EPA has moved toward imposing limits on greenhouse gases with a finding that such gases now present a “serious problem . . . for future generations.” The move could have widespread environmental benefits apart from climate change in forcing more fuel efficient cars and greater limitations on power plants and industrial sources.

The EPA finding of endangerment prepares allows for the EPA to act if Congress fails to do so. The finding will unite powerful industry lobby groups for utilities, car manufacturers and others in seeking to delay or stop the change. More worrisome is the fact that such regulations take a ridiculously long time — even without such concerting opposition. That would mean that the new Administration could easily stop the process. The Bush Administration previously opposed moved to use the Clean Air At to address climate change, but the Supreme Court found that such regulations is allowed — requiring, however, the “endangerment finding” issued by the EPA.

Here is the release from the EPA:

WASHINGTON – On January 1, 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will, for the first time, require large emitters of heat-trapping emissions to begin collecting greenhouse gas (GHG) data under a new reporting system. This new program will cover approximately 85 percent of the nation’s GHG emissions and apply to roughly 10,000 facilities.

“This is a major step forward in our effort to address the greenhouse gases polluting our skies,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “For the first time, we begin collecting data from the largest facilities in this country, ones that account for approximately 85 percent of the total U.S. emissions. The American public, and industry itself, will finally gain critically important knowledge and with this information we can determine how best to reduce those emissions.”

EPA’s new reporting system will provide a better understanding of where GHGs are coming from and will guide development of the best possible policies and programs to reduce emissions. The data will also allow businesses to track their own emissions, compare them to similar facilities, and provide assistance in identifying cost effective ways to reduce emissions in the future. This comprehensive, nationwide emissions data will help in the fight against climate change.

Greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, are produced by burning fossil fuels and through industrial and biological processes. Fossil fuel and industrial GHG suppliers, motor vehicle and engine manufacturers, and facilities that emit 25,000 metric tons or more of CO2 equivalent per year will be required to report GHG emissions data to EPA annually. This threshold is equivalent to about the annual GHG emissions from 4,600 passenger vehicles.

The first annual reports for the largest emitting facilities, covering calendar year 2010, will be submitted to EPA in 2011. Vehicle and engine manufacturers outside of the light-duty sector will begin phasing in GHG reporting with model year 2011. Some source categories included in the proposed rule are still under review.

More information on the new reporting system and reporting requirements: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/ghgrulemaking.html

It is a great holiday gift for environmentalists and public health advocates. It is a particularly wonderful gift for our children who will bear the costs of these pollutants to a greater degree than ourselves.

Source:PhySorg

171 thoughts on “EPA Moves Toward Limits on Greenhouse Gases”

  3. Tony thank you. I have been a reader of skepticalscience.com for almost a year now. I have many sites I visit. The one thing I have learned is to read the comment sections for refutations of a post. I have made up my mind on the issue and all the evidence that I see points to a more political agenda than an actual scientific one. Is there Global Warming? yes. Is all of it caused by man? No

    at least you will be able to avoid making statements so extravagantly false that they destroy your credibility even before anybody bothers to respond to you.

    For every action there is reaction. For every argument there is a counter argument. The science is not settled, however I do think it will be in the next 20-30 years as more satellite temperature data becomes available. A warming world is far better than a cooling one. The colder the planet the more you burn to keep warm. The more you burn the more CO2 gets added to the atmosphere. It has been a very cold winter in both hemisphere’s the last two years. You can call me a denialist or what ever name you would like to assign to me but we are soon becoming the majority.

  4. bdaman, I appreciate your eagerness to dismiss the mainstream scientific position, but I urge you if you have any scientific curiosity at all to delve a bit deeper into the scientific sources I have provided you. Unlike the nonsense you’ll find on Watts’ silly blog, these chaps are real and they know their stuff. Even if you still find yourself unconvinced, at least you will be able to avoid making statements so extravagantly false that they destroy your credibility even before anybody bothers to respond to you.

  5. It didn’t take me long to find the first bogus statement.

    Because of fossil fuel burning, atmospheric CO is at
    its highest level in at least 2 million years. And it’s still
    going up! The “human CO is tiny” argument misleads
    by only giving you half the picture.

    My first clue was, “Because of fossil fuel burning” it would of been more believable if it also said, and “natural variations”

    Various proxy measurements have been used to attempt to determine atmospheric carbon dioxide levels millions of years in the past. These include boron and carbon isotope ratios in certain types of marine sediments, and the number of stomata observed on fossil plant leaves. While these measurements give much less precise estimates of carbon dioxide concentration than ice cores, there is evidence for very high CO2 volume concentrations between 200 and 150 Ma of over 3,000 ppm and between 600 and 400 Ma of over 6,000 ppm.[5] In more recent times, atmospheric CO2 concentration continued to fall after about 60 Ma. About 34 Ma, the time of the Eocene-Oligocene extinction event and when the Antarctic ice sheet started to take its current form, CO2 is found to have been about 760 ppm,[22] and there is geochemical evidence that volume concentrations were less than 300 ppm by about 20 Ma. Low CO2 concentrations may have been the stimulus that favored the evolution of C4 plants, which increased greatly in abundance between 7 and 5 Ma.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere

    Oh thats right it says atmospheric CO is at
    its highest level in at least 2 million years. Wow thats a long time.

  7. Bdaman,

    What’s important is not if the Earth has ever been warmer in the past due to other causes but the current warming trend is caused by human actions. If you actually had science to support your arguments you wouldn’t misrepresent the issue at every opportunity…

  9. Bdaman,

    You have frequently made arguments like this:

    Temp record is unreliable
    U.S. weather stations have been located next to exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. 89 percent of the stations fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 metres away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source.

    Here is what Skeptical Science has to say about that argument:

    Independent studies using different software, different methods, and different data sets yield very similar results. The increase in temperatures since 1975 is a consistent feature of all reconstructions. This increase cannot be explained as an artifact of the adjustment process, the decrease in station numbers, or other non-climatological factors.

    If you would like to learn more (including why all of your huffing and puffing about ‘Climategate’ was, in the words of the Bard, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing) you should check out:

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/surface-temperature-measurements-advanced.htm

    And as for your allegations about Michael Mann ‘hiding the decline’, what do you say about the climate change deniers truncating the last 35 years of solar output from their graphs in order to hide the fact that it’s been diverging from temperature change in that period? The former, though not reflecting well on the researchers involved, doesn’t call the overall consensus of the climate research community into question while the latter is cherry picking data in order to create the false impression that the evidence says the opposite of what it actually says – a far more egregious offense. So which is it – were you ignorant that you were quoting misleading propaganda or were you lying to us intentionally?

  12. Slarti the same can be said about Michael Mann leaving out the Medieval Warming Period in the Hockey Stick Graph, you know Hide the Decline.

    OK this is from NASA not a youtube video

    Earth’s orbit around and orientation toward the Sun change over spans of many thousands of years. In turn, these changing “orbital mechanics” force climate to change because they change where and how much sunlight reaches Earth. (Please see for more details.) Thus, changing Earth’s exposure to sunlight forces climate to change. According to scientists’ models of Earth’s orbit and orientation toward the Sun indicate that our world should be just beginning to enter a new period of cooling — perhaps the next ice age.

    http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/big-questions/what-are-the-primary-causes-of-the-earth-system-variability/

  13. Bdaman,

    Apparently your solar theory breaks down…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Sf_UIQYc20&feature=player_embedded

    Herman,

    If you think that Bdaman’s arguments are of superior quality to mine, then you should check out the skeptical science website that Tony linked to above (which is where I found the video). I think that most of the people here can see the egregious double standard that you and Bdaman are using – any study that you believe (in your ignorance) supports your position is unquestionably true and any study which is contrary to your view is discredited by any means available whether true or not. In my opinion this shows a serious lack of intellectual integrity

    Tony,

    Thanks for the link to skeptical science – it looks like it has everything necessary to debunk any of Bdaman’s arguments. For instance, the following link debunks his assertion that there is no scientific consensus (Bdaman, I think you’ll find the explanation of scientific consensus educational if you can understand it…):

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-basic.htm

    Much easier than wading through the crap he post to debunk it primarily… 😉

  15. In fact, there is near unanimity that the earth is warming and that this is probably caused by human activities

    Oh please tell me that 97 percent of climate scientist agree and then point me to the bogus survey.

  16. Bdaman:

    they all have tunnel vision. Since Al Gore is their hero, what he says is true.

  17. the earth is being controlled by the sun. Period end of story. There are some heat sinks that add and subtract energy but the sun makes the weather.

    Man having any calculable effect on weather is like saying a flea on a dogs ass has the dog by the tail.

  18. “1934 has long been considered the warmest year of the past century.”

    Not on this planet! The United States only occupies a small proportion of the earth’s surface, and 1934 is something like the 47th hottest year on record, way down the list.

    Tony are you not reading or is it low comprehension.

    Since then, NASA GISS has “adjusted” the U.S. data for 1934 downward and 1998 upward (see December 25, 2010 post by Ira Glickstein) in an attempt to make 1998 warmer than 1934 and seemingly erased the original rather large lead of 1934 over 1998.

    A case in point is the still ongoing race between 1934 and 1998 to be the hottest for US annual mean temperature, the subject of one of the emails released in January of this year by NASA GISS in response to a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request. The 2007 message from Dr. Makiko Sato to Dr. James Hansen traces the fascinating story of that hot competition. See the January WUWT and my contemporary graphic that was picked up by several websites at that time.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/25/do-we-care-if-2010-is-the-warmist-year-in-history/

  19. Bdaman:

    you go. Good posts.

    Slartibartfast:

    I think he has the upper hand in this debate. Too bad that high IQ aint high enough. You might have a chance if it was over 160.

  20. When faced with a verbal torrent apparently demonstrating lack of agreement on a scientific subject, it’s understandable that many people come away with the notion that the science itself is not well established. And thus it’s not surprising to me that many of the American public believe that there is little agreement between climate scientists who have investigated the matter. In fact, there is near unanimity that the earth is warming and that this is probably caused by human activities.

    Of all the websites I have visited, this one is perhaps the most reliable and most accessible. It examines and dissects the misconceptions that dog the public communication of climate science, and unclouds the view so that the facts are made clear.

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/

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