From Watts Up With That?

By Charles Rotter

Breaking: Climate Consensus Crusaders Sue to Save the Endangerment Finding From… Skeptics With Opinions

Yesterday, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) stormed into federal court, clutching their pearls and a 40-page complaint, to demand that the EPA and Department of Energy be stopped from—brace yourself—listening to people who don’t think “climate change” is the meteorological equivalent of Armageddon.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, reads like a mashup of Chicken Little’s autobiography and a high-school debate club’s “Appeal to Consensus” handbook. According to the plaintiffs, the great crime here is that Secretary of Energy Christopher Wright dared to assemble five well-known climate skeptics—John Christy, Judith Curry, Steven Koonin, Ross McKitrick, and Roy Spencer—to review the evidence and produce a report questioning the EPA’s 2009 “Endangerment Finding”. That’s the sacred ruling declaring greenhouse gases an official public health menace, without which the climate policy priesthood fears their altar might crumble.

The complaint is a parade of consensus incantations—“overwhelming scientific consensus,” “ocean of evidence,” “confirmed time and again”—interrupted only by ad hominem swipes at the Working Group’s résumés and reading lists. Curry, they note with horror, has criticized the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for “corruption.” Koonin once worked for BP. Spencer testified on behalf of a coal company. In other words, these people are contaminated by thoughtcrime.

EDF and UCS accuse Wright’s Climate Working Group of operating in secret, holding no public meetings, stacking the deck entirely with “contrarians,” and failing to genuflect before the holy consensus. They demand the court erase the group’s report, bar EPA from using it to justify repealing the Endangerment Finding, and—naturally—extend public comment periods until the paperwork gods are appeased.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, for his part, has called the reconsideration “the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States” and a “dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion”—a metaphor that, judging from the plaintiffs’ reaction, hit the bullseye.

In sum, the lawsuit boils down to this: the wrong people were asked the wrong questions and gave the wrong answers. In the plaintiffs’ worldview, “science” is not a method of inquiry but a franchise with exclusive licensing rights. Any unauthorized competition must be shut down, preferably by federal injunction.

One thing’s for sure—this case will test not just the legal durability of the Endangerment Finding, but whether “consensus” has officially replaced “evidence” as the highest standard in American science. And if the complaint’s tone is any clue, the consensus crowd isn’t feeling particularly confident.