Witch hunts seem to be all the current GOP has money or time for. For example, Senator James M. Inhofe (Okla.) — one of the most outspoken climate change deniers in the world — requested a review of the EPA’s greenhouse gas endangerment finding by the Office of Inspector General (IG) recently.

The report from the IG is in. Surprise, surprise.. it found that:

“ EPA met statutory requirements for rulemaking and generally followed

requirements and guidance related to ensuring the quality of the supporting

technical information. “

“ “…the TSD was a highly influential scientific assessment

because EPA weighed the strength of the available science by its choices of

information, data, studies, and conclusions included in and excluded from the TSD.“

BUT, the witch hunters are already out spreading nonsense in the media, clinging to a couple points of the review that they can spin to sound worse than they are. They are:

“EPA had the TSD reviewed by a panel of 12 federal climate change scientists. This review did not meet all OMB requirements for peer review of a highly influential scientific assessment primarily because the review results and EPA’s response were not publicly reported, and because 1 of the 12 reviewers was an EPA employee.”

“This report confirms that the endangerment finding, the very foundation of President Obama’s job-destroying regulatory agenda, was rushed, biased, and flawed,” Inhofe said in a statement. “It calls the scientific integrity of EPA’s decision-making process into question and undermines the credibility of the endangerment finding.”

Hardly!

Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.): “This report raises serious questions that our committee and staff will further review.”

Are you kidding me?!

The review, conducted during the BUSH administration, met all statutory requirements and “followed requirements and guidance related to ensuring the quality of the supporting technical information,” to repeat.

As EPA spokeswoman Betsaida Alcantara said: “EPA undertook a thorough and deliberate process in the development of this finding, including a careful review of the wide range of peer-reviewed science.”

As Vermont Law School environmental law professor Patrick A. Parenteau said: “the IG has concluded EPA has followed all the rulemaking procedures, and its decision is supported by the underlying science.”

Did the IG find something that could have been done even better. Maybe. And that is a clear maybe. So the EPA didn’t report the results of the review publicly, and one of its own staff was involved in the review. That is something to be concerned about?

It’s amazing to me that the GOP can complain about wasting taxpayers’ money when it is wasting time and money investigating clear scientific findings that have been backed not only by the EPA but by the following organizations:

U.S. Agency for International Development

United States Department of Agriculture

National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration

National Institute of Standards and Technology

United States Department of Defense

United States Department of Energy

National Institutes of Health

United States Department of State

United States Department of Transportation

U.S. Geological Survey

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

National Center for Atmospheric Research

National Aeronautics & Space Administration

National Science Foundation

Smithsonian Institution

International Arctic Science Committee

Arctic Council

African Academy of Sciences

Australian Academy of Sciences

Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts

Academia Brasileira de Ciéncias

Cameroon Academy of Sciences

Royal Society of Canada

Caribbean Academy of Sciences

Chinese Academy of Sciences

Académie des Sciences, France

Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences

Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina of Germany

Indonesian Academy of Sciences

Royal Irish Academy

Accademia nazionale delle scienze of Italy

Indian National Science Academy

Science Council of Japan

Kenya National Academy of Sciences

Madagascar’s National Academy of Arts, Letters and Sciences

Academy of Sciences Malaysia

Academia Mexicana de Ciencias

Nigerian Academy of Sciences

Royal Society of New Zealand

Polish Academy of Sciences

Russian Academy of Sciences

l’Académie des Sciences et Techniques du Sénégal

Academy of Science of South Africa

Sudan Academy of Sciences

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Tanzania Academy of Sciences

Turkish Academy of Sciences

Uganda National Academy of Sciences

The Royal Society of the United Kingdom

National Academy of Sciences, United States

Zambia Academy of Sciences

Zimbabwe Academy of Science

American Academy of Pediatrics

American Association for the Advancement of Science

American Association of Wildlife Veterinarians

American Astronomical Society

American Chemical Society

American College of Preventive Medicine

American Geophysical Union

American Institute of Physics

American Medical Association

American Meteorological Society

American Physical Society

American Public Health Association

American Quaternary Association

American Institute of Biological Sciences

American Society of Agronomy

American Society for Microbiology

American Society of Plant Biologists

American Statistical Association

Association of Ecosystem Research Centers

Botanical Society of America

Crop Science Society of America

Ecological Society of America

Federation of American Scientists

Geological Society of America

National Association of Geoscience Teachers

Natural Science Collections Alliance

Organization of Biological Field Stations

Society of American Foresters

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

Society of Systematic Biologists

Soil Science Society of America

Australian Coral Reef Society

Australian Medical Association

Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society

Engineers Australia

Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies

Geological Society of Australia

British Antarctic Survey

Institute of Biology, UK

Royal Meteorological Society, UK

Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences

Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society

European Federation of Geologists

European Geosciences Union

European Physical Society

European Science Foundation

International Association for Great Lakes Research

International Union for Quaternary Research

International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

World Federation of Public Health Associations

World Health Organization

World Meteorological Organization

For the full “Procedural Review of EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding Data Quality Processes” check out the link. Here is the summary of what it found from that:

EPA met statutory requirements for rulemaking and generally followed requirements and guidance related to ensuring the quality of the supporting technical information. Whether EPA’s review of its endangerment finding TSD met Office of Management and Budget (OMB) requirements for peer review depends on whether the TSD is considered a highly influential scientific assessment. In our opinion, the TSD was a highly influential scientific assessment because EPA weighed the strength of the available science by its choices of information, data, studies, and conclusions included in and excluded from the TSD. EPA officials told us they did not consider the TSD a highly influential scientific assessment. EPA noted that the TSD consisted only of science that was previously peer reviewed, and that these reviews were deemed adequate under the Agency’s policy. EPA had the TSD reviewed by a panel of 12 federal climate change scientists. This review did not meet all OMB requirements for peer review of a highly influential scientific assessment primarily because the review results and EPA’s response were not publicly reported, and because 1 of the 12 reviewers was an EPA employee. EPA’s guidance for assessing data generated by other organizations does not include procedures for conducting such assessments or require EPA to document its assessment. EPA provided statements in its final findings notice and supporting TSD that generally addressed the Agency’s assessment factors for evaluating scientific and technical information, and explained its rationale for accepting other organizations’ data. However, no supporting documentation was available to show what analyses the Agency conducted prior to disseminating the information. Our evaluation examined the data quality procedures EPA used in developing the endangerment finding. We did not assess whether the scientific information and data supported the endangerment finding.

If you want to put the strategy of the current GOP on global warming into perspective, check out this video:

Yes, this is what we’re going through with global warming and the clear science telling us to get moving in address the problem. (We have the solutions needed available to us today! We just need to stop halting clean energy progress!.. or, actually, it’s just the GOP that needs to stop doing so.)