Following
on the heels of a similar FIOA request filed with the EPA in June, the latest
request targets the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) – the US
government’s lead climate change agency – and ten NOAA-developed climate
assessments that formed, in part, the core scientific reference for the
endangerment finding. The EPA has since used these and other scientific
assessments as the scientific basis for numerous regulations, including those
of new and existing coal-fired power plants.
However,
according to Lawrence Kogan, CEO of the ITSSD, despite the leading role the
NOAA research played in establishing the regulatory framework for greenhouse
gas emissions in the US, it fails to satisfy key criteria of the Information
Quality Act (IQA) and relevant applicable OMB, NOAA and EPA IQA-implementing
guidelines. Such failures should have precluded the EPA from using the studies
as the basis for the endangerment finding and the enacted and proposed
regulations it has spawned, and could now present an opportunity for legal
challenge.
The
247-page FOIA request includes 44 appendices and other documented evidence of
“pervasive institutional conflicts-of-interest, subject matter bias and lack of
intellectual independence among selected peer review panel members, including
the bi-level peer review panels and committees and the oversight boards of the
much vaunted National Academy of Sciences, that severely compromised the IQA
compliance of the NOAA-developed climate assessments”, continued Kogan.
Furthermore,
the NOAA FOIA reveals, as had ITSSD’s previously filed EPA FOIA, that public
stakeholders were not provided an adequate administrative review of their
requests for correction of improperly peer reviewed agency climate data.
Consequently,
“the EPA's and NOAA's circumvention of and nonconformance with the IQA denied
public stakeholders their constitutional and statutory rights to due process.
Such circumvention and nonconformance ultimately resulted in the EPA's
enactment of costly and burdensome regulations with significant direct economic
impacts throughout the nation's industries, states and localities, as well as,
in indirect economic impacts upon consumers,” concludes Kogan.
According
to the ITSSD, unless the documents NOAA discloses in response to its FOIA
request show otherwise, OMB, NOAA and EPA IQA-implementing guidelines now
require the EPA to either base its GHG regulations on other scientific
assessments or to re-peer review these studies in conformance with the
applicable relevant IQA standards to ensure that they follow US law.
Written
by Jonathan Rowland.