Scott Pruitt, here's evidence backing your global-warming statement
3,000 pages, 10,000 footnotes say don't blame mankind
Published: 22 hours ago
Bob Unruh

The Heartland Institute, which promotes free-market solutions to social and economic problems, is offering to help Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt respond to a federal judge’s order to substantiate his stance on global warming.

Pruitt, shortly after his appointment, responded to a question by contending “carbon dioxide created by human activity is not the primary driver of global climate change.”

Members of the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility jumped on the statement, demanding evidence.

ArsTechnica reported Judge Beryl Howell now has ordered Pruitt to provide the documentation.

We’ll help, chimed in Heartland.

On Thursday, they shipped copies of their extensive “Climate Change Reconsidered” series of reports to Pruitt, totaling more than 3,000 pages.

A letter accompanying reports, which contain some 10,000 footnotes, explained the evidence could be used to respond to the judge’s demand.

Heartland’s president, former congressman Tim Huelskamp, explained to Pruitt:

“We have no doubt that PEER, with the assistance of the judge, is trying to box you in and embarrass you. After all, you were only on the job for a few days and you could not possibly have reviewed all the documents EPA possessed before your confirmation – which would all toe the unscientific, alarmist dogma that marked the Obama years. Fortunately, you do not have to look far to find ‘documents that support the conclusion that human activity is not the largest factor driving global climate change.'”

The institute previously submitted the “Climate Change Reconsidered” series to the agency, including digital versions when EPA has called for comments on rulemaking.

The years-long scholarship project is by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, led by prominent climate scientist S. Fred Singer. The Heartland Institute publishes and distributes NIPCC’s work.

The institute told Pruitt: “In the event an Obama-era ideologue at EPA disposed of or destroyed those volumes, we have enclosed them in this package for your use in answering Judge Howell’s order. In fact, the ‘Climate Change Reconsidered’ series stands on its own as the work of a ‘Red Team’ that has been working to critique and correct the work of the ideological alarmists on the ‘Blue Team’ for more than a decade.”

The research has, among other things:

empirical data on past temperatures contradicting the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) claim that climate observations during the 20th century are either unprecedented or provide evidence of an anthropogenic effect on climate;

research by a growing number of scientists who say variations in solar activity, not greenhouse gases, are the true driver of climate change;

research published in peer-reviewed science journals indicating the model-derived temperature sensitivity of Earth accepted by the IPCC is too large;

and proof that four specific forecasts made by global climate models have been falsified by real-world data from a wide variety of sources and that there has been no significant global warming for some 20 years.

It also provides evidence that there has been no significant increase in either the frequency or intensity of storms of any kind in the modern era.

The report points out that more CO2 in the atmosphere actually is a benefit and contends the claim of a “97 percent scientific consensus” on man-made global warming is “methodologically flawed and often deliberately misleading.”