EPA inspector general faults climate document peer review
By Ben Geman - 09/28/11 12:22 PM ET
www.thehill.com The Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general has concluded that the agency did not meet all White House peer review guidelines for a key document on climate science that supported EPA’s conclusion that greenhouse gases threaten human welfare.The IG report — requested by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who says global warming is a hoax — explores how EPA vetted the so-called technical support document (TSD) for its 2009 “endangerment finding” on greenhouse gases.
The endangerment finding provides the legal underpinning for climate-change regulations.
Inspector General Arthur A. Elkins Jr. said in a statement Wednesday that the technical support document should have undergone a “more rigorous” peer review. The report also finds that EPA should improve its procedures for vetting outside scientific data.
The IG's opinion disputes both the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and EPA. Calling it a “highly influential scientific assessment” under OMB’s peer-review guidelines, Elkins said EPA’s review didn’t meet the standards for such a consequential document.
The report states:
EPA had the TSD reviewed by a panel of 12 federal climate change scientists. However, the panel’s findings and EPA’s disposition of the findings were not made available to the public as would be required for reviews of highly influential scientific assessments. Also, this panel did not fully meet the independence requirements for reviews of highly influential scientific assessments because one of the panelists was an EPA employee.
While many EPA critics will likely pounce on the report, it finds that EPA met its statutory requirements for the endangerment finding and “generally followed” requirements for ensuring the quality of the supporting documents.
The IG report is not an evaluation of the underlying science that informed EPA’s endangerment finding.
“We did not test the validity of the scientific or technical information used by EPA to support its endangerment finding, nor did we evaluate the merit of the conclusions or analyses presented in EPA’s endangerment finding,” the report notes.
Both EPA and OMB both differ with the report's main conclusion about the TSD. EPA argued that the document was a not itself a scientific assessment but instead a document that straightforwardly summarized the work of the National Research Council, the U.S. Global Change Research Program and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“EPA responded that the TSD does not meet the OMB definition of a scientific assessment in that no weighing of information, data, and studies occurred in the TSD. EPA maintained that this process had already occurred in the underlying assessments, where the scientific synthesis occurred and where the state of the science was assessed,” the report notes.
The IG disagreed, saying the document's analysis qualified it for more rigorous review.
“In our opinion, the TSD met the definition of a scientific assessment in that it evaluated a body of scientific knowledge and synthesized multiple factual inputs,” the report states, adding that the document also included other information, such as statements from federal officials about the national security consequences of climate change.
Inhofe, the top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the report nonetheless “calls the scientific integrity of EPA’s decision-making process into question and undermines the credibility of the endangerment finding.”
“I am calling for the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, the committee of jurisdiction over the EPA, to hold immediate hearings to address EPA’s failure to provide the required documentation and have the science impartially reviewed,” he said in a statement Wednesday.
Elkins, in his statement, does not wade into what effect the alleged flaws in reviewing the document might have had on the endangerment finding.
"While it may be debatable what impact, if any, this had on EPA’s finding, it is clear that EPA did not follow all required steps for a highly influential scientific assessment," he said.
EPA's remarks on a draft version of the report, which are attached to the IG findings, note that it's about procedural issues and does not undercut the endangerment finding.
“All of the science used to support the endangerment finding is from peer-reviewed scientific assessments," EPA officials note.
“Although the draft report states that the OIG did not assess the quality of the scientific information and data EPA used to support the endangerment finding, we remain concerned about the potential for this report to mislead readers about the scientific content underlying EPA’s greenhouse gas endangerment finding,” EPA’s comments on the draft report state.
Inhofe had asked the IG to review whether EPA properly implemented the Data Quality Act, a very brief statute that was buried in a 2000 appropriations bill.
It says federal agencies must ensure the integrity of data they disseminate and allow outside parties to submit petitions for corrections.
—This post was updated at 12:32 p.m. and 1:08 p.m.
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