State climatologist disputes Texas’s greenhouse petition

John Nielsen-Gammon

Vilas Bhuchar, Mar 05, 10.

Texas’s state climatologist, John Nielsen-Gammon, disputes attacks made on climate science in the state’s petition against Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) findings that gases blamed for global warming threaten public health, according to The Wonk Room.

The petition, filed Tuesday by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R-TX), with the approval of Governor Rick Perry (R-TX), argues that the EPA “relied on flawed and legally unsupported methodology”, particularly from outside groups like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to reach its decision and should thus “reconsider the Endangerment Finding.”

State climatologist Nielsen-Gammon disputes the state’s contention that flawed and inaccurate information was used in the EPA findings, in an email interview with the Wonk Room:

Do I think that the EPA based its assessment on sound science? I think, by basing its assessments on the IPCC, USGCRP, and NAS reports, it was basing its assessments on the best available science. I have the expertise to independently evaluate the quality of these reports, and on the whole they constitute in my opinion the most comprehensive, balanced assessments of climate change science presently available.

Neilsen-Gammon, in the interview, also expressed support for EPA’s actual scientific findings:

...it is also apparent that if atmospheric concentrations of the six greenhouse gases continue to rise due to human influence, the Earth would eventually reach a point where there would be massive disruptions of ecosystems, changes in sea level, decreases in air quality, and so forth that would, in particular, substantially harm the public welfare of those generations forced to experience them. So anthropogenic increases of greenhouse gas concentrations clearly present a danger to the public welfare, and I agree with the EPA’s findings in that sense.

Full story and interview

(Photo credit: The Wonk Room)