October 9, 2008
[Note: See http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/downloads/ANPRPreamble1.pdf for instructions on how to submit comments]
Air and Radiation Docket and Information Center
Environmental Protection Agency
Mailcode: 2822T, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20460
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
Attn: Desk Officer for EPA
725 17th St. NW
Washington, DC 20503
Submitted by e-mail to: a-and-r-Docket@epa.gov
Comments re: Docket No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2008-0318
Environmental Protection Agency Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act
Physicians for Civil Defense is a nonprofit organization providing public education on threats to human life and well-being.
In Massachusetts v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court requires that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must “ground its reasons for action or inaction on regulating carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act (CAA).”
Physicians for Civil Defense states that EPA should not regulate carbon dioxide emissions, on the following grounds:
1. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.
2. Carbon dioxide is a minor greenhouse gas, far less significant than water vapor, which is generated by the same human activities that generate carbon dioxide.
3. Carbon dioxide does not endanger public health and welfare; in fact, increased atmospheric levels are a benefit.
4. There is no way to regulate carbon dioxide emissions that is not arbitrary, capricious, and harmful to public health and welfare.
1. Carbon dioxide is not an air pollutant under the CAA.
As Justice Scalia observes in his dissent, the simple fact that an entity is a chemical compound in the air does not make an entity a pollutant. Nitrogen, constituting about 78% of the air, is not a pollutant, nor is oxygen at about 21%. Trace elements, such as argon (about 1%) are not necessarily pollutants either. A pollutant is a toxic impurity, generally understood to emanate from human industry. Naturally occurring compounds, say from erupting volcanoes, decaying vegetation, forest fires, or ocean outgassing, are not under the jurisdiction of the EPA or any other governmental agency. It makes no sense to attempt to regulate quantitatively trivial human-caused increments to these naturally occurring compounds.
Carbon dioxide, constituting about 0.0384% of the atmosphere, is overwhelmingly from natural sources. Total annual human production of carbon dioxide, about 8.0 gigatons (Gt) from industry and 0.6 Gt from breathing, constitutes only about 1% of the total atmospheric content of some 780 Gt. This is in equilibrium with far larger reservoirs. Each year, surface ocean and atmosphere exchange about 90 Gt of carbon, vegetation and the atmosphere exchange an estimated 100 Gt, and marine biota and surface ocean about 50 Gt.
Carbon dioxide and water are the natural products of the metabolism of living things and the end-products of clean, complete combustion of all carbon-containing fuels, including wood. They are also a basic requirement for life. All food on the planet depends on photosynthesis, the process by which plants incorporate water and atmospheric carbon dioxide into glucose and other organic molecules.
2. Carbon dioxide is a minor greenhouse gas.
The contribution of carbon dioxide to the greenhouse effect is a minor one, and increases only logarithmically with an increase in atmospheric concentration. That is, the more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the smaller the radiative impact of adding more. Thus, any attempts to decrease emissions have rapidly diminishing returns, but rapidly escalating costs.
The predominant greenhouse gas is water vapor, which constitutes about 1% of the atmosphere. Its contribution as been estimated to be about 60%, to as much as 98%, depending on the location on earth. Like carbon dioxide, it is a product of metabolism and combustion, and thus just as much a “pollutant” as carbon dioxide.
Neither water nor carbon dioxide is reasonably considered to be a pollutant. If carbon dioxide is classified as a pollutant, logic requires that water must be so classified also.
3. Carbon dioxide does not endanger, but rather benefits human health and welfare.
The entire case for regulation of carbon dioxide is based on computer models predicting a possibility of future deleterious climate change; the conclusions of a United Nations panel of selected scientists and bureaucrats; and incorrect, outdated information.
The assertion that human use of hydrocarbon fuels is causing global warming is decisively refuted by the historical record. Global temperature has been trending upward since before 1800 A.D., and this trend has not changed since the Industrial Revolution despite a tremendous increase in combustion of hydrocarbons (coal, oil, and natural gas). A 6-fold increase in hydrocarbon fuel use since 1940 had no discernible effect on trends in temperature or on glacier length, while atmospheric carbon dioxide increased by about 22%.
The assertion that an “overwhelming consensus” of scientists supports the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is decisively refuted by the fact that 32,000 American scientists have signed a strong petition stating that:
“We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan, in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
The Supreme Court based its decision on the EPA’s acceptance of the alleged consensus in favor of the UN IPCC, and on incorrect or outdated facts, such as the statement that 1998 was the hottest year on record in the United States. This statement is related to an error by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which has since been corrected; the hottest year in the U.S. temperature records occurred in the 1930s. The EPA is obligated to update and correct the scientific information that it supplies to the Court on remand. This information should be published and submitted for rigorous review by scientists independent of the UN IPCC. An open public process in which scientists can speak without fear of recrimination is essential.
The benefits of carbon dioxide—such as satellite photographs showing that the Earth is now more bountiful than in decades, perhaps centuries—must also be supplied to the Court on remand, so that this can be considered. In a world facing food shortages, the restriction in the supply of an essential plant nutrient must be counted as a significant harm. The benefit-to-harm ratio is not a matter of emissions reductions vs. dollars but of actual net effect on the biosphere and the economy, recognizing that dollars spent on or lost by curbing emissions cannot be used in other ways. The assumption that carbon sequestered in the ground is somehow preferable to carbon that can be used by plants and animals has been implicitly accepted by the Court, but must be examined.
4. There is no way to regulate carbon dioxide that is not arbitrary and capricious.
The amount of emissions that the EPA may attempt to regulate (21 tons per year) is derived from compounds that are toxic pollutants. It is totally inappropriate to apply this to the compound that is the basic building block of all living things.
The amount of 21 tons is about 3 ten-billionths (3 x 10-10) of the total production of carbon dioxide from human activities, which itself is a small percentage of the total atmospheric carbon dioxide. The amount of 21 tons is also the amount exhaled in a year by a small group of human beings, perhaps fewer than 100.
The amount of carbon dioxide that the EPA proposes to regulate is a vanishingly small proportion of the total atmospheric content of a beneficial compound, which is overwhelmingly produced by natural, non-human sources, and which is in equilibrium with far larger reservoirs in the biosphere, oceans, soil, and rocks. Any effects of this regulation on the earth’s atmosphere would be of no significance whatsoever, even if carbon dioxide had any non-negligible effect on the earth’s climate.
If such trivial amounts can be regulated, is there any stopping place? The Court reasons that “every little bit helps,” writes Justice Roberts in his dissent. Why is 21 tons more logical than the annual exhalations of a single human being, or indeed of a single breath? All are negligible in comparison with the natural exchanges occurring in the carbon cycle of the earth.
If the EPA is not to forcibly stop all U.S. economic activity, and hence starve the human population of the United States, the enforcement of the regulations will perforce be arbitrary and capricious, based on political rather than scientific considerations. A discussion of differences this tiny has no more practical validity that an argument over angels dancing on pinheads.
The EPA must present a proper quantitative perspective to the Court on remand—including the range of error in all relevant measurements. The Court’s expressed concern about “every little bit” of carbon dioxide reflected the information that was presented. In fact, the total U.S. industrial and transportation-sector production of carbon dioxide has at most a small, and at that likely net beneficial effect on climate, and probably no measurable effect on sea level. However, “every little bit” of constraint of human activity (using a lawnmower, heating a hospital or classroom, driving to work, etc.) has a cost in diminished health or productivity. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions also harms the environment directly, by reducing the concentration of a critical plant nutrient, and indirectly, by impoverishing the nation and diverting resources from productive use.
Conclusion
The heads of the EPA and of numerous government agencies have outlined the crushing cost and widespread harm to the economy that would be inflicted by an attempt to regulate carbon dioxide as if it were a potent toxin rather than a requirement for all life.
The EPA needs to revise prior unwarranted statements on which the Supreme Court based its conclusions, in preparing the reasoned argument that the Court directed it to make on remand, including the errors on the temperature record and the dynamics of carbon dioxide exchange between the atmosphere and other reservoirs.
The EPA also needs to:
(1) dispute the purported but implausible and scientifically disproved causal connection between carbon dioxide and catastrophic climate change;
(2) renounce the false assertion of a scientific consensus favoring a causal connection;
(3) educate the Court about the natural causes of the inevitable climate variations that have occurred during the entire history of the earth, including the solar cycle;
(4) explain the obvious difference between carbon dioxide and air pollutants;
(5) make note of the great benefits of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide to the biosphere;
(6) point out the logical absurdity of trying to regulate emissions from human sources that cannot be distinguished from myriad natural ones and which are vastly overwhelmed in quantity by natural sources; and
(7) state unequivocally that interpreting the CAA to include carbon dioxide is an absurdity that will cause massive economic disruption and harm, for zero benefit.
Respectfully submitted,
Jane M. Orient, M.D., President
Physicians for Civil Defense
1601 N. Tucson Blvd. Suite 9
Tucson, AZ 85716
(520) 325-2680
