The EPA, along with the “Climate Working Group” of usual suspects (plus Judith Curry and Ross McKitrick) at DOE, have just put out a document for public comment their attempt to rescind the 2009 Endangerment Finding for greenhouse gas emissions.
Here are some relevant links:
- Original Endangerment Finding (2009)
- Proposed rule (2025)
- DOE Critical Review of Impacts of GHG Emissions on the US Climate (Christy, Curry, Koonin, McKitrick, Spencer, 2025)
This is a placeholder post for links and comments while folks try and digest the details. Feel free to post links to analyses as you find them and we’ll elevate the best to the OP. We’ll have a more considered response in a couple of days.
If this holds any utility for RC hosts and readers, a three-paragraph summary:
As of mid-2025 climate scientists are quite clear that technogenic contributions—numerous science practices and applied technologies brought to life by successive engineering, manufacturing, and industrial applications—are responsible for the levels of CO2 that have accumulated in our planet’s atmosphere since just before the advent of the Industrial Revolution. The overwhelming consensus is that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and copious amounts of other gases and chemicals are the chief drivers of the global warming contributing directly to global sea-level rise, itself a result of enormous losses to ice mass across both Greenland and Antarctica and, along with widespread deposition of carbon particulates across the planet’s mountain glaciers and polar ice sheets, the result also of melting and receding mountain glaciers worldwide. NASA reports that global sea levels have risen four inches since 1993, both from the volume of water accumulating from all that melted ice and from thermal expansion occurring in warming oceans. (Because sea level rise is not uniform globally, the rise is modestly higher along some specific shorelines.)
Global sea level rise and its specific mechanism (warming atmosphere and warming oceans causing enormous loss of ice mass in polar and mountain glacier regions), already as of mid-2025, constitute a “known known”: scientists have consistently expressed confidence and consensus on this matter for some years now. —and even though cascades of climate tipping points have not been reached or passed yet, and even though self-amplifying feedback loops have not yet begun to cascade, it is not the case that we see no evidence that such tipping points are being approached, reached, and passed. The Greenland Ice Sheet is losing ice mass, as is the West Antarctic ice sheet, as is the Wilkes Basin of East Antarctica. Mountain glaciers worldwide are losing ice mass, as indicated by the partial Birch Glacier collapse in Switzerland in late May 2025, as indicated by threats to the Colorado River Basin water supplies to the southwestern U. S.
It is not as if the rest of the planet and its climate are standing still. Climate scientists now observe permafrost thawing and are measuring consequent methane releases that stand to exacerbate the warming atmosphere when mixed with the carbon dioxide already there. The Amazon Rainforest, once one of the planet’s most reliable “carbon sinks”, today suffers from the frequency of droughts and has been degraded by widespread logging in some places, by wildfires in others. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current has by no means stopped or even come to a crawl, but it has shown a significant slowdown since the 1950s and remains threatened, as are the other global ocean currents. Some coral reefs have already experienced large-scale die-offs, even if those affected have experienced at least partial and/or temporary recovery: ocean temperatures and ocean chemistry continue to change, since the planet’s oceans are their own carbon sink, but as the absorbed carbon in ocean waters yields carbonic acid and helps acidify and heat oceans further, the oceans’ capacity for absorbing more atmospheric carbon is being reduced.
(I’ve incorporated this summary in a couple of essays I’ve sent out to a handful of venues. Feel free to edit for accuracy and length)
The proposed rule to rescind the 2009 Endangerment Finding is an ACT OF WAR against the human species by the fossil fuel industry.
So, we don’t need to reduce CO2 emissions because we may be reducing them already? Basically this is saying “Screw the rest of the world, if they want to save the planet they can go ahead and we’ll keep doing whatever and reap the benefits from their hard work”. Regarding the other summary conclusions all I can say is “Judith, how could you have fallen so low?”
Maybe worth a link to the Supreme Court ruling “Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007)” Here’s one that summarizes and also links to the opinions: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/549/497/
The majority found states had standing to sue to require EPA take action against CO2 and there were two dissenting opinions from the conservative minority. Scalia wrote the second – here’s the web page’s summary with my emphasis added:
Interesting that Scalia leans on that case, because the current conservatives on the Court, now that they have a majority, overturned it last year, so in 2025 there’s no Chevron Deference for today’s Scalias to invoke to give the EPA free rein to reinterpret laws.
I’m no legal scholar, but the following post quotes Roberts as saying agencies now lack standing to create their own interpretations of laws they need to enforce – which presumably means the Clean Air Act. EPA simply deciding to cancel their endangerment finding today might conflict with the Supreme Court’s recent work to hobble agency decision making when Biden was in office.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-strikes-down-chevron-curtailing-power-of-federal-agencies/
The science is 18 years clearer now, the Supremes just decided EPA can’t re-interpret laws, so we’ll see how this works out. I’m not optimistic, with our current branches of the federal government stacked against ending the increasing damages, but who knows. Hurricane season’s heavy part hasn’t started, data flow for high-quality forecasting is being cut off this week, while the President is trying to gut FEMA.