Reacting to EPA extortion

The battle to combat global warming may face a significant setback in Washington this week. Moderate Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, wants the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to back off its threat to enforce greenhouse gas regulations. We hope she's successful. The EPA recently declared that greenhouse gases are a threat, giving the agency authority to regulate them.

Ms. Murkowski sees the EPA move for what it is, heavy-handed coercion to pressure Congress to pass cap-and-trade legislation by threatening an administrative fiat beyond lawmakers' control.

"That's a terrible way to pursue climate policy, and beyond that, a terrible way to govern this country," said Ms. Murkowski. She may introduce an amendment to pending climate-change legislation this week to strip the EPA of its greenhouse gas emissions regulation authority.

As opposing economic and scientific arguments mounted last year, cap-and-trade legislation in the Senate stalled. But legislative opposition isn't the only problem facing advocates of government intervention.

Citing the EPA's questionable scientific assumptions, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce declared it will sue to block administrative regulations, while a group of House representatives petitioned the agency to "convene a proceeding for reconsideration" of its finding. Recently leaked e-mails from a major U.K. climate research facility reveal "a serious lack of integrity in the underlying data and models, such that it is doubtful that any process can be trusted," says the petition by Rep.

Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, and others.

Meanwhile, global warming skeptics have charged the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration similarly was "seriously complicit in data manipulation and fraud." Retired climatologist Joseph D'Aleo said in a report on KUSI television in San Diego that a computer analysis "found they systematically eliminated 75 percent of the world's (temperature measuring) stations with a clear bias" that resulted in misleadingly high temperature findings. That accusation is similar to one by a Russian think tank last month alleging U.K. climate scientists cherry-picked Russian temperature readings to arrive at false, high temperature readings they feed into computers to predict future temperatures.

Industry groups also are beginning to smell a rat. A major insurance industry trade group warned it is "exceedingly risky" for companies to blindly accept assertions about climate change, given "serious questions" about the extent to which humans cause warming, the New York Times reported. The National Cattlemen's Beef Association also has filed a court petition in Washington, D.C., to overturn the EPA endangerment ruling.

Increasingly, skeptics are being heard where they once were denied a voice when global warming zealots claimed there was a "consensus" that a threat existed. A public debate last week in conjunction with an auto industry conference featured skeptics and true believers arguing whether vehicle regulations are undermined by recent revelations, prompting the Detroit News to conclude that "the panel left no doubt that there is little consensus on global warming."

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