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The state of Texas on Tuesday February 16, became the first state to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA’s) irresponsible finding that gases blamed for global warming threaten public health. Also note that the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) filed a similar suit on February 5.

Gov. Rick Perry and other Texas officials said the federal finding is based on flawed science and would harm the state's economy

The EPA issued the finding two months ago in an attempt to regulate the gas humans’ exhale, “carbon dioxide” and other so called heat-trapping gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

Such rules would have a profound impact on Texas, which pumps more carbon dioxide into the air than any other state because of its scores of coal-fired power plants, refineries and other industrial facilities. Texas is home to more fortune 500 companies than any other state.

“The EPA's misguided plan paints a big target on the backs of Texas agriculture and energy producers and the hundreds of thousands of Texans they employ,” Perry said in a statement. “This legal action is being taken to protect the Texas economy and the jobs that go with it, as well as defend Texas' freedom to continue our successful environmental strategies free from federal overreach.”

Texas asked the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., to review the finding, with its petition coming on the heels of similar filings by business and conservative groups.

Al Armendariz, the EPA's administrator for Region 6, which includes Texas, said he isn't surprised by the state's legal challenge but chided Texas leaders for not doing more to reduce emissions.

“Instead Texas officials are attempting to slow progress with unnecessary litigation,” Armendariz said. “EPA is confident the endangerment finding ... will withstand legal challenge.”

Skeptic’s counter that Armendariz must not be familiar with Phil Jones’s work, including his lack of responsible record keeping and data sharing revelations.

The Supreme Court gave the agency legal authority to regulate such emissions in a landmark 2007 ruling.

Bashing the panel

The state's petition argues the EPA improperly relied on the scientific conclusions of other activist groups, particularly the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to make the endangerment finding on supposed heat-trapping gases.

The IPCC has admitted that its most recent report significantly overstated (most would refer to this all as lies) how quickly Himalayan glaciers will melt, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said, and there have been assertions of many other errors as well.

What's more, pirated e-mails show climate scientists attempting to suppress dissents or skeptics reports and data, he said.

As a result, Abbott said there is a legal rationale for a court to order the agency to reopen its scientific analysis. “There clearly is lying, falsification, cover-ups, and many other improper scientific actions that are going on here,” he said. “We're not saying the science is wrong, we're looking at this information and saying this information is troubling. “The course of American commerce cannot be altered when there are this many faults with the underlying analysis.”

Richard Faulk, who heads the environmental practice at the firm Gardere Wynne Sewell, endorsed the state's stance, saying the EPA only can make an endangerment finding after determining — independently — that ensuing rules would improve existing conditions. “No regulations the U.S. unilaterally adopts can possibly reverse global warming by themselves,” Faulk said. “Their impact on the global climate will be minimal, especially when China, India and other major emitters continue to release enormous amount of gases without any restrictions.”

But Victor Flatt, liberal acdemic Taft professor of environmental law at the University of North Carolina, found the petition “essentially baseless” since EPA referred to — but did not totally rely on — the findings of the IPCC.  “The scientific basis of EPA's endangerment finding is overwhelming,” Flatt said, “and certainly rises above the level of evidence they need to make the finding.”

Skeptics say, if the endangerment findings are so overwhelming, why so much lying, deception and systemic scientific corruption?

The EPA moved to regulate carbon dioxide and five other so called heat-trapping gases in December in the absence of congressional action to cut emissions. The agency does not expect to propose an air quality standard for the gases, as it does for smog-forming ozone and other pollutants, because the emissions aren't localized. Instead, the Clean Air Act would require that industries use the “best available control technology” — which the EPA hasn't yet defined — to reduce those emissions.

Senator agrees

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Perry's main rival in the Republican primary for governor, also questions the EPA's finding. She has joined other senators in seeking to strip the agency of the power to regulate climate-altering emissions.

“The EPA's actions represent a sweeping mandate that will cost jobs and cannot stand,” Hutchison said.

Environmentalists said they wish Texas officials would work with the EPA to reduce emissions through new, cleaner energy sources, rather than fight the agency in court.

“Not only is it legally unsound,” said Jim Marston, director of the Environmental Defense Fund's Texas office, “it puts Texas on the side of the 1950s economy, against the clean energy economy of the future.”

So what’s the unemployment rate in Texas 8.3%, and Green California – 12.5%!  Hmmm!