GHG Daily
1/22/2016
In their request for a stay of the Environmental Protection Agency’s carbon emissions standards for existing coal-fired power plants, parties to the suit, led by the state of West Virginia, make a faulty claim that the rule does not line up with the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Joel Darmstadter, a senior fellow with Resources for the Future, said in a blog post Tuesday. “Whether by design or inadvertence, the petition’s reference to the IPCC cites solely the report of Working Group I,” Darmstadter wrote, noting additional IPCC reports not cited.
The petition states that EPA’s projections of potential harm from climate change go far beyond those found in the IPCC’s Working Group I report Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. However, Darmstadter wrote, “The court petition looks at neither the analysis of Working Group II (“Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability”) nor that of Working Group III (“Mitigation of Climate Change”). A level playing field between the IPCC and EPA perspectives would limit the comparison of the latter’s part to underlying physical parameters as well.”