EPA’s Pruitt faults its climate finding

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt told a congressional panel Thursday that the President Barack Obama administration rushed an analysis that found climate change is a risk to human health and welfare, and offered a justification that Pruitt could use to reverse that determination.

The key concern, Pruitt said, was that the EPA in 2009 relied on scientific reports written by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s authoritative network of climate scientists. Pruitt called it a “unique situation” in which a regulatory procedure relied on outsiders’ scientific work.

“There was a breach of process that occurred in 2009 that many believe was not handled the proper way,” Pruitt told a panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Thursday. “That process in 2009 was short-shrifted.”

The panel, composed of government and university scientists from the U.S. and around the world, concluded in its most recent synthesis, published in 2014, that “human influence on the climate system is clear,” causing “widespread impacts on human and natural systems.”

Pruitt has questioned that link between emissions from factories, power plants and vehicles and global warming. His agency is preparing to begin its own review of climate science.