EPA: Regs Would Only Reduce Temps by 0.0015 Degrees While Slowing Business 'For Years

The EPA has admitted that tough new greenhouse gas regulations will “slow construction nationwide for years,” while only reducing global temperatures by 0.0015 of a degree Celsius, CNSNews.com reports.

CNS cites a GOP minority report, issued last Wednesday, which says a series of proposed and partially implemented new regulations on industrial boilers, greenhouse gas emitters, and ozone levels will put over 800,000 jobs at risk with little environmental benefit.

"The authors cite the EPA’s own staff to show that greenhouse gas regulations, which would require major sources of CO2 (carbon dioxide) to obtain permits and limit their output, could seriously harm the economy if implemented," CNS news reports.

Obtaining those permits, the EPA said in a June 3 report referenced by CNS and obtained through the Federal Register, would cause "delays, at the outset, that would be at least a decade or longer, and that would only grow worse over time as each year, the number of new permit applications would exceed permitting authority resources for that year.”

The report adds that during that time "tens of thousands of [permit applicants] each year would be prevented from constructing or modifying,” and that companies trying to obtain permits would "be forced to abandon altogether plans to construct or modify." The backlog could "slow construction nationwide for years, with all of the adverse effects that this would have on economic development."

CNS explains the reasoning behind the regulation:

All of these complications stem from EPA’s desire to regulate mobile sources of greenhouse gases -- primarily automobiles. By issuing a finding last spring that carbon dioxide is a danger to public health, the EPA is able to regulate mobile output of the gas; but the ancillary effect is that stationary CO2 emitters -- factories, schools, office buildings -- are now subject to those Clean Air Act regulations as well.

However, analysis by the EPA puts in question whether the 80,000 jobs that Republicans estimate these regulations could cost are worth it.

According to CNS the EPA writes in rule-making documents from April 2010 that “Based on the reanalysis the results for projected atmospheric CO2 concentrations are estimated to be reduced by an average of 2.9 ppm [parts per million] (previously 3.0 ppm), global mean temperature is estimated to by reduced by 0.006 to 0.0015 ˚C by 2100.”

Or, as James Inhofe (R-OK) said on the Senate floor last week, "they would reduce global temperatures by ... an amount so small it can’t be measured on a ground-based thermometer.”

The EPA has created "tailoring" rules that would protect many businesses from having to file for permits. But, CNS reports, Republicans on the Senate EPW committee fear a federal court could strike the tailoring rule, deciding it does not follow explicit guidelines set out for the process of issuing permits for pollutants in the Clean Air Act (CAA).

Should that rule be struck down, the Republicans point to a study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce which says that the EPA “could be forced to regulate” about 260,000 office buildings, 150,000 warehouses, 92,000 health care facilities, 92,000 health-care facilities, 37,000 churches, and 17,000 farms, among other things.

That could have a crippling affect on businesses and the economy.