GoodFuels

Grassley Fears EPA is “Putting Garbage In”

The technical term is GIGO - Garbage In, Garbage Out - originally coined as computer jargon but now “commonly used to describe failures in human decision making due to faulty, incomplete, or imprecise data.”

Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) is afraid that the Environmental Protection Agency could fall prey to the GIGO syndrome in trying to reach a conclusion on the inexact science of “indirect land use changes.”

“There are a number of assumptions that can affect the conclusions about indirect land use changes. With any model, if you put garbage in, you’ll get garbage out. I want to make sure that the EPA isn’t putting garbage in,” Grassley said on the Senate floor Monday.

I’m afraid the climate folks at the EPA are heading in the wrong direction on this. I don’t think they’re bad people, but I’m afraid they don’t understand how American agriculture works. I don’t think they’re aware of the significant crop yield improvements we’ve seen in recent years or the great potential over the next 20 years. I also don’t think they fully understand the benefit of valuable ethanol byproducts, which further reduce the effective land used for fuels production.

It defies common sense that the EPA would publish a proposed rulemaking with harmful conclusions for biofuels based on incomplete science and inaccurate assumptions. The EPA’s actions, if based on erroneous land use assumptions, could hinder biofuels development and extend America’s dependence on dirtier fossil fuels.

Grassley joined 11 other senators last week in a letter to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, urging her to refrain from making a “premature ethanol emissions regulation” that would result in regulations which assume greater U.S. biofuels use would increase carbon dioxide emissions.

While the EPA is required by law under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 to consider indirect land use changes, the fact is that what the legislation requires is currently impossible because there are no generally accepted methods for determining indirect land use - and there may never be. Maybe Congress and the administration should take a second look at this whole issue and consider putting it out with the garbage.