EPA clarifies stance on global warming

WASHINGTON, July 30 (UPI) -- There is no evidence to support claims that environmental records were manipulated to support theories on climate change, the U.S. EPA announced.

The Environmental Protection Agency denied 10 challenges to a 2009 finding that said global climate patterns were changing as a result of increased releases of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity.

The EPA announced that a review of its findings uncovered no evidence to suggest that climate change wasn't a credible threat.

"Defenders of the status quo will try to slow our efforts to get America running on clean energy," EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a statement. "A better solution would be to join the vast majority of the American people who want to see more green jobs, more clean energy innovation and an end to the oil addiction that pollutes our planet and jeopardizes our national security."

Critics said e-mail messages released by the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia were manipulated to support warming trends. The EPA said its review of "every e-mail" found the matter was the result of a "candid discussion" of scientists reviewing a large data set.

Climate issues came under fire when the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in January it made errors in reports saying the Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035, which the U.N. body used in its 2007 data on the affects of climate change.

The EPA said evidence on the rate of glacier melt from the Himalayas was corrected and in no way undermined the fact that climate change was real.

The environmental agency stressed that human activity was a contributor to climate change and that global warming was a real phenomenon.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for an independent review of environmental data in March.