Critics of the climate change agenda are calling it a huge breakthrough: The head of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says his agency will scarp a pivotal finding from 16 years ago that changed the direction of the battle against global warming.
A 2009 declaration in the EPA, known as the "endangerment finding," stated that greenhouse gases are considered air pollutants when measured against requirements in the groundbreaking law passed in 1970 during Richard Nixon's administration known as the Clean Air Act.
That 2009 declaration has been the center of controversy since, including legal arguments that it's a stretch both scientifically and legally to claim that the Clean Air Act clears the way for the "endangerment finding," when it's noted that there is no mention of carbon dioxide in the Act.
Carbon dioxide, which human beings breathe out as part of the natural processing of oxygen, became a central "greenhouse gas" in the fight against climate change partly because of endangerment finding.
"We inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, and yet they regulate that as a pollutant.
"For the first time in US history," says Climate Depot Editor Marc Marano.
But there are some who consider the endangerment finding an imaginative artificial construct based in a contorted reading of the 1970 Clean Air Act.
Of the "endangerment finding," Marano says, "This is what you'd call creative legalese that the Obama administration made happen."