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Misuse of Scientific Data By the White House
Science data nerds writes "The White House is consistently and persistently claiming that the US is doing better than Europe in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This is false — their claim is purely based on carefully selecting the only subset of the data that supports this conclusion. When all the data are used, it is plain that European emissions have declined substantially and US emissions have grown substantially. The article, and this linked analysis, debunk the White House claims."
with alot of eastern countries mostley not using cars i find this hard to believe. they also have better public transportation. Seems like in america i see big SUVs and trucks everywhere. i cannot comment on industrial pollution since i cannot link to any facts. and besides, the white house wouldnt lie. they always tell the truth. i almost couldnt say that without laughing
That's really all this is. It's cherry picking on both sides. The White House noted that the economic growth of the US compared carbon emission growth is greater than that in Europe. In fact, both have shown increased carbon emissions. The article focuses on the fact that the total growth of greenhouse gasses is less in Europe. Different metrics, neither of which come close to painting the whole picture.
.pdf might just as well be a blog for its purpose and analytical utility. I really don't think it even belongs on Slashdot.
The
Cheers
Why, I'll see your see misuse of scientific data by the right wing with a misuse of scientific data by the left!
a) Including 1990 as a base year for European emissions is wrong for a couple of reasons. First, up until very recently European economic growth has badly lagged that of the USA. When there is less growth, there is less emissions. Even now, European economic growth lags, as a rule. When you have 10% of your people unemployed, as the French do, it does not take them much CO2 to drive to work, as there is no work to drive to. Secondly, Europeans have been furiously gaming emissions in their own right. There's been rampant adjusting of the baseline in order to improve their own greenhouse picture. So, the real question is, are the Europeans actually seriously making their targets, or are they simply patting themselves on the back for the slow growth side effects of the nanny state.
b) The gases described by the convention do not include water vapor, which constitutes the bulk of global warming.
c) All climate conventions these days presuppose that a reduction in manmade emissions will correct the atmospheric balance of gasses, and, that, by doing so, our climate will revert to some imagined ideal state of 1700, which was in the middle of an ice age, and a billion people will easily starve to death because of a shortened growing season. This will be almost as stupid as the wide spread left wing opposition to nuclear power, which essentially doomed us to global warming to begin with. Really, if the USA had gone 100% nuclear, there would be no global warming, and, so really, all of this finger pointing at Republicans over global warming is an elaborate smokescreen to say that you Lefties once again f=== up the planet and want we superior Bush supporters to bail you out.
We told you what the answer was : Build Nukes. Build Hydro. If you don't like it, that's your problem.
I think anyone can see that humanity needs to manage the atmospheric mixture of gases. We manage the acidity of our soils to grow things, we build dams around rivers and levees around the sea. It only stands to reason that we should do battle with mother nature and preserve some happy mix of gases to benefit humanity. So, where is the call to actually build a technology that sequesters excess gases from the atmosphere? Why can't we research and build machines that eat CO2 and turn it into carbon and oxygen? Sure, the energy required to split that up is enormous, but, that's what nukes are for. Do we really seriously build an atmospheric management strategy that a geologically active planet with a radioactive core and a radically diverse ecosystem will not on occasion enter an atmospheric state on its own that we should control? What if we discover some giant CO2 source on the ocean floor that we never considered before?
Let's pursue a strategy of building nuclear plants to reduce our own emissions, and then, while we are at it, build a machine to manage the atmosphere.
This is my sig.
all governments all over the world do stuff like this. I thought that the great thing about the usa was the fact that things like this could be exposed by the likes of the media (as well as open discussion). While many cheer this administration because of the propaganda, and many hate it for the same reason, the real problem has to account for nothing.
The idea behind democracy is that there is an effective opposition to the government, that will call them to task if they attempt shenanigans like this. Government's might attempt stuff like this all the time; it is a measure of how well-functioning the democracy is as to whether they get away with it.
Trying to pass this off as 'everyone does it therefore it is OK', is WRONG! It is never OK, and the fact that the USA seems to get away with it again and again and again, is not a good indicator for the political health of that country.
The critical point about greenhouse emissions control is it is an extremely intricate economic, political and environmental maneuver. You try to control CO2 and you do it wrong there is a high probability of unintended consequences and a net worsening of the situation. There isn't exactly a right and wrong way to do it, its more likely to be a case of some people will win and some will lose under a CO2 control regime which is why its so controversial.
Businesses and nations which ignore emission controls are almost assured to benefit economically. If they use cheap power, have no carbon taxes to pay and no expensive pollution controls they will kill their competitors who are facing such controls, they already are(a.k.a China). The trading regime instituted in Europe has already caused stress to clean efficient plants trying to control their emissions because they face competitors in places like Morocco with no control regime who undersell them. If this happens on a large scale Europe looks great on the CO2 front but only because all the big emitters have gone off shore to Asia and Africa. The end result could be a net worsening of the climate problem because there will be a bunch of dirty plants spewing CO2 in all the "developing" world replacing cleaner but too expensive ones in developed countries.
The key point to CO2 control is it has to be applied globally and evenly or it isn't going to work. If it isn't applied globally countries who aren't participating have to have exports heavily taxed so they are forced to pay for abusing CO2 emissions. The Kyoto protocol is indeed deeply flawed because it exerts little control over India and China because they are "developing" countries but their CO2 emissions are exploding. If you crack down on the U.S., Japan and Europe but leave India and China unchecked you will just give them yet another competitive advantage. They will build even more really dirty power plants and factories and the global CO2 situation will get worse not better.
A cynic could say CO2 controls on developed countries is just another ploy to further devastate the economies of developed countries to the benefit China, India and other cheap off shoring destinations.
In China's defense they are realizing their massive abuse of coal is an ecological disaster in the making, or already made, and they are undertaking a massive switch to nuclear energy. This is a key reason processed Uranium has gone from $10/lb to $130/lb since 2003 and Toshiba bought Westinghouse's Nuclear division, to build China nukes. They are building something like 32 nuclear power plants by 2020 and 10 times that by 2050. They've also broken ground on a huge nuclear waste dump. Going nuclear is obviously a double edged sword but it is one of the not so many viable options to what China is doing now, throwing up rat trap coal fired power plants at a furious pace, with no pollution controls, terrible efficiency and which are spewing vast quantities of CO2 and Mercury in to the air.
@de_machina
Water vapor warms the atmosphere. Of that, there is no doubt. The problem is that as CO2 rises, it ever so slightly nudges up the temperature, which in turn kicks off more evaporation, and that, my friend screws up the climate even more. So yes, we are both right. But, if we were emitting water vapor ourselves, we would be skipping the CO2 step. I wonder if a study has ever been done on water vapor emissions?
The 18th century was the tale end of the Little Ige Age. I picked 1700 because it was unarguably pre-industrial, but even during the American revolution, the climate was much colder than it is today. There was a year without a summer, for one, and, one of the most famous moments of the American Revolution, George Washington crosses a Delaware river packed with giant chunks of ice, as it was freezing over. The Delaware NEVER freezes over any more. I have read that if not for global warming, we would actually be entering an ice age now, if you believed the Milankovich cycle and all of that stuff.
Unemployment in France indeed hovers above 10%, which is why the French did the unthinkable and elected Sarkozy.
The plug about Left vs Right is that the Left likes to paint itself as the Angels of the Environment, and, in retrospect, they have made two disasterous mistakes. Banning DDT contributed to millions of deaths from malaria, and, killing nuclear power aggravated global warming. This doesn't mean the right wing is perfect. If you take the Mauna Loa CO2 ppm measurements, you can roughly calculate the increase, in tons, in CO2 added to the atmosphere each year. Basically, you take the ppm, get the % of weight in the atmosphere, then, knowing the atmospheric pressure you can figure out that somewhere each year 4 - 8 gigatons of CO2 go into the air, and, of all surprises, that's about how much carbon is in the fuel that we burn. So, it's pretty reasonable to assume that the CO2 is coming from us. My point is, though, that, the origin of CO2 is ultimately irrelevant. We know that the CO2 is going up. And just as we know we need to build a levee when the water goes up, we know we need to manage the CO2 in the air, and part of that equation has to be sequestration, just in case something screwy is going on with the earth that we don't know about, or, just as likely, something screwy goes on with the earth, like, a big burst of methane hydrates erupts out of the ocean or yellowstone erupts. We just need to have a way to manage the atmosphere.
This is my sig.
The USA alone plants more than 4 million trees *per day* - billions of trees per year. The US forest area has increased over the last several decades. How many trees are Europe planting?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
BTW, Both sides of the argument are full of shit. Having been to many of the countries in Europe (and spent significant time in some) I have seen that most European countries are much less concerned about the environment than the US is, they require significantly lower standards and allow vehicles to smog freely.
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Why not also test your global warming knowledge. http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/GlobWarmTest/st
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Europe as a whole has a declining population. Typically a nation has to have a birth rate of 2.1 children per woman in order to sustain it's population. Europe's number of births per woman in 2004 was 1.45 while the United States has actually managed an average of 2.09 births per woman.
i lity should suffice for anyone wanting more information.
I wouldn't readily accept that policy alone accounts for differences in a regions rate of pollution as much as there are gradually fewer and fewer people that are engaging in pollution causing activities. I'm not discounting the influence of policy but I would like to suggest that any analysis of the situation should take into account declining population.... especially in the middle and upper classes of the region.
This article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fert
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Eh, the problem with things like carbon credits is they are not "real" commodities; they are just...well, they are just made up. It's not like there's a giant pile of CO2, and once that pile is gone there is no more. There is actually no way to enforce something like carbon credits, unless countries are willing to destroy factories etc. that are producing emissions beyond their credits. That isn't going to happen.
Economics of scarce goods only works if the goods are really scarce. "Producing emissions" is by no means a scarce good.
What carbon credits are is really another odd form of fiat currency - it's not based on anything physical (except in name) and wholly depends on the willingness of the involved parties to follow the rules.
Sure, it looks good on paper, but I don't know of any reasonable economic arguments that say that something like carbon credits will actually work.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Better put (as my stats professor said):
Torture statistics enough, and it will admit to anything.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
From American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary, definition 3: incompetence - "The inability to distinguish right from wrong or to manage one's affairs."
Hmm..that sounds familiar. From Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1), sociopath - "a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience."; from American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition, sociopath - "Someone whose social behavior is extremely abnormal. Sociopaths are interested only in their personal needs and desires, without concern for the effects of their behavior on others."
Now, as for malice; from Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1), malice - "desire to inflict injury, harm, or suffering on another, either because of a hostile impulse or out of deep-seated meanness".
So, in short, I rather agree with your definition. Bush much better fits the definition of sociopath, not one with malice. Of course, that's rather disturbing.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Your point about China switching away from coal is an interesting one. A recent German report estimated that China will reach peak coal in about 15 years (linked here http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/05/three-cornered -ghost.html). China takes enourmous staged hits from global warming
but it is not clear that their conversion is owing to recognition of that particular problem.s -selling-solar.html
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Orient toward the Sun: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Ok, so why did the EU's carbon-dioxide emissions increase by so much in 2000-2004? Could it have been in part because the EU expanded during this time to include, for example, Poland? Does anyone here know what the status is on this?
Logic, macros, and more
You imagine that the scientists fuck around and lie about their side, and your imagination gives you license to actually fuck around and lie on your side.
Open your eyes and you'll find out that it's not both sides that are making shit up. It's one side telling the truth, and one side lying.
Now guess which side Rush Limbaugh is on.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
This is what cherry picking data really does: Imagine you roll a die, and only record the result when it lands on a 6. Your conclusion is that rolling a die produces a 6 every time. Or to make it look realistic, just remove about half the times it lands below a 3. That way you get an average of around 4. That's pretty much what the global warming deniers do. Cherry picking data is possibly the most outrageous of scientific misconduct. Sadly it's all too common these days - even in intro science courses in college, a lot of kids throw away experimental results if they don't agree with "What I'm supposed to get" and far too many courses reward getting the "right" result ahead of performing the experiment thoroughly and interpreting the real data your receive.
Did you read the PDF? Did you look at the graph at the bottom?
The US shows a steady increase of greenhouse gas emissions, EXCEPT for the period between 2000 and 2002 where it shows a pretty sharp decline. This decline is NOT because of a conscious effort to reduce emissions, it's a direct result of 9/11 and its effects on the airline industry. There's no will behind the decline, it's just a freak accident, a secondary effect. And to include that decline in any sort of comparison and say "Look guys, we're doing better!" is completely dishonest.
You could be right though he seems to be at pains to say that NASA's job is to get good data not to do anything about the data. Engineers work to tolerances rather than seeking to quantify uncertainties. In a way, that means engineers can ignore a whole slew of data. If you've built a levy system to withstand catagory three storms, it is someone elses problem if catagory 4 storms are in the cards. James Hansen's criticism http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=10577221 that Griffin is uninformed could fit more with the engineer's penchant for
ingnoring things that don't affects specs than with the servility you imply. In that case, one wants to look at the appointing official's intentions
rather than blame the character of the appointee.
Well I cannot speak to the scientific data produced by the EU or the US, but I can tell you that when I went to Italy last month, they were burning leaded gasoline and Just about everyday the smog was so bad that you could barely see from the hotel to the other side of town. This was particularly disappointing since I was staying in Sorrento which is 100 miles from Rome and you would think a little closer to clean country air. I am not a world traveler. Other than this two week trip to Rome and the Sorrento Peninsula, I have not really traveled through Europe. I have to say though that Italy reminded me of the US in the 70's with the persistent smog and their tendency to leave trash and litter on the side of the road. It was particularly galling to watch CNN and the BBC harp everyday on how the US is destroying the worlds environment while I struggled to find air that I could even see through.