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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."
Everyone knows that George W. Bush loves the scientific method so much that he would NEVER allow this to happen. Just look at his stance on that intelligent design nonsense....
You mean the White House lied to the public? I'm shocked, shocked! Well, not that shocked.
The ensuing hot air will contribute [a] little.
For everyone interested in this topic, Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science is required reading.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
are belong to U.S.
The submitter, the analysis, and the relevant claims in the first linked article are from the "Pacific Institute". That's fine and doesn't mean anything about it is incorrect, but probably means there is an agenda at work - surprise, just as there's an "agenda" served by the White House, too - and this is also a factual statement:
Pick any year since the Kyoto Protocol was agreed to in 1997, Mr. Bush should have said, and the U.S. CO2 emission performance is superior to that of all major Kyoto parties, including and most notably Europe (CO2 being the focus of the many pending legislative proposals).
Also, the submission complains that the US metric shown in a positive light - surprising they'd choose something that reflects positively! - is that because only CO2 emissions are considered. Well, CO2 emissions account for nearly three quarters of all greenhouse gas emissions.
Further is the problem with using 2000 as the reference point. In fact, it is perfectly valid to use 2000 as a reference point; it's just as valid as using 1997 or any other time. There is no magical time in terms of statistical length or any point in time that is any more valid than any other. You can argue that the submitter is "cherry picking" his own data. It's laughable to say there is a "right" base year.
Of course, the issue is much, much more complex, and no one wants to take into consideration the very real economic impacts of taking drastic action to reduce emissions, especially when China and India - forget the EU - are not saddled with the same restrictions.
Constructing greater and more elaborate lies, and applying the finest of lipstick to pigs.
I just watched two movies: Control Room (2004) about the media coverage of the invasion of Iraq and Al Jazeera's role and The revolution will not be televised (2003) about the role of the private media in the coup in Venezuela in 2001. Neither of the two might be called very objective, but I see how difficult it would be to find an audience for more scientific analysis.
The common theme in both is how important the media has become. Now this is not really news, but during the last decade the media reaction has been part of e.g. military operation (embedded journalism) and there is a tremendous effort to control the pictures. Not so much to suppress any reporting, since it has become obvious that this will never work, but to control what is fed to the press. And unfortunately the press is not yet up to speed to get their informations from a wider number of sources.
Now with blogging, youtube, flickr etc. there seems to be a much wider range of possible information sources, even harder to suppress than in the past. But today we face the problem which of these sources to trust, there are just so many. There are attempts like newstrust, which tries to be a sort of slashdot moderation system on top of existing news. But I think we need much more of this. Like greasemonkey allows you to attach things to websites that the authors did not intend to be there, we need the option to attach other sources to any news and have a large body of people vote on which of these sources should be taken into account. I have no clue how to realize this, but this is a typical case: the government using FUD to strengthen their position. People can react and argue with the claims, but there should be a way for these comments to reach the public, not only via sites like slashdot, but by default. With the increase of media sources and media power we have to become better at using and evaluating media as a group, not only as single viewers and readers.
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Cheers
Take a look at US and UK BMW websites. The UK entry level model gets 40MPG, which is not much worse than our Prius. Living proof that we can double our car fuel efficiency NOW if we just stop being apathetic about it. And this is nothing compared to the impact of living in apartments and having a working Metro.
"me wipes tear from my eye"
You see that? You see that you MOTHERFUCKERS? You made the cookie monster cry! Cookie Monster! For shame! Add this to the long list of Bush attrocities...not the worst, not the last, but I never thought they would go this low. Jesus...
Statistics these days are becoming increasingly worthless, often just used to justify a political agenda on both sides. It's like the old adage says: statistics are like a bikini: what they reveal is interesting, but what they hide is crucial.
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.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Calm down! Relax! It's all part of a carefully orchestrated plan; when we eventually begin to get severely affected by global warming, the US war mongering will reach a point where nuclear winter will cancel it out.
The summary's claim is that the White House is selectively using data points, and to an extent that is true. They base their claims on an index comparison that starts at the year 2000. When you view the data this way, it does appear that the EU's Greenhouse Gas emissions have gone up, while the US's have declined/been neutral. The article prefers on the other hand to index at 1990, which shows that over the last 14 years of data that the US's emissions have increased dramatically compared to the EU.
Now here's my first problem: the accusation assumes that 2000 is not a good index year, which it is. If the Bush Administration wants to make the case that they (The Bush Administration) have been more successful than the EU in reducing emissions, then the logical start point for comparison is about when they took over which would be 2001.
Now, the article points out correctly that Greenhouse emissions tend to drop during economic slowdowns. One can see that easily by looking at the graph at the end of it (the US has a drop in 1991; the EU has a drop from 92-96; the US has another drop from 00-01). If one takes these economic slowdowns into account, then 2000, the peak of the last economy, might very well be a good starting point for the Administration to start their indexing from. Why should they have to take into account the failures of past administrations (Bush I, and Clinton) when touting the success of their administration? If, hypothetically, US emissions had decreased from 1990 to 2000 and increased from 2000 to 2004, would it be fair for the Bush Administration to take the earlier data into account and claim that they had reduced emissions? No, that would be taking credit for progress they did not make. The same principle applies reverse.
The article also brings about a perpetual flaw in any sort of greenhouse gas analysis. It completely ignores economic growth and the effect it has on increasing emissions (which it candidly points out by the way). During much of the mid-90s the US economy was booming, especially compared to the EU, so of course there was going to be an increase in emissions from 1991-2000. Additionally, these indexes fail to take into account the size of the economic growth when making the comparison. If we really want a useful measure, we should be tracking "Volume of Emissions per Unit of GDP Growth." That way we could judge economies based on their environmental efficiency rather just on pure volumetric data.
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
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.
A few years ago, I was assigned to write a story about a policy analysis that predicted the economic consequences of a new school funding plan in my state (adding about $1 billion to k-12 funding). Just for grins, I found an equally compelling study that found the opposite conclusion (though it wasn't based exactly on the school funding plan, it did model the state economy and the impact of new taxes, government hiring, etc.) I called the writers of both studies, who freely admitted their models are based on assumptions -- such as that taxation and the new government jobs it supports are a drag on the economy. Then, I talked with a few state lawmakers, who all also freely admitted that what they and their collegues do when confronted with all these conflicting studies is pick whichever study supports their pre-conceived notions and call it "evidence."
This most shocking thing in this article is not that the White House cherry-picks data, but that the White House (and the Conservatives in general) have finally got on board with the whole "climate change" thing. Go back 5 years and you would be called crazy if you said greenhouse gasses are aiding global warming (notice the alternate term: "climate change" instead of "global warming" - Conservatives wouldn't dare agree with Liberals and call it "global warming").
:)
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they're finally getting what Liberals have been shouting for decades. It's just shocking that they're only agreeing with the science now.
Now all we have to do is wait 30 more years for Conservatives to accept evolution.
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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.
Come on. It's really not that hard to get emissions data on China. Pollutants like sulfur oxides, soot and mercury are harmful in trace amounts in exhaust, and emissions can vary widely depending on the pollution controls in place. However, CO2 is the main compound that results from combustion of coal. Just knowing total coal consumption is enough to estimate CO2 emissions accurately. And we do know how much coal they produce and use. How hard is it to Google "China coal consumption 2005"? I'll save you the trouble and paste this hit from the first page:
..."
Policy Briefs
"Coal consumption reached more than 2 billion tons. in 2005, almost twice the coal consumption of the United. States, even though China's economy is only
www.iie.com/publications/pb/pb06-6.pdf
Oh, and news flash: wood is not a fossil fuel.
Is the UK entry level model street legal in the US? Does it meet US emissions and safety requirements? (For that matter, what constitues a 'UK entry level model', as no model is designated as such on the UK BMW website that I can find.)
but just see an opportunity to bash Bush.
How blatant do the lies have to be before it's justified? How can someone lie to you so much and so often yet you...apparently...seem to still support them?
Saying Bush cherry picks statistics and manipulates data to mislead the public (i.e. lying) cannot be doubted by a reasonable person. The truth doesn't have many friends these days, might ask yourself if you're one of them.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
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.
a rt.html
Why not also test your global warming knowledge. http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/GlobWarmTest/st
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Being a patriot means loving your country.. and, consequently, hating your government.
Software patents delenda est.
that the Whitehouse seems to actually expect that intelligent people won't see right through their argument.
The other thing that gets me is that most Americans seem to prefer to believe the Whitehouse's argument because it conveniently eliminates their need to take responsibility for their own pollution.
The third thing that gets me is that even though its actually just stating true facts, this post will probably be moderated (by an American) as 'Flamebait' or 'Troll' just so they can continue to live in denial.
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
load "$",8,1
The current administration *always* lies, so the truth is just the opposite of what they say. GW's methods have made it so easy to know where the truth is. So, we know if GW says we are doing better the than EU on emissions, than the truth is the EU is doing better than we are. So simple!
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
China will probably become the biggest greenhouse gas emitter this year or next, International Energy Agency Chief Economist Fatih Birol said in April. Ma said today this is inevitable and he can't estimate when it will happen.
The country's[China's] greenhouse gas emissions reached 5.6 billion tons in 2004, of which 5.05 billion tons were carbon dioxide, the commission said in the report. U.S. emissions that year reached 7.12 billion tons, according to the Department of Energy.
I stole this Sig
If those fuckers are willing to lie to us, then get them the fuck out of office. Mod me down for inflammatory language but it needs to be said.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
The largest, most successful car company on the planet? Toyota. The leader on going Green through higher fuel economy and smarter technology? Toyota. Coincidence?
Which city in the rust belt has a trade surplus with China and why? Erie PA. Because GE makes the most fuel efficient locomotives on the planet in Erie and even though the Chinese have lower labor costs and environmental protection standards, the GE locmotives, while costing more to purchase, pay-back the extra cost very rapidly in fuel savings. The greenest tech is the most efficient tech and it wins economically.
So, protecting and subsidizing stupidity might protect one particular set of players in an industry (GM & Ford, for instance) but overall it doesn't do the USA any good.
Green is efficient, so Green is smart business.
There's green in going green -- Friedman
Griffin did not dispute the reality of global warming, he's just not sure it is worth doing anything about it. This is strange coming from an engineer since one would think the basic reaction would be "Wow! If we can change the planet with out meaning to, what could we do if we engineered it?" but he seems to have some philosophical hangup about not interfering in how we are interfering with the planet. Here's a summary: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASA_Administrat or_Michael_Griffin_Not_Sure_Global_Warming_A_Probl em_999.html.
s -selling-solar.html
More to the point on emissions from various countries, here is a recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences tabulation of emission trends. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0700609104v1. China appears to be primarily responsible for the acceleration of emissions. With the US reducing it's emissions 1.3% between 2005 and 2006 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18831796/, it look as though China will continue to dominate the acceleration.
While TFA has some valid points, the main thing is that industrialized countries have a better opportunity to slow or reduce emissions since, for them, efficiency improvements can pace growth while for developing nations efficiency cannot help with a growth from zero situation.
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Out pace growth: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
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
How much shit would a dipshit dip, if a dipshit could dip shit?
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
It'd be real nice to grow tropical fruit in New England.
The USA will get that Mexican climate, fitting for the new owners. The old owners can move to that uninhabited area called Canada. We all get more space; the continent is kind of triangular with the big part up north.
Alaska is way bigger than Hawaii.
Opening up the Northwest Passage would be great for trade. Opening up the whole Arctic Ocean would be even better. Right now the area is a damn worthless because of the ice.
" It won't be long before the European factory is, say, using only 1/3 the energy of a US factory"
Coal is cheap and the U.S. and China have vast reserves of it. As long as you can throw people at mining it or strip mine it, and you can stand the mercury and CO2 pollution there isn't going to be any particularly serious energy related spike there. Why do you think the U.S. and China are on a binge of building coal fired power plants. Industries dependent on oil and gas could certainly benefit from the efficiency you cite.
As an aside you have to love the Bush administration and coal industry propaganda about "Clean Coal" technology. Last time I looked this is still at least a decade away if if will be done at all. They can use the term now though in saturation advertising as they build lots of coal fired power plants, which while cleaner than they were, are still spewing vast quantities of CO2 and some mercury. Everyone thinks they are "Clean" though thanks to advertising.
@de_machina
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.
This is at least partially true. Although the most advanced silicon and solar cell technologies currently come from Canberra (Australia) Australian National University. One of the things most often missed is that the great climate change debate (pretty much over for all you continuing sceptics out there) will stimulate a lot of things. If Carbon trading is adopted globally, and even when it is adopted locally, there is then a significant incentive to innovation to reduce carbon impacts. If a carbon tax of say US $25 per ton is applied then all of a sudden there are technologies such as solar, wave, wind, geo-thermal etc that start to become competitive with older technologies such as coal etc. Carbon sequestration becomes cost effective, then we see genuine competition to develop new and better technologies that will give companies an economic advantage. If these efficiencies have an impact at a reasonable cost then yes, they will be adopting them in India and China. This is where innovation can restore a competitive advantage to economies who have lost out on low-skilled manufacturing to India, China, Indonesia and others. Cutting back emissions can actually stimulate economic growth.
It's purely political. Now you might say the same about U.S. DOE releases.
But I refuse - completely - to read any "scientific" report that has "bush is evil" and "the washington times had the nerve to discredit me" on the first page.
Why ? Because such statements DO NOT belong in a scientific study. Neutral references from both sides, in peer-reviewed journals, yes. Note that still would mean that the washington times is off limits.
Also why is the study house so young ?
There are so many things wrong with calling this a "study" that it's ridiculous.
Close, but no cigar?
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
Your US fluid oz is bigger than our UK fluid oz.
So the number of oz per gallon doesn't relate to the different size of the gallon.
The UK gallon is a little bigger.
Ignoring reality and pretending that the delusions of the current US administration could be true is a much worse form of bias than the one you're imagining to exist here.
Partisan morons like yourself need to get over their infatuations with certain politicians and political groups. You can always spot them; you probably noticed a few of them yourself ten years ago -- the people who went around whining like spanked children everytime there was an article about the Clinton's supreme court hearings. "How can they be so judgemental and MEAN! Grrr! Clinton is a good guy! BIAS! BIAS! Ricky... wahhhh *" The best thing for them would have been to not idolize clinton in the first place, and to simply acknowledge that he was a pig-fucking con artist. So how does it feel to be in the same moronic position with the Bush administration? Get over them -- they're a bunch of corrupt moronic assholes and they have the collective scientific knowledge of a sack of mice.
* Reference to "I Love Lucy".