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EPA Quashed Report Skeptical of Global Warming
theodp writes "CNET reports that less than two weeks before the EPA formally submitted its pro-carbon dioxide regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty 'decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data.' In an e-mail message (pdf) to a staff researcher on March 17, the EPA official wrote: 'The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward...and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision.' The employee was also ordered not to 'have any direct communication' with anyone outside his small group at EPA on the topic of climate change, and was informed his report would not be shared with the agency group working on the topic. In a statement, the EPA took aim at the credentials of the report's author, Alan Carlin (BS Physics-Caltech, PhD Econ-MIT), describing him as 'not a scientist.' BTW, the official who chastised Carlin also found himself caught up in a 2005 brouhaha over mercury emissions after top EPA officials ordered the findings of a Harvard University study stripped from public records."
So, under the old boss, he leaned one way, and under the new boss he leans another.
Color me shocked.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I wonder how many of these reports on other things (crime, drugs, copyright, etc) have been censored too in order to only give the government's point of view?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Science may not be biased, but scientists certainly are.
"The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as long as we live." - M.J. A
I made a post very critical of carbon emissions not long ago, think it ended up scoring (1, Troll). I was even trying to cite the numbers from other sources. Now is it worth severe economic consequences to lower the temperature (and this is just a maybe, and likely using the best model for the pro-carbon-emission-controllers out there) by ONE-TWENTIETH of ONE degree? (over the course of decades) I know I certainly believed most of this green crap when I was in school (not all of it is COMPLETELY crap). However the carbon dioxide aspect of it is the biggest fairy tale we seem to want to believe. Clouds and sunspots have more effect on climate than carbon dioxide ever will. Feel free to mod me down, but at least explain where I'm wrong before doing so. Once again please note I'm only talking about carbon dioxide, and I'm not saying things like smog, or other emissions that cause acid rain are not problems.
There will ALWAYS be skepticism on a scientific theory as controversial as this. At some point we have to take action. And maybe this paper was given the bum's rush, but I think it was less "conspiracy to silence critics of the almighty environmentalists" and more "oh, God, let's just get on with this already."
The EPA is a federal organization that, at the end of the day, must side on the consensus of the scientific community. Not be paralyzed by every single dissenting opinion.
I hate to be a troll - but I agree with the EPA, a PhD in economics is not the same as being a climate scientist - unless he has decided to dig into the climate computer models - which I doubt - I am not sure what the substance of his report would be - economic impact?
Stop giving them power to take your money and make your choices for you. Then you don't care.
Under the old boss, the EPA was accused of quashing reports on climate change made by climatologists. Now, they're accused of quashing reports on climate change made by economists. There's a fundamental difference there.
Wow, the guy has worked for the EPA for almost 40 years but because he has an MIT PhD in economics, that makes it ok?
It wasn't ok when it was the other side, and it's not ok now. End of story.
True... only you have alternatives to the corporate doctor, when the state takes full control, your options get pretty thin pretty fast.
Not really, because for the vast majority of americans it isn't the corporate doctor making the decision, but the corporate insurance agency bureaucrat who has a vested interest in not doing anything for you. With the government at least they have the ostensible purpose of administering your good health and outrageously bad decisions reflect on politicians concerned about being reelected. Outrageous decisions from the insurance companies result in them giving someone a promotion and bad press that comes to nothing because politicians care more about lobbying bucks than constituents.
I'm quite skeptical that the US government can create and run a reasonable socialized healthcare system, but I don't see any better alternatives. What we have now isn't working. We pay more than other countries for much less and it is one of the major factors destabilizing our economy. Half of personal bankruptcies are the result of medical problems. 75% of those were people who had health insurance that found a way to not ay or underpay to such a degree that the individual could not afford treatment. I've been through the system. I had some of the best healthcare available to the middle class when I became ill. I still ended up paying over $20K out of pocket to get treated which would have driven the majority of people (without my paranoiacly large amount of savings) into complete poverty. I can't even imagine how many people who are too poor for personal bankruptcy to make sense are driven into poverty by our broken healthcare system.
Medicine is one of those fields along with firefighting, law enforcement, and military defense where capitalism is a very poor fit.
Except a ecological degree guarantees that you are fully indoctrinated in the environmental dogma of the day...not necessarily that you understand the nature of natural phenomena.
THL phish sticks
What does Al Gore have a degree in?
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
Actually, it just looks like a brief downward excursion in a larger chaotic trend. We see exactly the same behavior in another chaotic system, the stock marker: even in a a bull market (good times), one finds downward trends.
Changes in temperature on this scale are exactly what you would expect to find, actually, in the context of an overall, long-term warming trend.
"No warming in 11 years", in particular, is a wingnut claim. And with a PhD in Economics, he's not a climate scientist.
First, have a look at the data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png
"Global temperature" is a meaningless term in any case, but so long as measures are consistent (they aren't--the thermometer coverage in Asia dropped precipitately after the fall of the Soviet Union) the trend should have something vaguely to do with atmospheric heat content. On that basis, there was a large increase in atmospheric heat content from around 1900 to about 1940, then nothing much for the next forty years, then a sudden jump between 1980 and 2000. It's too soon to tell yet, and I've not run a statistical analysis myself (although one is trivial to do) but you'd have to be insane not to notice that the past decade looks a lot like noise.
Furthermore, the climate modelling community are now predicting "the possibility" of a reduction in global heat content in the next decade, making AGW an untestable hypothesis, globally. If temperatures go up: it proves we have global warming! If temperatures go down: it proves nothing because global warming can cause that too!
So now the ball is firmly in the court of AGW advocates: what facts would you count as evidence that AGW is NOT occurring? If you can't name any, then your belief is not science but faith. We'll argue about priors strength and whatnot after you've adduced the facts that you would count as evidence.
Secondly, with a B.Sc. in physics from Caltech he is one of the smartest people you could possibly imagine, with a better grounding in physics--and remember, climate science is nothing but a special category of physics, so anyone with a decent physics degree is qualified to do climate science--than many people with Ph.D.'s in the subject. I was a post-doc at Caltech, coming from a top-tier university, and felt myself in good company with the grad students, post-docs and profs there. The undergrads were like they belonged to a different species: focused, intelligent and intense beyond belief.
And I should also point out: no one doing "climate science" is a computational physicist, yet a huge amount of climate science is nothing but computational physics. As a computational physicist who has had a look at GCM's, I'm appalled by what I find there. Good science, certainly, but nothing like what I would want public policy based on.
I think there are good reasons to try to reduce our dependence on carbon-based fuels, and as a believer in free markets I am in general an advocate of cap and trade as a sustainable mechanism for imposing property rights and limiting dumping in the atmospheric commons. But as a scientist I think there are far more open questions on AGW than settled ones, and the public debate as pretty much abandoned any pretence of science, with each side arguing its own religion with no reference to any facts that would reasonably bear on the issue.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
This just serves to remind us, 'liberal' and 'conservative' alike, that political maneuvering and groupthink look pretty much exactly the same and have the same consequences, regardless on which side of the ideological fence it occurs.
Groupthink is groupthink, and it's ALWAYS bad.
That's why, as a liberal, I preferred Dennis Kucinich and am wary of Obama; Obama is far too good at mixing up the Kool-Aid and fomenting groupthink. Kucinich is a plain talker, and it apparently makes him unpopular for saying things that rattle people's delusions and make them uncomfortable. Obama NEVER does that. He's a playa.
Medicine is one of those fields along with firefighting, law enforcement, and military defense whee capitalism is a very poor fit.
This may be true, but Government control of medicine is actually worse. I live in Britain, where we have socialised healthcare in the form of the NHS. I pay for the NHS with a big chunk of tax money; all Brits are forced to do likewise, no choice, no opt-out. Still, many of us choose to buy private health insurance as well, paying twice simply because the quality of NHS care is so poor. It is poor because it is inefficient, and it is inefficient because it is run by a Government monopoly staffed by more bureaucrats than doctors.
For all its faults, I envy the American system and wish that we had it here. An American may lose his house to pay for an operation, but at least he gets the operation, while the Brits die from MRSA, waiting months for urgent surgery in a dirty ward, paying more (on average) for the privilege.
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
Al Gore isn't setting EPA policy.
Economists are the Rheumatologists of the the math world. If you want to diagnose some strange condition, that every other Dr tells you is all in your head, and no one is able to diagnose, you go to a Rheumatologist.
The economist's job is to spot and analyze trends. Since global warming has everything to do with trend analysis, I think an economist is the perfect person to evaluate the data.
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels.
I call paskahousut.
ANYONE with a physics degree can certainly comment on the physics of AGW theory.
[flame thrower on]An ecology degree or a degree in meteorology is what you you get when you can't do the math for your physics.[flame thrower off]
The problem with current AGW theory is that the data doesn't always match the theory as well as would be expected. Generally for people trained in the basic sciences this means that one needs to re-examine the original hypothesis or perhaps the models. Not for people that truly believe in AGW. These folks, scientists or not, can be pretty dogmatic. In today's climate that means that work is either censored, ignored, or the researchers attacked. I find it odd that people who publish works that don't follow the prevailing wisdom that writes the pay checks for AGW researchers are called skeptics or crackpots or are accused of being paid off by "Big Oil" (While money in the form of government grants and/or "green" organizations isn't tainted, ever)
The laws of physics change for no person. They just get occasionally refined (hat tip Einstein). If the basic physics upon which the theory is based doesn't work, then the theory is wrong. Period.
I suspect he was speaking more from his economics degree. If one is to make a decision as to what is better for the world, with a limited supply of resources (ie money) wouldn't having someone with an economics background help do the cost benefit analysis? -cluge
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
He has been working for the EPA as an economist. Not a climatologist.
His prior publications are in law and economics journals. Not science journals.
He is no doubt very qualified to asses the economic impact of EPA actions.
Not so much the veracity of various competing scientific theories of climate change.
But he did give a speech last year to the media where he told them that it was past time to allow dissenting voices to be heard as they only confused people. He said the debate was over and those few voices from the other side were outliars (intentional misspelling) and must be ignored One wonders how many millions of dollars he has made as he flies about the world in his private jet, travels in his SUVs and lives in his massive mansions.
The guy had a physics degree, and an economics degree. Neither which fully qualifies him to report on Global Warming.
What does, in your opinion?
The problem with "climate science" is that it really does require a broad application of disciplines - suggesting that someone with a degree in physics in not a scientist, or not qualified to report on GW is absurd. As for economics, this is an even more important discipline when it comes to determining what action, if any, should be taken (eg, cost benefit analysis of various approaches, etc).
Alan Carlin has no place in any serious discussion about climate change.
Ok then, so what's the solution? He has a point of view you--and presumably the Obama administration--disagrees with. As a 38-year long government employee, should he be fired for his views? After all, if as you say, he has no place in any serious discussion about climate change, why NOT fire him?
Whilst it's not directly relevant to the decision in quashing the report it's interesting to look at who is pushing this. The file is hosted at by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an right-wing think tank who "seeks to overturn government regulations that the CEI regards as inappropriate, such as regulations pertaining to drug safety, rent control, and automobile fuel efficiency" See info at http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Competitive_Enterprise_Institute
They get significant corporation funding, including from the likes of Texaco.
However, I suspect that the reality of this is that the EPA commissioned a report under the previous government and chose someone who would give them the line the White house wanted, then with the change of President they cancelled it. It's politics. Don't let that stop any conspiracy theories though.
Most of these reports are poor, whether they support your point of view or not. They are intended to take a large body of primary material understandable only by experts and make it easy for politicians to get ideas from. Usually this results in an unacceptable simplification of that primary material.
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
There are two standard academic journals where the specialized stuff in Environmental Economics is published: Land Economics and The Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. Carlin has published only a single article in Land Econ and none in JEEM during his entire career dating back to the mid-1960s. Furthermore, he only began publishing on the economics of global warming in 2007. Finally, anyone who is first rate coming out of a Ph.D. Econ program in MIT gets a Prof job at Berkeley, Harvard, Chicago, etc. The second raters get placements at Nebraska, Auburn, Oregon State, etc. It is only the dregs that end up as civil servants in places like the EPA. I would almost completely dismiss him except that I did notice that he had co-authored a couple of papers 15 years ago with Kip Viscusi who is certainly not a lightwieght in the field of risk assessment but who has also happily accepted money from Exxon for studying the economics of punitive damages resulting from the Exxon Valdez oil spill case.
Bottom line: Carlin is a 60 year-old fart who has done no significant research in his entire career and has a political viewpoint that is coloring what little work he has done.
FreeSpeech.org
True, but no other branch of science is working within governments to literally tax every person on the planet under the guise of helping mother earth. But climatologists are so yes they get more scrutiny.
It doesn't make people feel warm and fuzzy when the guy that is supposed to be detached has become a "believer".
A creationist could use exactly the same argument to discredit evolution. And like evolution, I think the fact is that if you sit down and study it, the evidence leans in favor of the experts, which you are not.
There's a lot of people decrying the 'religious fanaticism' surrounding climate change science. However, the fact is that the people trying to discredit climate change are in fact those who ascribe to the church of the almighty invisible hand of the economy which will right all ills if we just leave it alone and let it do its business.
I find it amusing that everyone is so fired up about Cap and Trade when they ignore the fact that it will only work if EVERY emitter buys into it.
That's simply not going to be the case.
What's going to happen is that more heavy, energy-intensive industry will move to India, China, and other less industrialized countries and C02 emission will stay the same (if not actually increasing due to lower levels of efficiency).
The only true solution is mitigation or sequestration.
Couldn't disagree more. The reason economists are useful in analyzing global warming is that they understand economics. They actually have half a clue what will happen to the economy if we impose massive regulations on it.
PJ O'Rourke was writing about his experiences in a number of countries with major famines. He observed that there was always plenty of food around but that the thugs in charge didn't allow it to get to starving people. Nature, in a nutshell, doesn't cause famines, people do.
So if the science is settled, fine, but also realize that it's a historical fact that we could easily kill more of ourselves than global warming if we screw up the solution. So we need a debate about the economics and we need proper economists to weigh in.
You do realize that Mr. Carlin isn't an academic? I know plenty of engineers, doctors, lawyers who don't publish in academic journals. Do you know why that is? Because they are active practitioners doing the jobs they have trained to do. Mr. Carlin's report was not new science. New research isn't even the EPA's role. His report was a summary of papers counter to the holy scripture put forth by the political hacks running the show, political hacks in an agency that isn't supposed to be political. In fact he cites court cases that specifically state the EPA is supposed to be providing information on all of the positions around an issue. Not just the positions that support the executive branch's agenda.
So, how about, instead of the piss poor ad hominem hatchet job on this guy -- who is doing the job he is supposed to be doing -- why don't you explain why the EPA is failing to do its duty?
I'm sure the EPA needs economists to evaluate the impact of its policies on the economy. Having said that, that doesn't mean that the opinion of said economists should have any weight whatsoever when it comes to evaluating the science of climate change. The fact remains that the author of the "quashed" report has never published a single paper relating to climatology and climate science, and has only worked as an economist for his entire career.
I'm a Ph.D. student in engineering at MIT with a substantial background in physics. Does that mean that when I have a fancy MIT Ph.D. on my resume in a few years, my opinion be given as much impact as someone who's studied climatology? I'd hope not.
Does that mean that when I have a fancy MIT Ph.D. on my resume in a few years, my opinion be given as much impact as someone who's studied climatology? I'd hope not.
You haven't been around here long, have you? You don't even need a degree in a related field to have your opinion be given as much weight as the consensus positions of the world's scientific academies, climatologists, etc. At least by this crowd.
I tore these out of your symbol, and they turned into paper.
"Money" is an abstract value for the actual costs are in terms of labor, materials, etc. Economics often involves money, but it doesn't have to. Similarly, astronomy isn't necessarily about optical telescopes.
In terms of the environment, we have a limited amount of CO2 and other forms of pollution that we can put into the atmosphere without causing large amounts of harm. Figuring out the optimal point for CO2 output versus the level of harm is valid area of economic study. Money could play a part here, but it doesn't have to.
Not a typewriter
The grant money argument is one of the stupidest against global warming. Seriously, you believe there is some conspiracy of individuals furthering a false hypothesis and cooking data across several branches of science on the topic of global warming to get grant funding? I'm not going to claim grant funding is easy to get, because it isn't, but smart people will find plenty of good topics to study. We know very little about the climate, and the NSF would be funding lots of research even without the global warming tag attached to it.
Furthermore, the GP points out flaws in the paper that anybody can see. You don't need to be a climatologist to see that there is no causal link between lifespan, crop yield and global warming despite a correlative link.
You don't have to read very far into icecap.us to realize these guys are a fraud. The http://icecap.us/index.php/go/faqs-and-myths is filled with strawman arguments like these:
# CO2 is a pollutant.
(Who claimed it was a pollutant?)
# CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas.
(Who claimed it was?)
# The greenhouse effect is a bad thing.
The greenhouse effect is necessary for life on earth as we know it, were it not for the greenhouse effect, temperatures on Earth would be about 60 degrees F (33C) colder than they are at present. The global warming discussions center on the claims that human enhancement of the greenhouse will raise temperatures, and that these will be large compared with natural variations. (http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/ and Sherwood B. Idso, Craig D. Idso and Keith E. Idso, "The Specter of Species Extinction: Will Global Warming Decimate Earth's Biosphere?,
http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/150.pdf)
# Modeling the earth's climate is nearly an exact science.
(Who claimed it was?)
# Summers will be extremely hot and dry.
(Who claimed it was? Some people prefer to call this effect 'climate change', because the effect on the climate is unknown).
Don't be an idiot.
With your logic Einstein would never have worked his way up and out of the patent office. What the hell was HE doing discussing anything other than patents?
At least listen to the message before judging the messenger.
"As a 38-year long government employee, should he be fired for his views?"
Problem is that they are not his views they are the views of the CEI lobbyists as seen in email linked in TFS, and that's all they are views not evidence. The role of a civil servant is to speak truth to power not to push the barrow of a special interest group, particularly when that special interest is anti-science FUD. IMHO he should be sacked for incompetence, corruption, or both.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Bush vs Obama on the subject of 'squashing dissent':
Bush:
1. Omitted DATA for 1000 years and mandated the insertion of qualifying words such as âoepotentiallyâ and âoemayâ that the result would have been to insert âoeuncertainty... where there is essentially none."
2. Demanded that data from a discredited study funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute be included in climate change reports.
3. Demanded that The elimination of the summary statementâ" noncontroversial within the science community that studies climate changeâ"that âoeclimate change has global consequences for human health and the environment.â
On the other hand:
Obama:
1. Despite the fact that Alan Carlin was no part of any group tasked with studying climate control, Obama allowed his unsolicited and unwarranted report to be analyzed and subjected to PEER REVIEW, and was subsequently REJECTED by his PEERS.
Yeah, that's the same exact thing.
The thing that should stand out to anyone is that Carlin claims in this "report": "There may be in the future. But global temperatures are roughly where they were in the mid-20th century. They're not going up, and if anything they're going down."
This is complete and utter HORSESHIT.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
I REALLY expect more from the /. crowd.