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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."
from separate 'research institutions'. i will time them so that they will come one after another and even make you believe that there is no global warming, despite the ice you stand on in antarctica is melting and you gonna fall into the water in 5 minutes.
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This is not news. The guy had a physics degree, and an economics degree. Neither which fully qualifies him to report on Global Warming. Perhaps if he had an ecological degree to go along with the physics degree I'd give him more weight. As it is, I suspect he was speaking more from his economics degree.
re: "No warming in 11 years", in particular, is a wingnut claim.
Yeah, those guys at NASA are all wingnuts...
...that there are problems with the theory of anthropogenic global warming and at least how it is presented. A while back I put together a document that points out some serious problems with how Algore has gone about making his points...
http://www.chrisoleary.com/projects/NeitherThisNorThat/Documents/AnInconvenientTruth_Analysis.pdf
So what if he's "just an economist"?
Sphincter says what? What if you were going in for open heart surgery and the nurse introduced your surgeon, and said he's "just a janitor"? How is the fact that someone is commenting outside the field of their expertise NOT relevant?
Sometimes the stupid around here makes my head hurt.
Looking at this guy's website the first thing that seems not quite kosher is that he works for RAND corporation
I think this explains all, it seems very natural that the same "think-tank" that once proposed that a nuclear war can have a winner will also state so categorically that global warming is harmless.
That's the same organization that gets so much funding from the oil industry they opened a branch in the Persian gulf.
I'm going to go ahead and let him perform brain surgery.
Troll? Really? Questioning this guys credentials is considered a troll?
If you look at what he published in the last forty years, you will see that almost every single work presents the "big cost" of preserving the environment. He has shown a very consistent, extremely biased point of view, that puts economics above everything else.
Alan Carlin has no place in any serious discussion about climate change.
Your argument that technology evolves is a red herring, and is irrelevant to the original point. Also, you never answered my question: In principle, what evidence would convince you that global warming is real, anthropogenic, and dangerous?
I never said that it wasn't. I was replying to a post that stated that we needed to take action. I never said anything abut global warming being totally fake. I simply stated that before we paralyzed our economy in some way, we needed to look at the evidence some more. For human made global warming to be proven real and dangerous there needs to be a few points. Number one would be that humans can not adapt to the changes. Throughout history there have been numerous changes in nature and humans have survived through them. Today we are better equipped to handle a changing climate than any time in the past. We have the technology that even with rising sea levels, we can still build for the same amount of living space (artificial islands or by building higher buildings). We also have the capacity that if this was such a danger to artificially house samples of "in danger" ecosystems for future use. For it to be dangerous, we can't have any capabilities to adapt. With current data, a massive solar flare which we can't control would disrupt life infinitely more than global warming would in a decade or two. Two, it needs to be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that humans caused it, we today have too little data to prove anything more than a gradual increase of temperatures. Mix with that the fact that some of the recording stations are invalid (being in very hot areas compared to even a few miles away) or have known problems.
My problems aren't with if global warming exists or not but rather if we should paralyze the economy to do so (as that seems to be the current option with most lawmakers). If we could reduce global warming in a way that does not paralyze the economy or by ideas that might have disasterous global effects if they go wrong (like the creating clouds idea), I would be all for them.
You'll need to support that with evidence, because from where I'm sitting, the places in the world with well-regulated market economies (Western Europe, Australia, Europe, Japan) are among the best places on earth to live, and measure better on virtually every quality-of-life index than less-regulated places like China and the United States. I wouldn't quite call that "ruin".
There are a few things wrong with those assumptions. The current economies of Europe and Japan were basically rebuilt after WWII. Thats only 65 years or so of running. And China is very, very, very heavily regulated, not so much with industrial goods, but rather with any type of ideas. The US also got an overhaul in the '30s and similarly hasn't had enough time to really prove itself. And the USA (not sure about Europe, Japan and China) really doesn't even have a decent enough economic system after the federal reserve came into play because effectively the notes are only worth the fabric of them backed by "the full faith of the US government" and thanks in part to its isolation from a lot of the world, it hasn't had any major attacks or challenges to its sovereignty.
Similarly, on "quality of life" just look at the suicide rates, (all stats taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_rates) where Japan is in the top 10. Plus, a lot of European countries, particularly western Europe rank above the US in number of suicides. Granted, Japan has a cultural attitude favorable to suicide due to the honor code of Samurai, but its interesting to look there and see a lot of developed countries with high suicide rates. While "undeveloped" countries such as Iran, Syria, and Kuwait rank near the bottom (of course part of it could be due to governments not keeping records.)
I don't see how this "don't let perfect be the enemy of good" factor appl
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
First, The free market will (sometimes) optimize to maximize profits (though not necessarily over the long term --- see "Global Financial Services Industry, 1990-2009"). It will only "find a solution" if carbon emissions/global warming decreases profits, or if there's a clear case that developing a solution will lead to new profits. And even then, it may not actually succeed in producing an optimal outcome (see "Global Financial Services Industry, 1990-2009" for a handy set of examples.)
There are some new markets to be reached by being "green" that will require new technology to be made which will create a better outcome. For example, lower powered CPUs, just look at the netbook, if Intel hadn't made the Atom CPU, it wouldn't have been able to dominate the netbook market which required a lower powered CPU to have decent enough battery life. So even by not making a conscious decision to be "green" Intel contributed to laptops using less electricity which leads to less coal being burnt, etc. The same thing will happen with other things with enough time for them to be made cheaply enough.
Finding a solution either involves a massive change to our energy infrastructure, or some random-chance brilliant invention (try as it might, even the free market can't do more that set the right conditions for this --- it's largely blind luck and human intuition).
Sure, but as humans have proved in the past, there are tons of people with blind luck and enough intuition to take principles and turn them into products. At one time a heavier than air flying machine was deemed impossible. At one time the earth was believed to be flat. At one time people thought certain things were the future, that airships would replace jets, that PowerPC CPUs would dominate the home computer market, etc.
The only constant is change.
At present, there is minimal incentive for the market to restructure our energy (consumption/transmission/generation) infrastructure. So outside of a few edge cases, all the brilliance of the free market is doing nothing at all to solve the problem. It will probably continue to fail to solve the problem until global warming starts to become a serious threat to industry profits (i.e., customers vanishing beneath the waves). Unfortunately, the best science on this issue indicates that there'll be very little we can do about it then. Even cold fusion won't reduce the CO2 levels, and all but the most radical technological breakthroughs will be inadequate to the problem.
Thats where your wrong. For one, all this hype by the media has made a lot of people go out of their way to buy things that are "green", this creates a market for things such as home solar panels, etc. Eventually with this niche market it will become cheaper to produce giving the rise of cheap high capacity solar panels. For another this could lead to cheaper energy costs which would allow for a thriving consumer market for these things. Computers used to be a niche item too, then they got smaller and cheaper to where everything now uses a computer. They went from being only in a few science labs to being in just about every home in a few short years.
What the US government is trying to do with Cap & Trade is use the power of the free market to achieve a valuable goal now. Specifically, the purpose is to avoid radical solutions and central planning, and to simply place a price on carbon emissions. The free market, in all of its brilliance, should then adjust to those price changes and find technological alternatives that achieve the same purposes but without emitting as much carbon. In other words, the purpose of the law is simply to price the emissions and let the free market optimize them down.
Cap and trade fails for the simple thing that why should I be penalized for being productive in 2009? There is no power source that has the safety, reliability, and price of fossil fuels. Why should I be penalized for providing jobs? Until there is a real solution, this leads us down the road to where the Soviet Union ended up, in a government created mess.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Indeed. The environmental movement often pisses me off in talking about shit that is incredibly stupid and ignoring actually important stuff.
My current pet peeve is the billions of dollars we spend on nonsensical 'recycling' of shit like paper, which, duh, grows on trees we specifically plant to grow damn paper. Oh, heaven forbid we throw that away. Let's spend more energy to 'recycle' it then to grow more trees. (And, hell, while we're at it, it's a carbon sink. A short-term one, to be sure, as paper rots in landfills and the CO2 escapes, but whatever.)
You want to save fucking trees, stop eating at places that cut down rain forests to raise cattle, and stop worrying about forests that paper companies plant and harvest. It's paper from a paper farm, you loons. They've got so much of it they aren't even using the extra from lumber mills anymore.
Meanwhile, let's not spend a fucking dime to get people to separate out their toxic batteries and paint and actual stuff we shouldn't be putting in landfills. Let's not actually collect that separately from the trash, so 95% of the people just throw them away, and they end up in landfills and toxic chemicals leech out.
Even if you disagree with me about paper recycling, I want you to sit there and think to yourself if you'd rather have a ton of paper in the local landfill, or a quart of mercury? And then ask yourself, if we're only going to collect one, which one we should set up bins for next to garbage? Which should we be teaching kids to separate from their garbage in school?
</rant>
Oh, and yes, 'In hundreds of years, the cities will be under several feet of water' is stupid as an argument. That is not the problem with global climate change. The problem with global climate change is that, during global climate changes, lots of stuff dies. Randomly, haphazardly. Entire ecosystems. Plants, animals, humans, human-like beings such as congresspeople, all randomly die. Often en mass. For all sorts of crazy reasons. Sometime directly from climate change, sometimes because predators and food move around, sometimes because their breeding is shot to hell, sometimes because the ocean is full of carbonic acid, whatever.
And, then, thousands of years later, new stuff is all over the place, and no one even knows it happened. Which is fine for the distant past, and fine for the future, because humans are very adaptable and we live in any environment on earth that can grow animals and plants we can eat, and we can eat a hell of a lot of different kinds. Skip forward 1000 years, and, no matter what global warming does, humans will be living fine, with a nice standard of living.
It's, however, incredibly annoying if you're actually attempting to live through the damn climate change.
A lot of assholes who think they can wreck the planet for profit need to be lined up and shot, but sometimes I think we'd be a lot better off, if we had the choice to instead turn around and start shooting the assholes who are on 'the side of good' doing just as much damage because of their irrational behavior.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Disclaimer: I am software person who happens to work with a group of people who deal with, among other issues, climate change.
This of course renders your remarks as useless as words spoken from any so called climate expert. You as well as others have
a vested interest in pushing the global warming theory. It keeps the grant money from the govt flowing.
Got Code?
I find it interesting that mentioning Obama's middle name is considered "taboo". Now, why is that? Hmmmm???
I don't recall that ever being an issue for the other 43 Presidents before him.
Life is not for the lazy.
http://www.texaco.com/sitelets/ecuador/en/default.aspx
I think that person was put in place by the Bush Administration and is a loyal Republican. Most credible scientists agree that global warming is real.
And, you think that you'll convince me that your view is right, by talking to me like an ass? Sorry, that doesn't work either.
Consensus. Another word for collectivism, which is yet another word for communism, from which we took "politically correct".
Give me a freaking break. You don't speak like a scientist any more than I do. Nor do you speak for scientists, or even for this "consensus". If I can show you that North Dakota was a steaming rain forest ages ago, do you suppose that you MIGHT question this "consensus" that man has caused the world to warm? I don't even ask that you reject this collectivist reasoning, just that you question it.
All of the little Al Gore wannabe critters taken together can't prove that man caused global warming, nor can the heretics prove that man has NOT caused global warming. But, anyone with the least bit of intelligence can clearly see that warming and cooling has happened time and time again on the earth. It takes an IQ of about 30 to figure out that it would be happening with, or without, humans on the earth.
Did we contribute to accelerating the latest round of warming? You'll never know. You just accept it on faith. And, call me a jerk because I don't share your faith.
Fuck you, asshole. And, fuck every religious zealot in history who saw the nonbeliever as an asshole.
I have a great idea. Pull your lower lip over your head, then swallow. That may not save the earth, but it will save reasonable men and women from listening to your mindless prattling.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
My point is that people are not free to use their minds to creatively solve problems, because regulations force people to do things the way our rulers want us to.
People are, but they are limited in their ability to advertise and sell things based upon the greater interests of public health. Personally, I'm all for lesser restrictions on individual access to medical equipment and drugs, but not for letting people sell services without being held accountable.
you seem to be one of those libertarian economists with a strong, but unsupported belief that an unregulated free market will somehow magically solve all problems.
So when thinking, self-responsible, people solve problems, you call it magic?
Who said anything about self-responsible people solving problems. We're talking about applying the free market to aspects of our society where individual buying and immediate self interest between buyers and sellers is too skewed. A guy standing outside your house offering to save it from burning down if you give him 90% of the value is not a good fit to the capitalist model. It doesn't bring fair competition or better service. The same is true for the guy bleeding out in need of medical treatment.
So the only "non-magical" way to solve problems is: when bureaucrats impose their will on everyone at the point of a gun?
No, the best and most effective solution, as demonstrated around the world, is for the people to use the democratic process to pool resources and solve a problem the free market has failed to.
If you are a student of economics and history, then have you studied Von Mises and other Austrian economists?
Sure he was a closed minded extremist by all accounts, just as bad as the extreme socialist, just wrong in the opposite direction. At least Hayek was sensible, if you want to cite said school of economics.
I personally know of many professional economists and historians who advocate Laissez-Faire Capitalism. It is essentially the framework advocate by the founding fathers.
Yeah, why don't you move to Estonia or some other hellhole that subscribes to such sophomoric views. We don't even have a long standing example of such an economy because it is so painfully unstable. By far the consensus of economists advocate a balanced and stable moderation. Regulated capitalism where possible and socialism with progressive taxation to balance wealth condensation and provide for the markets where capitalism fails.
For you to call it a "simplistic philosophy" is just a smear that avoids the effort required to understand and apply the ethical and political arguments advocated by such people.
You're arguing ethics while the rest of the world looks at us as barbaric morons who let the poor members of our society suffer and die from treatable illnesses while our economy spirals down the crapper dragging them with it. You cite Von Mises, a wealthy man born to wealth with a notorious lack of understanding of human nature to the point where most of his contemporaries gave up even trying to have discussions with him. The reason capitalism works is because it exploits human nature in a beneficial way. It's the same reason capitalism fails in particular cases. Unless you comprehend the mechanism, you'll never see why it is inappropriate for healthcare.