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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."
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.
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.