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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
debate is healthy, the fact that the EPA needs a step on anyone who disagree's means thier arguments are not as solid as they want us to think.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
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.
They are not necessarily corrupt. The just adjust easily. Perhaps this is why they are called 'servants'.
I would like to die like my grandfather did - sleeping. And not screaming in terror, like his passengers.
"There is no reason to regulate CO2".
- Carlin
They told me if I voted for McCain that science would be subservient to policy goals. And they were right!
Thx Instapundit.
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?
If you read through the entire article, you can find some interesting information on what it was he wanted us to do. Instead of regulating CO2 emissions, he states that it is more economical to reduce the amount of radiation from the sun that reaches the earth. I don't really understand his position. In effect, he's saying, "I don't believe in global warming. However, even if I did, there's no reason to regulate CO2 emissions." He seems bent against regulation of CO2 at any cost.
Secondly, he also states that global temperatures have fallen for the last 11 years. I really would like to see his work. This article (http://earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/83), reported in the September 26 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows global temperatures rising for the last 30 years.
This man strikes me as being very much against any type of environmental regulation, and I'm not surprised that the EPA is trying to silence him.
They said he's not a climate scientist, but he has an undergrad physics degree and a PhD in economics and he's seems to have spent most of his career writing position papers for economics think tanks! Heck, that should be enough to qualify him as a client scientist...oh wait. What I mean is, with those credentials he should be able to practice dentistry and set policy on...no, that's not it.
He's a...race car driver? No, that's not it either.
Let me think.
I know! He's an economist.
So now all I have to do is prove that climate science is a subset of economics and the "how dare they say he isn't a climate scientist" outrage will be justified.
--MarkusQ
P.S. From what I can gather, the "suppressed opinion" was just that--an opinion. It isn't like the guy had gone out and done any original research.
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.
This man has been working for the EPA since 1971. Hell, he helped BUILD the place.
So what if he's "just an economist"? According to my degree, I'm "just a fish farmer", yet I'm working for a company and doing stuff that keeps the telcom grid alive. Nine years of military communications experience will do that for you. Makes me wonder what 38 years of experience working for climate scientists would do for an economist?
It's not exactly like he's going to just pull this stuff out of his backside after 38 years of service. Nobody that manages to survive THAT long, through seven presidents-five or whom were hostile to the EPA-is going to just buck the trend without a pretty darn good reason.
I'd say it's worth paying attention to the man. Even if he's on the verge of retirement, 38 years of experience is nothing to sneeze at.
[End Of Line]
Physics degree qualifies you to report on whatever the hell you like as far as I'm concerned.
This is one bit of denialist propaganda that gets repeated over and over. Only there's one huge problem with it -- the satellites temperature measurements correlate very closely with the ground temperature measurements. (Compare the blue with black and red lines here). I suppose the satellites are misbehaving in exactly the same way too?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Too bad that the folks who wrote the report in question were economists instead of scientists, and the compiled their "data" from anti-global warming websites. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/bubkes/#more-691
The alleged danger that cigarettes pose will never be known with acceptable certainty, and anyone who says anything one way or the other doesn't know what the hell they are talking about.
Same hand waving, same excuses.
We'll never really know for 100% certainty.
Nothing is "100% certain" in science, not even gravity. But for practical purposes, yes you can be sure that climate change is happening, and humans have been the driving cause. Deal with it.
The position of the previous adminstration was not based on scientific consensus: it was based on political opinion and a lot of wishful thinking by a lot of people who thought that if they wished hard enough, that reality would change to fit their world-view. You can't really expect more from politicians who base is composed of free market fundamentalists and young Earth creationists.
On the other hand, the Obama administration, much to their credit, are far more reality-based, and have a much more rational world view generally. Senior Obama advisors are a veritable who's who of great minds. Wooly disfunctional thinking won't get you very far with this lot.
So when a bureaucrat holdover from the previous administration starts trying to claim that there is anything but overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, he deserves to have his arse kicked for his stupidity.
Modded +1 Darwin Bait.
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
Quite. After all, reducing the emotional response to a Shakespeare sonnet to a set of quantum states is well within the reach of an undergraduate Physics course nowadays, isn't it? Er, isn't it? Oh, in that case maybe a physics degree doesn't qualify a person to report on whatever the hell they like after all.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
What does Al Gore have a degree in?
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
Unbelievably, despite the fact that I am working on a deliverable for this coming week, I took the time to a) RTFM on CNET, and b) download the PDF of the author's report.
I read through the table of contents, and thought it was worth scanning through portions of the document.
Ironic Item One
In the executive summary, the author chides the EPA as an organization for relying on decades of work by the IPCC, and thousands of person-hours involved in climate science that were brought to bear on the IPCC reports over the last several years. The author points out that the IPCC reports did not include the most recent findings regarding, among several phenomena, solar sunspot cycles, cosmic rays, and the melting of Greenland's ice sheet. The author supports his contention that sunspot cycles and cosmic rays affect Earth's climate by citing one or two, non-peer-reviewed postings to web sites.
Interestingly the most recent peer-reviewed findings regarding all of these items indicate that a) sunspot cycles have nothing to do with global mean temperatures; b) cosmic rays have nothing to do with global mean temperatures; c) Greenland's ice sheet continues to melt at a fairly good clip.
Ironic, and damaging, Item Two
Scanning through the report, the reader comes to page 64 of the report, 79 of the PDF, and finds this heading:
The author then goes on to point out how the following aspects of life in the US have improved over the last century or so, despite rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations:
Then, the kicker comes on page 66; I quote:
While the author does cite a number of actual scientific reports, the text quoted here and the failure to consider the entire constellation of improvements wrought by technology over the last century render his entire report ridiculous.
If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law;
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.
RAND is actually rather non-partisan, and does serious work on climate change policy, e.g. here, here, here, here.
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.
Moving the stations that make climate measurements away from things that either generate heat (like an air conditioning system's heat exchanger) or even things that simply absorb and release heat (like buildings, sidewalks, or pavement) just makes sense.
I have an idea! Let's move them into space! Oh wait, we already did, as noted in the post you're replying to, which you apparently didn't read and/or understand.
Al Gore isn't setting EPA policy.
But Al Gore's movie made money, so therefore global warming is real. The market has spoken.
(Courtesy Stephen Colbert)
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.
Haven't had time to find out what proctological study they pulled their data out of,
As clearly labelled, the temperature points are the UAH and RSS global average.
their "best fit" (the violet line).
OK my friend, if your trend line from January 2002 to May 2009 is not a decline of 0.26 degrees per decade like their violet line, what is it then and how did you arrive at it?
Wow, I'm impressed that some moderator found that comment insightful, since (a) Al Gore's background is completely irrelevant to the question of whether the person in the article is a *climate scientist* or not, (b) Al Gore's background is completely irrelevant to the question of whether the the person in the article should be relied upon for an independent *scientific opinion* to be incorporated into a scientific report, (c) Al Gore has not, to my knowledge, attempted to speak *as a climate scientist* nor, to my knowledge, has he ever held himself out as *a climate scientist*, and (d) I've yet to see Al Gore attempt to introduce his own theories as to global warming derived from his own *scientific analysis*--my understanding is that he attempts to explain and distill what *scientists or the scientific literature* tell him, rather than relying on his own expertise.
So apparently the bar for 'insightful' on Slashdot these days is 'irrelevant, and comprising a logical fallacy'?
If he were the lead guitarist in a rock band, that also wouldn't make him automatically wrong. What's your point?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You're right, my friend. Consider the trendline from June of 2008 to January of 2009: if anything, global temperatures are plunging. At this rate, even the tropics will freeze in a few years. AGW is a farce: we have global cooling to worry about!
</snark>
The OP's point is that the graph's trendline is meaningless in context.
(Curve-fitting is probably the most abused practice in all of statistics: it's absolutely bonkers unless you know a priori (that is, before you see the data) what kind of curve you expect to see, and you fit against a reasonable sample of the data. If you choose incorrect parameters, you can show a curve that fits any cockamamie notion you come up with.)
This may be true, but Government control of medicine is actually worse. I live in Britain...
Congratulations, you live with one of the worst implemented of socialized medicine.
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.
I'm sure it's terrible, but statistically, you still pay less than the average US citizen with much, much better results. It may seem bad to you over there, but the grass is definitely browner over here. The rates of people going blind from preventable causes, is absurdly higher here, for example. The correlation between wealth and lifespan is much more drastic. The overall lifespan is shorter.
. An American may lose his house to pay for an operation, but at least he gets the operation...
Fewer and fewer have houses to lose, in no small part because of health care costs and trying to get a loan so you can get medical treatment is not going to happen. It's a bad bet. I have a friend who is naturally skinny and tall. He can't get insurance at all because he is clinically underweight. I know a girl who is short. Clinically overweight, no insurance for her. Most doctors won't even treat them even if they have cash. They don't go to the hospital when they get very ill, because they simply can't afford it. One had something stuck in their eye, but decided to wait it out and hope they would not lose vision in that eye, because the alternative was losing everything she owned. The other spent a week in massive pain because of a serious infection of the inner ear. Again, no option other than begging people he knew with money in the hopes someone would help. You assert that Americans get the operation but a huge number of us certainly don't. In the UK they prioritize by severity of condition but here if you don't have the money you just suffer in pain or even die. I have other friends stuck in jobs that provide health insurance. The job is terrible but they can't ever quit because it's the only way they can get healthcare. Oh, and what about me. I'm physically fit, not too old and have no serious medical conditions. I will never, ever be able to buy medical insurance again because I had an inexplicable illness once and they never figured out what it was, so I'm a poor investment for insurance companies too.
Sorry, but the US has every other first world nation pretty well beat for worst health care and there are plenty of numbers to back that up.
Gore studied climate science at Harvard under Roger Revelle before switching to an art degree. Besides Gore presented the IPCC reports he did not claim to do otherwise. If you are base your opinion of ANY scientific claim on the character or authority of the messenger then you are doing it wrong.
The only problem I have with a government department quashing a psuedo-skeptical report is if they do it in secret, I don't know if this is the case since i haven't RTFA. If this guys opinion is different to every reputable science institution on the planet then he should be allowed make a fool of himself by speaking to the press provided he makes it clear he does not represent his employer.
There are only a handfull of credible scientists world wide who disagree with parts of the much maligned consensus (the only one I can think of is Dyson). This is despite the fountain of anti-science bullshit from think tanks such as the Heartland Institute. The science has prevailed over the lobbyists as it did with the tabacco industry in the 80's and countless other extrodinary claims since the time of Copurnicus.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Or bribery, graft, patronage, embezzlement, nepotism, cronyism and kickbacks. Clearly government is about much more than simple politics.
On target, gandhi. Global warming is nothing more than the religion of the 21st century. Either you are a believer, or you are a blasphemer. By definition, a blasphemer is NOT qualified to have an opinion. To make things clear, I am a blasphemer, and I think that Al Gore goes down on little children and baby goats.
"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
That's a pretty broad statement to make without a shred evidence or reason. You say all environmental scientists are drinking the same kool-aid, I say it's probably just you choosing to dismiss an entire field of research because you disagree with what you know of their findings.
I disagree. Informed debate is healthy. Is this guy expressing a carefully considered opinion or spewing political ideology? The distinction matters.
I can't predict the weather over the next ten days, but I have a pretty good idea of what it'll be like over the next ten months. If you're trotting out this argument, you have no idea what a "chaotic system", and have no business commenting on climate science.
Like this one? Or this one? Or even this one?
My point is that the creator of the OP's graph cherry-picked a period during which temperatures happened to decline, and that it's no different from my doing the same thing with a different cherry-picked period. If you look at recorded temperatures and ice-core results, you'll find that the runup since the beginning of the industrial revolution is like nothing we've been since the Eocene Thermal Maximum.
Just when Obama is about to spend tens of billions of the people's money on pseudoscientific environmental BS, this story shows up on Slashdot? And here I was complaining that Slashdot was a bastion of polical correctness and a mouthpiece for environmental wackos. Is the tide is reversing on the climate change alarmists/con artists or am I just dreaming?
Watch out, Obama. The public will tear you a new asshole if it so much as suspects that it's being ripped off by the enviro-mafia.
I tend to believe that it is impossible to burn THIS much fuel and have no effect on a balanced system. I pretty much believe Climate Change(tm) is possible.
My problem is that some of this has become the flat-earth dogma that science is supposed to rise above.
My wife is a wildlife biologist. Has a degree in Zoology and Conservation Ecology. Working on her masters. Her office consists of wildlife tech's working their way thru the "tree-hugger circuit" as I call it: taking several years worth of seasonal wildlife technician jobs before finding a permanent one. So I've hung out with, rock climbed with, had BBQ's with many more "hackysack-playing, bluegrass-listening, quickdry-and-plaid-wearing 20-something's" with ecological bachelors and masters degrees than you are ever likely to meet.
So take me as something of an educated witness that an ecological degree caries with it a certain indoctrinated mindset about things. A sort of "don't question global warming" mentality. I thought science questioned everything.
Broad brush? Unfairly stereo-typing? Mostly true? Yep. I put more faith behind the physics degree in explaining physical natural phenomena.
THL phish sticks
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).
He his just a servant. I would expect things to change with regards to the issue as years go by. Public servants have to adapt to direction changes in management.
Please let me had that I have always had concerns with regards to the way this whole thing is handled.
Of course I admit than man may cause global warming but I find that we sometimes seem to diverge from scientific reasoning when it comes to this matter. It should come back to a more scientific approach as years go by, the concept is pretty new relatively speaking ;-)
In short, people are generally classified in one of these 2 groups (good or evil):
1) The ones who believe that man is responsible from global warming. They are the "good" people.
2) The ones who believe that other factors might be involved. They are the "evil people", which must all have interests in oil companies.
At the local university, a teacher produced a paper after conducting scientific observations. He found that we may be jumping to conclusion to fast with this issue. The teacher lost his reputation, his neighbors quit talking to him. He is now viewed as an evil person who must secretly work for oil companies. This is scary when nobody is allowed to express a divergent opinion. It reminds me the middle ages.
On a funny note, after having had 3 extremely hot summers where I live, this summer is abnormally cold compared to the average temperatures of the last century, does this mean that global warming is over ? ;-)
Note: I am not affiliated with any oil companies, I do not drive a vehicle and I think pollution and waste of energy is stupid and ugly. I agree with the principle "Make the polluter pay". In short, I have leftish views with regards to the environmental issues but I am questioning the current way we handle this problem from a scientific perspective.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
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?
A physics degree does not give him an innate understanding of every system (eco or otherwise). He might understand the basic mechanics but it does not mean he will know all of the moving pieces that make up the final answer. He will probably not even know what questions to ask to ensure he has all aspects of it covered. If a physicist was so competent in all areas, we would have only physics degrees.
Well said, most people with science qualifications at least have some idea of how much they don't know and all of them have bruises on their foreheads caused by the painfully obvious.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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.
The Democrats have made up their mind. The laws will be passed.
No matter what the rest of the world does, they are going to follow this religion and pretty much wreck everyone's standard of living to make themselves feel good about their earth worship. Things will eventually change when the whole truth comes out. The public is made aware of how much of an economic disaster this is. Some day the whole truth will come out, that we won't know if this works for another 400 years.
The entire US economy is about to be ruined. Hopefully these green people won't mind plowing fields themselves, because that's where we are headed.
Teaching people that they richer when they have less energy. What a colossal lie. What a treason. What a waste.
This is my sig.
I have two conditions: 1) show me a correlation between solar activity and temperature that's stronger than the correlation between CO2 and temperature, and 2) propose a plausible theory of why past temperature correlates so closely with CO2 excursions, but why this CO2 excursion won't in turn cause a large temperature excursion. That is, show me that CO2 doesn't have a causal relationship to temperature, or that it does, but not for this cycle. Due to the strong correlation between CO2 and temperature, that would require you to show that CO2 is instead increased by temperature, or that CO2 and temperature increases have typically had a common cause.
Just to warn you: it'll be hard to show that CO2 increases don't cause temperature changes: the physics of the CO2's heat-trapping effects and the feedback effect of increased water vapor are well-understood. Granted, I'm not a climate scientist, but just an informed observer. But I'll still need to see some credible evidence. Given that, however, I'll start to think "By George, maybe they're onto something!"
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".
Don't you think it ironic to mention this in Slashdot, of all places, where questioning something will quickly send you to -1 oblivion, while going along with the herd mentality will raise you to +5 nirvana?
Science questions everything, yes, as long as those are pertinent questions. Scientists will listen to anyone at all, but don't expect any sympathy if no results are verified.
Climatologists have already reached a very solid consensus that CO2 emissions *must* be reduced at *any* cost.
That completely misrepresents the opinion of climatologists. The consensus is that CO2 is increasing, that CO2 is highly correlated with historical temperature changes, and that the last century of climate change is caused primarily by humans. There is far less consensus over the exact changes that will occur, that they will all necessarily all be bad, or that we must reduce them at all costs.
Not a typewriter
Ok, so it seems what you're basically saying here is, the guy's background is in physics and econonomics--he's not a climate scientist (btw, who is--do you have to have a degree called "climate science" or can other scientists count as well?) and so his writings on anything touching on the climate should just be dismissed (I notice that you haven't touched on any of the merits / lack thereof of anything he's actually written, so I assume this is your point of view)?
Lastly, since he doesn't fit in the "solid consensus," he should just get in line with the consensus.
You'll forgive me, but that doesn't sound like any kind of scientific community / environment that I would want to be associated with or promote, and I seriously hope you would agree. I don't think this has anything to do with what side of the "global warming debate" / whatever you want to call it you fall on.
btw, slightly off-topic, but it seems somewhat noteworthy that others were interested in the EPA's submission process of the IPCC as seen at: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6354
Well, at least not directly.
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?
I know paranoia is popular on slashdot, and nobody RTFA, however, don't you think it's at least reasonable to judge the EPAs actions on the merits of their arguments?
For what it's worth, some climate scientists wrote a short article on Alan Carlin's paper.
There is, of course, no substitute for reading Carlin's paper yourself, but you need to also read the references, and try to find out more information about the arguments. Then you can judge whether the EPA is just being manipulative
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
ANYONE with a physics degree can certainly comment on the physics of AGW theory.
Sure, they may comment, but that doesn't mean they have any qualifications for making an informed judgment. A bachelors in Physics does not necessarily prepare you to understand chaotic biological and thermodynamic systems at a global scale any more than a bachelors in Nuclear Science or Computer Science. You may have proven that you can stomach the math and a logical thought process, but surprisingly there is actual, applicable knowledge being offered in an ecology major (depending on the school offering it).
For what it's worth, a 40-year position at the EPA doesn't necessarily prove he's qualified either, because he could have just as easily earned that experience by calculating budgets for dam construction or making policies for airport rainwater runoff allowances.
Finally, a PhD in Economics CERTAINLY doesn't prove he's qualified to judge the scientific findings. His input may be invaluable in determining the most practical way to budget for (or ignore entirely) the scientifically-analyzed situation, but not to evaluate the scientific findings themselves. If you are experiencing symptoms of a possible stroke, you don't take advice from your accountant until you've had a doctor examine you.
That being said... I still find it appalling that his report was squashed and hidden from sight. Scientific debate is about considering the all the evidence and a winning theory should be able to explain any major questions or inconsistencies. Rather than silence the report, qualified scientists that have arrived at the contrary scientific conclusion (i.e., Global Warming) should simultaneously distribute a paper that convincingly refutes the "rogue" economist's arguments. Government should be about transparency, and Science even more so. If the officials think he's just interfering with the new policy for political (and not scientific) reasons, then their counterpoint should seek to reveal his dishonest intentions. At least, that's the proper response in an ideal world...
As it is, the governments seem very weak compared to corporate power.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
It seems Obama isn't the only one quashing dissenting opinions.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5664069/Polar-bear-expert-barred-by-global-warmists.html
Summary. Leading export on Polar Bears excluded from Polar Bear conference because he is a "skeptic" (shudder)
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Yes and no. There is this idear of "competing theories" and the evidence used to be the arbiter. Science is supposed to be about more than belonging to the right clique. Skepticism is a prerequisite to good science - I don't give a flying hyena what you think, I care about what you can prove. Research "Null Hypothesis".
You've never heard of anyone having trouble publishing something that goes against current thinking?
Why yes I have but in general when a competing theory explains the observables as well or better than the current theory it's published. That's the way it's supposed to work, I'm sorry you missed the point.
-cluge
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
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.
To summarize your post:
1. I'm a reasonable person. I think massive increases in the earth's Methane/CO2 levels are probably-to-possibly going to induce massive changes in the biosphere, thus placing large numbers of human beings (including myself and my offspring) in harm's way.
2. But here's a personal anecdote about some crunchy tree-huggers I hung out with.
Ergo,
3. On balance, I think it would be valuable to take an unsubstantiated swipe at the scientists who are qualified to researching this incredibly complicated subject. And even though I haven't read his report, I place more faith in this guy's undergrad BS degree than in real scientists in the area.
If you really want to stand by this guy's BS in physics, I urge you to read this comment --- from someone who actually read his report (or better, read the report). Post back to me if you still think the guy is making a strong, scientific argument.
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?
"Economics" is the study of how to use limited resources most effectively. This is a broader and more interesting field of study than most people tend to think. "Money" doesn't necessarily play a part.
Not a typewriter
Isn't all science about finding patterns in numbers, and even more importantly finding the exceptions to the patterns?
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels.
And he has a point. Most people are not well enough educated to understand that there will always be dissent. Most of the time the climate change deniers use that as evidence that there is no problem coming.
It's been the fact that the Republicans can find a half dozen hardcore scientists to question the findings of studies which has caused the kind of damage that we're already seeing. It's roughly analogous to pay a lot now or pay a lot later and put up with the inconvenience of having a mobster busting your kneecaps. One way or another we will pay, but if we allow for the dissenters to derail the progress, then we may reach the point where the only option is to cut down to 19th century levels.
Also, that's a nasty ad hominem argument to make, yes he really shouldn't live in a house like that and lecture us on cutting back, but it's really not germane to the argument.
Remind me again, aren't economists the ones that thought that supply side economist, was really the thing for growing an economy?
Economists are definitely not good at spotting or studying trends, it's taken an awfully long time for them to fess up and acknowledge that people don't make decisions in a cool logical fashion. It's a view which many have based upon a sort of survivorship bias, people generally forget that most economists get it wrong and just remember the couple that got it right. It was an embarassingly small number of economists that saw the current crisis coming, and it wasn't exactly a subtle one either.
Economists are the ones you consult with when you want to know about choices people make and why. I suppose game theorists might also be a good choice.
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.
James Hansen has a PhD in Physics, and his astronomy work was on planetary climate models (his first post-dissertation publications were on Venus's atmosphere -- the pioneering work on it, which lead to a much greater understanding of the greenhouse effect -- which then led to his work with GISS since the 1980s). Alan Carlin is an economist who merely has a BS in Physics and hasn't worked in any physics-related field since he graduated college. You don't see the difference?
Now, don't get me wrong -- economists' voices are *very* critical in this debate. However, their voice is not warranted on the science aspect of the field. An economist discussing the field should operate via a Monte Carlo simulation of the scientific consensus positions and their stated confidence intervals, rather than adopting minority positions and/or confidence intervals. Carlin should not be discussing the science. And for that matter, Hansen should not be discussing the economics, either. Neither are in each others' respective fields.
I tore these out of your symbol, and they turned into paper.
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
As it is, the governments seem very weak compared to corporate power.
The biggest corporation in the world at worst can offer you take it or leave it. The lowest hourly bureaucrat can ruin your life.
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.
It's a little disingenuous to say that his background is in physics and economics. His undergrad is in physics, that doesn't mean anything. He's had a career; what does it consist of? (No, I don't know the answer.) At least as an economist, he may well be on firm footing on the potential economic impact of hasty decisions.
After all, if as you say, he has no place in any serious discussion about climate change, why NOT fire him?
Because he might have valuable insights in his area of expertise? You know... law and economics?
I find it interesting that mentioning Obama's middle name is considered "taboo". Now, why is that? Hmmmm???
It's not a taboo, it's just doing that makes you look stupid. After all, people don't usually write "George Walker Bush" or "Franklin Delano Roosevelt" in full, either. Same goes for Obama - only context when his middle name is spelt out is generally when someone is trying to hint at his "un-American" ancestry.
Interesting that the research he quotes to make his point is funded by those groups who stand to lose the most if global warming legislation is passed.
Let's look at who some of the people who fund icecap.us are:
Robert C. Balling Jr - Balling has acknowledged receiving $408,000 in research funding from the fossil fuel industry over the last decade (of which his University takes 50% for overhead). Contributors include ExxonMobil, the British Coal Corporation, Cyprus Minerals and OPEC.
Sallie Baliunas - Between December 1998 and September 2001 she was listed as a "Scientific Adviser" to the Greening Earth Society, a group that was funded and controlled by the Western Fuels Association (WFA), an association of coal-burning utility companies. WFA founded the group in 1997, according to an archived version of it website, "as a vehicle for advocacy on climate change, the environmental impact of CO2, and fossil fuel use."
Robert M. Carter - Sits on the advisory board of the Institute of Public Affairs which is funded by the mining and tobacco industry along with Monsanto. 'I don't think it is the point whether or not you are paid by the coal or petroleum industry,' said Professor Carter.
The EPA is doing its duty by choosing to ignore junk science funded by the coal and oil lobbies.
FreeSpeech.org
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).
It's customary to quote the source when cutting and pasting but I'll bite and match your cut and paste about Idso with my own:
In October 1999 Craig D. Idso and Keith E. Idso mentioned that they had "recently completed a project commissioned by the Greening Earth Society entitled "Forecasting World Food Supplies: The Impact of the Rising Atmospheric CO2 Concentration," which we presented at the Second Annual Dixy Lee Ray Memorial Symposium held in Washington, DC on 31 August - 2 September 1999." [1] The Greening Earth Society, [is] a front group of the Western Fuels Association. Donald Paul Hodel, chairman of Summit Power Group is listed among the "scientific advisors" to the Center.[2] - sourcewatch.
Or I could just google his name along with the CEI ( the organisation pushing their psuedo-scientific report in TFA ) and find that he collarborates with them through yet another well known anti-science think tank called the "Cooler Heads Coalition".
"[Hansen is]considered by many to be perhaps the world's foremost authority on the 'greenhouse effect' of anthropogenic CO2 emissions" - At least you got that right.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Here's some scientists view on the matter. Apparently this report is typical for AGW deniers stuff in every way. You decide:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/bubkes/
The ordinary view? WTF is THAT supposed to mean? Is it something like "consensus"?
FYI, very few real scientists have accepted some "ordinary view" or "consensus". You may go back as far as you like in history. Those individuals who discovered valuable and meaningful knowledge were generally frowned upon for challenging the "ordinary view".
Try Webster's or the Oxford dictionaries. Look up "scientific method", and "science". You'll find nothing in there about "ordinary view" or "consensus".
And, yes. I insist that today's generation is indeed subscribing to a new religion, generally accepted on nothing more than faith. There is over fucking whelming evidence that global warming and global cooling has happened repeatedly, both historically and prehistorically. Wild fluctuations that have gone above and below the extremes in which life "as we know it" might be supported.
The earth is warming. Evolution is at work. Adapt, or die. And, in the end, no one will give a shit which you do. Except maybe your grandchildren, however many generations removed.
The only good thing to come of the global warming alarm, is the growing attitude that we really shouldn't be polluting the earth. Man has been like a pig for the last couple hundred years - shitting in the drinking water, dumping garbage in the backyard, etc ad nauseum. Cleaning up our act can only be a good thing. But, don't expect that to cool the earth off. And, don't expect me to pay homage to the global warming gods, like Al Gore. They are all full of shit.
"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
They are not necessarily corrupt. The just adjust easily. Perhaps this is why they are called 'servants'.
"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition."
Thomas Jefferson
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
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.
The strength of the AGW argument would be demonstrated by its expression in a manner convincing to the general critical thinker
The problem is that the subect is just really damn complex and any simplification to the argument immediately leads to some smartass claiming X hasn't been considered, e.g. all the posts about "it's increased solar activity" that regularly pop up on Slashdot when it's already been said ad nauseum that the solar activity is not sufficient to explain the change we're seeing. To avoid arguments like that numbers need to be posted ("the increase in energy we're seeing on the surface is X, the increase in energy output from the sun is Y") and once you start with numbers most people just throw their hands up in the air and stop listening.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
You miss the point. It shouldn't be about opinions, but verifiable facts. Credentials are useless in establishing truth.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Yeah, it wasn't the Government that created the internet... oh wait, yes it was. If you can point to this great internet analogue that was squashed by the government, you might have SOME kind of credibility, otherwise it's yet more empty rhetoric. And never mind the transistor, mosfets, LSI, fiber optics, and cell phone technology invented by Bell labs with a majority of funding from the Government (what today's neocons would call 'pork'). The NIH (the major funding organization behind Bell Labs) is responsible for much of the medical breakthroughs in the last 60 years as well. And of course we don't need the CDC (heavy sarcasm). Oh, and of course I'd trust my family's clean drinking water and disease and chemical free food to the corporate sector as well, because you know they police themselves so well, as evidenced by Enron, Global Crossing, Haliburton, Qwest, Tyco, World Com, Bear-Sterns, Citigroup, etc., etc, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
And on 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 "potentially" and "may" that the result would have been to insert "uncertainty... 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 change-that "climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment."
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.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
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.
[..]
In short, people are generally classified in one of these 2 groups (good or evil):
1) The ones who believe that man is responsible from global warming. They are the "good" people.
2) The ones who believe that other factors might be involved. They are the "evil people", which must all have interests in oil companies.
[...]
Wrong.
There is a group of people who conclude that of the many factors only anthropogenic emission explain the current warming. These are called climatologists.
There is another group of people who while knowing better, spread FUD about the above. These are called "evil people", and they usually get paid by corporations. Many of them were spreading FUD about second hand tobacco smoke, CFCs, DDT, you name it.
Then there are people who believe they have proved 150 years of science wrong, or theory of relativity wrong, or heliocentric solar system wrong. These are ignorants, or fools. They forgot/ignored/haven't slightest clue that human CO2 warming atmosphere is based on very simple physics and very simple statistics, and any alternative explanation must also explain why the CO2 isn't warming atmosphere.
And finally we have people who either believe doctors, lawyers and other experts on issues they feel they can't understand properly, and people who come up with a bundle of excuses not to listen to experts if the experts tell things they don't like.
After all, no science, including climatology, is done on blogs or bulletin boards, or in op eds. If look at those, there is a flood of divergent opinions. For example in early 90s USA joined the Rio agreement to cut emissions (among other things) and majority of American were conserned about AGW. 15 years later majority believes it's a hoax, and USA hasn't done a thing. You want us to believe that's because divergent opinions are not allowed?
"*one* reason why any of his comments are wrong, off the wall, inappropriate, stupid, whatever else"
Obviously you missed my comments. The guy should be sacked as incompetent and corrupt.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"That completely misrepresents the opinion of climatologists."
Ummm, no it doesn't. It's just that you're about 10yrs out of date in the consensus game.
Please refer to the recent climate confrence in Copenhagen (basically an interim IPCC report), the confrence gave six key messages as listed in their report (warning 5mb pdf). Key message #5 was Inaction is inexcusable
The conference was organised by a "star alliance" of research universities: Copenhagen, Yale, Berkeley, Oxford, Cambridge, Tokyo, Beijing - to name a few. It included 2500 participants from 80 countries and had 1400 scientific presentations.
The folk at Nature have also echoed their sentiments.
True this does not mean "at all cost" but that is a pedantic nitpick rather than a misrepresentation of the consensus opinion on the part of the OP.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Color me Skeptical.
I used to be on the environmentalist side of the global warming debate.
But now the same guys that installed a Monsanto guy as head of Department of Agriculture are telling me global warming is real.
Suddenly I'm doubting the whole thing, and suspect this is more about stripping individuals of their rights further, which seems to be the primary task of both the Republican and Democratic parties and the corporations that run them.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
> Why don't we examine the content of his report before disregarding it based on his non-qualifications.
Because people hired to make noise must be disregarded eventually. But since the noise-making apparently succeded enough to get a slashdot post, I can at least link to an examination at
deep climate.
Short version: He cut and pasted from various contrarian blogs and astroturf organisations - the ones that are now shouting censorhip - rewriting it slightly to remove too obvious editorialising. The actual content is standard issue denialist fare: misrepresenting papers (and ignoring the protests when the author complains), along with some long discredited talking points (global warming stopped in 1998, and anyway it was the sun and cosmic rays that did it)
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
From reading these comments, one ting is absolutely certain. Al Gore's infamous, "The Debate Is Over" statement was patently wrong.
He's had a career; what does it consist of?
As the articles noted, 38 years at the EPA, and as he was asked to respond to the drafts his opinion was obviously valued and relevant within the EPA. Frankly I can't think of many ways anyone could be more qualified than that. It's exactly this type of highly politicised and selective behaviour that makes me very sceptical about any conclusions or predictions about climate change.
And I say that with a thorough conviction that we should quit using fossil fuels ASAP; if the corruption, socio-economic misery and cost in human lives isn't reason enough to quit using them, the fact that they'll run out within a fairly short time is more than reason enough.
I'm just worried that highly political, high profile, and not entirely rigorous 'science' will give all science a bad name as a whole, that if the 'predictions' turn out invalid, it'll get to be a permanent case of the boy who cried wolf, and any necessary future adjustments might get completely ignored.
He is an ECONOMIST for fuck's sake. That IS relevant.
Regardless, Real Climate looked into this last week. Much detail there, finishing with: "So in summary, what we have is a ragbag collection of un-peer reviewed web pages, an unhealthy dose of sunstroke, a dash of astrology and more cherries than you can poke a cocktail stick at."
The usual "climate skeptic" bollocks. He has nothing new.
Wonderful. Now climate change is communism. See, I am a scientist. An actual one. My field, however is in no way related to climatology. I have, however a good idea on how consensus is formed, how it might be right or wrong.
I also know how jerks knowing nothing can invent an infinite stream of objections to anything they don't like (yet know nothing about) and demand careful debunking of each. And will whine if their demands are not met.
This has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with the fact that ignorance is not a valid opinion. If you don't know and aren't qualified, you should believe the consensus. Because as far as you can tell it is the best current bet.
Because the alternative is that all mainstream scientists in the field are lying. Possible, yes, but silly.
Be ready for the consensus to change however -- it is not a fixed thing -- but change is rarely dramatic. Only once in a century do we have deeply unsettling changes in consensus (think quantum mechanics). But the observations, they do not change...
Oh, and I love your Luddite "you'll never know". But then, seeing your wonderful grasp of the process of science, this is unsurprising.
"I have yet to see *one* criticism of something in the Carlin paper [snip] if you actually looked at the linked comments paper, it attempts to raise questions. Points to new studies, revised data, etc."
Can you point to *one* paragraph, "new study" or "data revision" in the report that you think is worthwhile debating? - All I can see are the same old arguments and misinformation put out out by the anti-science lobbyists at CEI and other FF think tanks that have been debunked a million times over. Here are a few specific critisisims...
1. He claims that tempratures have been trending downwards for the past 11yrs - this can be debunked by a simple google search and is laughable to anyone who has looked at the temprate records.
2. He blathers on about sunspots and cosmic rays - a theory born from a book by a self-agrandising author and completely unsupported in the litrature, debunked in detail by yours trully here.
3. He complains the last IPCC report is 3 years old and thus out of date. - Fucking nonsense.
4. He claims that the 1998 temprature spike cannot be explained - maybe it's a mystery to him but yet another simple google search shows it's well known that the 1998 spike was due to El Nino.
I stopped there because my head was about to explode. Suffice to say that after skimming what I was sure would be 98 pages of anti-science drivel I no longer think he should be sacked, I think he should be prosecuted for collusion and conspiricy.
"all the more reason to not rush through it to satisfy political whims of the day!"
I'm sorry to say, and mean no disrespect, this is exacly what the psuedo-skeptical slimeballs at CEI want you to think. They lost the technical debate over a decade ago and have been promoting "debate" as a delay tactic ever since. These are the same people who promoted "tabacco scientists" in the eighties and are still recieving funding from Phillip Morris. They are the scum of the earth and I don't find it the least bit "bizzare" that the "slashdot crowd" are calling bullshit on this particular example of Machevelian politics.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I don't think you're an ass, just like I don;t think people who believe in God are asses.
The problem I have is that you are not qualified to debunk climate science (or if you are you are keeping it well hidden) - you dismiss the science out of hand because it doesn't fit with your world view, and you seem to have a massive axe to grind about Al Gore, who is not a scientist, but who is good at giving presentations and presenting the science in a way that is easy for non-scientists to understand.
This is not a new thing for him, or a passing craze he has picked up on. He has been campaigning to stop climate change since the 70s, long before it was a hot button issue like it is today.
The core argument "that humans can't possibly be affecting climate change" and that this "is a cyclical thing, the Earth does this every now and then" can be shown to be incorrect quite easily with the ice core graph of CO2 levels versus global temperature.
If nothing else, this graph clearly shows that at no point in the last 650 million years have atmospheric CO2 levels been anywhere close to what they are today. The line is clear. They go up and down over those 650 million years, through ice ages, through droughts, through continental shifts, through extinction events, through massive volcanic activity, through over half a billion years worth of natural processes. Now suddenly in the last 150 years, when humans began their relentless industrial revolution, the CO2 level in the atmosphere has jumped up to far, far above any previous high point over the past half a billion years.
Now, a scientist cannot say for absolute certainty that it is a human cause, but the evidence is overwhelmingly strong that we are causing this (in the absence of any other large scale source of CO2 being released into the atmosphere by some other means like volcanos, meteors, aliens, God, other), it is man's actions that are creating this enormous swing away from the natural line (which does indeed vary cyclically, but this is way off the chart).
Then it's just a case of plotting another graph of CO2 concentration versus global temperature over those same 650 million years and the two graphs look remarkably similar....
Note though, that you can't definitively prove that CO2 level in the atmosphere causes these changes in temperatures, the correlation in the graphs is striking (but again, you can only infer it since the graphs are *so closely related*). Now it's just a case of extending the temperature graph out in line with the CO2 one...
Where it all falls down for people like you is that you seize on the inability to definitively prove things as a fundamental weakness in the science, when in reality it is the greatest strength. In the absence of some other reasonable explanation (again, tested by the scientific method), the general scientific consensus right now is that humans are causing the huge rise in global CO2 concentration, and that CO2 concentration affects global temperature, thus, if we keep adding to it, the Earth's climate will change.
We might be totally wrong! It might be aliens all along. Or God. Or a temporal vortex only detectable by Geordi's visor, but right now, our best inference is the one we have. It's not a guess, since it has a lot of scientific research behind it, but it's not unlikely to be hugely wrong either (barring some major shift in human knowledge like finding an invisible CO2 generator put there by aliens).
A lot of people have been working on this, for a long time, and we are learning all the time. I am actually a scientist, and while I understand some of the science, I am not a climatologist (I am a chemist). I can show you that Antarctica used to be a rain forest with a temperate climate (the lake that formed due to rain when it was still hot down there is still there, just buried under ice). No one is claiming the Earth's climate doesn't change significantly over time (and we can look at 650 million years of time remember), or that North Dakota wasn't once a rain
Have you ever seen an atom? How many scientists have actually reproduced the Rutherford scattering experiment? Well, most scientists have not, so everybody is following the consensus that atoms are built in a certain way. Damn, most people rely on the consensus about the world being round instead of flat—there is not that much space in the ISS.
I work with methanol, and I never ran spectroscopy to ascertain that methanol actually is CH3OH. I never checked out that the gas it reacts into actually is CO2. I never checked out the circuits in the mass-flow controllers to check they are measuring the right flow, and even then I would have to check that Maxwell's laws are actually true.
Everybody, and this goes for scientists too, make a huge number of reasonable assumptions. That's the consensus, and it is a consensus because it works.
Strawman. Who would those be? Einstein changed the view more than any other, and the only reason certain people frowned upon him was unrelated to his science—he was a Jew. Galileo was surely frowned upon, but certainly not by scientists; and what about the discovery of DNA, the proof of Poincaré's conjecture, nuclear physics—were all those scientists doing ground-breaking work being "frowned upon"?
In fact, making bold new claims is all there is to a scientist's life. You need to publish new stuff, which needs to pass anonymous peer review. It's not just a formality, and when I was called for some reviews I have actually sunk a couple of papers which made fundamental mistakes. The problem you have is, you cannot just make absurd claims without any proof on the only basis of faith or personal political bias.
... and that is misleading, bordering on falsehood. It has never happened this fast in nature, which leaves human activity as the most likely cause. If you make this kind of extraordinary claims you should follow it up with extraordinary proof.
Oh my god, gas-guzzling climate-change deniers have interbred with the evolution-denying fundies! Let's hope they do not meet the flat-earthers too...
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
He also claims in the report that quality of life of Americans has gone up, as have crop yields and that there are fewer annual deaths from heat stroke. While these all may be true, his attempt to connect them to global warming is nonsensical at best, and grossly stupid at worst.
Here's my take on it. Government's goal is to grow; grow in power and control over all. The means to do this involves making people afraid. When people are afraid they are willing, in fact may demand, that government step in and "do something." This is not a left or right issue. The right might use the "terror threat" to make people afraid, the left "global warming." Both have used "economic meltdown." So we argue the merits of this or that all the while the government rolls along on its real agenda.
"Written on the pages is the answer to the never ending story..."
"Try Webster's or the Oxford dictionaries. Look up "scientific method", and "science". You'll find nothing in there about "ordinary view" or "consensus"
A dictonary is not a particularly illuminating source for understanding scientific philosophy. Try researching the term Republic of science, it's an older alternate term for "consensus" and is indeed central part of the philosophy of science, it's what gives rise to the term "scientists say" as in "scientists say the earth orbits the sun". A strong scientific consensus is derived from...
1. Overwhelming evidence via multiple independent lines of enquiry.
2. A high degree of predictive and/or explanatory power.
3. A lack of conta-evidence and a lack of equally valid alternative explainations.
Of course it's every scientists duty (and wet dream) to find a logical or evidentry crack in a strong consensus but it's also every scientists duty to accept a consensus he cannot convincingly refute. The strong scientific consensus on GW is that mankinds emmisions are causing the bulk of the observed warming and it will servely retard our civilisation unless we act to reduce those emmissions by ~70-80% over the next four or five decades. The good news is it's "doable" if people can overcome their political predjudices toward the messengers.
"The earth is warming. Evolution is at work. Adapt, or die. And, in the end, no one will give a shit which you do. Except maybe your grandchildren, however many generations removed."
These sort of statements always confuse me as to what they mean by "adapt". Please explain to me why reducing emmissions through a free market cap and trade scheme that strives to make renewables economically viable is not seen as an adaptation? And yes this has little effect on me as I will probably be dead come 2050. However I already have grandchildren that "scientists say" AGW will affect if I make decisions based solely on a few pennies pressing on my hip pocket nerve. If my grandparents generation had thought that way in the 50's we would all be chocking to death under a layer of soot.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"That completely misrepresents the opinion of climatologists." Really? Like James E. Hansen, Nasa's lead climatologist. Oh, no, I guess not. How about atmospheric scientists from the University of Oxford? Hmm. No. Or maybe you mean Jonathan Overpeck, the director for the University of Arizona's Institute for the Study of Planet Earth who once said of climate change, "The results suggest the threshold is close to the end of this century, and it could come sooner. The Arctic is already warming much faster than we thought it would. To think we're not going to get 4 to 5 degrees warmer in another 50 years is wishful thinking." Oh, no, you don't mean him. How about Damon Matthews, from Concordia University in Canada, or Ken Caldeira, from the Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford ... no, not them. Perhaps you mean Roger Pielke Sr. of ClimateScience.org, who does at least say, "Policies that focus on CO2 by itself are ignoring definitive research results ... that humans have a much broader influence on the climate system."
I've not found a climatologist who has said that raising CO2 levels are a good thing or even a neutral thing.
I can find meteorologists, economists, physicists, and many other very clever people who say such things, but if there are climatologists out there saying "Ah, nevermind the CO2, it's no big thing," then they are outnumbered 100 to 1 at best. Is that "far less" consensus than the rest? No, I don't think so. Maybe a little less. But I'm giving you a hypothetical. I still haven't even seen one of these mythical pro-CO2 climatologists of which you write. Please enlighten.
http://www.newsminer.com/news/2008/sep/27/global-warming-has-paused/?opinion
If any of you read the Wegman report, you'll know that Climate Scientists make use of some very questionable statistical methods (i.e. methods often not even cited in text books), yet their papers are not peer reviewed by statisticians. As the Climatologists don't themselves understand the mathematics they're using to "prove" their hypothesis (or rather, they do understand how to make the figures point to warming, even when it's cooling), it seems to me a little churlish to accuse any interested intellect (in this case a very clever man) of being ignorant of the Science, when he's at least as smart as the so called experts themselves.
Gavin Schmidt of RealClimate had basically the same response and, further, he bemoaned the lack of statistical analysis in Carlin's paper. This is the same Schmidt who trumpeted Hansen, Mann (both well known for creating fantasy stastical analysis) and, amazingly, Steig's paper on Antarctic warming, which has been shown to be a complete load of bunk!
If I had to choose between one view or the other, purely based on the integrity and intelligence of the proponents, I would choose the sceptics. The colder it gets, the more shrill the warmists are getting. This whole scare is one of the most sordid, ridiculous and idiotic episodes in the history of the Science.
One does have to look at the broader context in situations like this.
First point, since it has some humor value, is that Carlin's field is economics. He is expert in the same studies and techniques as those wonderful quants who gave the financial world those marvelous risk management tools called "derivatives". Economics was nick-named "the dismal science" for a couple of reasons, one being a reference to the quality of the extrapolations that economists have used in their predictions.
More serious points: this news is presented to the world through the Competitive Enterprise Institute. It has a $3 million+ annual budget, and is supported by donations from ExxonMobil, American Petroleum Institute, Dow Chemical, General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Phillip Morris, and others. It is characterized as a "libertarian" think tank ideologically opposed to any government regulation of business conduct. It has taken an active role in advocating for "free-market environmentalism" where corporations and not governments would determine the best way to manage the environment. It has been a continuing, constant critic of global warming concerns. (See Wikipedia article, also validation of primary source, also Google on "Competitive Enterprise Institute".)
WRT Alan Carlin himself: he has been in the US Civil Service for 38 years, so he is fully vested in one of the best retirement packages in the world, and he is at retirement age. His title is "Senior Operations Research Analyst" at the National Center for Environmental Economics of the EPA. He would be at the top of his pay scale at this point, and it is unlikely that continued Federal employment has anything to offer him that he would be interested in doing (a common theme through the papers he has published in the last few years shows a bias against the kinds of Federal protections that the Obama Administration is involved in setting up). It is not at all unlikely that he will soon start drawing his Federal pension and begin a second career in the private sector as a consultant with expertise on EPA matters, or as a staff person in a think tank not unlike CEI. (see synopsis of A. Carlin's career.)
WRT the emails that were sent to Carlin, that were then mysteriously leaked to the national media through CEI: Carlin attempted to inject his argument against a policy decision into the works after he would have known that the period for such commentary was closed. Further, he was acting out of his area of expertise, which is economics, by attempting a review of the recent literature of climate research papers. Further, and to me most telling, is that he admits that he has not formatted his work in accordance with EPA standards, nor is providing proper citations that would allow distinguishing between crap and peer reviewed papers. I see this clearly showing that he had an ulterior motive of monkeywrenching the process, since his past publications show that he knows very well how to write these kinds of papers. It looks very much like he knew his work would be rejected, planned on having it rejected, and planned on collecting the emails that he would receive afterward to use in the way that these emails have been used. (See the .pdf referred to in the article summary, and note that the 4 emails were cherry picked from a much longer body of correspondence.)
BTW, taken in context,the quote from Carlin's boss, "The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward...and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision," takes on a very different meaning. What Carlin is being told is that discussion has moved on from what the science is to what the legal and societal implications are, and how to frame a policy that addresses those c
Will
Blind, unquestioning faith is not science. To assert that the debate is closed is anti-scientific and ultimately very dangerous. YOU may be certain, a large number of people may be certain, but ongoing criticism and debate is the hallmark of real science. How certain are lemmings that they are heading in the right direction just before they plunge over the cliff? Groupthink is not science. Consensus is not science. Arrogance and hubris are not science. Science is only useful as a process insofar as it is capable of yielding to additional data or new ways of looking at existing data. You should be very, very skeptical of anyone who claims to be so certain as to need no further inquiry.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
...but we can be certain that humans are driving CO2...
Not all of us. I drive a golf cart powered by my own sense of self-satisfaction.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.