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Judge Orders EPA To Produce Science Behind Pruitt's Climate Claims (scientificamerican.com)
EPA must produce the opposing body of science Administrator Scott Pruitt has relied upon to claim that humans are not the primary drivers of global warming, a federal judge has ruled. From a report: The EPA boss has so far resisted attempts to show the science backing up his claims. His critics say such evidence doesn't exist, even as Pruitt has called for greater science transparency at the agency. Now, a court case may compel him to produce research that attempts to contradict the mountain of peer-reviewed studies collected by the world's top science agencies over decades that show humans are warming the planet at an unprecedented pace through the burning of fossil fuels. Not long after he took over as EPA administrator, Pruitt appeared on CNBC's "Squawk Box," where he was asked about carbon dioxide and climate change. He said, "I would not agree that it's a primary contributor to the global warming that we see." The next day, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the studies Pruitt used to make his claims. Specifically, the group requested "EPA documents that support the conclusion that human activity is not the largest factor driving global climate change." On Friday, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Beryl Howell, ordered the agency to comply.
Does not Agree does not necessarily require more scientific studies.
Does not agree needs an explanation. The concept that human inserted CO2 and methane into th eatomsphere requires invalidating some laws of physics.
You don't validate a theory by claiming everyone else is wrong. Gotta show the work proving your theoty is the right one.
Otherwise you can simply say Humans do not prodoce CO2 warming because God ignores it and won't let the temperatures change. That's as valid an idea as any of the denial ideas. It isn't science, because it can't be proven wrong, but there we go.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Technically, the judge has not ruled that the EPA must prove the claim. The judge has ruled that the evidence must be released under the FOIA request. Even if the EPA only releases one rough non-reviewed report and says "that's all we have", they're in compliance with the court.
Then it's up to the American public to recognize this is ridiculous, and vote for something better. Good luck with that.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The scientific method requires starting with the foundation of a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement.
To wit:
1) a list of observations that would invalidate your hypothesis;
2) an argument that the lack of these observations would exclude all other hypotheses, including the null.
Having mounds of evidence "consistent with" your hypothesis is not sufficient to make it scientific - after all, astrology has mounds upon mounds of evidence and measurements. What makes a hypothesis scientific is falsifiability.
Yes, AGW would be falsified by CO2 not existing, but the mere existence of CO2 doesn't imply that AGW must be true. Same with the wavelength absorption properties of CO2 - their existence might be *necessary* for AGW to be true, but it is not *sufficient* to exclude natural (or other different man made) climate drivers.
To date, there has never been presented any necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement of AGW, much less CAGW (which would at that point possibly drive policy).
Except the Democratic party actually finds ways to pay for what they spend. The Republicans love their deficit spending. Bush Sr did it. Clinton had to clean it up which is why a lot of military folks hate him for closing all those bases except that Republicans forced him to balance the budget so he did what he hand to. Bush Jr created a whole new cabinet position with DHS while cutting taxes so again we couldn't pay for it. Of course going to war at the same time as tax cuts was pretty foolish as well. That lead to Obama having to clean up except he had zero support for anything. Republicans at least worked with Clinton to clean up the mess prior.
With Obama's weak leadership paving the way for the Trump era I don't expect our deficit to be in good shape for the next President especially with even deeper tax cuts while still being involved in Iraq and Afghanistan among many other hot spots that aren't cheap. Nevermind all the increased spending on border security which again can't be paid for without raising taxes which he just cut or severely cutting other programs which will cause issues like childhood hunger which was a solved problem in the Clinton era to come back with a vengeance as it has through Bush and Obama years.
People keep talking about entitlements being a problem when they were created to solve a specific issue. If you remove the entitlement you better prepare to address that issue in a new way or at the very least admit your solution is for people to die in the streets instead of getting public assistance.
First, you have to prove global warming is happening
Yes, I believe this is called "end of the last ice age".
Ocean currents are not generally been part of the climate models... sigh this is not the place to debate science anymore.
Dude, you are so wrong; wrong enough that I've wasted quite a few mod points to post this.
5 seconds with Bing and the search term 'gcm that includes ocean currents' had Evaluation of the GISS GCM ModelE in the top few results. This article is dated 2002 and talked about how ocean currents are included in the GISS GCM. Ocean currents have been part of GCMs (General Circulation Models) for at least that amount of time.
Now, I am skeptical of the robustness of GCMs. Their predictive power appears to be weak over time (look at how accurate the CFSV2 is over a three month period, for example); and probably because their resolution is quite low; GCMs typically having a horizontal resolution of between 250 and 600 km, 10 to 20 vertical layers in the atmosphere and sometimes as many as 30 layers in the oceans. But that will change as computers get faster or more massively paralleled.
Disagree with GCSs all you want. But at least try and do some rudimentary research on why you disagree with them..
Except they DID provide the evidence global warning exists, now the current administration is claiming otherwise without presenting any evidence for why they changed conclusions.
How do you make the retrograde motion of planets work in a geocentric system? You really going to try to make planets jumping around in space "work"?
I'd suggest you do a quick primer on frames of reference in the theory of relativity. But who knows, maybe Einstein was wrong about all that stuff...
Bringing up Special Relativity when the subject is rotating non-inertial reference
frames doesn't really help your case. You might want to dial down your smugness.
The cooling during that period was very slight. It's pretty clear that it was caused by the increased particulates in the air at that time.
https://www.skepticalscience.c...
You are however correct about one thing, CO2 isn't our only big problem
Greed is the root of all evil.
Sorry, but almost everything you wrote is wrong.
When you only ask one side to provide proof of something, that's bullshit.
That's true, however...
When the one side making the absurd claims is the side that has not conducted any repeatable experiments on the matter, has not been able to accurately predict things, and keeps revising both their models and data points in order to fit their hypothesis, yet they're the "accepted" side, that's bullshit.
I absolute agree with you that Pruitt needs to produce some evidence to support his position. But, of course, in you thought you were attacking climate scientists. However, nothing you wrote actually applies to them. They provide the data, the methods, the models and the repeatable experiments for virtually everything they do. Curiously, however, your statements apply well to every single alternative theory that tries to explain the observed facts of climate change. None of them have been able to survive even casual scrutiny from interested reviewers.
But the most bullshit thing is not realizing the simple fact that carbon dioxide is absolutely not the primary cause of global warming.
Except, of course, that it actually is. It's the primary driver of global warming because of the volume and longevity of CO2 produced by human activity.
Not only is CO2 a weak greenhouse gas, human production of it doesn't account for the majority of it.
The majority of the total CO2 in the atmosphere? That's true, for now, since pre-industrial levels are estimated to have been lower than 290 ppm and we're currently around 411 ppm. However, human activity has produced all of the increase in CO2 since pre-industrial levels. We know that because natural factors have been acting as a CO2 sink and absorbing more CO2 than they release. CO2 is a relatively weak CO2 gas but again we produce a lot more of it and it last a very long time in the atmosphere so it's the primary driver of the change, and then it is amplified because a little bit of warming from CO2 increases the average amount of water in the air which drives further warming. It's similar to pennies, they might not be worth much individually, but a million pennies is worth a lot more than a dozen hundred dollar bills.
The primary cause of warming and cooling is the fucking sun, by far.
No, it's not. The sun has cooled slightly while the average temperature continues to rise, and that's a good thing because the earth would be warming even faster if the sun were actually warming. In any case, the effect of the sun's tiny variation in output is far smaller than the effects of the increase in the greenhouse effect.
If you want to get into secondary factors, then plain ol' water vapor beats out CO2 by a country mile.
Because water vapour content is driven by average temperature, it's considered an amplifier rather a primary cause of warming. It applies the effect of every other greenhouse gas, but it can not be increased or decreased independently and that's why CO2 is considered more important as a greenhouse gas than water vapour.
You've got a few things right, but you've failed to understand what those things actually mean.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
In 1972, J.S. Sawyer calculated there would be about 0.6 C of global warming by the end of the century (the actual amount of warming was 0.5 C as the CO2 concentration was a bit lower than predicted). In 1967, Manabe & Wetherald predicted that doubling the CO2 concentration would increase global temperatures 2 C. (see here for more early papers.)
Neither of these papers were based on a sophisticated computer model, they were based on energy balance calculations - greenhouse gases slow down the exit of energy to space, therefore the surface warms - plus feedbacks such as the relation between temperature and absolute humidity.
The early predictions of global warming came during a period of global cooling. The scientists stuck their necks out and got the right answer then - so if you don't trust computer models, feel free to trust that early pre-computer-model research. It got roughly the same answer the computer models are getting today.
It's true that some models disagree: some say the ECS is closer to 2.0 C, others closer to 4.5 C. Meanwhile the average temperature over land has increased over 1 C since 1975. None of these numbers justifies inaction to fund clean energy.
Human-caused global warming has been predicted by scientists since Svante Arrhenius in 1896 (See this list of early global warming papers).
Many of these papers were produced during the global cooling trend before 1975. Climate scientists predicted global warming before it happened and now over 90% of climate scientists are in agreement on the subject. Numerous studies show humans as the cause of recent global warming. Yet you think mainstream scientists haven't made their case?
Until you add feedback mechanisms such as the increased absolute humidity that corresponds to increased temperatures (water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas). Then it has a much greater effect.
Sort of. We started with 280 ppm in the atmosphere, now we're up to 410 ppm, so I guess humans are responsible for less than half!
However I assume you are referring to the myth that humans release less than 4% of all the CO2 that is "released" each year.
In a very twisted way, this is correct. A glass of water evaporating in a room with 90% humidity does not just "release" water molecules, it also absorbs them from the air. But if someone uses this fact to argue that water glasses will fill up in a humid room, there is something wrong with that, isn't there?
Similarly the ocean "releases" more CO2 every year than humans, but it absorbs more than it releases. Drawing attention to CO2 coming out of the ocean while completely ignoring the CO2 going into the ocean is highly misleading. The ocean's pH is dropping, why do you think that is?
Humidity depends on environmental conditions. When temperatures increase, the water vapor concentration (absolute humidity aka vapor pressure) also increases.
The 11-year average of solar irradiance has varied by only about 0.1% over the last century and solar output has decreased in recent decades.