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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.
that's why it takes someone with knowledge and experience to lead this effort. Just kidding, the POTUS and I are golf buddies...
It was nice knowing you. But now you're just getting in the way of the current administration. You were signed into law by a Democrat, so expect to be repealed soon by a Republican majority Congress.
You know... because asking someone to provide proof of a claim is anti-conservative.
It's a demand for evidence. Perhaps in your world evidence is not scientific? Methinks you haven't the foggiest notion what does or doesn't constitute a scientific demand.
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.
They didn't pin him down. They simply are asking for the research behind his statements. If you're the head of the EPA and make a statement such as he made I think it's totally rational to ask for the research.
Sent from my TARDIS
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.
What is the "other side" to Copernicus' view that the Earth revolves around the Sun? It's been almost half a millennium, so you've had plenty of time to come up with something.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yeah he's just going to be releasing his used toilet paper and calling it a day, nobody is going to be shocked he just pulled it out of his ass.
It isn’t possible to met the judges demand.
Sure it is. All he has to do is show evidence of what is the primary driver of global warming. If that primary driver isn't humans, then voila, it's done!
First, you have to prove global warming is happening
That's already been demonstrated by the temperature of the sea rising.
Pruitt may contend this is a normal fluctuation.
If this is true then there would be evidence of it (which there is not).
The “consensus view” on global warming being manmade is based on a flawed study of the papers at a climate conference where the famed 97% figure arose.
A lot of good research has been done on the topic. No single study shapes the view of the scientific community. Living in denial is fine... as long as you don't stand in the way of people trying to address the issue.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
An organizational leader shouldn't make informed decisions?
What kind of leader do you want?
Oh wait, I think I know.
Any scientific organizational leader that doesn't make policy based on scientific research is incompetent.
FTFY
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
If Mr. Pruitt thinks that there is research going on casting serious doubts on the results the IPCC is basing its recommendations on, then he surely is able to point to that research. Because it was Mr. Pruitt who demands that the EPA needs more scientific transparency. This is just the demand to actually cast some light to make the science more transparent for us to judge.
That's a silly reductionist position. The EPA is a government agency that has both a fiduciary responsibility to taxpayers, as well as a responsibility to the well being of *citizens*. The "environment" is only a proxy here for protecting humans, and we must *obviously* take off the table those things that protect the "environment" but harm people.
Their default action should always be "what policy balances the costs and benefits for the people".
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.
no one ever asked epa to provide "proof" that global warming exists
Conservatives have asked, on numerous occasions. It has been provided as research papers, peer reviewed. And in some cases the data has been collected from multiple sources. And the hypothesis are testable and in some cases independently reproduced.
Just because you don't like the answer doesn't mean you weren't given an answer.
tl;dr- climate change is occurring. oceans are warming. global changes in weather is inevitable. these changes is caused, at least partially, by human activity. these are the things we know. ask me in 10 years and I can give you an answer with more detail and be able to predict even more.
Ocean temperature rise may or may not be human-caused, that's why the research needs to continue. The current administration wants to just say "it's not human caused, case closed", and start burning the research, censuring or outright firing scientists that disagree, and actively discouraging anyone, government or private, from doing any further research. That's the sort of bullshit that needs to be stopped; it smacks of Dominionism, of religious zealots who actually believe the Earth is only 6000 years old, and that we don't have to give a damn about it because it's all going to end soon anyway. This isn't just about climate change, it's about Real Facts and the neverending search for Real Truth versus dogma.
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..
Unfortunately, the two are intrinsically linked, so any solution will be complex.
I highly suggest reading the book Doughnut Economics on this topic. The essential argument the author makes is that ultimately our economies are based upon the systems of the earth. We can make things out of wood without trees, we can't grow food without soil, etc. Even things like mineral extraction and fossil fuel use are also ultimately rooted in earth systems.
If we want to have a robust world economy that creates opportunity for everybody, it *must* be ecologically sustainable. Anything else is just borrowing from future generations and will eventually collapse when resources run out.
The doughnut economics book also traces a lot of the history of economic theory to sets of mathematical models invented to describe things limited in scope that have now been taken grossly out of the original context.
There are also plenty of economic models that are just too damn simple. A number of these came about shortly after Newton wrote down the basic laws of planetary motion, which inspired other disciplines to describe the world with mathematics. Of course, the systems are radically different. Planetary systems are relatively simple when compared to economics, which can involve literally millions of people making independent decisions.
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).
So give me the current work that invalidates the Greenhouse effect on a planetart scale.
Remember current work. Everything I have seen so far has been invalidated. This is usually based on cherry picking data, and anything that isn't understood is waved like a smoking gun -showing that all of the data is wrong. The best example of this was the smoking gun difference between satellite observations and high altitude balloon measurements. This differnce was touted as the destruction of any and all Global warming period. I was referred to many pages touting this work.
Problem is, later work brought the differences into agreement - including by the team who wrote the paper notint the anomalies.
Regardless, the US Environmental Protection agency is presumably not a organization that marches in lockstep to the Republican administration, andrelies on science. to make it's decisions,
Surely they have this evidence that completely refutes AGW, and perhaps The entire physic of energy retention (or rejection) of certain gases based on their presence. Seems a little odd that the head of the EPA refuses to show the work. that will silence the purveyors of incorrect science - I mean, he is using truth and not politics, amirite?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
The thing is, his model is basically curve fitting. It's a purely phenomenological model with lots of tunable parameters. And as Fermi said: "With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk."
Meanwhile, CO2-based climate forcing has purely theoretical explanation. In the end it's a simple heat balance equation.
Consider that the United States obesity epidemic has been caused by a government policy to promote carbohydrate consumption and discourage fat consumption. That policy was based on scientific research.
Not true.
These recommendations emanated from hearings held in the mid-to-late 1970s by the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, despite a “boisterous mob of critics,” including those within the scientific community who pleaded with the Committee to wait for more research “before we make announcements to the American public.” In response, Committee Chairman Sen. McGovern responded that “Senators don’t have the luxury that the research scientist does of waiting until every last shred of evidence is in.”
This was a classic case of, "We have to do something, this is something, we have to do this." The scientists were very clear that there was no research supporting the policy recommendation.
Nope, no sig
Real conservatives are, indeed, pro science. That any can call themselves Republican in the face of the current Republican party I doubt. They either qualify what the mean by Republican to explicitly refer to some previous edition of the Republican party, or they are fake conservatives. (I count people who just close their eyes and go la-la-la as fake conservatives.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
5: Prophet!
Yeah he's just going to be releasing his used toilet paper and calling it a day, nobody is going to be shocked he just pulled it out of his ass.
Flag as Inappropriate
Personally I just wipe. Is shoving the paper actually up there something we expect from those in high office?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Here is an interesting one
An interesting paper, thanks. I'd say the authors have substantially contributed to our understanding of the long term evolution of ice sheets, and their models will (within boundaries and with significant uncertainties) go some way towards predicting how the northern hemisphere ice sheets will change over the coming decades.
Still, it's worth pointing out that the fact that it was briefly warmer 5000 years ago doesn't contradict either the notions that CO2 traps heat or that increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere causes global warming, or the notion that mankind is responsible for rapidly increasing the concentration of atmospheric CO2.
As regards your other nugget:
...which is what led Phil Jones, Director of the CRU of East Anglia and a primary contributor to the IPCC, to agree that
according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical
. So if the heating over those periods - two well before the rapid rise in CO2 - are the same as the "big trigger" that caused the whole IPCC/global warming issue in the first place, then how do we know that it's because of CO2?
That's a good question, and I guess the answer is "We don't, completely". Numerous factors influence the climate, not just levels of CO2. The fact remains though that we are rapidly increasing the levels of atmospheric CO2, whereas we have no control over the other factors.
I feel it's worth pointing out, just in case someone reads your post and doesn't follow the links, a couple of things:
Firstly, unlike your "quote" which is actually the question that was asked (missing the question mark), Phil Jones' response was that "the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other. Ascribing false certainty, as you do, might lead one to question the integrity of your argument.
Secondly, it's also worth pointing out that, since the rates are similar, it also follows that temperatures have been consistently rising, and are continuing to rise. One might think that this alone justifies concern over what will happen as they continue to rise, with regards sea levels, weather patterns and behaviour, and so on.
Finally, since you linked to the article, why don't we give Phil's answer to the question "Would it be reasonable looking at the same scientific evidence to take the view that recent warming is not predominantly manmade?". His answer: "No"
Lets cut the crap... republicans and conservatives are traitors to the country and people
Fucking moron. This is NOT a partisan issue. Voting democrat will NOT help. Just stop. The problem is corruption and nepotism which infects BOTH political parties. Even if it is possible to say one side is worse than the other, it makes no difference. It is like saying being burned alive is worse than being drawn and quartered. You may be correct, but you are still going to die an extremely painful death. Let's talk about the dying rather than the method of dying.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
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.