The EPA suppresses dissent and opinion, and apparently decides issues in advance of public comment

WOW, shocked I tell you, just shocked.
When the government starts lying to you about the basic premise for massive new taxes, what type of a government do you have?
You expected to find truth? Science is going to be materially damaged in the eyes of the public because of this hoax.

So ‘We the People’ doesn’t even matter if it gets in the way of the green agenda? What kind of government is that.
In other notes, the greenhouse effect diagrams need a good overhaul
http://www.iceagenow.com/If_the_canary_is_still_singing_we_are_okay.htm
CO2 is heavier than air according to old mine tours and thus the gas would be the most dense at sea level, plus as air gets thinner the higher you go, that means less CO2, there’s no ‘wall’ of CO2 trapping heat high up in the atmosphere like some GHG chart implies.

Nothing new here for the EPA!
I hesitate to bring this up, but foregone conclusions is not exactly uncharted territory for the EPA.
In their report on ETS, (second hand smoke), they twisted the rules to get the answer they wanted. (I am not going to debate whether or not it is even dangerous or not.)
1) They used a form of analysis called a ‘meta-study’ (a collection of studies to enlarge the sample size.)
2) they ‘cherry-picked’ the studies to include.
Even after this they couldn’t get the required result, so…
3) they reduced the CI to 90%
Even so they couldn’t get the figures they really wanted, so…
4) they declared an RR of 1.15 @ 90% as a class 1 carcinogen!
5) their ruling was thrown out by the US supreme court.
6) They appealed and won, not on the grounds the judge had indicted them but on the grounds that the courts had no jurisdiction.
As I said, I’m not going to debate the rights & wrongs of ETS/SHS & even if you are of the view that it is harmful. does that justify falsifying the data?
That is the kind of organisation you are dealing with!
DaveE.

Sorry, falsifying RESULTS, not data
DaveE.

sounds like they are trying to muzzle their scientist from speaking on AGW.

Why is anyone shocked about dishonesty in the AGW debate? This scam has been a fraud since its inception. What we are witnessing is a slow motion rape of our sensibilities, science, and industry. We are nothing more than “denialists” deserving of scorn, ridicule, imprisonment, or worse.
The science be damned, the debate is over, the Ministry of Truth has spoken.
Get used to it.

You’re on The Examiner: http://www.examiner.com/x-9111-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m6d24-Is-the-EPA-suppressing-or-withholding-information-on-global-warming

I don’t think it’s very useful to send comments to site like EPA. They have a political agenda anyway. They don’t care about science or facts. As a skeptic i think the most usefull is to advertise sites like yours. As more and more people will know the skeptic cause, i am sure we will win in the end.

Now that this has seen the light, I’ll bet the EPA Administration will go on the offensive and attack Mr. Carlin’s credibility and assassinate his character. Just wait and see the “horrible offenses” that he supposedly committed and the “shoddy work” he performed (this usually happens in spite of a history of good performance appraisals). If necessary the media will gladly share any accusations to discredit this individual. I hope not, but if it does happen it will be an absolute shame. Either way, I’ll bet someone at EPA has already crafted these “talking points” as well, just in case they need to use them.

Spread the link above, news sites like hits, and will continue to write about anything that brings them traffic

Obama’s EPA screws the whole country. Meanwhile, Drudge is more concerned with reporting that SC Governor Sanford cheated on his wife. If Drudge can’t get it right, what of the rest of the media?

The FCC does the same thing. Got caught being selective with the facts regarding interference caused by BPL, broadband over powerlines. Thank goodness for the American Radio Relay League (ham radio). Took them to court over it and the FCC was forced to release all the data. Not sure if the FCC has actually done that yet.

gt (13:59:53) :
Not sure about the timing of the issue though. It seems that the email dialogues between the 2 parties happened 3 months ago. Why do they disclose it now, one day after EPA closed the public commentary?
As the advert says, ‘simples’ he’s given them time to recant. That time is passed now!
DaveE.

There must be some mistake. Everyone knows that only Republican administrations suppress inconvienent findings by career scientists, right? I confidently await the outrage and investigation by Congress.

wow.
We are so screwed.

As with everything in this administration, the likely response will be, “This simply could not wait. The situation is so dire that we have to move forward as quickly as possible.”

Sorry chaps but we are seeing the end of representative democracy throughout the western world.
The fact is that most voters are too busy getting on with their lives to make the effort required to second guesss the ‘establishment’.
Many years ago the ‘establishment’ realised that allowing a decline in intellectual rigour in the education system was entirely to it’s own advantage.
All that post World War 2 prosperity and freedom has rendered the average voter over confident and complacent about the preservation of the basic rules of a democratic system.
The irony is that the process is being driven by all those 60s radicals who were such a noisy nuisance 50 years ago.
No one ever guaranteed that the democratic experiment started by the UK 500 years ago and consolidated by the US Constitutuion would be a permanent phenomenon.
We are seeing the end game for good or ill.
Supra Governmental organisations such as the UN and the European Union are in the ascendant and will not be denied.
The future will be determined by the extent to which the emerging world including China and India is prepared to go along with it.
I suspect that the Orwellian vision of a world split into 3 major power blocs (possibly only 2) was not far off the mark.

People, assume NOTHING! I just contacted my rep…House Minority Leader J. Boehner and gave the nice lady on the phone this piece. She actually called up the web page as we spoke.
I suggested that the links provided could provide the basis for a nice floor speech.
Will it do any good? Dunno, the vote is this Friday. Never the less, call anyway; the honest ones will listen, the crooks will probably either [A] hang up on you, or [B] give you a verbal ‘pat on the head’ and send you on your way.
At any rate, remember this BS when 2010 comes around.

I do wonder…are the comments only for the sake of humoring people’s opinions?
I suppose it is nice and all…but it seems to be rather unneccesary and deceiving to think they would ever have any influence on the outcome of the policies made.

I think EPA is going to have some trouble over this. My recollection is that the EPA rulemaking is not based on its own research or evaluation of the scientifc literature, but instead is based only on the IPCC and CCSP reports. It doesn’t look like CEI got a hold of the actual document that Alan Carlin prepared, but based on the e-mails it probably contained a discussion of various scientific papers and studies that conflicted with the findings of those two reports, and that the author thought should be made a part of the record. It also seems to indicate that someone in the EPA wanted to independently form their own conclusions about the weight of the scientific literature as to endangerment, but that higher-management torpedoed that idea.
One of the issues the EPA invited comment on was whether or not it was appropriate for them to promulgate rules based exclusively on findings and research of other entities, e.g. the IPCC. The reason this e-mail exchange is so damaging is that it at least appears to show that EPA was made aware of scientific research that conflicted with those reports and which were either (1) not available to the IPCC and CCSP; (2) not considered by those report; or (3) both.
The EPA began this exercise on the assumption that the IPCC essentially did all their work for them, and that they could use someone else’s conclusions as a rational basis for an endangerment finding, without going through the time-consuming process of conducting its own review of the credibility of the scientific literature. Even setting aside the question of pre-judgment, which the CEI is stressing, the fact that the EPA shunted this document aside highlights the fact that the EPA has in essence abdicated to other agencies (one of which isn’t even a US agency) its own responsibility to determine the factual issue of endangerment. What it wants is not only to rely upon the compilation of scientific data from the IPCC but also rely upon the conclusions of the IPCC (e.g. 98% confidence that most of the temperature increase in recent decades is from CO2) so that EPA doesn’t have to go through and evaluate all the scientific literature referenced by the IPCC report, which would take years.
In my opinion, even were the EPA to do what the CEI asks, e.g. extend the public comment and add the document to the administrative record, they nonetheless have handed a stockpile of ammo to anyone who wants to challenge the finding in court on the basis that the EPA cannot avoid its own responsibility to both collect its own scientific record and make its own independent judgments as to the weight of that record. In other words, the conclusions the IPCC drew from its own review of the scientific literature is not a factaal basis from which the EPA can support an endangerment finding.

“I tried to do my part today by calling my Congressman About the Waxman-Markey energy bill, but doubt it will slow down the steamroller. ” – Retired BChe.
“I don’t believe in the no-win scenario.” – James T. Kirk, Admiral Star Fleet United Federation of Planets.

Another example of how the EPA does not represent sound scientific achievement or the good of mankind. Our progress cannot continue if science is suppressed in favor of Big Oil interests to defraud the consumer. See altfuels.us for other expamples of EPA tactics.

Ummm… Carlin is an economist with EPA, not a scientist.
His CV lists exactly zero publications in meteorology, atmospheric physics… or any scientific field whatsoever.
While he is certainly qualified to comment on things like costs vs benefits of regulating CO2, he has absolutely no qualifications to be commenting on the underlying science (which is what he appears to have done).

Before we get too excited re this apparent “suppression” of Mr. Carlin’s paper, be advised that Mr. Carlin is STRONGLY in the AGW camp. His 2007 paper “Risky Gamble” talks about the difficulties of adopting a single approach to reducing GHG and strongly encourages looking at Geoengineering to effect Solar Radiation Management. [ ERD=Exclusive Regulatory DeCarbonization or Cap and Trade]:
“Risky Gamble
Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases may be well intentioned and even
helpful. But as the sole strategy for climate change control it is nevertheless
inflexible, expensive, risky, and politically unrealistic, according to this government economist. Such a strategy could even make matters worse.
Fortunately, there is a better solution.
ALAN CARLIN
{Here it is }
“…Fortunately, there is an alternative to relying on ERD, although it is almost never mentioned by environmentalists and not widely known, much less understood, by the public — solar radiation management, sometimes called stratospheric geoengineering or engineered climate selection. An extensive review of management strategies and currently available alternative technologies for global climate control gives the inescapable conclusion that SRM is the most effective and efficient first step toward solving most of the problems that ERD supporters are concerned about, quickly and easily………
So it is likely that his contribution may include a paper on SRM which does not fit the current thrust of the Gore/Obama/Goldman Sachs coalition.
[The above title and quote are taken from the Carlin website:
http://carlineconomics.googlepages.com/

That did not take too long for someone to write an article to try to debunk the emails and memo… http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-24-scant-evidence-of-suppression/
Looks like the story is being burried in the Google News search. Just an hour ago you could find it by only putting in EPA… but now you have to be much more specific to find it.

The true revolutionary will never waiver. If the evidence disagrees with the movement, they will change the evidence, not the policy.
NOAA, IPCC and now EPA – it is a sign of our times that I trust Vince, the Sham Wow guy, more than I trust the preeminent scientists who guard our truth.

The sad thing is that I expected this from the people who surround Obama; however, I did not expect them to get caught like this. But it’s not just him either of course. There is blame enough for all in the government who cannot resist, or who can find a way to justify, grabbing power over ordinary Americans’ lives in the name of public safety. He is just a mouth piece and that’s it.
But I’m just waiting for the government to come up with this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_of_Public_Safety

“Chris V. (15:17:13) :
Ummm… Carlin is an economist with EPA, not a scientist.
His CV lists exactly zero publications in meteorology, atmospheric physics… or any scientific field whatsoever.
While he is certainly qualified to comment on things like costs vs benefits of regulating CO2, he has absolutely no qualifications to be commenting on the underlying science (which is what he appears to have done).”
Be careful about this. First, for all we know, he was submitting research on the economic projections that computer models use to project future emissions, hence future climate. Economic studies were also used in the IPCC report to assess damage caused by climate change. Many of the lead authors of the IPCC report are mathemeticians or modelers as opposed to scientists, yet their word is treated as gospel.
Economists can be very intelligent people. I’d hesitate before claiming that an econmist isn’t qualified to understand research papers involving matehmatical models, or even qualified to understand or comment on say, radiative transfer.
More importantly, the e-mail exchange seems to indicate that whatever he was proposing to submit with respect to the endangerment finding could have been forwarded on, but wasn’t because a decision had been made to go forward, even though the deadline hadn’t yet passed. I’m assuming that this deadline was for the EPA’s preliminary finding of endangerment which in turn triggered the public comment period.
One very interesting part of the e-mail exchange was at the end when Carlin was told that the endangerment finding was not a “criteria document” and hence his comments weren’t relevant at that stage of the process. This refers to “criteria pollutants” for which the EPA sets concentration limits for air pollution, e.g. ozone, particulates, etc. As part of the Clean Air Act requirements, EPA must periodically assess the current state of scientific data on what concentrations of criteria pollutants are hazardous. I take this exchange as indicating that the EPA is basing its endangerment findings solely on the conclusions of the IPCC and other selective reports of other agencies (see my post above), but this guy Carlin has presented data that was more recent than the respective cut-off dates for scientific papers to be sumbitted prior to writing those reports. The e-mails seem to suggest that the EPA is taking the position that they are under no obligation to consider current scientific data before making an endangerment finding based on the IPCC report.

When Hansen claimed to have been “muzzled” by the Bush administration, all the news media trumpeted the allegation and most treated it as true. Will Alan Carlin’s obvious “muzzling” be noticed in any of the major news media? The left is already claiming there is nothing to it:
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-24-scant-evidence-of-suppression/
That’s the only “hit” by Google news for “Alan Carlin EPA” right now.

Has anyone checked out The Examiner article linked by Ray at 13:40:09? The author claims to have spoken to a rep from the EPA who appears to have an explanation for this espisode. It’s worth a read, and a little further digging before we all jump to conclusions here.

If this idiocy continues, it is my intention to work outside the US in order to escape the onerous taxes and industry-choking regulations.
I do not intend to leave my city, however.

Folks, the fix is in and there’s nothing that can be done. Obama is ramrodding all these things through because he knows in 2010 people will be fed up. However, none of this can be reversed once enacted. The electorate made their bed and will have to sleep in it; we’re going to be poorer and have less freedom one year from now, get used to it.
BTW Anthony, Dana Rohrabacher mentioned you in a speech last night on the House floor.

hareynolds (13:11:12) :
I believe the actual quote, by Henrik Ibson, was “People usually have whatever form of government they deserve.”
Tom Fuller (14:33:32) :
In passing along verbatim that hastily cobbled-together compendium of canned bureaucratic talking-points, I assume your intention was irony? As for “the many opportunities,” I’d be interested to hear Carlin’s take. As long as you’re following this, why don’t you ask him?
Jim Papsdorf (15:28:35) :
If Mr. Carlin has floated the adaptation & mitigation ideas you mention, then he is NOT STRONGLY in the AGW camp. The eco-evangelicals are utterly hostile to any engineering/adaptive strategies, or any solutions that threaten their ecotopian fantasies. In fact, the entire AGW myth was simply an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it trump card designed to force the issue. But it looks like they over-played their hand. If there’s a silver lining to all this, it’s that the greens will be discredited for possibly an entire generation.
However, Carlin’s ideas do reveal an Economist’s outlook, in that he’s considering effective, least-cost solutions based on pragmatism and not eco-fantasies.
This EPA kerfuffle is simply the latest in the sad debasement of Science by scientists, but now is not the time for weary cynicism – the AGW card-castle is trembling in the breeze and we can help hasten its collapse. Of course I will call and write my Congresscritters and demand some action, but maybe Anthony or others know some columnists who would love to shine a light on some intra-agency dirty politics? Didn’t WUWT feature a George Will column recently? This sounds like something he’d love.

[snip–please follow instructions concerning cutting and pasting ~ ctm]

[snip–please follow instructions concerning cutting and pasting ~ ctm]

Let me give my opinion on this issue; science has been invaded and corrupted by politics and false philosophies that have flown away from science and reason. The real philosophy of science does not allow dogmatism and senselessness.
I can offer a well done investigation, with quite realistic results based on careful observations of real phenomena and/or experimentation; however, it would be rejected if it is not following the mainstream chosen by the editorial board of the publication, or if I have not published a paper in any of their “reliable” magazines, or if I am demonstrating that which they are saying is not true.
Whatever contradicts their viewpoint is rejected without any consideration, understanding for reliability the fact that the editors of such or that magazine belongs to the same academy or way of thought. I have read stupid articles in Science Magazine which have passed the peer review just because they mention somewhere that humans are changing the climate on Earth.
There is no chance of publishing in any “chief” scientific magazine because at the first signal from the article of being on the side which is opposed to their ideology, it will be rejected. That is the reason by which many scientists have opted for publishing in the Internet. Any publication in the Internet is valid if it has been submitted to impartial, not biased peer review. There is an organization called “Scientists Without Borders” to which the accepted members can ask for help on any problem related with science, including the peer reviews of papers by well known scientist from the whole world. However, they don’t accept any peer reviewed paper if it has not passed under the scrutiny of the mainstream.
You can follow unerringly a procedure taken from a book of physics using magnitudes which had been derived from your own measurements and experiments and they will not accept your results just because they are out of their ideology or just because their reviewers did not review your paper. At this pace, there will not be more scientists on this world except AGWers, even those who have never acquired a degree in sciences.
Yes, the world is changing; a dark era has been progressing since 1890. They are destroying science. Ecology is a branch of biology; ecology is a very beautiful factual science… They have converted it into a bunch of lies and assumptions. They have shifted from the real world to a mythical world.
NOAA, NASA, EPA, etc. will never fly again on the field of science and reason. Who could believe that Hansen was really arrested? Hansen has always played the role of being a martyr of the system. Just remember.
Thanks for reading…

If the administration had been honest in its statements regarding science, ideology and policy, it would have been a first for environmental activists.
If your congressman or senator is a democrat write, phone, email as many times as you can to try an dissuade them from supporting the EPA finding or cap and trade.
If they are republican do the same, but it won’t make a difference, because their votes are not relevant. This fight has been between democrats since Jan 2009.

If you have not sent your e-mails off to Senate/congress, include a request that Lisa Jackson, Administrator of EPA be removed from office. This is VERY typical of her. I do a lot of work in the environmental industry in New Jersey where she was the head of the NJ DEP before being kicked upstairs. Well, just before here elevation she was trying her damnedest to wrest complete control of the environmental industry into government hands. Her proposals to tghe legislature would have destroyed the entire multi-billion dollar per year professional scientist/engineer industry and simply required industry in the state to do whatever she and her stooges in the DEP wanted them to. NJ lucked out because it would have caused a mass exodus of businesses.
She is a command and control viper to the core and she will go to congress to testify shrilly about the endangerment.
Tom

Phil Nizialek (16:26:45) :
Has anyone checked out The Examiner article linked by Ray at 13:40:09?
A portion of it has been striken.
And as someone else said, it seems to miss the mark anyways.

Folks, I work at EPA and am unfortunate enough to actually know exactly what happened. Alan Carlin knows more about climate change science than most of the people on the EPA work group that wrote the endangerment proposal. The claim that he is simply an economist is a deep disservice to Alan and is patently false. Further, the work group refused to consider his arguments because they “don’t know how to weigh them against the IPCC report” – suggesting they won’t be able to evaluate the public comments either. Notably, others at EPA agree with Alan’s analysis which EPA will make public (so they say). If they actually release the report Alan sent forward, and don’t take his extremely critical statements out, it will embarrass the Agency badly. That will be a shame, but it is what the Agency has earned for itself.
I would like to give my name, but I don’t wish to be punished in the same manner as Alan.
This is a deeply sad set of events for EPA and for the nation.
REPLY: Doing a quick Google Search on the email he provided, I can vouch for the claim of this poster working with the EPA – Anthony

Re: SunSword (16:59:02) :
No truer words have ever been written on this blog…
Well said.

Just remember: THUGS are THUGS.
IT doesn’t really matter if they wield a batton, a rifle or a PEN.
THUGS are THUGS.
The EPA, because of their power, are THUGS.
And if anyone doesn’t understand what a THUG is, look up Thugge
for example here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee#Religion_and_Thuggee
And remember, they were brutal killers.
Joe

Just what did everybody think “Yes We Can” actually meant?
Oh you poor naive babies.
Sorry for the snark. Sometimes there’s nothing else (that’s legal) left to do.

Re: May I forward your email to Tom Fuller? ~ charles the moderator.
Only after Tom publically promises anonymity.
Reply: Ok ~ ctm

Folks, from an island in the Pacific, I can see at least a couple of people who may just be in need of a Fighting Fund real soon. After all, a 66% budget cut and a successful EPA process are most easily simultaneously achieved by firing the whistle-blowers (publicly regretfully, natch).

Anonymous, thank you for putting the truth above your personal convenience. Incompetent bureaucrats must learn that bluster and bullying may seem to work in the short term, but they will be exposed.
Exposing incompetence and waste in Government is what we elect politicians for, but they have become part of the problem. Will the internet take up the slack?

Im not from the states, and have a limited knowledge of the political workings of youre country… but this certainly is a lil reminiscent of that Simpsons movie. As Reiner Wolfcastle so eloquently put it… “Im here to lead! Not to read!” 😉

I believe anonymous, but it can only be a belief for now, not proof. Understandably, anonymous’ own self-preservation means that only an official inquiry will disclose what he knows. Until that time, his comments are unsupportable and would be summarily dismissed as rumormongering.
Mr. Watts, don’t lose his co-ordinates. Years down the road there’ll be an entire book chapter surrounding the EPA’s shenanigans and it’s role in the current catastrophic AGW industry. I look forward to reading it.

The Obama Administration’s World Transparency Tour continues…with transparency having the clarity of a pyroclastic flow.

Between governmental coverups, omissions, arrests, and ignorance, it seems we have arrived at more of a political tipping point than a climatological tipping point eh?

Robert Wood: I suggest you take up your argument with the alarmists. It is they who have overused the authority falacy to defend their belief. I (and I assume most of posters) are mocking them. Feeding them little bit of their own medicine does wonders to flush out the system.

deadwood (17:34:48) : You are absolutely correct, although we need every Republican to vote against this insanity just in case there are cross-overs. The dream of America and the future freedom of the world is relying on this bill to be struck down. It is that important.
Next time you are asked to give to or support a candidate, insist they answer publicly about global warming. If they refuse or skate around the subject, don’t give a dime.

anonymous (17:51:36) :
Good on you!

WorldNetDaily has picked up on this event-
HERE’S YOUR TRANSPARENCY
WorldNetDaily Exclusive
EPA’s own research expert
‘shut up’ on climate change
Government analyst silenced
after he critiques CO2 findings
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=102031

neill (22:23:47) :
WestHoustonGeo (16:36:38) :
“If this idiocy continues, it is my intention to work outside the US in order to escape the onerous taxes and industry-choking regulations.
I do not intend to leave my city, however.”
sorry, dude. this is global.
you can run, but you cain’t hide.
Unless you live in Russia, where they will increase CO2 emissions by burning cheap fossil fuels while collecting $Billons of Kyoto Carbon credits from foolish western nations. A No-Lose situation. REF: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=awZsTffLILz0&refer=home
Also, China and India are definently putting economic growth ahead of cutting CO2, however both countries are happy for CO2 Credits as a Western Subsidy to pay for Hydro power schemes. REF-1: http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2119 and REF-2: http://www.indiatogether.org/2008/jul/env-cdm.htm
Also Brazil is looking at ways to burn methane (emitting CO2) while collecting carbon credits from Western nations to do so. REF: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38070
So there are plenty of places to go…

Reality mirrors fiction: It’s like Atlas Shrugged, but without Atlantis to escape to.

A government agency not telling the truth? Well I never…
Government agencies exist to nurture and progress government agendas. There’s no other reason for their existence. Over here we call them Quangos – Quasi non-governmental organisations. Some people believe quangos are autonomous but they receive their funding from a central government that also has a say in who runs the outfit and how it operates so how can they be autonomous? The non-governmental part of the name is a cynical lie. No way is our control freak Prime Minister, nor his equally freakish predecessor, going to allow anything resembling independent thought to escape into the proletarian wilds. Think tanks running contrary to the party line (i.e. NOT paid for by government) are staffed by racists, extreme right-wingers, nutjobs and other sinister types etc.
This is standard operating procedure for any government on the make, particularly when they’ve discovered a new way to fleece and/or control the electorate. It’s nothing short of a gift to socialists who know how to manipulate a system like this. The UK New Labour government love quangos; they’ve allowed them to multiply like bacteria since 1997 . And then New Labour got creative with bogus, state sponsored charities lobbying for “change” that the government just happens to want. Amazing!
This eco-fascism is getting out of hand. I read somewhere that eventually we’ll be split into two basic groups: Greenies and the people who shoot Greenies.
Lock and load!
[REPLY – No inciting to violence, please, even in jest, by implication. Ad Argumentum is all the buckshot we need. ~ Evan]

“While he is certainly qualified to comment on things like costs vs benefits of regulating CO2, he has absolutely no qualifications to be commenting on the underlying science (which is what he appears to have done).”
This sort of comment really gets up my nose. Since when has Science been akin to a gnostic religion where secret knowledge is held by a coterie of high priests?
Science consists, among other things, of a body of knowledge that is accessible to all. One does not need to be an expert in the field of celestial mechanics to realise that solar eclipses can be calculated hundreds of years in advance with high precision. We know this because such predictions have been made in the past and confirmed by later events. This could be called a successsful track record.
Climate science has no such track record and the predictions of its high priests will be subject to possible falsification in fifty or one hundred years time. Until then a modicum of humility should be in order. Perhaps ensuring that data collection meets a reasonable standard would be an attainable goal?

I also take issue with the claim that one needs a PHD in cliimate science or GCM modelling experience to make a statement on climate change. It doesn’t take a tailor to see that the Emperor is not wearing any clothes, it simply takes one person who can see the facts.
The facts are that there are no facts. There is simply no evidence that CO2 is the primary cause of warming, and the pattern of warming (with a significant dip in the 40s and 70s) shows that natural inter-decadal variability is as large or greater than CO2’s influence. Once you refer to the inter-century variability (with Vikings buried in Greenland permafrost and medieval mines being found under retreating glaciers), you cannot even say that the current warming is unprecedented. Scientists need to grow up and become engineers. The most important lesson is to learn what you don’t know, and you tend to learn what you don’t know a lot better when it those unknowns can kill people.

Joe Barton, Texas congressman (who I don’t always agree with) has picked up this story, according to Bloomberg News.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=av_k2IrzSU5g

WestHoustonGeo (16:36:38) :
If this idiocy continues, it is my intention to work outside the US in order to escape the onerous taxes and industry-choking regulations. I do not intend to leave my city, however.
Mexico won’t help you too much… Here our president is proud for being the first developing country on implementing “regulatory actions against climate change”, which means… Taxes and more taxes on breathing… They said it yesterday.

Mr. Fuller:
Thank you very very much for your correspondence. I am glad you are willing to dip a toe over here to further investigate this story. A large majority of journalists would have dropped the matter as soon as the EPA responded, and we have seen many reporters simply dismiss anything that has developed as a result of the work of Anthony’s or Steve McIntyre’s work. I too am suspicious that CEI didn’t respond in a timely fashion. It wouldn’t be the first time an advocacy group on either side of the AGW issue has exaggerated to try and create a mountain out of a mole hill. Regardless, this story is young. Let’s see how the worm turns.
Again, thanks for stopping by and keeping an open mind on these matters.
Mike Alexander aka Sonicfrog.

I’m not sure what I think of this. Rulemaking has to be a very messy business. I don’t want to complain with one breath that an agency can’t fire a maverick like Hansen, and then in the next that bosses should give all maverick opinions forbearance. It would be great to see this play out in the press. It would answer many questions I have about what things are like in these rulemaking agencies.

evanmjones (08:55:51) :
Scientists need to grow up and become engineers.
Now there’s a candidate for quote of the week.
Hear, hear!
Jimmy Haigh (09:03:23) :
I’m primarily a scientist and I like this quote too. It has a certain something which I’m still trying to work out!
A “je ne se qua?”

Scientists need to grow up and become engineers.
Now there’s a candidate for quote of the week.
I’m primarily a scientist and I like this quote too. It has a certain something which I’m still trying to work out!
I’m sure there’s a climate science computer model that will be able to decipher the meaning. Of course, it will also confirm global warming.

Jimmy Haigh (09:03:23) :
evanmjones (08:55:51) :
Scientists need to grow up and become engineers.
Now there’s a candidate for quote of the week.
I’m primarily a scientist and I like this quote too. It has a certain something which I’m still trying to work out!
———————————————-
Engineering is where the rubber meets the road.

I wish to thank “anonymous” for alerting the public of the truthfulness of this story, based on WUWT fact-checking the validity of your identity.
Joe Barton, ranking member of the House minority Committee on Energy and Commerce, has a Press Release dated yesterday at:
http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/News/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=7148
Barton Confronts EPA Politicals Over Suppression of Economist’s Critical Report on CO2 Endangerment
Barton, others to discuss issue at 12:30 p.m. news conference on Thursday in House Radio-TV Gallery, H-321
This should already have happened. It will be interesting to hear the answers to those questions.

Jeff in Ctown (13:29:31) :
If I was an American I would be realy mad at this one.
Jeff Id (13:30:01) :
I’m so pissed now.
To quote someone with more intelligence than the overwhelming majority in Congress:
That’s all I’m going to say bout that.

Tim Clark (13:05:18)
Even better, by the same individual:
Washington is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get……and…..It happens.

Tom Fuller (13:03:22) :
Your diligence and high standards are to be commended, sir.

The moderators may want to edit that last post by Tom Fuller to omit the parentheticals in the last paragraph that should have been deleted. It’s a guess, but the deletions may be intended to protect the identity of the source.
Reply: Done. ~ ctm

This “anonymous” source sounds pretty credible, if for no other reason than that he provides an explanation for some of the ambiguities in the e-mails released by CEI. For example, in the first e-mail to Carlin, the supervisor refers to a “tighty schedule” and a “turn of events,” which is now explained by the paltry one-week notice and the Earth Day deadline. It’s also consistent with EPAs response that Carlin put on some seminars about his work and opinions, its just that this new information clarifies that these seminars were prior to, and had nothing to do with the endangerment finding. (Based on my recollection, everything in EPAs initial response to Fuller is technically true, but doesn’t tell the whole story). Finally, note the consistency between the last e-mail to Carlin telling him to do busy-work and noting that the agency had a lot of budgetary cutbacks, with the information above that Carlin is now required to do things normally assigned to contractors.

anonymous (17:51:36) :
I would like to give my name, but I don’t wish to be punished in the same manner as Alan.
This is a deeply sad set of events for EPA and for the nation.
What is particularly vexing is that people choosing to bring forth the truth in the manner the head of EPA and the Obama Administration claimed they would – are all terrified to the man. What any government employee should know is that reprisals of any sort for bringing forward factual information pertinent to the public – is protected by law. Specifically by the Office of Special Counsel. It seems like they should be immediately involved in this specific case where an employee is being silenced due to the contrary content of their work.
http://www.osc.gov/intro.htm
It should be up to the public and their representatives how do deal with reports like those of Mr. Carlin. WE pay the salary of these people. I for one would like to judge for myself the merits of Mr. Carlin’s argument. Publish this report! Each day it is not published is another failure of the transparency EPA claims to operate by.

Jeff in Ctown (13:29:31):
If I was an American I would be realy mad at this one.
America goes first, Europe and Asia go second, and the developing world goes third. At the end, every human inhabiting this world will be buying “clean” air or carbon credits to get the right of cooking outdoors an extra BBQ on the grill…

Richard M says:

Once again I see that Flanagan, Joel, etc. are strangely quiet. When are these guys going to figure out that if you have the FACTs on your side there is no need to suppress anything. Only liars feel the need to hide the truth. Wake up guys.

I would turn this around and ask where you and your friends here were when a political appointee in the White House with no scientific credentials was rewriting scientific reports from the EPA with his own mandatory edits to such a degree that the EPA scientists decided to just delete the entire section on climate change from the report rather than going with the scientifically-indefensible product that these edits produced? And, the editor is a person who had previously worked for the American Petroleum Institute and ended up going to Exxon right after he left the White House. (See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Cooney)
So basically, we have on the one hand, a non-scientist political appointee enforcing mandatory edits on a scientific report during the Bush era. And, now on the other hand, in the Obama era, we apparently have one economist in the EPA who wanted to raise some questions about the climate science well after the EPA scientists had already weighed in on the scientific issues and was told that the time to do so had already past.
In other words, what we have here is a completely manufactured controversy and the simultaneous overlooking of the very serious repression of scientific information that occurred in regards to climate change during the Bush Administration.

As for needing a PHD … How hard is it to view temperature (air and ocean) and CO2 graphs for the last few years and see one going up and the others going down. That should make even the smartest PHD take notice and create doubts in any hypothesis that links the two as cause and effect. That is the application of simple logic which applies to all fields of science.

Well, I honestly would not expect it would take a PhD to understand how to understand a signal that consists of a slow approximately linear trend with quite a bit of variability imposed on top of this trend. After all, I don’t see people here in Rochester, NY running around and saying that the seasonal cycle is a myth whenever we have a week or two in spring when the temperature trend is negative (which does not seem to me to be at all uncommon although I have never actually tried to run the numbers to see just how often it occurs). However, given the fact that this does seem to create so much confusion, I’m not sure what it takes.

Joel Shore (20:11:07) :
“Well, I honestly would not expect it would take a PhD to understand how to understand a signal that consists of a slow approximately linear trend with quite a bit of variability imposed on top of this trend.”
How do you know that the variability is “imposed on the top of” the linear trend? This implies something like a weak repeating radio signal with a lot of spurrious EM interference on the signal. One alternate view of that kind of a graph is that the “trend” is just a result of the random variablity. If I toss a coin 10,000 times, there may well be periods in the data set where the number of “heads” results in a sequential 10-toss increments goes from 4 to 5 to 6, etc. by random chance. This does not represent some real “trend”, it’s just the nature of random behavior.

I would like to know once and for all from the AGW crowd where in the scientific literature does it say “Exxon=Satan”? And why do you all insist on using ad hominem attacks against dissenters instead of attempting to refute the theories themselves?

“Scientists need to grow up and become engineers.”
Engineers make things.
Scientists think they make things.

Engineers make things.
Scientists think they make things.

Scientists produce the understanding and knowledge that allows the engineers to make the things. I’m not dissing engineers, as I very much respect a good engineer’s ability to turn scientific knowledge into something useful. The world needs both.

The NCEE home page describes its mission, including assiting “EPA by informing important policy decisions with sound economics and other sciences. …” The NCEE was formally established in 1980 (according to its history page). anyone know how I can find the legal reference that established the NCEE. That document should describe the responsibliites of the NCEE, which was probably paraphrased into the statement on the NCEE’s home page. Depending on what the legal responsiblities of the NCEE are, there may be a case of misfeasance on the part of the NCEE office director.