“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.”

Until the engineers did something useful, the scientists’s “knowledge” was really just “speculation.” I’m not dissing scientists, I just think that they sometimes use the soundness of the methodology behind a conclusion as a proxy for the ultimate truth of the conclusion.

Some scientists tend to be a little cavalier when asserting that they “know” a fact, when really they merely presume it based on essentially reasoned speculation. I think this is because scientists don’t have to suffer real consequences for being wrong. In fact, a good scientist shouldn’t really care in that if an hypothisis or premise is ultimately proven wrong, they still have learned something incremental. But at the same time you have to wonder when you read facially absurd statements by some of them, (e.g. “we now know” that the higher-than-present temperatures of the Holcene optimum were limited to equatorial regions – the authors of that statement “knew” nothing of the kind, they just inferred it from a single new study of twenty so data points covering the entire globe).

It’s got nothing to do with science, which is why all the science is ignored. This is the new gold rush, and anyone getting in the way will be ignored, brushed aside, or just plain trampled in the stampede by the armies of vested interests.

Why the rush? This law has to be a done deal in time for Copenhagen, which will get the rest of the G8 into an armlock to force through similar laws in all the other G8 countries; The Americans will declare “We’ve done it, so now you’ve got to do it too”.

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.

(BTW, your wikipedia link is dead. You wouldn’t happen to be recycling an old “talking point”, would you?)

The problem is that the closed parentheses was interpreted as part of the URL…Try this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Cooney

I would like to know once and for all from the AGW crowd where in the scientific literature does it say “Exxon=Satan”?

I don’t control reality. The reality of the situation is that Cooney was at API before entering the Bush Administration and went to ExxonMobil immediately after. If he had gone to Chevron or Texaco instead, then I likely would have pointed that out too. But he didn’t.

Engineers make things.
Scientists think they make things.

The AGW crowd rarely answers uncomfortable questions like yours, and when they do they’re never very truthful. But you do raise a good point regarding American businesses, and since the AGW contingent won’t comment, may I? Thank you:

Let’s take the case of Chevron, for one example. Because I know the story [I'm not affiliated with Chevron in any way].

From 1977, the Ecuadorian government began taking a 62.5% share in all oil produced by Texaco in the Lago Agrio field, and in 1992 Ecuador arbitrarily raised that to a 100% tax. Texaco withdrew from Ecuador. Chevron bought Texaco in 2001.

Texaco had originally financed the entire operation in Ecuador with that government’s active encouragement, and by invitation. Subsequently, Ecuador arbitrarily confiscated all of Texaco’s assets, with no compensation.

Naturally, some activist lawyers appeared and tried to file suit on behalf of locals who claimed damage to their health from the oil waste. Three separate times, American courts ruled that they had no jurisdiction over the matter. Now the lawsuit is in Ecuador, promoted by the Ecuadorian government, and it will likely result in a huge award against Chevron/Texaco. Once that judgement is in, U.S. law allows the judgement to be filed in the U.S. for collection. That’s your retirement nest egg at stake.

Given the unwanted publicity over the waste pits, Texaco had previously agreed to pay $40 million to clean up the pits and resolve the issue. The government signed an agreement with Texaco, specifically releasing Texaco from any further liability once the $40 million was paid.

Texaco’s cleanup work was completed in 1998. Meanwhile, the government’s oil company, Petroecuador, which was to clean up its own waste pits neglected to do so. Petroecuador continues to use the same pits for its waste disposal. But of course, Petroecuador gets a pass; the government isn’t going to go after itself.

Ecuador then passed an environmental law, which was specifically stated to be non-retroactive. That didn’t matter. In 2003 Chevron was sued under the law for $6 billion over the cleanup.

That amount was later arbitrarily raised by Ecuador to $27.3 billion [keep in mind that anyone with a 401-K or equivalent, or a mutual fund, probably owns Chevron stock; Ecuador is after your savings].

The $27.3 billion included a claim of $8.4 billion for “unjust enrichment” [note that Texaco's total profits from its entire Ecuador production was only $497 million -- while the government of Ecuador took in $25.3 billion from the oil field, over fifty times as much as Texaco. But they had to have it all].

Another $9.5 billion was added to the suit for 30,000 cancer deaths claimed to be caused by the oil residue. Of course, Petroecuador got a free pass again, and has never been sued, even though they run 100% of the operation and continue to fill the waste pits. [In 2007 a U.S. court ruled that the claims of pollution causing cancers was fabricated, and fined the plaintiff's U.S. lawyers.]

As in many countries, there is no rule of law in Ecuador. Signed agreements between the government and private business means nothing when the government decides to confiscate foreign assets. The government of Ecuador has learned from countries like Iran and Venezuela that the U.S. government will do absolutely nothing to protect U.S. interests — which are your interests. Every dollar that U.S. companies and citizens are cheated out of is a dollar in the pockets of a corrupt government.

Sad to say, but the current Administration appears to represent the interests of other countries over the welfare of its own citizens.

That’s my rant. And I double dog dare any AGW weenie to dispute it. I have plenty more facts, this was just an example.

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.

So Joel, when can we expect the Obama administration appointee to be forced to resign? That is, after all, what happened in the Bush administration, isn’t it?

I must say, it’s a sad day for wamers when their only argument seem to be “our political hacks are no worse than your political hacks.”

(BTW, your wikipedia link is dead. You wouldn’t happen to be recycling an old “talking point”, would you?)

“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.

“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.”

The former is unprofessional and arguably unethical, the latter is unlawful. EPA is required by both regulation and federal court decisions to include, in an administrative record on a proposed rule (not at issue in your Bush-era example), all evidence relevant to its decision, even that weighing against the decision. Carlin’s branch of the EPA was given notice of the proposed rule a week before the deadline to submit comments. Carlin promptly compiled comments to submit based on his prior workand submitted it to his supervisor, who then obstructed its submission to the relevant group, and in the last few days just sat on it until the deadline passed. Your claim that Carlin’s submission was prepared “well after the EPA scientists had already weighed in on the scientific issues and [after] the time to do so had already past” is simply false.

I’d also point out that I’ve just read Carlin’s report, and your reference to him as a “non-scientist” is disingenuous, particularly given his degree in Physics. He may have a Masters in Economics, and work for an Economics division of EPA, but implying that he lacks the technical background to submit relevant commentary to the EPA’s proposed endangerment finding is absurd. Quite frankly, Carlin’s report makes a mockery of the EPA’s technical support document that accompanies the proposed endangerment finding. The former is a detailed analysis of the relevant science and the latter is just a rehash of IPCC conclusory statements about the impacts of CO2.

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.

As the Examiner who wrote the story up, I need to apologise for not crediting this blog for doing so much of the original work. I’ve amended my story to start, Update: Because I was on deadline (no excuse) I didn’t credit Anthony Watts and his weblog Watts Up With That for a) alerting me to this issue in the first place, b) providing adequate background to help my understanding enough of the issue to proceed and c) facilitating contact with the source interviewed below. I have mentioned Mr. Watts and his weblog on numerous occasions (I’m not affiliated with them, by the way), but certainly not enough on this occasion. Watts Up With That, winner of the Science Blog of the Year, has once again provided an invaluable service to those interested in issues surrounding global warming.

REPLY: Thanks Tom, no worries. As a broadcaster, I understand deadlines. You are always welcome here. – Anthony

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…

I would expect so as well. However, had you been paying attention you would have noted that I was referring to Dr. Al McGartland, Office Director of EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE), who originated the “shut up and color” e-mail. Dr. McGartland holds a PhD from the University of Maryland. I confident that the requirements for a minor at U of M are not as stringent as they are at MIT.

“Or would you like to demonstrate your expertise by taking the MIT General Examination in Economics tomorrow?”

Perhaps you would like to demonstrate your humility by apologizing.

Francis

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.

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.

Again, thank you for your due diligence.

Meanwhile the lawmakers on Capital Hill are still trying to railroad the cap and trade through.

Reply: Done. ~ ctm