The EPA apparently doesn’t care about any negative comment of their GHG Endangerment findings, even internally, so the exercise in Democracy we did yesterday apparently was for naught.
“The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision… I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.”
– Internal EPA email, March 17th, 2009
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has caught EPA administration red-handed in concealment of internal dissent as well as apparently proceeding with plans in advance.
From this PDF circulated today by CEI, here are the points:
EI is submitting a set of four EPA emails, dated March 12-17, 2009, which indicate that a significant internal critique of EPA’s position on Endangerment was essentially put under wraps and concealed. The study was barred from being circulated within EPA, it was never disclosed to the public, and it was not placed in the docket of this proceeding. The emails further show that the study was treated in this manner not because of any problem with its quality, but for political reasons.
CEI hereby requests that EPA make this study public, place it into the docket, and either extend or reopen the comment period to allow public response to this new study. We also request that EPA publicly declare that it will engage in no reprisals against the author of the study, who has worked at EPA for over 35 years.
The emails, attached hereto, consist of the following:
1) a March 12 email from Al McGartland, Office Director of EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE), to Alan Carlin, Senior Operations Research Analyst at NCEE, forbidding him from speaking to anyone outside NCEE on endangerment issues;
2) a March 16 email from Mr. Carlin to another NCEE economist, with a cc to Mr. McGartland and two other NCEE staffers, requesting that his study be forwarded to EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, which directs EPA’s climate change program. The email notes the quantity of peer-reviewed references in the study, and defends its inclusion of new research as well. It states Mr. Carlin’s view that “the critical attribute of good science is its correspondence to observable data rather than where it appears in
the technical literature.” It goes on to point out that the new studies “explain much of the observational data that have been collected which cannot be explained by the IPCC models.” (Emphases added);
3) a March 17 email from Mr. McGartland to Mr. Carlin, stating that he will not forward Mr. Carlin’s study. “The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision… I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.” (Emphasis added);
4) a second March 17 email from Mr. McGartland to Mr. Carlin, dated eight minutes later, stating “ I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change.”
Mr. McGartland’s emails demonstrate that he was rejecting Mr. Carlin’s study because its conclusions ran counter to EPA’s proposed position. This raises several major issues.
A. Incompleteness of the Rulemaking Record: The end result of withholding Mr. Carlin’s study was to taint the Endangerment Proceeding by denying the public access to important agency information. Court rulings have made it abundantly clear that a rulemaking record should include both “the evidence relied upon [by the agency] and the evidence discarded.” Ethyl Corp. v. EPA, 541 F.2d 1, 36 (D.C. Cir. 1976), cert. denied, 426 U.S. 941 (1976).
B. Prejudgment of the Outcome of the Endangerment Proceeding: The emails also suggest that EPA has prejudged the outcome of this proceeding, to the point where it arguably cannot be trusted to fairly evaluate the record before it. Courts have recognized “the danger that an agency, having reached a particular result, may become so committed to that result as to resist engaging in any genuine reconsideration of the issues.” Food Marketing Institute v. ICC, 587 F.2d 1285, 1290 (D.C. Cir. 1978).
C. Violations of EPA’s Commitment to Transparency and Scientific Honesty: Finally, the emails suggest that EPA’s extensive pronouncements about transparency and scientific honesty may just be rhetoric. Shortly before assuming office, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson declared: “As Administrator, I will ensure EPA’s efforts to address the environmental crises of today are rooted in three fundamental values: science-based policies and programs, adherence to the rule of law, and overwhelming transparency.” Jan. 23, 2009, link. See also Administrator Jackson’s April 23 Memo to EPA Employees, “Transparency in EPA’s Operations”. These follow the President’s own January 21 memo to agency heads on “Transparency and Open Government”. And in an April 27 speech to the National Academy of Sciences, the President declared that, “under my administration, the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over.”
Because of ideology, however, it was this back seat to which Mr. Carlin’s study was relegated; more precisely, it was booted out of the car entirely.
For these reasons, we submit that EPA should immediately make Mr. Carlin’s study public by entering it into the Endangerment docket, and that it should either extend or reopen the comment period in this proceeding to allow public responses to that study. It should do so, moreover, while publicly pledging that Mr. Carlin will suffer no adverse repercussions from agency personnel. Mr. Carlin is guilty of no wrongdoing, but the tenor of the emails described above suggests he may well have reason to fear reprisals.
Read the EPA internal emails, including photographs of the originals here.
Call your congressional representative. This is legally wrong and makes a mockery of the public comment process.
Tell them here: 202-224-3121.
I had no idea murderer was a bad word. I noticed it was snipped from my previous comment.
Should I call them killers instead. I presume I can call them cheats and liars, just not murderers? The EPA knows exactly what they are doing. When DDT was banned they said it was not banned for scientific reasons, it was banned for political reasons. The EPA also refused to allow any of the safeguards proposed by the Army Engineers to protect New Orleans. The proposed folding floodgate which would have protected the city against the storm surge was not allowed, by the EPA, because it would interfer with fish sex. In the case of C02 being a pollutant, I know they know better and I am sure they know the numbers of Americans who will die from cold when energy prices skyrocket. However, keeping humans alive is not their agenda.
Once again, it’s WUWT that deserves the credit–many thanks to you all:
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-9111-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m6d25-The-EPAs-internal-nightmare-over-global-warming-Part-1
The EPA’s internal nightmare over global warming: Part 1
A source inside the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed many of the claims made by analyst Alan Carlin, the economist/physicist who yesterday went public with accusations that science was being ignored in evaluating the danger of CO2.
The source, who chooses not to be identified for fear of retaliation, said that Carlin was rebuffed in his attempt to introduce scientific evidence that does not accord with the EPA’s view of global warming, which largely relies on IPCC reports. The source also saw Carlin’s report and said that it was ‘based on 8 points of peer-reviewed, recent and relevant scientific publications’ that cast doubt on the wisdom of regulating CO2 as a pollutant.
The EPA’s draft Endangerment Finding was initially written over a year ago during the Bush administration, and Lisa Jackson (the new head of the EPA) and her team wanted to get the Finding out on or near Earth Day, according to a schedule that was made public about a week before formal publication of the proposal. The draft was submitted to agency workgroups with only one week for review and comment, which is unprecedented, and received only light comments–except for Carlin’s.
Alan Carlin, who had hosted a series of seminars featuring peer-reviewed scientists who disagree with the IPCC reports (but were unattended by members of the workgroup developing the Endangerment Finding) went public via the Competitive Enterprise Institute after realising that there would be no debate about the science. The lectures by the scientists are available on the EPA website, but were not even mentioned in the Finding. Carlin was advised to get an attorney–and has since been reassigned to mundane work, some of which is normally performed by outside contractors.
All this comes despite the peculiar bind the EPA finds itself in. Regulating CO2 as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act is not something they really want to do–unless new legislation makes it possible for them to ignore smaller emitters. As it stands, the EPA would find it necessary to regulate entities as small as churches and schools, if they have buses that emit more than 250 tons of CO2 per year. But there is no certainty that new legislation will arrive at all, much less contain the restrictions the EPA needs.
Meanwhile, the many comments received by the EPA will now be evaluated. Our source indicates that it is most likely that the initial compilation and review will be conducted by outside contractors, who may also provide draft responses, which is really supposed to be done only by EPA staff. Our source notes that the EPA may not have the expertise to evaluate many of the comments, as they are more charged with dealing with the effects of global warming through regulation rather than determining the true nature of the cause. Our source says members of the workgroup complained to other EPA staff that they don’t understand these issues, much less how to relate the scientific studies identified in Carlin’s report to the IPCC report.
(Some day I’ll put in the comments some of the back story behind all of this…)
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
Mr. Fuller
Again, thank you for your due diligence.
Meanwhile the lawmakers on Capital Hill are still trying to railroad the cap and trade through.
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.
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.
“David L. Hagen (06:12:22) : I would expect that combination of physics, mathematics, probability theory, and analysis of complex correlations would prepare Dr. Alan Carlin well to grasp the challenges of climate theory and problems with Global Warming Models.”
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
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…
Hi all,
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
Richard M says:
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.
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) :
“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.
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.
Joel Shore (20:11:07) :
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?)
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?
Sean,
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.
“Scientists need to grow up and become engineers.”
Engineers make things.
Scientists think they make things.
John M says:
The problem is that the closed parentheses was interpreted as part of the URL…Try this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Cooney
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.
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.
This is a foundation piece of law upon which will be built new so-called “green” businesses and taxation worth trillion$.
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”.
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.
Joel Shore (18:31:22) :
“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).