This story is a joint effort between the San Francisco Examiner Environmental Policy blogger Thomas Fuller and WUWT.
Here is what started it all. An email as part of a package of emails posted as public comment in the EPA endangerment finding by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) who caught EPA administration red-handed in concealment of internal dissent as well as apparently proceeding with plans in advance of public comment.
From this PDF circulated by CEI, here is the most pertinent email:
Yesterday, Thomas Fuller, who writes for the Examiner in San Francisco, noted as many other WUWT readers did, a comment from “anonymous” posted on the WUWT thread “The EPA suppresses dissent and opinion, and apparently decides issues in advance of public comment”
“anonymous” wrote:
anonymous
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
After I confirmed the email, one of our moderators, Charles, confirmed the originating IP address. Discussion ensued, and Mr. Fuller reported in comments:
I contacted the EPA this morning and received an email response from them that seemed relevant–and open. I contacted the CEI and received nothing.
…
I’m a liberal Democrat who happens to lean towards the skeptic arguments regarding AGW. It will never be a completely comfortable fit for me amongst many of you. But I am trying to be an honest commentator on the facts. I’m a big boy and can handle criticism, but read some of what I’ve written first.
Mr. Fuller was skeptical of the claims made by “anonymous” which I fully understand and appreciate, he wrote:
…
I linked to Anthony’s article here because I trust him and this site. I still do. The Competitive Enterprise Institute did create an impression of Alan as a skeptic who could not get his opinion heard within the EPA. I’ve seen pretty convincing evidence that he not only got his opinion heard, he got some of it into the Endangerment report. It also became quickly evident that he is not a skeptic at all.
However, “anonymous” was concerned about retaliation within EPA, and both his email and IP addresses checked out.
“anonymous” replied to Mr. Fuller, and Charles offered some facilitating help:
anonymous
Re: Tom Fuller (18:08:13) :
I respect Tom’s willingness to listen to both sides in this matter. He simply is not privy to the facts. Alan was muzzled. Others who tried to get the work group to evaluate his arguments ran into a brick wall. It is not that Alan’s comments were flawed. It is that the people who were in charge wanted him taken out of the process and his report “disappeared”. This was “politics” pure and simple. The arguments were ignored for lack of expertise in climate science. Indeed, when an investigation was done to determine how many full time equivalents (bureaucratise for “people”) EPA has with actual first hand knowledge on how to use the kind of GCMs upon which the IPCC relied, the answer was half a person (a person half time). I’m not sure, but I don’t think that person was actually on the work group. I don’t recall seeing his name on it, in any case.
Tom, there are going to be a lot of questions about this transaction. I am not permitted to give details, but I expect Congressional inquiries will force most of the facts out. If they don’t, then I don’t really know what to say.
I’m prepared to go on background on this if you are serious about finding out the facts.
Reply: May I forward your email to Tom Fuller? ~ charles the moderator.
To which the reply was:
anonymous
Re: May I forward your email to Tom Fuller? ~ charles the moderator.
Only after Tom publically promises anonymity.
Reply: Ok ~ ctm
Mr. Fuller responded with:
Hi all,
Anonymous, if you do agree to speak with me, I promise I will keep your identity anonymous. That is without conditions.
Thanks for performing a public service.
Tom Fuller
San Francisco Environmental Policy Examiner,
Examiner.com
Reply: IP addresses and unpublished email confirmed. I believe anonymous has retired for the evening, but I will forward information ~ ctm.
I discussed the idea with Charles, and emails were exchanged, and we stood back and waited for the results.
The results were a surprise to Mr. Fuller, and he responded with this excellent article below, for which I’ve posted a link and a couple of excerpts to.
Please visit Mr. Fuller’s blog to give him some traffic and some kudos for excellence in journalism. I was pleased that team WUWT was able to assist, and it goes to demonstrate that reasonable people on opposite sides of an issue can work together to find truth. Also, let’s all give major props to WUWT’s “Charles the moderator” for his role as facilitator. – Anthony
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.
…
Read the entire story here at the SF Environmental Examiner
anybody else getting the following error when trying to reach the link to the full article?
There has been a site error or the web application you are requesting is down for maintenance.
Fuller’s blog has been taken down!
Good work all round.
The truth will out.
There is an old saying “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.
The EPA has changed that to, “When all you have is a hammer, deny the relevance of anything that doesn’t look like a nail”.
Big Brother is probably watching and doesn’t want this info out before the Climate Bill vote.
Several things.
1. You must remember who is in charge. Obama Carol Browner Al Gore and a radical democrat congress.
2. This is totally political and has nothing to do with science. Remembering who is in charge.
3. In light of 1. and 2. how could any reasonable individual expect anything different?
4. Anonymous had better be very afraid if there is a public outcry.
5. This will go unreported by the mainstream media since Michael Jackson has croaked.
Great work, everybody, Anthony, Fuller, and anonymous. Can we get links to the papers Carlin cited posted?
Tried to go to the examiner site but they seem to be having problems. CEI broke the story but leave it to the hard work at WUWT to develop it. Should be interesting to see how this all develops. Dropped a line to Drudge – wonder if they’ll finally pick up on this developing story.
It makes sense that insiders to the Great Fraud will come out only when a significant critical milestone is reached or imminent. They are under tremendous pressure over job security and damaged personal relationships with colleagues.
I suppose it’s like quantum mechanics in a sense.
It would be interesting to see someone in the data “gathering” community come out, but I suppose there is no similar leaping event to drive them.
I think the SF Examiner is suffering a big spike in traffic and can’t cope. Anyone put this on Slashdot or Digg?
What article? There never was any such article.
Bureau of Truth
So it would appear.
Interesting that an article also appeared in the local a.m. paper about the EPA’s evaluation of the “Cancer danger” in two towns close to here because of “toxic air.”
One of them is home to one of the steel industry’s last coke batteries, US Steel’s Clairton Coke Works.
Coincidence? I THINK NOT.
Interesting this was being planned last year… Fuller mentions in his article that the EPA doesn’t really want to do this since it will create a headache for them monitoring the small players… But obviously for Lisa Jackson et al, they REALLY DO want to do this. Why else would they have been planning it since the last administration? And it follows they intended to find for endangerment at that time.
Should be “suppressed” but that’s OK we know what you mean.
The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment.
Who knows? Maybe this will be Obama’s watergate.
I clicked the link and I am reading the Thomas Fuller article now.
It is reassuring to see that some non-activist scientists, at great personal cost, are willing to stand up for the truth. I had begun to think science would soon be completely replaced by green scams.
Just tried to read Mr. Fuller’s article via the link and received this lovely little gem:
Let’s hope that it’s actually a server meltdown from traffic hits and not a DOS attack.
It’s really refreshing to see that there is at least one Left-leaning journalist out there who is willing to actually look into the corruption and malfeasance in the AGW crowd that’s been blatantly apparent to a lot of people for a long time. It also says a lot about Anthony and his team that Mr. Fuller trusted them enough to act as go-betweens on such a momentous story.
cbullitt (17:19:35) :
It looks like anything with the word “Coke” in it is indeed doomed to be targeted by this “ACES” GHG bill.
I also wish to give major props to WUWT’s “Charles the moderator” as Anthony suggested, but this is all I could come up with:
http://www.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/windfarm.jpg
Seriously though, I do wish to give a big thumbs up to “ctm.”
This episode raises a point I have long thought important.
Let me tell you about an obscure piece of the English Law of Evidence. In a case called R v Silverlock in 1894 someone who had studied handwriting for about ten years was allowed to give evidence on an issue of disputed handwriting, the court treated him as an expert by reason of his own, private, studies even though he had no formal teaching or qualifications on the subject. You don’t have to have a certificate to be an expert, what you need is expertise.
Dr Carlin would appear to have expertise in the scientific issues he addressed because he has studied them. That he is described as an economist and a physicist suggests he has no directly relevant formal qualifications. Of course he is not alone in that, many of those who argue most strongly on each side of the AGW debate have no directly relevant formal qualifications. Some have genuine expertise, others (like my plump and humble self) use only our BS meter (highly tuned, one likes to think).
On the face of it, Dr Carlin’s observations cannot properly be dismissed as “non-expert”, so their rejection can only be based on other grounds.
The question when asking whether someone is an “expert” is not whether he is right or wrong in what he asserts (very often there is simply no right and wrong there are just shades of opinion based on inferences from relatively few primary facts), it is whether he has sufficient learning in the subject to be worthy of being heard. This is one of the great limitations on the status of peer-reviewed papers. An opinion or inference is not “right” because it is supported by reviewers who also have expertise, nor is it “wrong” because such people do not support it. Whether it is right of wrong can only be determined by facts whereas reviewers can only give opinions.
This, in my view, explains not only why peer review can never be a necessary condition of an opinion being correct but also why minds should always be open to arguments that are well-formulated and supported by evidence. If they are to be rejected it can only properly be on substantive grounds.
And therein lies the problem with the reason given for the ERA’s rejection of Dr Carlin’s submission, it was rejected on administrative (or, if you prefer, political) grounds without their substance being considered. That is no way to conduct a debate on any important issue.
I had no trouble getting through. Let’s hope part 2 of the story includes the WUWT part of the story!
I didn’t have any trouble getting to Fuller’s home page. Must have been a temp glitch. I think I’ll be watching CSPAN tomorrow to see how the vote goes.
A lot of thanks for all involved.
I really hope this will result in some positive effects.
We need it.
Remember Watergate the more they struggle the more trouble they get in.
World Net Daily covered the cover up at EPA this morning, so it is being carried. After the vote, since CO2 is so poisonous, will the esteemed members of Congress forgo the carbonated water with their beverages?
I’ve carefully read through the e-mails published by CEI, several times, and I think the charge that the e-mails prove that EPA decided to pre-judge the ultimate result in advance of public comment is inaccurate. The e-mail stating that EPA and the administration has decided to “move forward” on endangerment likely only refers to a decision to issue a proposed finding, which was done on April 17, 2009, I believe. It was this proposed finding that triggered the public comment period. This process occurs with any proposed rulemaking, such that an agency always sets itself on a preliminary course of action prior to the opportunity for public comment. The public is allowed to comment, and the agency is required to consider that comment, and in fact will draft replies to comments. A statement that the EPA has decided to announce a proposed finding of endangerment thus doesn’t necessarily prove that the EPA was hell-bent on ignoring any subsequent public commentary and issuing a final finding no matter what.
Having said that, they do seem to be guilty of squashing internal efforts to include evidence in the record that would support a finding of non-endangerment, and I think that one could form a reasonable opinion that in light of that behavior, it is doubtful that the EPA would give public commentary a fair shake. If the EPA, when they find out that an employee wants to submit evidence contrary to a rule they might propose, says “we don’t want to hear that – go away”, it does show that their minds are closed.
Unfortunately for us …..
The American Public will get ALL IT DESERVES …
… for being a majority collection of idiots who think with the wrong organ.
Anthony you are a savior of the planet.
Like the little Dutchboy sticking his finger in the dike holding back the sea of gobal warming horsemanure being shoveled at us everyday. (mixed metaphor – oh well. It’s true.)
The world – everyone of us, owe you one.
[post excerpt plus link] ~ charles the moderator
‘onya Charles! Good work.
WUWT is certainly doing a fine job….. Leaves the mainstream media in the dust when it comes to matters scientific and climatological.
That’s a mighty fine article by Thomas Fuller on the poor treatment of Carlin by the EPA because he tried to bring attention to the bad science behind the AGW hypothesis.
According to the Slashdot firehose, this story has been submitted to Slashdot. If you’re a Slashdotter, then I’d suggest tagging the story for publication
It seems that too often truth lies bleeding in a corner. What a relief to find that there are persons with the courage to risk their professions and reputations in an effort to inform the public on matters that will impact the lives of all Americans.
Kudos to Alan Carlin, Anthony and Charles. May fate be kind to Anonymous.
Good job Mr. Fuller.
Just a follow up to my last post. Public commentary on proposed rules are almost always a pointless exercise, except to add opposing views to the administrative record. I’ve seen agencies review public comments and in response make some minor changes to small sections that proved particularly unpopular, but I can’t think of any instance (or even imagine for that matter) an agency abandoning a proposed rule because of the public comments. In fact, the public comments probably wind up assisting the agency in defending its position because when responding to the comments they can offer a reasoned rebuttal that will be upheld by a court so long as the rebuttal is at all rational. Also remember that a good portion of the public commentary will support the rule, so when addressing the public comments thay can say “some comments say “x” evil consequence will happen while other commentary syas “x” consequence will not happen and just play one side against the other to a draw.
When I read the e-mail exchange posted by CEI, I thus see it, not so much for its impact on the public comment period because all the public comments will be entered into the record, EPA will respond to them, and EPA will do what it proposed to do like any goverment agency would have done. When EPA reviews Anthony’s comment on the (in}accuracy of the US surface record, they will have to come up with a response, but it will probably be something to the effect that warming biases in the surface record are known and corrected for when processing the data, or that the trends in the satellite data independnetly confirm at least a warming trend, if not quite as severe as that of the surface record. Once they get that rebuttal in, they are good to go.
The evidence that the process, by which EPA promulgated the proposed rule, was tainted, however, is a much more serious matter. If an EPA employee wanted to include contrary evidence in the administrative record, but was prevented, that is something that can bring the rule down once it is adopted.
Several years after I graduated from college with a bachelor’s in Chemical Physics—I was living in Washington D.C., at the time—my college advisor called me and invited me to dinner. He was working on a year sabbatical at the EPA.
He told me a curious story, which if you will pardon 25+ years of memory failure over numbers, went something like this: Congress had legislatively mandated EPA to identify the (50?) chemicals we had released into our environment most likely to cause cancer. The EPA scientists scratched their heads, then called their various friends in academia and asked them what chemicals should be put on a suspect list for further testing.
No sooner had the draft suspect list been compiled then someone with clout in Congress called and demanded the list. EPA responded with the Draft Suspect List, of course with the words Draft and Suspect removed. Today that list still stands, but I don’t know if subsequent due diligence on those chemicals has actually been performed.
(Scene change)
Then when I was working as a contractor for an unnamed governmental Department, we (all contractors) got a call from some Congressman’s office. They needed to introduce an amendment to some Legislation on the House Floor; could we provide them the text. We spent 20 minutes drafting several paragraphs and called it in. No governmental employee was involved, lest of all the head of that department/agency.
(Comment)
We all know about the Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules. Outdated: in this day and age it should be he who spins best makes the rules.
Fortunately, we have blogs like Anthony’s, and moderators like Charles, who are willing to challenge the majority spin. Enough people read this blog and are interested in issues that dissenting views do filter up to our representatives. It’s an old game; just the methods have changed.
One final comment: the AGW proponents argue that you have to be a climate scientist to fully understand the issue. Well, climate science is in reality nothing more than a thermodynamic history of weather. Thermodynamics is a province of physics. Any climate change argument must standup to a rigorous thermodynamic analysis. If it doesn’t, then it is political spin which I have seen over and over in the past 30 years.
Now, there needs to be a flow of traffic to this. Start posting the link randomly at sites like ESPN, movie blogs, anywhere you can get it through, where people go to read comments. Viral style. It is too important to ignore. It needs to be front page news tomorrow, if not sooner. Traffic will generate interest in the story. If the media won’t report it, someone has to shove it up their noses.
Great work, congratulations to everybody involved, including that [snipping] good fellow Charles The Moderator.
The only thing I find surprising about this EPA cover-up is that anyone finds this EPA cover-up surprising.
The IPCC has been playing cover-up on climate science since its inception.
The statement “the science is settled” is the BIG LIE of our time.
Charles, you’re a remarkable man indeed. I may be in your area late Fall and would be honored to buy you the beverage of your choice.
Folks:
Here is the suppressed EPA report. It’s a draft version, but I do hope it suffices for now.
http://cei.org/news-release/2009/06/25/cei-releases-global-warming-study-censored-epa
Darell C. Phillips (17:32:10)
you owe me a new monitor the current one has diet mountain dew sprayed all over it. good pic
and, uh, no. I won’t just send you the money.
The truth is there is no longer a Bureau of Truth. I have replaced it with the Ministry of Truth.
– Truth Czar
I agree – this is very Watergate-esque. Excellent work by everyone involved in getting this murky episode out into the public arena.
Perhaps, when all is said and done on the entire AGW scam and Hollywood does the movie, this will be the pivotal scene.
If the EPA is acting based upon IPCC information, this behavior is not surprising. The IPCC principles only demand human-induced climate change, not climate science. If the EPA is willing to accept IPCC information then they’ve already accepted skewed information.
Dang, Sam. I skimmed some of it, and that is some report! I hope you sent that along to the House and Senate! No wonder EPA is scrambling to cover their butts.
I had a post about a week ago that alluded to government cover ups/deception, in which I linked to a WUWT posting from over a year ago. My posting is here with WUWT link included in the post:
http://www.c3headlines.com/2009/06/just-a-reminder-your-government-does-will-produce-purposefully-deceptive-climate-reports-and-analysis.html
This new episode with the EPA doesn’t surprise me but it’s still disappointing to see our government act this way; or, how they (NOAA) recently dealt with Anthony’s work on the surface stations. I hate to admit it, but I’m finding it harder and harder to believe any scientist or bureaucrat associated with the Feds.
C3H Editor, http://www.c3headlines.com
I’m mad as…(I’m being nice). The first thing in the morning I’m faxing a copy to my house rep, Mary Jo Kilroy and let her know the jig up. The more of us adverage “six pack Joe” that expose this crap to our reps the better.
Thanks Sam, Alan, anonymous, Charles, Anthony.
Quite the report to have to refute from the public record. No mystery why they didn’t want it included.
Gilbert @17:26:51
The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment.
Who knows? Maybe this will be Obama’s watergate.
CARBONGATE
two things:
1. Hats off to Tom Fuller. I was skeptical but it appears he kept up his end … and got a scoop to boot.
2. It’s already ione climatedept, which has mushroomed to the clearing house of global warming opposittion newsfeed.
Good Lord! CEI has published a draft version of the Carlin Report and I’m simply stunned. The link to download the report was mentioned above, but here it is again:
http://cei.org/news-release/2009/06/25/cei-releases-global-warming-study-censored-epa
The good news is that Anthony Watts and his team are cited throughout the document. The bad news is that it could not have been written by a committed warmer. I would start looking very, very seriously for independent confirmation, preferably from Dr. Carlin himself, that this document is authentic. If it is authentic, it is devastating.
Sam Kazman, Competitive Enterprise Institute (18:37:28) :
Thanks Sam! This is good stuff!! No wonder a lot of people high up in AGW didn’t want this out.
Robert Wood (19:05:10) :
Thanks too to Gilbert @17:26:51
CARBONGATE – Excellent!
It is very heartening to me to see some folks at EPA speaking out for truth. Never forget that there are some really good people and great scientists in all these agencies, but they have the same fears as all of us, relative to retributions, etc. And they have to be feeling pretty low about some of what they see going on in this Administration (as well as in previous ones–but I think it may be much more blatant and important now).
Thanks to the honest folks that make America work!
Sorry – it’s thanks to Robert @ (19:05:10)
CARBONGATE is yours!
Seems like at least Grist is going with the old, reliable “He’s a non-scientist, economist kook who has crazy ideas” play straight out of the book, along with derision for anyone, such as Mr. Fuller, who looks investigates at all.
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-24-scant-evidence-of-suppression/
If this is really the case, it seems the easiest way for the EPA to show that would be for them to make Dr. Carlin’s comments and report public for all to see and judge for themselves…
Brian P @17:44:52
Remember Watergate: the more they struggle, the more they trouble
Seems like at least Grist is going with the old, reliable “He’s a non-scientist, economist kook who has crazy ideas” play straight out of the book, along with derision for anyone, such as Mr. Fuller, considers investigating things.
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-24-scant-evidence-of-suppression/
If this ignorant-kook premise is really the case, it seems the easiest way for the EPA to show that would be for them to make Dr. Carlin’s comments and report public for all to see and judge for themselves…
WOW!!! Just read the Executive Summary of that draft report.
This 98 page report is headline stuff. A detailed EPA internal skeptical report.
Heroes All: Carlin, Fuller, Anthony and Charles, not to mention Deep Throat, the confirmation.
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
Sorry, left off another hero: Sam Kazman, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Good job News Team! You stay classy WUWT.
This is so close to the EPA crusade against Phospho-gypsum in Florida. All politics and very little science. When asked to reproduce their science, EPA couldn’t.
rephelan (19:14:52) : “I would start looking very, very seriously for independent confirmation, preferably from Dr. Carlin himself, that this document is authentic.”
Anthony, an interview?
I often find myself in disagreement with her, but Rosa DeLauro is a classy lady and probably one of the hardest working members of Congress. Nonethelss, this is the e-mail I sent this evening:
The following is a link to a page at the Competitive Enterprise Institute web site which contains a link to a purported internal report by Dr. Alan Carlin at the EPA.
http://cei.org/news-release/2009/06/25/cei-releases-global-warming-study-censored-epa
If this report is authentic it is a devastating indictment of the EPA, the IPCC and the under-pinnings of the Clean Energy and Security Act. I expect my representative to lead the effort to get to the truth of this matter and to either get the vote on this bill postponed or to vote against it.
I have long supported Congresswoman DeLauro with my ballot, but a vote in favor of this bill will change that.
Sincerely,
I encourage everyone to get this off to their congress person. You can get access to their e-mail addresses through this site:
http://www.webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-email.html
I submitted this thread to the Drudge ‘News Tips’. I encourage all of you to also. We need to stir up the storm on this one.
Drudge news tips is in the right column 3/4 down the page.
http://www.drudgereport.com/
Congratulations to all involved in genesis the Examiner article on the EPA CO2 debacle.
Caution for Anthony/WUWT: I predict the number of site hits is going to metastasize when/if this gets wider coverage in the liberal MSM.
Sent the alert to my Rep (D), but also 2 others (R) that will run with it.
Left a tip a Drudge.
Tomorrow I watch CSPAN.
After scanning the summary fo Carlin’s report, I can see why EPA wanted nothing to do with it.
Think back a year or so ago when an environmental group requested that EPA regulate CO2 and EPA refused. The case went to the Supreme Court who told EPA that they could not avoid making a technical determination of whether CO2 represented a danger, and remanded. EPA knows that if it were to start from scratch and conduct its own inquiry into the climate effects of CO2 it would take years. So their strategy is to piggy-back on the IPCC report and use the conclusions of that international organization as a technical basis for its own legal conclusion of endangerment.
The IPCC report, though extensive, is not all that transparent. For example, they assert that “expert judgment” is of a 90% probability that most of the warming is from CO2, but they don’t indicate who participtaed in the survey and how the 90% combined number was reached. That’s just one example. Steve McIntyre gives other examples where it is not possible to actually evaluate the science behind the conclusory statements made in the IPCC. But EPA, under their strategy, doesn’t have to deal with any of these messy details about model assumptions and raw data, etc. They just say “the experts concuded CO2 is dangerous.”
Along comes Carlin and points out that the IPCC data is not current and mentions specific findings that contradict the conclusions of the IPCC which were incorporated into EPA’s TSD without independent evaluation. But EPA can’t evaluate whether these new studies really do diminish the credibility of the IPCC conclusions without delving into all the messy details they want to avoid. Since they have no real way of addressing or rebutting Carlin’s new information, they opted to sit on it.
I think a grand bait-and-switch is going on here to con Congress into passinig the cap-and-trade scheme. I think “anonymous” is correct that EPA really hates the idea of regulating CO2 because its so pervasive in our economy that regulating it would be a bureaucratic and public relations nightmare. But EPA is under instructions to push this endangerment holding along because one of the provisions of the cap and trade legislation removes EPA jurisdiction to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act provisions that would reach down to, as “anonymous” put it, the schools and the churches. In essence, cap and trade would replace the existing regulatory scheme of the Clean Air Act with respect to CO2. Thus, Senators and legislators can vote for cap and trade as the lesser of the two evils.
In other words, this EPA endangerment ruling is a gambit to get cap and trade passed. That’s why they are in such a rush. Of course, if cap and trade doesn’t pass, EPA is not going to be able to undo this damage – they will have made an endangerment finding and they will be stuck with it.
paulID (18:37:57) :
paulID said: “you owe me a new monitor the current one has diet mountain dew sprayed all over it. good pic”
Thank you, but I wish you would not have confessed that publicly. The EPA HASMAT team should be at your door presently, I fear. They certainly cannot allow an open carbonation spill like that to go unanswered. I suggest that you be creative and try saying that you were doing it as a 1st Amendment opinion of a current news revelation. Currently the EPA is back on there heels on that topic and it might just work. 8^)
Robert Wood (19:05:10) :
CARBONGATE
If this pans out you will be famous.
I Just sent this stuff to my congress critters. Would suggest that everyone do the same.
This has the potential to bottle up congressional stupidity for some time to come.
Firstly, I am going to say C-mod, you rock!! Secondly, the bad news in this, and we must not let it stop us, is that The Prez has spent a (snip) load of money and has to make up for it somehow. From his viewpoint, the climate bill has to go through (accurate or not) or he will be in deep doo-doo (technical term). As a Canadian, it concerns me greatly, since we are so conjoined to the American economy that if you are sunk, we are sunk, too.
I would just like to say thankyou to Anthony, Charles, Tom, Alan and Anon. for a truly inspirational effort.
I wish I could get my friends to read all 98 pages of omission.
The Environmental Protection Agency is doing antiscience. Nevertheless, I opine that antiscience is a word incorrectly constructed: anti is a Greek root which means “against”, and scientia, which means knowledge, science. The word “antiscience” is wrongly constructed because the combination of Greek roots with Latin roots is not allowed by mixing a bond root with a free root (morpheme), in any language.
The correct word should be contra-science, which has been built with to Latin roots, a bond root and a free root: contra, which means “against”, and scientia , which means “science”. One way or another, EPA is doing contra-science.
Darell C. Phillips (20:43:37) :
“Currently the EPA is back on there heels on that topic…”
should be-
“Currently the EPA is back on their heels on that topic…”
Wow, I can’t spell tonight.
If the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or one of its licensees, did something like this, the green movement would be all over it for suppressing whistleblowers and dissenters. It will be interesting to see how this pans out, but I suspect that the MSM and the politicians who are in charge will just bury it – it is just too inconvenient now.
One way or another, EPA is doing contra-science.
They have proven themselves too chuckleheaded for that, the poor dears. They can’t handle contra-science. All they are up for is unscience or nonscience, and only if provided by others.
It is clear they can’t warehouse on a salary what the least among us on either side of the debate pick up for kicks.
But, Fuller looks so unhappy about what he has done.
I applaud “Anonymous”. Whistleblowers are some of the best American heros. They put the spotlight on corruption.
Thank you Anonymous…..
Nasif Nahle (23:31:57) :
“The Environmental Protection Agency is doing antiscience. Nevertheless, I opine that antiscience is a word incorrectly constructed: anti is a Greek root which means “against”, and scientia, which means knowledge, science. The word “antiscience” is wrongly constructed because the combination of Greek roots with Latin roots is not allowed by mixing a bond root with a free root (morpheme), in any language.
The correct word should be contra-science, which has been built with to Latin roots, a bond root and a free root: contra, which means “against”, and scientia , which means “science”. One way or another, EPA is doing contra-science.”
As a classicist once said:
TELEVISION – the word is a mixture of Latin and Greek. No good will ever come of it!
“We’ve always been at war with Eastasia”
– Big Brother, as reported by the Ministry of Truth
After reading some of the draft report could it be that part of the problem the report was not considered was because the authors understand the subject better than anyone else in the EPA? Of course they were bringing up things counter to the party line but they may also have been referencing things no one understood. From my following of the whole AGW subject the authors seem quite knowlegible and up to date on current news, studies and controversies. Just a thought.
john
The Free Press WorldNetDaily has picked up the story. Passing this around would certainly help get the word out.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=102031
Nasif
Oh yeah? What about television? I believe it was Lord Reith (the first DG of the BBC) who said that no good could come of such a hideous combination of Latin and Greek.
… and then I scroll down and find Allan M has beaten me to it. Mostly.
I can’t remember where I heard it (possibly Heinlein or Pournelle), but the comment was: “If one percent or more of the citizens of any nation can no longer trust their government for even the basic functions government should be responsible for, that government is doomed”. This kind of stupidity makes trusting government on anything about as sensible as trusting a bee not to sting, or a snake not to bite. I also think we’re coming very close to that one-percent threshhold.
timbrom (12:33:38) :
Nasif
Oh yeah? What about television? I believe it was Lord Reith (the first DG of the BBC) who said that no good could come of such a hideous combination of Latin and Greek.
Yep! It already had been pointed out by Allan [Allan M (04:26:16)]. Television is a wrongly constructed word with a badly evolved politics… Heh! 😉
The New York Times has noticed this story, and noted that Carlin is not alone:
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/06/26/26greenwire-two-epa-staffers-question-science-behind-clima-89720.html
“Dissent on the proposal was expressed in a March 16 report (pdf) by Alan Carlin and John Davidson of EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics.”
“Carlin is a senior operations research analyst who has worked in EPA’s economics office since 1983. He has a doctorate in economics and a bachelor’s degree in physics. He specializes in cost-benefit analysis and the economics of global climate change control, EPA said. The co-author of the report, John Davidson, is an environmental scientist in the economics office who holds a doctorate in physics. Davidson also joined the program in 1983.”
So, if Carlin “is not a scientist,” what is Davidson?
Great work getting some daylight on this suppressed report. Kudos all around!
For those interested in both sides of the story, RC has some commentary on the report.
Sorry folks, I read the emails and it doesn’t sound like suppression to me. The guy is just claiming suppression. He was addressing a different level than what his group was supposed to be working on.
And sorry, just because someone yells COVERUP doesn’t make it one, and Carlin isn’t a Climatologist. Working at the EPA doesn’t make him an expert on climate. Let’s get the secretaries’ statements in there too, there are plenty of over-educated ones who are actually very smart.
However I’m sure all the pro-coal and oil people will feel totally self-justified for weeks now, and try to derail the wind folks. High-stakes plays going on here, and many media are owned by people with big investments in fossil fuels.
1.) Reports of direct suppression are independently confirmed.
2.) In order for wind to be derailed it would have to be on the rails in the first place.
Hey Yvonne, who are you kidding??? The media is in the tank for Obama and the rest of you nut cases. You’re one of those that even if climate becomes cooler, you say, ” well, it has to become cooler to become warmer.!” Climate changes!!!!!!. Michigan used to be glaciers. Climate change changed that! Why don’t you go live in the forest with a kerosene lamp!!
I’d say Congress(a future incarnation) needs to abolish the EPA and start from scratch without granting unelected bureaucratic ‘experts’ authority to regulate commerce.
Greenhouse effect – fiction
Greenhouse effect – sequence
1. Energy /The Sun, … /
2. Temperature
3. Quantitative composition /partial pressure: CO2, CH4,…/