On June 25th the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released a draft copy of the suppressed EPA report by EPA employee Alan Carlin critical of the EPA’s position on Carbon Dioxide saying:
The released report is a draft version, prepared under EPA’s unusually short internal review schedule, and thus may contain inaccuracies which were corrected in the final report.
While we hoped that EPA would release the final report, we’re tired of waiting for this agency to become transparent, even though its Administrator has been talking transparency since she took office. So we are releasing a draft version of the report ourselves, today,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman.
CEI notes that: Internal EPA email messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the Administration’s agenda of regulating carbon dioxide.
I’m pleased to say that we have the final report exclusively available here, courtesy of our verified contact at the EPA, who shall remain anonymous. For some background on this contact, developed with the help of Tom Fuller at the San Francisco Environmental Policy Examiner, please read the WUWT story below. The download link is also below.
Source inside EPA confirms claims of science being ignored, suppressed, by top EPA management
The title page of the final report from Alan Carlin of the EPA reads:
Comments on Draft Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act
By Alan Carlin
NCEE/OPEI
Based on TSD Draft of March 9, 2009
March 16, 2009
Alan prepared an update to this document which is on page 3, I’m reproducing it here for our readers:
Important Note on the Origins of These Comments
These comments were prepared during the week of March 9-16, 2009 and are based on the March 9 version of the draft EPA Technical Support document for the endangerment analysis for Greenhouse Gases under the Clean Air Act. On March 17, the Director of the National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE) in the EPA Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation communicated his decision not to forward these comments along the chain-of-command that would have resulted in their transmission to the Office of Air and Radiation, the authors of the draft TSD.
These comments (dated March 16) represent the last version prepared prior to the close of the internal EPA comment period as modified on June 27 to correct some of the non-substantive problems that could not be corrected at the time. No substantive change has been made from the version actually submitted on March 16. The following example illustrates the type of changes made on June 27. Prior to March 16 the draft comments were prepared as draft comments by NCEE with Alan Carlin and John Davidson listed as authors. In response to internal NCEE comments this was changed on March 16 to single author comments with assistance acknowledged by John Davidson. There was insufficient time, however, because of deadlines imposed by the Office of Air and Radiation, to make the corresponding change in the use of the word “we” to “I” implicit in the change in listed authorship. This change has been made in this version.
It is very important that readers of these comments understand that these comments were prepared under severe time constraints. The actual time available was approximately 4-5 working days. It was therefore impossible to observe normal scholarly standards or even to carefully proofread the comments. As a result there are undoubtedly numerous unresolved inconsistencies and other problems that would normally have been resolved with more normal deadlines. No effort has been made to resolve any possible substantive issues; only a few of the more evident non-substantive ones have been resolved in this version.
It should be noted, of course, that these comments represent the views of the author and not those of the US Environmental Protection Agency or the NCEE.
Alan Carlin
June 27, 2009
UPDATE: Before downloading, please read the paragraph above from Alan Carlin to get some perspective. Certainly, this document is not perfect. How could it be? The EPA gave an internal comment period of 1 week on the most far reaching “finding” the agency has ever dealt with. This short window was unprecedented. So ask yourself, could you produce a paper like this, covering many disciplines outside of your own, that is “perfect” on 5 working days notice?
The EPA’s procedure here is the culprit.
Download the final report from Alan Carlin here, link: Endangerment comments v7b1 (PDF 4MB)
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Fixed, WordPress has this odd error inserting links to PDF’s that puts in the date twice in the URL – Anthony
For what is called a “scientific report” there are very few references from science–mostly citations of internet blog. I’ve never seen an EPA report or any other scientific report, with so little reliance on scientific studies.
REPLY: The EPA only gave a few days for internal comments, read page 3. The real problem here is not Carlin’s report, but the fact that the EPA threw caution to the wind, and gave a very small comment period internally, which was unheard of for something of such importance. It’s just like our boneheaded Congress adding 300+ pages to the “Climate Change Bill” at 3AM the morning before the vote. Who could refute that with perfect citations in that short of time? Who could do it in a week?
The process is corrupt. – Anthony
Several issues with the EPA in the past related to what is happening now:
1. Browner when head of the EPA for Clinton was sued for trying to silence an insider.
2. Do not understand full set of details, but EPA (same time period) was sued for passing funds to non profit groups with out proper cause.
3. Browner when leaving the EPA supposedly erased all the hard drives(while under court order not to) to cover up 2 above.
4. Supposedly Landmark Legal sued and now has a data base of all EPA grants to enviro non-profits. Waiting to hear back on how to access there data base.
*****************
How much of the stimulus bill funds will show up in the hands of non-profits running agw info-mercials?
When a non-profit org becomes involved in politics, how is there status challanged?
The Ad Council has formed an alliance with the United Way, needless to say, I no longer donate to the United Way
I see Carbongate made the IBD editorials.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=330911757213432
Comes to mind the old proverb: “Marry in haste; repent at leisure.”
I wrote an email to Congressman Boehner…
http://republicanleader.house.gov/Contact/
>>>
To House Republican Leader John Boehner:
Sir, I was honored by your speech on the floor of congress in regard to the Climate Bill. For a brief moment I felt as if someone was actually fighting for the American people and their right to have a intelligent debate on this subject.
This Climate Bill is based on false science and run-away ideology. The world’s scientist’s are finally coming out in number to address the false claims made by the IPCC and those alarmists that would have us believe it’s something more than a natural (warming or cooling) cycle.
This bill will cause massive job losses and devastate our economy.
Thank you for your efforts,
Mk
As some who writes and reviews scientific studies, I still don ‘t understand how one can claim a report has been supressed if it is only available in an early draft that is incomplete and in need of fact checking and references. When I write a scientific article I write numerous drafts and often give it to colleagues for informal review, especially if I do not have co-authors who are also experts in the field. Dozens of times a year, I also do this kind of informal peer review for younger scientists from around the world. It’s the author’s resonsibility to make sure that a “scientific report” is accurate and complete before making it public.
Congressional bills, of course, have no resemblance to scientific studies.
On my way home this evening, heard an ad on the radio regarding a young girl who didn’t unplug her cell phone charger when it wasn’t in use…. and advising children to “do their part” to conserve energy. Then quoted a website ending in “dot Gov” How far will this go?
REPLY: There’s nothing wrong with conserving energy. Destroying our energy creating capability with excessive government intrusion and taxes, that’s something entirely different. – Anthony
OT Love this headline!
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/boehner-climate-bill-a-pile-of-s–t-2009-06-27.html
I’m pleased to say that we have the final report exclusively available here,
I just sent the following quote from the PDF to News Tips at Drudge along with the link to this post here at WUWT.
“I have become increasingly concerned that EPA has itself paid too little attention to the science of global warming.”
I’m not kidding when I say I want the world to know about this.
Hi all,
After a wearying experience at RealClimate I have developed my own list of what I call ‘Next Generation Questions on Global Warming.’ I’m asking for help from the WUWT community on both the questions and the answers. See here:
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-9111-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m6d27-Next-generation-questions-for-global-warming
Thanks in advance for any help that is forthcoming.
“Skipping one bath saves a much energy as leaving your TV off standby for over six months. People who wash regularly, wear clean clothes, consume hot food or drink, use powered transport of any kind and live in warm houses have no need to worry about the energy they use to power their electronics; it’s insignificant compared to the other things.
Most of us don’t see basic hygiene, decent food and warm houses as sinful luxuries, but as things we can reasonably expect to have. ”
This is a quote from a review at
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/20/mackay_on_carbon_free_uk/
The review concerns Cambridge Professor David MacKay – his site is at
http://withouthotair.com/
I see they pulled out the Dunning-Kruger effect on Mr. Fuller over at RC…There needs to be a Godwin’s Alarmist Law for this…
The report is marred by the two (!) Figures 2.15 using 1) the obsolete Hoyt-Schatten TSI and 2) the PMOD TSI where the decrease of TSI at the present minimum is due to instrumental error.
REPLY: No dispute there Leif, but please read Alan’s statement on page 3. The issue is that the time for comments internally was a week or less, not nearly enough time for a fully fact checked commentary, and this was apparently the only rebuttal. EPA ran turbo mode on this with no cares. Look at the bigger picture, not the details. – Anthony
POLICE EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE!
SLOGAN
Hi Tom Fuller,
Was going to add a comment at the Examiner but the verification image didn’t come through. My comment was:
A few hundred million years of fossil records show that 5-10C extra temperature and CO2 levels 2-5 times present lead to an extremely healthy biosphere (big animals big appetites). The records also show that a CO2 tipping point to runaway Venus hell is a boogie-monster for kids, since nature has abused the biosphere way beyond anything we can imagine and yet, amazingly, it bounces back.
Tom Fuller (23:45:22) :
You may find this helpful :
“Climate Audit Submission to EPA”
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6354
PDF of Steve McIntyre’s submission to the EPA
http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/McIntyre_Submission_to_EPA.pdf
Tom Fuller (23:45:22) :
This may be helpful also :
“Check the Numbers: The Case for Due Diligence in Policy Formation”
PDF :
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/commerce.web/product_files/CaseforDueDiligence_Cda.pdf
Anthony, you wanted the world to know, it now on Slashdot. http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/06/27/2314213/EPA-Quashed-Report-Skeptical-of-Global-Warming
Section 1.5 (p. 9-12) on Greenland ice melt appears to be lifted almost word-for-word from Pat Michael’s World Climate Report blog. And there’s no attribution whatsoever as far as I can tell (not to mention that the Carlin/WCR interpretation of van de Wal et al is highly misleading).
See:
http://deepclimate.org/2009/06/28/epas-alan-carlin-channels-pat-michaels-and-the-friends-of-science/
Hi Tom Fuller too,
Was going to add a comment at the Examiner as well but the verification image didn’t come through for me either. My comment was:
See http://www.informath.org/
“The fraud allegation against some climatic research of Wei-Chyung Wang”, Energy & Environment, 18: 985–995 (2007). doi: 10.1260/095830507782616913. Remarks.
Bill D. As some who writes and reviews scientific studies, I still don’t understand how one can claim a report has been supressed [sic] if it is only available in an early draft that is incomplete and in need of fact checking and references.
Please Bill, don’t be dense. The report was written in a week because that’s all the time allotted, despite the significant legal import of the EPA’s “endangerment” finding. Do you write comprehensive scientific studies in a week? With all facts checked and referenced? If so, please produce such a document and proof that a week is all you spent on it.
It is unclear that EPA higher-ups even knew that such a report was being drafted. However, when those higher-ups found out about the (hastily written) report, they refused to forward it or to allow it to be seen by the public (or Congress), and they forbade the author from speaking to anyone outside NCEE on endangerment issues. The author was apparently reassigned to other duties not commensurate with his (former) position or status. Please see:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/24/the-epa-suppresses-dissent-and-opinion-and-apparently-decides-issues-in-advance-of-public-comment/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/25/source-inside-epa-confirms-claims-of-science-being-ignored-by-top-epa-management/
and numerous articles that have appeared in the national media.
All that amounts to suppression and a coverup that was exposed by WUWT and others, thanks to whistleblowers within the EPA.
Now Bill, I don’t argue with your statement that you don’t understand. I take you at your word on that. But (most of) the rest of us get it.
PS to Leif: so you don’t concur on each and every point in the hastily written, suppressed report? Do you not understand (like Bill) that the EPA pushed through the “endangerment” finding with no scientific balance or integrity, incomplete disclosure and review, and some amazingly outlandish and unscientific claims? Don’t you think your criticisms would be more useful if they were directed at the details of the “endangerment” finding that treats CO2 as a pollutant? Personally, I don’t see how nitpicking this report and ignoring the bizarre finding serves science or the public weal.
“Who shall remain anonymous” once again has my public thanks.
For Tom Fuller, the most glaring insight for me is how plants seem to be genetically built for a much higher supply of CO2 but we act as if that is a bad thing. One of my favorite articles here at WUWT is http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/09/high-co2-boosts-plant-respiration-potentially-affecting-climate-and-crops/
My favorite paragraph of this article is:
“The results were striking. At least 90 different genes coding the majority of enzymes in the cascade of chemical reactions that govern respiration were switched on (expressed) at higher levels in the soybeans grown at high CO2 levels. This explained how the plants were able to use the increased supply of sugars from stimulated photosynthesis under high CO2 conditions to produce energy, Leakey said. The rate of respiration increased 37 percent at the elevated CO2 levels. The enhanced respiration is likely to support greater transport of sugars from leaves to other growing parts of the plant, including the seeds, Leakey said. “The expression of over 600 genes was altered by elevated CO2 in total, which will help us to understand how the response is regulated and also hopefully produce crops that will perform better in the future,” he said.”
1. Browner when head of the EPA for Clinton was sued for trying to silence an insider.
Thats a constructive start. Time to play rough.
“REPLY: The EPA only gave a few days for internal comments, read page 3. The real problem here is not Carlin’s report, but the fact that the EPA threw caution to the wind, and gave a very small comment period internally, which was unheard of for something of such importance. It’s just like our boneheaded Congress adding 300+ pages to the “Climate Change Bill” at 3AM the morning before the vote. Who could refute that with perfect citations in that short of time? Who could do it in a week?
The process is corrupt. – Anthony”
They’re not boneheaded, they are clever fascists.
“The actual time available was approximately 4-5 working days. It was therefore impossible to observe normal scholarly standards or even to carefully proofread the comments.”
And the 300+ extra pages when no-one had the chance to even read them (Any honourable politician, Yea or Nay, would have refused to support the bill because of this).
These people are just crooks. They act like they don’t believe it themselves. They’re just desparate to get their way.
Bill D
“When I write a scientific article I write numerous drafts and often give it to colleagues for informal review, especially if I do not have co-authors who are also experts in the field.”
You do all this in five days?
The age of the bloggers may be enough for a collective fossil record. As such, use guys are making the BLM and Corps of Engineers look like Red Cross volunteers next to the EPA.
Here’s my point for Tom Fuller
(Tom: you need to fix your comment / captcha thing. It’s bad. Very bad.)
A thought experiment:
Imagine the world unites and applies some of the anti-carbon medicine. The medicine turns out much better than anyone hoped for. Within a short period global temperatures level off, polar icecaps return to their normal sizes, weather seems normal worldwide, no islands need evacuation, no species go extinct. The extreme events like hurricanes, tornadoes, killer heatwaves don’t flare up and terrify us all.
OK well you don’t need to imagine this future utopia because it describes today’s regular old world. It ain’t broken and it don’t need fixing.
“The process is corrupt. – Anthony”
And this is surprising, how? Really… think about it. When you have Chris Dodd’s wife serving on 3 health company boards all the while he is the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which will soon start work on a health care bill…that SCREAMS of corruption.
If he were a judge, he’d have to recuse himself, but I guess the hint of impropriety doesn’t matter when you serve the people. It’s a sick, sick process. I just wish our folks would grow a pair and actually demonstrate vigorously against our govt…peacefully of course…what we need is a transfusion of the passion of the Iranian people to demand reform…REAL reform…not reform that sounds good, but reform that boots corruption out of our government. If Obama could grow a pair and bring to light all the double deals, etc going on, then maybe we could start moving toward this goal, but it won’t happen. If this guy, who had the best chance of actually bringing reform to the process, folds under pressure, then I don’t think we have a chance at it. It is depressing.
http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.ssf/2009/06/sen_chris_dodds_wife_serves_on.html
“Deep Climate (01:09:59) :
Section 1.5 (p. 9-12) on Greenland ice melt appears to be lifted almost word-for-word from Pat Michael’s World Climate Report blog. And there’s no attribution whatsoever as far as I can tell (not to mention that the Carlin/WCR interpretation of van de Wal et al is highly misleading).
See:
http://deepclimate.org/2009/06/28/epas-alan-carlin-channels-pat-michaels-and-the-friends-of-science/”
Sorry, did the EPA reject it because it was flawed in parts? As are probably some of the pro warming contributions. I didn’t see that reasoning anywhere?
Get real. It was rejected for political reasons.
cheers
David
“Sandy (00:25:06) :
Hi Tom Fuller,
Was going to add a comment at the Examiner but the verification image didn’t come through. My comment was:
A few hundred million years of fossil records show that 5-10C extra temperature and CO2 levels 2-5 times present lead to an extremely healthy biosphere (big animals big appetites). ”
Agreed, but perhaps those animals weren’t so big? 🙂
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090621195620.htm
Notice the quote;
“Scientists have discovered that the original statistical model used to calculate dinosaur mass is flawed, suggesting dinosaurs have been oversized.”
What! A long standing, sophisticated, supercomputer model accepted by consensus wrong?! Unheard of! [sarc off].
cheers
David
I’m hoarding light bulbs, toilet paper, and gasoline. Just kidding.
We need to follow the money trail that leads to this EPA Czar Browner. The only way to stop this is to discover the scandal that’s going on. The only problem is nothing is a scandal with the media we have now. Wasting money is viewed as wasting only rich people’s money. These are very strange times we live in.
A nationwide strike is the only thing that will get their attention. Maybe when we have the July 4th tea parties we have a week long strike by the producers?
Mark (03:58:55),
California’s two senators are just as corrupt. Sen. Barbara Boxer kited over one hundred bad checks made out to “cash”, and cashed them at the senate’s U.S. Post Office annex over a several year period.
Despite repeated requests from the USPS to make her checks good, Boxer ignored them …until a PO’d post office worker called the local newspaper, which ran the story. Boxer then promptly made the checks good [what would happen to you if you had bounced even one check to the post office, eh?].
Boxer got pretty much of a free pass from the media, which did minimal reporting on the crime, and then buried it. No charges were ever filed against Boxer.
Then there’s Sen. Dianne Feinstein — who used her position as Chair of the Senate Military Apppropriations subcommittee to funnel tens of $millions in NO BID contracts awarded by Feinstein’s committee to companies owned by her husband, Richard Blum. No major media carried the story. But it was carried by the Metro free papers, and DiFi was forced to resign her position as committee Chair [just google “Feinstein, Metro” for the low-down].
These people are thoroughly corrupt. They use their elected position for self-enrichment. Is it any wonder that they are selling out our country for personal gain? And does it make me a conspiracy theorist to see that this cap & trade bill was bought the same way?
Smokey (04:40:30)
Don’t forget about Cheney and Halliburton / KBR getting all that business when the war kicked off.
I am really shocked by the entire process, the bias, the corruption and the vicious objectives behind this scheme.
On the other hand I am honored to read a report because an insider could not take the abuse of an evaluation process any more and informed the outside world.
I am extremely honored that WUWT is now recognized for it’s objective approach on the science behind the facts.
Even the report is full with quotes and references from WUWT.
It is a sparkle of hope for a future with less Government, less rules and much more room for individual freedom and policies based on integrity and common sense.
We were doing pretty well until Government screwed up our financial system, we were doing well until Government started to screw up our energy system resulting in high food prices, high fuel prices etc.
We can do very well without the corrupt United Nations and the thousands of political bodies and NGO’s that work against our interests.
We can very well do without the “Change” introduced by a President who falsifies science and bends the rules.
All those visiting WUWT know what’s really going on.
For this I am extremely grateful.
Someone needs to post this on WikiLeaks.
https://secure.wikileaks.org/
All the proof you need that Cap and Trade is a political agenda. Let’s hope that the US Senate makes a ruling that’s based on fact and throws out this insanity passed by Congress.
As for the ways and means this monstrosity is progressing, your wonderful Administration needs to look no further than the EU and the UK Parliament for lessons in how to BS the public. All the signs are there. It worked for our lot and it looks to be working for yours.
Damn!
It appears that, whether through Waxman-Markey or EPA, the US government is committed to declaring “war” on climate change, based on questionable intelligence, without a broad coalition of allies and with insufficient weapons and inadequate training. This war is lost before it even begins!
Will the EPA say this report wasn’t peer reviewed and therefore ignorable? 😉
Tom,
> “After a wearying experience at RealClimate I have developed my own list of what I call ‘Next Generation Questions on Global Warming.’ I’m asking for help from the WUWT community on both the questions and the answers.”
If current temperatures are below the error bars on the IPCC’s original report, then that original hypothesis has already been falsified by observation.
To continue repeating the same hypothesis every few years with new model runs starting from a more recent date is simply moving the goalposts. That’s an “F-” on any Science 101 test, since that makes the hypothesis unfalsifiable.
The hypothesis is that CO2 was the most important factor in the ~30 year warming we observed up until about 10 years ago.
That hypothesis is well over 20 years old now. That is plenty of time to accumulate observational evidence to either confirm or reject it. Models are no longer necessary.
To support the hypothesis you need a proposed mechanism (how does CO2 warm the climate), and a set of observations that demonstrate that mechanism at work over and above all the other influences on climate, such as oceanic warming/cooling cycles, jet stream cycles, land-use changes, etc.
Currently you can look at the temperature graphs and say “that spike is from this El Nino, and that dip is from that La Nina or that volcano.” You can point to the trend from the 1800’s and say “that 150 year warming trend is recovery from the Little Ice Age”, or point to a longer trend and say “we’re returning to the temperatures of the Medieval Warming period”.
Where can you point and say “that’s from CO2” without physically altering historical data to make the current trend appear to be unusual?
THAT’s what the current discussion is about. If you want a new generation of questions, ask what’s so unusual about the period we’re in now. What we’re currently experiencing is not unusual, it does not fall outside the long-term natural cycles.
The mechanism proposed – that CO2 has a positive feedback relationship with water vapor – has never been demonstrated. There is no peer-reviewed paper that I know of that shows that. If there were, and if that mechanism was confirmed by observation, then case-closed, AGW would be confirmed, and ocean-front communities would be investing in sea-walls and we’d all be preparing to adapt.
But we have none of this. We have 20 years of arm-waving, bad temperature data, re-writing of historical records, and threats against scientists who dare speak truth to power.
So we don’t really need a new generation of questions. We need answers to the original ones.
I love your articles BTW, I’ve been emailing links to them to friends. Excellent work!
Apologies if this has been asked before, but wouldn’t hot water vapor rise and transport heat away from the surface?
Companies to avoid…
But a host of companies and utilities touted the bill, including Nike Inc., Starbucks Corp., Exelon Corp., Symantec Corp. and PG&E Corp. — a coalition that House Democrats said was invaluable
The EPA/Carlin story also appeared on CNET yesterday: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10274412-38.html , so it is getting around.
I also send a link to this thread to Progressive Farmer Magazine, which has been carrying stories about climate change, ethanol, etc.
Whats the process over at EPA moving forward from here? Presumably they are now tabulating and writing a report summarizing all the comments that people, businesses and organizations sent in. It seems conceivable that there would be more studies to do after the comment period. In an ideal world this is where non-epa scientists get their input and suggestions heard. Also in an ideal world this is where someone over at EPA says, “Anthony Watts is right, we’ve got to do something about these weather stations;” or where someone does something about Steve McIntyre’s complaint that the science is not adequate because gov’t scientists all play “dog in the manger” with their data and methods. It even seems possible that Alan Carlin would be given opportunity to refine the things he has to say. It doesn’t seem this thing is ripe for lawsuits until the EPA reacts to comments.
Sandy (00:25:06)
Hi Sandy,
You two points are of course correct, however I am worried that too many people jump to the wrong conclusions because of them.
It’s undoubtedly true that there was far more life on land, and it was more widespread than today, when we had 1000 ppm plus CO2. It wasn’t so good for ocean life because of the increased acidification, but that’s another matter. It’s probably true that if we allowed CO2 and methane levels etc. to rise to the levels of those far off days, when the biosphere was larger than it is today, that things might become more comfortable generally for life IN THE LONG RUN. The huge problem with this point of view is that it ignores what happens in the interim while we are getting from our current climate to the very high CO2 led climate you seem to think is a good idea.
By analogy, California seems to have a stronger economy than Arizona and if you are from Arizona you may want to improve your family’s employment prospects so you might consider it a good idea to up sticks and move because once you are there things would be great. The only problem is the Grand Canyon is on your path and you would plummet to an unpleasant doom on the journey. A small number of your neighbours making a similar journey (with luck) could make it through to the promised land but that would be little consolation to the majority who never made it.
In essence, the likely disruption to the climate and species extinctions that is likely in the process of getting to the high CO2 environment is way too risky to chance.
In any case the life and ecosystems that benefited from that high carbon environment hundreds of millions of years ago evolved to fit those changing circumstances over millions of years. It simply couldn’t do it in a couple of hundred.
Your point about runaway feedback effects is almost certainly correct because although there are positive feedbacks they are not believed to be greater than unity – a Venusian environment is definitely not on the cards from the basic physics. But I don’t know any serious climatologist who claims that an out and out runaway is likely. Of course, a climate that stabilised at 6-7 degrees higher would be a catastrophe for most life until a few million years had gone by to allow it to adapt. Things would get very sticky for all of us in the meantime…
sincerely,
Nick Palmer
my blogspot: “Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer”
http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
WUWT reference in Climate Video:
http://penoflight.com/climatebuzz/?p=587
Well… Obama is proselytizing in the Senate:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/28/obama-urges-senate-pass-climate-bill/?source=newsletter_must-read-stories-today_photo_feature
The Examiner comment thingie pops up when you hit submit.
Soon we’ll all be holding our breath while using both sides of the toilet paper or get fined.
Leif Svalgaard (00:15:46) :
The issue is that the time for comments internally was a week or less, not nearly enough time for a fully fact checked commentary, and this was apparently the only rebuttal. EPA ran turbo mode on this with no cares. Look at the bigger picture, not the details. – Anthony
If you don’t have time to get the details right, the proper thing is to omit the details.
Mike D. (01:30:00) :
PS to Leif: so you don’t concur on each and every point in the hastily written, suppressed report?
Haste is waste. Omitting the wrong details would have given the author a bit more time to concentrate on his central message.
REPLY: You’re assuming he knew it was wrong. As a solar physics expert, you know immediately what the status is of several datasets that you deal with. 99.99999% of the rest of the world does not. Haste makes waste. I agree with that, but Leif I strongly disagree with you here on your criticism because the EPA forced a comments window that was abnormally small for arguably the most far reaching “finding” they would ever deal with. The haste is the fault of the EPA and the unreasonable policy.
The EPA is the culprit here. – Anthony
Thank you Alan Carlin and Anthony for making this document public. It is not surprising that the EPA under Lisa Jackson chose to continue their findings that CO2 is a pollutant. With Chicago politics and now U.S. politics it is not about right or wrong but who is in charge.
Love this excerpt from “The Hill” article quoted above:
“Further, officials with the House GOP’s campaign arm, the National
Republican Congressional Committee, confirm that they will run with
paid media over recess in districts of conservative Dems who voted
for the bill. The official would not reveal details on the ad buys at
this time.”
The Republicans are going to hit hard on it. I think they smell blood.
Then this quote:
One Democrat was upset that his leaders would needlessly force
vulnerable Dems to vote for a bill that will come back to haunt
them. Mississippi Rep. Gene Taylor (D) voted against the measure
that he says will die in the Senate.
Smokey (04:40:30) :
17th amendment disconnected Senators from the entity of their home State. That essentially made them no different than a member of Congress and has allowed them to go hob nob for themselves with too limited repercussions from their home state voters as long as they deliver the pork and carbon allowances will be the new pork.
Because we have the 17th amendment we need to counter it with term limits on Senators.
Re: Comments on TSD – March 2009
Well. It may have been a rushed job to publish. And it took a couple of hours of my Sunday to read. But it was certainly worth the effort. And how frustrating to have it buried when it could do so much good.
Thanks for getting this out into the public arena.
TJ
Leif Svalgaard (07:24:24) :
Many of the criticisms are real, all that this rebuttal asked for was a further investigation. I think some space can be given for some of the details being inaccurate since the request is for greater accuracy.
This whole incident has just about turned me into an AGW denier. All the politics I’ve brought up over and over came right out in broad daylight with hardly a squeak from the scientific community. There is nothing but exaggerations and over-conclusions in this report.
The only thing preventing me from being a denier at this point is I don’t believe anyone knows the truth.
Leif Svalgaard (07:24:24) :
REPLY: You’re assuming he knew it was wrong. […]
The EPA is the culprit here. – Anthony
1st: I agree that the EPA is the culprit.
2nd: I’m not assuming he knew it was wrong. He almost certainly believes it is correct as he is a man of integrity.
3rd: The issue is a wider one. If I see some report or paper that makes, say, ten claims and, say, only one of them happens to be about something I know something about, the rest being completely outside. And if then the one I do know something about turns out to be wrong, that gives me a bad feeling about the rest. How do I know that they are right when the one I know about is wrong? Perhaps it is so that that wrong one was the only wrong one, but how is one to know?
4th: Although the window was very small, the author’s knowledge about the matter was presumably not acquired only during that window [if it was, I could rightfully dismiss it], but during a long period of time, so it is during that long period of time the wrong detail was acquired, so the short window is not an issue. The window would explain why there were two Figures with the same number 2.15, which is certainly excusable and understandable.
REPLY: Good points. I’ll add that it wasn’t until interaction with you that I learned that certain things that I thought I knew to be true (after months of looking at them) were not as I’d been led to believe by my own research. Unfortunately, almost every scientist that writes a study believes he/she to be “right”. The good ones leave a lot of room for correction.
Unfortunately it is tough to gauge what is correct and what is not solely by yourself, when you are a spectator to the discipline. Unfortunately in this hurried world, and the surreal hurried world of the EPA, time for determining the real merit of each piece of information you gather is short. – Anthony
The author makes a very important point concerning health. What are the observed negative health consequences of rising CO2? We’ve recorded generations of coincident CO2 rise and increasing world health. The IPCC needs to delete any content related to human health consequences unless they can explain the data.
Jeff Id (08:00:53) :
Many of the criticisms are real, all that this rebuttal asked for was a further investigation. I think some space can be given for some of the details being inaccurate since the request is for greater accuracy.
Perhaps everybody here misunderstand what I, perhaps too clumsily, was trying to say. So let me clarify: A document like this will be attacked. Wrong details are great attack points and serve as straw men that can be nitpicked over in order to gloss over the real message, so weaken the document. It is, of course, too late to do anything about it, but it may serve as a lesson to get the details right next time or in general when one is debating a strong ‘team’ or a powerful bureaucracy or administration. We need more such documents, but let’s get the details right EVERY TIME.
REPLY: Well said Leif, unfortunately all that can be done after the fact when imperfections are made into straw men is to point out that the EPA process itself created the imperfections by the unreasonably (and unheard of) short period for internal comments. By making it so short, many thorough scientists like yourself probably said to themselves “no way I can produce a quality document in that short space of time” so they didn’t try…which is the point. The EPA didn’t want well researched internal comments, they wanted to get the finding out the door.
This is why the flawed process calls for a “do-over”. – Anthony
Of course, a climate that stabilised at 6-7 degrees higher would be a catastrophe for most life until a few million years had gone by to allow it to adapt. Things would get very sticky for all of us in the meantime… – Nick Palmer
Helsinki Finland annual average temp 4.1°C
Shanghai China annual average temp 15.4°C
Seem there’s a lot of room for temperature variability without “catastrophe.”
CBS News picked up the story, in their political hotsheet blog:
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/06/26/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5117890.shtml
I’ve been having a lot of fun over there in the comments section…
Still only 31 articles listed by Google News, CBS & NYT are the only majors.
http://news.google.com/news?ned=us&hl=en&q=epa+suppressed+report
Jeff Id (08:00:53) :
” The only thing preventing me from being a denier at this point is I don’t believe anyone knows the truth.”
Exactly that is the point. “Skeptic” are in search of the Truth AGW believers are dead set on accepting one errant explanation = CO2 man made. I think they have a compelling theory, but for some reason it does not stand up to empiracal Scientific testing (unless you count models as ‘Emprical’ Science. Computer models are helpful, but not all/100% inclusive of all natural processes. So that leaves me with a big ? = Skeptic. This site just so happens to feed my desire to know more. AGW sites (the ones I have visited) only tell me I have to do this and do that because it is real and I am at fault. I will only do something if I want to do it not because somebody tells me to do it. That is why I am against this Cap and Tax bill, as well as the National Healthcare bill. I have also urged my State to not accept the stimulus payments, they did it any way, because we (the people) would owe the Federal Government with interest. The Fed’s have gotten to big and powerful to even care about what it’s citizens want.
Sorry I got off topic, but that is the way I feel.
Nick Palmer:
“It wasn’t so good for ocean life because of the increased acidification, but that’s another matter.”
Do you have any references for that? It certainly isn’t the way I read the fossil record.
This deal where the GCMs *assume* that RH is constant with temperature. It seems ridiculous to me. Why even bother running a GCM? The radiative warming attributable to CO2 is instantly magnified by an *assumed* constituitive relation that exponentially increases water vapor in the stratosphere? Are you effing kidding me?
From an e-mail I’m sending on global warming (no doubt fruitlessly) to an Obama administration official:
With its view that “the science is settled” the administration risks appearing less informed than a fairly intelligent and curious individual who can browse the Internet. Certainly other countries with whom we will be dealing on this issue will not be ideologically blinkered in what evidence they will consider in forming policy.
The Obama administration is a step away from holding a position reminiscent of Lysenkoism on anthropogenic global warming. (Lysenko, as you know, was the Soviet “biologist” under Stalin whose views on the inheritance of acquired characteristics achieved state sponsorship and set back Soviet biology and agriculture for a generation). The administration is clinging to its position in the face of increasing scientific evidence to the contrary which it won’t consider and despite evidence from their own senses that temperatures have been steady/dropping over the past decade.
The process is corrupt. – Anthony
————————————
Anthony, a concise description of the administrative and legislative Federal government of the United States of America.
smallz79 (08:24:10) :
Exactly that is the point. “Skeptic” are in search of the Truth
“A philosophical skeptic does not claim that truth is impossible (which would be a truth claim). The label is commonly used to describe other philosophies which appear similar to philosophical skepticism, such as “academic” skepticism, an ancient variant of Platonism that claimed knowledge of truth was impossible.”
So a skeptic believes that one cannot know the truth. In more ordinary usage skepticism is the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain. So there is not much to search for. Perhaps the word ‘skeptic’ is not good for characterizing your position. It looks to me more like a label for disbelieving somebody else’s opinion or theory.
E3du8R qdjilqhidouh, [url=http://wrxjzwoafpzd.com/]wrxjzwoafpzd[/url], [link=http://uvrluwvlkvlm.com/]uvrluwvlkvlm[/link], http://beticbdvfbdw.com/
As noted above by Michael D. Smith, CBS News has now picked up the story. Following the link in Michael’s post and reading the whole thing highly recommended.
And even if CBS + NYT are the only majors SO FAR, the fact that 2 majors have started to cover it; together with the cover-up being mentioned on the floor during debate on 2454; AND with the outstanding work to get the story out by WUWT:
Makes me hopeful that critical mass may have been reached, and the EPA will not be able to sweep this story under the rug (as they already appear desperately trying to do). If nothing else what has come out should weigh heavily in what I expect will be an inevitable court challenge to this absurd endangerment finding.
Curiousgeorge (06:12:21) :
The EPA/Carlin story also appeared on CNET yesterday: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10274412-38.html , so it is getting around.
Recognition should be made of the few MSM reporters who are running with this story. The CNET article is from CBSnews.com Chief Political Correspondent Declan McCullagh. CBS so far is the only major network organization that has carried this story – though the NY Times’ Greenwire, Robin Bravender wrote the “Two EPA Staffers Question Science Behind Climate ‘Endangerment’ Proposal” story on Thursday 26, June.
You can thank Declan at delcan@cbsnews.com, and Greenwire Editor, Kevin Braun at kbraun@eenews.com, or Robin at rbravender@eenews.com
It’s helpful to let these writers know that their work is being read and appreciated by this dedicated community. Writing the whole truth about these issues has its rewards for MSM – massive new readership.
Tom Fuller,
Your San Francisco Examiner out-did itself by publishing your investigation. I was not alone in being surprised by your candor. Great work!
Your questions are on the right track, but deserve the benefit of broader inquiry. I suggest that you attempt to acquire Ian Plimer’s new book: Heaven+Earth, Global Warming: the missing science. It’s new, already in its 6th printing. It’s published in Australia by ConnorCourt Publishing. It’s 493 pages with 2311 footnotes. That said, you only have to read the 29 page introduction (33 footnotes) to understand the breadth and nature of the inquiry you seek.
He notes that there is no single scientific discipline that defines climate. Here are some relevant quotes:
“Studies of the earth’s atmosphere tell us nothing about future climate. An understanding of climate requires an amalgamation of astronomy, solar physics, geology, geochronology, geochemistry, sedimentology, tectonics, paleontology, paleoecology, glaciology, climatology, meteorology, oceanography, ecology, archaeology and history. This is what is attempted in this book.”
He also notes…”Data collection in science is derived from observation, measurement and experiment, not from modeling.” This is a direct reference to the sole reliance of IPCC on modeling. “Observations in nature differ markedly from the results generated by nearly two dozen climate models. These climate models exaggerate the effects of human CO2 emissions into the atmosphere because few of the natural variables are considered.”
You get the drift. It’s an enjoyable and informative read.
Keep asking questions.
The EPA didn’t want well researched internal comments, they wanted to get the finding out the door.
And they covered up internal dissent to get it done. Same procedure as RC and Open Mind.
My favorite quote from Mythbusters- Adam
“I reject your reality and substitute my own.”
Tom Fuller (23:45:22) :
Thanks for your courageous coverage of what I’m sure has been an eye-opening experience. I can imagine the discourse at RC must have left you drained.
From your point 3, it’s obvious you’ve looked at some recent info. There’s and interesting post over at Jennifer Marohasy’s site, a guest post from Michael Hammer. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth the look. Bottom line: the NOAA “adjustments” account almost entirely for the reported temperature rise over the last several decades. In addition to eliminating a UHI adjustment, he points out that siting changes from urban to non-urban locations in effect builds in a positive UHI positive forever!
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/06/how-the-us-temperature-record-is-adjusted/
On your comments on sensitivity, you write “The IPCC calculation of 1.5 to 4.5 with a ‘preference’ (help with phrasing?) of 3.5 may be too high”. I’d suggest inserting the word sensitivity for clarity.
Great work! It’s great having someone in the media asking tough questions. My experience is that you don’t really get answers, only circular arguments, dismissal, hostility, appeals to authority or all of the above.
Jack Green, wasting money is now seen as a patriotic duty 🙂
This story and WUWT is also mentioned in Investor’s Business Daily. http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=330911757213432
Jeff Id
The only thing preventing me from being a denier at this point is I don’t believe anyone knows the truth.
I, too, do not know the truth, but I can discover a lie.
Leif Svalgaard (08:58:56) :
smallz79 (08:24:10) :
Exactly that is the point. “Skeptic” are in search of the Truth
“A philosophical skeptic does not claim that truth is impossible (which would be a truth claim). The label is commonly used to describe other philosophies which appear similar to philosophical skepticism, such as “academic” skepticism, an ancient variant of Platonism that claimed knowledge of truth was impossible.”
So a skeptic believes that one cannot know the truth. In more ordinary usage skepticism is the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain. So there is not much to search for. Perhaps the word ’skeptic’ is not good for characterizing your position. It looks to me more like a label for disbelieving somebody else’s opinion or theory
Point taken, but I was not trying to be philosophical. I was merely pointing out that there is more at work than CO2 and a computer model….
There are continual references to the “San Francisco Examiner.” I can’t find Tom Fuller in the SF Examiner I read here in San Francisco.
What’s with this “denier” word? Has it ever been used about anything except the Holocaust? Do AGW folk think it is even close to semantically appropriate to use?
If “denier” is a proper term, they could answer this in a heartbeat:
http://thereisnoevidence.com/
Nick Palmer
Where did you get the data / evidence that there would be a viloent transition from current CO² climate to a different one?
In order for that to be true you must be certain that CO² affects the climate today and that there would be a sudden transition to 1000ppm in the future.
Without going into details, in order to double the current concentration in the atmosphere will take many years at current rate. To treble it many more and current science suggest that it might contribute 0.30-1.0 °C over 100 years depending on other factors such as PDO, AMO, The sun, etc. Even over a month we see larger anomolies than 0.3°C and the planet continues without major damage.
Has denier ever been used in any context other than Holocaust denial? Do AGW
proponents think this is even close to semantically appropriate?
If it was appropriate, they could easily answer:
http://thereisnoevidence.com/
But they cannot.
Ron de Haan (04:57:33) :
“We were doing pretty well until Government screwed up our financial system”
“We can very well do without the “Change” introduced by a President who falsifies science and bends the rules”
You mean the previous president and government was more true to science (what a joke!) and the financial system was all nice and dandy under Bush and the banks are not the primary culprits for the financial crisis? Are you kidding? Please Ron, go to another blog to vent your reactionary political views.
Don E (10:06:34) :
Thomas Fuller is from San Francisco and posts on examiner.com.
His home page URL is: http://www.examiner.com/x-9111-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner
His home page lists his recent posts on the topic.
NOTE FOR WUWT MODERATORS
This post is not from Maurice Garoutte, as indicated by the email and website.
gsarah6151@gmail.com
http://www.allaboutfun.info (DON’T VISIT THIS)
This looks like a new ploy with spambots to scan for recent post names, then substitute the name on the next post, with redirection to websites.
Moderators, be on the lookout for this garbage. – Anthony
Leif Svalgaard (07:24:24) :
Leif Svalgaard (00:15:46) :
The issue is that the time for comments internally was a week or less, not nearly enough time for a fully fact checked commentary, and this was apparently the only rebuttal. EPA ran turbo mode on this with no cares. Look at the bigger picture, not the details. – Anthony
If you don’t have time to get the details right, the proper thing is to omit the details.
REPLY: You’re assuming he knew it was wrong. As a solar physics expert, you know immediately what the status is of several datasets that you deal with. 99.99999% of the rest of the world does not.
1) If he believed it was important then from the initial writing on 16th March 2009 he had 3 months to correct it and would surely have worked on it in his own time? Most of the data is from sceptical blogs including this. TSI has been discussed often here. Leif has given references to the corrected TSI plot.
2) quoting from sceptical science blogs must surely weaken any arguement. It’s lucky for instance he did not pick up on the initial headline on WUWT concerning CO2 freezing out of the atmosphere (how many pages did it take before most beleived the obvious?)!!!
e.g.
Source: http://icecap.us/images/uploads/ipccchart.jpg; part of article by Marlo Lewis on Planet Gore at http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTYwMjRiZjJhMmUxYWE2MmQ0NDZhOGM0M2Q3ZWUzMmE ; as reproduced on icecap.us on August 14, 2008.
http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Warming_Look.html#UAH%20MSU
5. Watts blog
10. From http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/irradiance.gif
3) and a real blooper is his reference to:
Figure 2-11: Galactic Cosmic Rays & Temperatures: Last 1100 yrs
where he compares comic rays with temperature from multiproxies which have been discredited in the sceptic view
And similarly with:
Figure 2-12: Temperature Reconstruction for the Central Alps over Last Two Millennia, Obtained from O-18 Composition of Speleothem from Spannagel Cave,
Again this data is often called into question if used to support AGW reconstructions.
4) and just so much on TSI and temperature.
If TSI had a significant affect on temperature or on an amplifier affecting temperature then it would show up as a 11year peak when doing FFTs of temperature record:
http://img162.imageshack.us/img162/84/hadcrutnhshlsgiscetssna.jpg
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/1127/ffts.jpg
There is no significant 11 year cycle. There is no significant 22 year cycle Longer cycles cannot be sensibly extracted because of insufficiently long records (22years is not too hot either!)
Several comments here have pointed out flaws in Dr. Carlin’s report as justification for the EPA to not officially consider it in the comment process. I believe that the more flaws in the report the more reason the EPA had to put it on the record.
The central point in the suppressed report was that the EPA should validate the science internally not rely on the IPCC. His most telling point was that the EPA will be in court, and will then have to defend the science as if they owned it.
If the report is indeed so flawed, the EPA could have left it on the record and refuted it point by point as evidence in future lawsuits that the scientific process prevailed. Now the record will show that politicians and policy prevail.
Bring on the court cases. Put the scientists and policy makers under oath and let’s see what they say when contemplating a few years in orange jump suits.
bill (10:55:45) :
1) If he believed it was important then from the initial writing on 16th March 2009 he had 3 months to correct it and would surely have worked on it in his own time? Most of the data is from sceptical blogs including this. TSI has been discussed often here. Leif has given references to the corrected TSI plot.
He is lucky that the EPA censored him; that gives him a grievance and we can all denigrate our big bad government. but suppose the EPA had done their homework and called Carlin on his use of the obsolete Hoyt-Schatten TSI, then they could have discredited him instead of censored him and the report would have have a lot smaller effect, perhaps even none. If you want to fight the good fight get the facts and the details right every time, or else you lose.
To Tom Fuller: I could not verify this comment on your site.
Michael Crichton put the current situation concerning climate alarmists in perspective in a 2003 speech he made at Cal Tech:
“I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”
The alarmists have managed to reverse the scientific process. Their AGW hypothesis is presented as fact based upon model simulations and their expert opinions. They are enabled by the main stream media and politicians who repress discussion and debate. Scientific consensus is used to obscure the lack of supporting empirical data and experimental research to support of the AGW hypothesis.
We are dealing with scoundrels who stand to make trillions of dollars in the course of replacing sovereign nations with trans-national global socialist governance over which they will preside.
I never believe even one thing I hear when it comes to science. I don’t even believe my own data. I fault the author, not EPA, for including TSI theories that have been revised. It once again demonstrates the risk of succumbing to bias often seen in the notion that the Sun must have something to do with temperature variation because golly gee, it is colder at night than during the day. It is nothing more than seat of the pants and arm chair logic and bypasses good scientific rebuttal. In the old days, anecdotal evidence led to flat earth and firmament ideas. In our day, it leads to the Sun being a highly variable energy source.
It is ALWAYS advisable to disbelieve what you see, read, and believe and instead subject it to the null hypothesis till demonstrated otherwise. The author failed this basic scientific premise, as do AGW’s. How do his hastily made statements make him better than the other side of the EPA debate? They do not. He did not further the cause of natural variability. In fact, he may have harmed it. There are many who do.
Alan Carlin, the primary author of the 98-page EPA report, told CBSNews.com in a telephone interview on Friday that his boss, McGartland, was being pressured himself. “It was his view that he either lost his job or he got me working on something else,” Carlin said. “That was obviously coming from higher levels.”
I hope McGartland has collected his own set of emails.
I suspect he does, and may even be Mr. Anonymous.
Deep Climate (01:09:59) :
Recent research from another team at same university and external coauthors shows that Greenland surface energy mass balance is positive and 63% higher than believed, that means it is accumulating mass, rather than melting
http://tr.im/pDnk
Again, where is the scientific criticism of the “facts and details” in the endangerment finding?
People are far too quick to cast stones at the lone voice in the EPA calling for a balanced asssessment. I call that a “chicken pecking party”.
If those who are so desirous of scientific rigor refuse to condemn the a-scientific endangerment finding, then I believe their own scientific integrity is questionable.
Leif: “suppose the EPA had done their homework and called Carlin on his use of the obsolete Hoyt-Schatten TSI, then they could have discredited him instead of censored him and the report would have have a lot smaller effect, perhaps even none. If you want to fight the good fight get the facts and the details right every time, or else you lose.”
I with you 100% that every attempt should be made to get things right but the story here is that the EPA relegated such little time to considering the matter — and a very important, far-reaching matter, no less — that they didn’t even have enough time for proper rebuttal; dismissed Carlin’s comment out-of-hand; and chose to censor his statements instead. The only impression one gets is that the EPA would have ignored him regardless of merit. IOW: damn the facts~ Full speed ahead!
Mark, Mark, Mark … open your eyes dude! Obama IS A HUGE PART OF THE PROBLEM
Obama has become a central point and driver of this corruption! I don’t care if you like or dislike Obama, the FACT is, he is as corrupt as any of them, and more corrupt than most of them! You are NEVER going to get the necessary reforms with Obama at the helm! In fact, it is only going to get worse, much worse! (ie: Health Care, Amnesty, Stimulus II, etc…)
Get a clue dude, Obama is NOT the answer, Obama is one of the problems!
As a follow-up to that University of Illinois FACE Study:
With 550 ppm CO2, Bean yield was UP 13%, and Corn was UP 26%.
http://soyface.illinois.edu/results/AAAS%202004%20poster%20Leakey.pdf
Oh, and they needed less water, and food quality was unchanged.
I can’t believe this has gone “unremarked-upon.”
DAV (11:55:21) :
The only impression one gets is that the EPA would have ignored him regardless of merit.
Lucky him that they did, better to be censored than to be shown wrong.
It seems obvious that they have decided to ignore the report, for the sake of political goals. I am often left wondering what their real goals are, then.
In Prague President Obama gave a speech about the severe danger to the world of nuclear weapons, the legacy from the Cold War, and talked about stopping nuclear proliferation, and stopping the production of weapons grade material, and proceeding with disarmament. In the next breath he adds, “We must harness the power of nuclear energy on behalf of our efforts to combat climate change”. And in the next breath he talks about North Korea testing a missile, and proceeds to talk about Iran’s nuclear programme.
I like Sci-fi so let me add this: recently they remade The Day The Earth Stood Still, except they substituted the environment for nuclear war. It was a terrible terrible film, I’m glad I never went to see it. But it did remind me, why would they the new plot need to focus on the environment when nuclear weapons are today as much a threat as ever, and are probably the greatest threat we presently face?
There is an elephant in the room, but it is something wearing a costume?
Woe, woe, there Nick.
You are telling me, that at a current rate of Anthropogenic addition of CO2 to the atmosphere, currently at approximately 3-4ppm per century, that because of that “human” contribution, we are heading to a high CO2 environment?
WOW! What is it you are smoking over there?
People, I cannot emphasis this enough, it seems to continuously get lost. We are talking about 3-4ppm of “human” contributions of CO2 per century!!! Meanwhile, “natural” contributions are more than 100ppm per century!
WUWT? … Am I the only being on this planet anymore that recognizes this? This seems to have been completely forgotten about. We see graphs of how CO2 has risen some 100pmm in the past 100yrs., but COMPLETELY forget about the FACT that “human” contribution is at best, 3ppm of that. My god people, have you that short of attention span?
You could completely stop ALL human CO2 production world wide this very second, and you could not even accurately measure the difference in 100 years. YOU SIMPLY COULD NOT EVEN DISTINGUISH THAT HUMANS QUIT PRODUCING CO2!!
Sheeesh…. this CO2 crap is such a farce! … my god, lets beat this stupid CO2 horse into anti-matter. I just cannot comprehend the stupidity in all this.
Patagon,
Did you read the actual abstract? It doesn’t support your conclusion: that Greenland “is accumulating mass, rather than melting”. That’s not how global warming works. Rather, snow accumulates at the centre and the ice pack melts at the edges.
“The surface mass balance trend over the full 1958–2007 period reveals the classic pattern expected in a warming climate, with increased snowfall in the interior and enhanced runoff from the marginal ablation zone. In the period 1990–2007, total runoff increased significantly, 3% per year. The absolute increase in runoff is especially pronounced in the southeast, where several outlet glaciers have recently accelerated.” [Emphasis added]
Nice try, though.
It is time for a Freedom of Information Act request at the EPA to gather even more of the inconvenient information which EPA would rather not have us see. This administration put a premium on transparency, let’s have a look.
Leif Svalgaard (12:11:59) : “Lucky him that they did, better to be censored than to be shown wrong.”
Maybe. This isn’t the first time the EPA has acted similarly. Checkout the DDT ruling for one example of past shenanigans regarding internal reports. Apprently set a precedent.l Note the total lack of pretense in searching out both sides with point-by-point consideration. So predictable. Hopefully this issue has broad enough reach to finally place a leash on the EPA charge-ahead rule making process. I’m realistic enough to think it will still be easier to find a talking dog.
“Leif Svalgaard (12:11:59) :
DAV (11:55:21) :
The only impression one gets is that the EPA would have ignored him regardless of merit.
Lucky him that they did, better to be censored than to be shown wrong.”
It’s better for Carlin that he was not proven wrong, but it looks WAAAAAYYYY worse for the EPA if they are out there dismissing any dissenting opinions based on the point-of-view and not by proving them wrong. That is the issue here. I don’t know Carlin and, to be honest, I’m not personally concerned with what he says or does. The EPA, however, (who could possibly be put in a position to dictate to me my entire lifestyle based on how they proceed with CO2 regulations), better be dang sure they are doing things for the right reasons, i.e. scientific proof.
Leif Svalgaard (12:11:59) :
“Lucky him that they did, better to be censored than to be shown wrong”
I cannot imagine that you seriously condone censorship for every occasion that someone errs. Please don’t make me doubt your sense of morality.
“Global temperatures have declined-extending the current downturn to 11 years…”
It is a disappointment to see included here the classic double cherry-pick of 1998 ‘n all that.
There’s the choice of 1998, which had the largest El Nino event in a century.
And, there followed the necessary choice of HADCRUT3 data. HADCRUT3 omits the Arctic Ocean from its calculations, because there aren’t any permanent weather stations out on the ice.
But the Arctic Ocean is ‘the fastest-warming area of the globe’.
The GISS dataset does include the Arctic Ocean, by estimating those temperatures based on the nearest shore weather station. In GISS, 2005 is slightly warmer than 1998.
For the most recent explanation of why this is actually a period of warming…not cooling…
tamino.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/embarrassing-questions/
“Steven Hill (06:04:47) :
Companies to avoid…
But a host of companies and utilities touted the bill, including Nike Inc., Starbucks Corp., Exelon Corp., Symantec Corp. and PG&E Corp. — a coalition that House Democrats said was invaluable”
Let’s not forget GE and its CEO Jeffrey Immelt and his fetish to make money off the carbon circus. I don’t think we’ll see MSNBC / NBC run with this story which is a story in itself if we had any real journalists out there…
AGWgate is now in play…
Farmers are going to have to grow less crop otherwise pay for more carbon credits. Makes me wonder how they will pay for their land and labourers.
Reminds me of a joke Ronald Reagan once told.
The commissar of the Soviet Union went out to a state collective farm and grabbed the first worker he came to. He said “How are the crops?”
The worker responded “Oh the crops have never been better! Just wonderful”
“How are the potatoes?” the commissar demanded to know.
“Oh comrade commissar, if we could put the potatoes in one pile they would reach the foot of God!”
The commissar’s face became serious, “Comrade, you should know that in the Soviet Union there is no God!”
The worker was very relieved to hear this and replied “Well that’s alright then because there are no potatoes!”
Chris Schoneveld (12:50:32) :
“Lucky him that they did, better to be censored than to be shown wrong”
I cannot imagine that you seriously condone censorship for every occasion that someone errs. Please don’t make me doubt your sense of morality.
This has nothing to do with morality. If the EPA had done their homework and dismissed Carlin’s report on its lack of merit we would hardly have this discussion here. Because it was censured instead, it attracted [well-deserved] attention, not because of its scientific merit, but because of its political merit. So, Carlin is better off [for him] censured because of politics than dismissed because of wrong science.
“Wade (05:05:19) :
Someone needs to post this on WikiLeaks.
https://secure.wikileaks.org/”
That can be you Wade.
Francis:
The areas with the poorest surface coverage are also the areas where GISS and UAH diverge the most. Coincidence or estimate?
On CNET
“E-mails indicate EPA suppressed report skeptical of global warming”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10274412-38.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody
You can send this WUWT update to the story to the author of the column at CNET to this email :
declan@well.com
Ron de Haan (04:57:33) : All those visiting WUWT know what’s really going on. For this I am extremely grateful.
I’m glad this web site exists too!
Francis (12:51:58)
If you don’t like 1998, because of the effect of the high starting point, why don’t you check out Lucia’s blog, where she compares trends with 2000 and 2001 starting points, for GISS, HADCRUT, and NOAA. All show either slightly negative or slightly positive trends, all well below the model predictions. Personally, I find Lucia’s approach to be much less adversarial than Tamino’s.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/hadley-may-anomaly-rose-0002c-from-april/
I just sent this WUWT story and link to Breitbart. It is a very simple form. Please contact Breitbart also with this story :
http://www.breitbart.com/contact.php
Leif, Pamela……
You guys are scientists that don’t have to be in a hurry, but this defence of Carlin’s flawed document has already been raised by several. One thing that seems to be wrong with much thinking by scientists in this unfamiliar world of science and policy is exemplified by your and others criticisms on this topic . The point of this whole thing is that everyone in the upper heirarchy of the EPA had already made up his/her minds anyway. You should be outraged that your government would ask for your comments before a certain date and then learn that the di was already cast at least 3 months before you sent your comments. This gentleman Carlin deserves your utmost respect. Do you think he has been handed resources to underake a detailed review and critique to evaluate all that might have a bearing on the current state of the state of climate science. No he was under seige but still had the courage to try to frame some discussion of what appeared to be a foregone conclusion and apparently at great personal risk for your beneifit. In his own words he apologizes for the poor aspects of his paper. Indeed, its easy for politicians to buffalo most scientists by giving out a few crumbs to argue about so that they don’t go after the whole loaf. Shame on you.
Leif Svalgaard (13:11:31) :
“This has nothing to do with morality. If the EPA had done their homework and dismissed Carlin’s report on its lack of merit we would hardly have this discussion here. Because it was censured instead, it attracted [well-deserved] attention, not because of its scientific merit, but because of its political merit. So, Carlin is better off [for him] censured because of politics than dismissed because of wrong science.”
Leif, perhaps it’s just my misinterpretation, but you seem to be willing to grant that the dismissal of Carlin’s report on scientific grounds is likely, because of the shortcoming you identified. I think it much more probable the Carlin is correct on certain issues and not on others. Even if some of his points are correct, he will have made a positive contribution.
Chris Schoneveld (10:35:18) :
Ron de Haan (04:57:33) :
“We were doing pretty well until Government screwed up our financial system”
“We can very well do without the “Change” introduced by a President who falsifies science and bends the rules”
You mean the previous president and government was more true to science (what a joke!) and the financial system was all nice and dandy under Bush and the banks are not the primary culprits for the financial crisis? Are you kidding? Please Ron, go to another blog to vent your reactionary political views.
Chris Schoneveld (10:35:18) :
No Chris,
You have to look further back than the Bush Administration.
The bomb under our financial system was laid under the Clinton Administration.
The Bush Administration has made several significant efforts to address the problems but was blocked by the Democrats. There are still video’s available at youtube about the hearings, so you can see for yourself. Type Bush Fanny May Freddy Mack and you get the entire story.
I certainly will not go to another blog since WUWT is my home blog.
“Steven Hill (06:04:47) :
Companies to avoid…
But a host of companies and utilities touted the bill, including Nike Inc., Starbucks Corp., Exelon Corp., Symantec Corp. and PG&E Corp. — a coalition that House Democrats said was invaluable”
Let’s not forget GE and its CEO Jeffrey Immelt and his fetish to make money off the carbon circus. I don’t think we’ll see MSNBC / NBC run with this story which is a story in itself if we had any real journalists out there…
AGWgate is now in play…
I fired Norton and Symantec today, the bill was due next week, bad timing for them. yes, GE, I sold my stock and I am very aware of Jeffrey Immelt. The whole situations reminds me of the propaganda used during WWII. lies are flying all around the place.
Gary Pearse (14:07:14) :
This gentleman Carlin deserves your utmost respect.
And he has it. He was lucky that the EPA did not dismiss his report on its lack of merit, but on political grounds, so he has a reason to denounce the EPA, which they deserve.
D Johnson (14:11:04) :
I think it much more probable the Carlin is correct on certain issues and not on others. Even if some of his points are correct, he will have made a positive contribution.
The contribution is wholly on political grounds, and just barely outweighs the harm done by poor science [even if as you say some of the points are correct].
“Don E (10:06:34) : There are continual references to the “San Francisco Examiner.” I can’t find Tom Fuller in the SF Examiner I read here in San Francisco”
It’s not the hard copy paper.
It’s the web site.
policyguy (09:15:01) :
Tom Fuller
There is also the book, “Air Con”, which is highly recommended by Bob Carter.
It is reviewed in the video :
Instead of dissecting this story and splitting hairs four ways, as I see happening in some comments, let’s get with it and inform news agencies, like Drudge, about it.
Let’s get something accomplished.
“No effort has been made to resolve any possible substantive issues; only a few of the more evident non-substantive ones have been resolved in this version.”
let me see if i understand this.
the author is acknowledging substantive errors in his document, but he expected it to be treated as though it did NOT have substantive errors, because he was in too much of a hurry… to know what he was talking about.
and the decision not to forward what the author himself freely, openly admits is an erroneous document is supposed to be some kind of scandal.
is it possible to be smart and fast? yes. every day, in every industry, competent, non-partisan people are fast and accurate in mind-boggling ways.
was carlin fast and accurate? no. he says he wasn’t because he says it’s impossible. what’s his proof? the fact that he did a bad job.
boy you know i’d love to live in a world where everything i did was rated based on what *i* thought of it. life would be easier and i wouldn’t have had to quit a really good class i was just in because i wasn’t up to it. i could have had the teacher fired! and taught the class myself!
but no one would have learned anything.
Once again the material appearing here leaves me with the strong impression that the skeptics community needs and owes itself a skeptics climate science wiki, written and edited by all interested and proven skeptics/realists. This would be an immaculately sourced resource that Carlin could have simply copied wholesale.
I am very sure that the community reading WUWT is capable of this. I am also very sure that the community reading WUWT is capable of enjoying doing this, and drawing in experts like Plimer, Christy, Lindzen, etc as appropriate. But though I can “see” this potential and need, I’m not in a strong enough position to do much more than speak up for this project. Can’t I convince enough of you here, though, to help start it?
Monckton this month has written a “Talking Points” piece which addresses many of the most common lines of AGW dismissal of climate realists, such as we all encounter all the time. This piece could be a seed-start of a more complete FAQ – but it needs the references which I am certain Monckton knows correctly and could give.
Mickey Langan (10:22:34) : Has denier ever been used in any context other than Holocaust denial? Do AGW proponents think this is even close to semantically appropriate? If it was appropriate, they could easily answer: http://thereisnoevidence.com/. But they cannot.
Behind this brilliant one-page statement by Dr David Evans (who did a U-turn after six years of promoting AGW) lies an 18-page brilliant pdf There Is No Evidence. Like Joanne Nova (short) and Ian Plimer (long) he hits the nail on the head, again and again, simply, directly, very understandably, and with the necessary science. And with the references spelled out fully, it could, again, be the seed for a general skeptics’ statement that is acceptable to all and meets all the AGW “answers to skeptics”. If uploaded in wiki format, with editing (and discussion) open to skeptics, it could be improved and edited in response to RC criticism as well as to criticism from WUWT / CA / etc – (as did Craig Loehle in his study of MWP studies) to the point where even RC denialist activities could not dent it.
Let’s get something accomplished.
President Obama has already this weekend started working on Senators to get them to pass Waxman-Markey. He is not even giving this a rest on the weekend. The science for global warming is pathetic. But that isn’t stopping anyone on that side of the issue from pushing this unbelievable tax raise through.
If anyone wants to point out flaws in science I would ask that you focus on the bad science of global warming and not on the understandable mistakes in a hastily prepared report.
The flaws in the criticism are less than the published report. The criticism of the actual report is simply pointing out more, newer data exists which contradicts the conclusions of the EPA report, as one of many examples, I refer you to the friggin’ TEMPERATURE plots.
It’s frustrating to read posts here which discuss the FLAWS in the hastily prepared criticism when it’s apparent that the criticisms are primarily valid.
I strongly disagree with Leif Svalgaard.
This was an internal report that was shot down before it could work through normal editing cycles. As far as I know, we don’t know who leaked the report and I have to assume the authors weren’t ready to make the report public.
We have to take it as an incomplete report that was assembled quickly due to the constraints imposed by the EPA. You don’t know what this report would have looked like if the authors were given more time.
In the mind of most people, the entire climate science field is riding on a single theory, AGW. If that is false, then the field will implode. I give the field 10 years. Temperatures continue to rise, then the field is ok, if they drop, then the field implodes, and funding dries up.
I am just hoping if the climate science field implodes, it limits the damage to itself and not start an anti-science movement.
Jeff Id (14:59:03) :
I’m with you on that Jeff.
But then I just want results.
“Lucy Skywalker (14:50:34) :
Once again the material appearing here leaves me with the strong impression that the skeptics community needs and owes itself a skeptics climate science wiki, written and edited by all interested and proven skeptics/realists. This would be an immaculately sourced resource that Carlin could have simply copied wholesale.
I would like to see this happen also, but,
is there a safeguard in Wiki to protect such a entry from being butchered beyond recognition by William Connolley?
Just Want Results… (15:12:42) :
“Lucy Skywalker (14:50:34) : Once again the material appearing here leaves me with the strong impression that the skeptics community needs and owes itself a skeptics climate science wiki, written and edited by all interested and proven skeptics/realists. This would be an immaculately sourced resource that Carlin could have simply copied wholesale.
I would like to see this happen also, but, is there a safeguard in Wiki to protect such a entry from being butchered beyond recognition by William Connolley?
Of course this is the most important question. AFAIK all wiki formats can be configured as to who has rights to (a) contribute to the front page articles and (b) add comments on the comments pages. One idea: (a) start with a good “seed” material like the David Evans mentioned above (b) only allow editors of a capacity known and approved in the skeptics’ community (then we need to work out how to do that) (c) allow a wider selection of people to comment (as in the Wikipedia wiki setup) and from there, if they prove they are not little Connolleys, they can be promoted to editing rights.
Karl B. (15:08:51) :
This was an internal report that was shot down before it could work through normal editing cycles.
If this was an internal report, then it reflects badly on the internal expertise of EPA.
I decided to post to the “Bubkes” by gavin thread on RealClimate today, and it appears, for some reason, gavin thought it not worthy of space on RealClimate, as it didn’t make the “moderator”‘s cut.
Of course, Alan Carlin was denigrated about having no climate science credentials, so I posted (or tried to post) the following:
” 1. Greg Goodknight Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
28 June 2009 at 5:05 PM
R. Pachauri, Chair of the IPCC:
Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering;
MS Industrial Engineering, Phd Industrial Engineering, PhD in Economics, North Carolina State University,
A. Carlin, BS Physics California Institute of Technology, PhD Econ, MIT.
North Carolina State engineering and econ, vs. CIT and MIT physics and econ. Which is the stronger science background?
It’s a shame Dr. Carlin had less than a week to crank out his draft report, but since the debate was over such things were mere formalities, and besides, it would have made his department look bad. Now the entire EPA is looking bad.”
It would have been #231…
I think that there is one very important point in this discussion. It doesn’t matter whether report has some errors in it. What important is that there is evidence that it was being suppressed. If it was evaluated on its merits and rejected on that basis EPA would have no problems whatsoever. It wasn’t and now they have.
It is not the crime itself, it’s a conspiracy to hide it that got Nixon and many, many others. That is where greatest potential in blowing this whole thing open lies. That is a chance to start real discussion regarding science. Lets hope that this will be a turning point.
I am very impressed with anyone who can assemble that much material and write the document in that short amount of time. And yes, there will be errors, typos, etc. But he captures every essential aspect for challenging CO2 being the cause of GW.
I do have one observation: In his document, on page 58 (73 of 100), in presenting data from Chapter 9 of IPCC’s Rev4 Report, the caption says the scale is “in degrees Celsius per decade”. In the IPCC report, http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch09.pdf, Page 675, the caption states the units are “C/century”.
Would someone straighten out what are the units?
Tom Fuller,
I, too, found that the comment verification step on your site couldn’t be “obeyed,” since there was no image of letters/numbers that I would need to type to verify my status as a sentient being.
So, here’s what I would have said there:
This is your most important question: “How confident can the public be in the disinterested viewpoint normally expected from scientists?”
The answer appears to be: “The public should never believe the scientists trumpeting the greenhouse gas global warming hypothesis are disinterested; and should instead presume that they are not behaving in accordance with the scientific method at all.”
No one needs to be an expert in any science to recognize behavior that is analogous to that of religious zealots.
Rely on your own eyes, ears, and knowledge of the ways of the world.
The comments you elicited from the “RC” blog readers are from people who have the same dogmatic approach to the issues as the “AGW” “scientists”.
So, don’t shut up, no matter how indignantly they attempt to discourage you. Their zealous dogmatism is enough to turn a Bible thumping, snake handling, Appalachian fundamentalist green with envy. They won’t change, and you should not.
Mr. Fuller and your talking points:
There are two sides. Not only may AGW be wrong, but if they aren’t then there is also the the fact that an increase in temperature may well have considerable benefits to mankind in terms of better harvests, etc…. and gee, if we warmed the climate up for a few centuries, we could burn less fuel!! I had a terrible fuel bill up here in Ottawa for the last couple of years. I would hate to have to pay $200 BOE because of a tax and have colder winters to go with it. I don’t have any ready links but google “benefits of a warmer climate” – there is lots out there.
Lucy Skywalker (15:33:25) :
I think I’d feel safer if any edit that someone would want to do would have to be sent to a selected few people who run the page. Then the edit, if approved, would be added in by one of those few who control the page. That way no one but those few would ever have access to it.
Just Want Results… (14:55:36) :
I want results too.
Greg Goodknight (15:43:12) :
Gavin who?
[post excerpt plus link] ~ charles the moderator
The Imposter Maurice Garoutte (10:54:16) :
Your web site may be all about fun but I am not amused.
To Tom, that bit of snark at the end of the 10:54:16 comment was an imposter, not my thoughts.
To Anthony, You have an imposter on your site using my (formerly) good name. I don’t need any help looking opinionated.
REPLY: I’ll have a look. – Anthony
Ed Long (16:01:31) :
And yes, there will be errors, typos, etc. But he captures every essential aspect for challenging CO2 being the cause of GW.
Flawed data are not essential aspects for a successful challenge of AGW unless we play as dirty as they do.
D. Johnson (13:57:44:)
I was addressing the errors of the 1998 ‘n all that argument in the report. Its wildly unsuitable in a science setting. And, there isn’t even any cooling.
Myself, I’m content with the warmest month rankings. April was fifth; May was fourth.
Tamino may have been more adversarial because he was addressing the originator of the 1998 cherry-pick: Bob Carter.
These near flat-lined temperatures are obviously short of the model predictions. Natural fluctuations?…weather is not climate?…or…
“…we should expect the observations to catch-up somewhat with models because El Nino is due…” (Lucia)
Leif Svalgaard (17:22:09) :
Flawed data and flawed logic just before the deadline does little to advance the cause. However perfect data and perfect logic after the submission deadline does absolutely nothing to advance the cause. The administrators at the EPA know that, and that is why the review period was compressed.
We don’t have to play as dirty as the “end justifies the means” crowd in the administration but we do have to play within their rules. As long as the rules are controlled by Lisa Jackson, data and logic will have little to do with how the process plays out. Please keep your powder dry for the future court cases where the process can be challenged and the scientific process can (possibility) mean something.
Squidly says:
No. The current human emissions from burning fossil fuels are in fact enough to raise CO2 by about 3ppm or so EVERY YEAR. The actual rate of increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere is about half that because the oceans and, to a lesser degree, the land biosphere, have been taking up about half of this excess. Humans are responsible for all, or essentially all, of the 100ppm increase in the past 100 years…and in fact the levels would have gone up about twice as much if these sinks did not absorb about half of what we have liberated into the atmosphere.
Francis (17:36:32) :
‘These near flat-lined temperatures are obviously short of the model predictions. Natural fluctuations?…weather is not climate?…or…
“…we should expect the observations to catch-up somewhat with models because El Nino is due…” (Lucia)’
Fine, but you left out the very significant possibity that the models are simply over-predicting the extent of warming. Isn’t this a significant omission?
Molon Labe says:
Sorry…I misformatted my last comment but the 2nd paragraph (the most indented one) are my words.
D Johnson (18:34:12) :
Francis (17:36:32) :
The models are non linear… if they are wrong at all, the errors will compound. It shows them to be less than useless at the present stage…
And something that has always irked me about the climate models and the AGW crowd is the whole weather is not climate… this statement taken on face value is true obviously, climate is a measure of the average of the weather… But, and its a big but, to model the earths climate WOULD require you too accurately predict the weather at every location around the globe at all times, because its non linear, and each event effects the next. So errors will compound. We’re not talking about a basic black body model after all. There are a lot more factors than albedo and the radiative properties of green house gases to be taken in to account.
“The current human emissions from burning fossil fuels are in fact enough to raise CO2 by about 3ppm or so EVERY YEAR.
Co2 does not control climate.
Haven’t you studied the science?
Is the document which requested comments public yet? Somehow the request for comments reached these fellows. Was it a memo sent to all employees, was it a task assigned to individual people?
Humans are responsible for all, or essentially all, of the 100ppm increase in the past 100 years
Please cite the references for this since no one can be certain of that. Where did you read this?
Did you take in to account co2 from oceans? Volcanoes? All natural sources?
You will have a precarious time proving that all the co2 increase over the last 100 years was manmade.
Just Want Results… says:
This comes from multiple lines of evidence. First of all, we have good estimates of the amount of fossil fuels burned and the amount of CO2 thus produced and thus how much CO2 levels would have gone up had all of this CO2 liberated from long-buried sources of carbon had not been so liberated. Hence, the oceans + lithosphere + biosphere must be a net sink. (There is also direct evidence of the change in pH in the oceans associated with their net uptake of CO2.)
Second of all, we have the strong circumstantial evidence from ice cores that CO2 levels have oscillated between about 180 and 300ppm over the last 750,000 years and have only shot up to their current levels of ~385ppm very recently…with the rise well-timed with the industrial revolution. (And, in fact, the more detailed measurement available since the 1950s show the CO2 levels consistently rising about half as fast as they would have had all of our emissions remained in the atmosphere. (When I say “consistently”, I mean once you average over several years; there is year-to-year variability in this associated with the ENSO oscillations / global temperatures, among other things.)
Third of all, there is the isotopic evidence that shows the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is coming from the carbon in fossil fuels.
There are other lines of evidence, including the lag between the CO2 levels in the Northern Hemisphere (where most of the fossil fuel burning occurs) and the Southern Hemisphere.
I think my use of the word “circumstantial” is poorly expressed in my last post. What I say the ice cores show is not circumstantial. What is circumstantial is to use this history to say that therefore the current rise must be due to man. However, as circumstantial arguments go, it is a strong one because it is exceeding unlikely in a statistical sense that such a rise in CO2 over, say, any century would occur coincidentally with the time that we have been significantly burning of fossil fuels for unrelated natural reasons.
And, of course, the other lines of evidence further bury this “exceedingly unlikely coincidence” hypothesis!
Joel Shore said: “…it is exceeding unlikely in a statistical sense that such a rise in CO2 over, say, any century would occur coincidentally with the time that we have been significantly burning of fossil fuels for unrelated natural reasons.”
What does that mean, exactly? I have charts showing an amazing correlation between global warming and the number of pirates, and correlation between the rise in postage rates and the rise in CO2. So some folks have their pirates or postage rate hikes charted and use them to predict the future… and you’ve got your CO2=AGW hypothesis. Same-same.
REPLY: I can correlate temperature with a worldwide increase in carbonated beverage consumption. In fact, accronding to this graph, the steady increase in CO2 during the last century may be entirely correlated to soft drinks.
http://joemaller.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/soft-drinks_vs_candy.gif
– Anthony
His main point was that EPA should not rely on IPCC AR4 because it was out of date. He cited work published since the AR4 cutoff date and indicated reasons why these studies should have been taken into acount but weren’t. If he’s “wrong” on something arising from a particular study that doesn’t mean he is “wrong” that it should have been considered (and maybe rejected).
Coverage of the passing of the bill in the house in Australia.
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/obama-against-penalties-on-polluters-20090629-d1yn.html
I think China and India won’t care a hoot about the demise of US businesses.
I can correlate temperature with a worldwide increase in carbonated beverage consumption. In fact, according to this graph, the steady increase in CO2 during the last century may be entirely correlated to soft drinks.
Oddly the chart exactly matches my consumption of candy bars. Starting about 1987 I got hooked on the mars bar and have noted significant temperature rises since then. Likely due in part to these sinful ingredients: Creamy Nougat, Heavenly Carmel, Covered in Chocolate…
http://www.mars.com/global/Global+Brands/Snackfood/Mars.htm
This has been an interesting thread. However, unless I’ve missed something, it would appear that it is violating “Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies”. I was considering remedying that by talking about Jeffrey Immelt’s ambitions, but I couldn’t decide whether the better analogy was Albert Speer or Gustav Krupp. 🙂
Deep Climate wrote:
“Patagon,
“Did you read the actual abstract? It doesn’t support your conclusion: that Greenland “is accumulating mass, rather than melting”. That’s not how global warming works. Rather, snow accumulates at the centre and the ice pack melts at the edges.
“The surface mass balance trend over the full 1958–2007 period reveals the classic pattern expected in a warming climate, with increased snowfall in the interior and enhanced runoff from the marginal ablation zone. In the period 1990–2007, total runoff increased significantly, 3% per year. The absolute increase in runoff is especially pronounced in the southeast, where several outlet glaciers have recently accelerated.”
First, the bottom line is that there won’t be rising sea levels, because the increased snowfall will offset the increased runoff. Rising sea levels are the most worrisome outcome of global warming.
Second, the temperature rise in Greenland may not be indicative of global warming, but only local warming. Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu has claimed that during the period of claimed global warming, which the IPCC’s climate models predicted would result in temperature increases throughout the arctic, the temperature of Greenland declined. It’s only recently that it’s risen. Here is a link to his paper, 52-page PDF, “The Recovery from the Little Ice Age”:
http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu/pdf/recovery_little_ice_age.pdf
Pat (20:21:52) : I think China and India won’t care a hoot about the demise of US businesses.
With China aggressively building economic infrastructure maybe their plan is world domination through economics.
How funny it is that the USA—or I should say the current President—is doing everything it can to shut down economic progress.
—-
But not to worry, America can never fall behind China….sark off now.
we have good estimates
Ok, then provide them. I had already said cite your sources.
the strong circumstantial evidence
You evidence is inaccurate.
Provide sources please.
the isotopic evidence
Provide the source of your statement here please. This is what I asked in the first place.
What I am saying is provide the data.
What is circumstantial is to use this history to say that therefore the current rise must be due to man.
This is only opinion. You have not and cannot provide evidence for that. You cannot conclude it is due to man. You remind me very much of someone I debated for months at YouTube who would constantly give his view of things and never provide data. He would talk like he was so certain about things but when put on the spot to give the science for what he said was never able to produce any. He would only go on and on about what he “believed” was true–he literally would say “I believe”, not “the data shows”.
I could more accurately say that the recent rise in co2 level (which has now ended) is due primarily to increased solar activity (which also has now ended). And I will provide evidence.
This five part YouTube series about the suns influence on the earths warming and cooling, which includes warming and cooling of ocean water that is directly related to co2 level in the atmosphere.
I am very interested. I have everything ready, and would very much appreciate it.
the amount of fossil fuels burned and the amount of CO2
The level of manmade co2 is rising faster than was predicted it would. Yet worldwide the level of co2 is falling and so are temperatures.
You hypothesis wrong. The scientific method therefore says you must discard it.
The Scientific Method-Richard Feynman :
REPLY: I can correlate temperature with a worldwide increase in carbonated beverage consumption. In fact, accronding to this graph, the steady increase in CO2 during the last century may be entirely correlated to soft drinks.
LOL!!
President Obama has already this weekend started working on Senators to get them to pass Waxman-Markey
“Obama, hoping to build momentum in the Senate after the narrow victory in the House, delayed the start of a Sunday golf game to speak to a small group of reporters in the Oval Office…”
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.e85bfc186c27a0ad174305d3021bd251.201&show_article=1&catnum=7
I’ve emailed Tom Fuller inviting him to dinner with me and moshpit.
REPLY: and I get to eat crackers while talking on a cell phone from up north. – Anthony
Reply 2: Did you want to join us? It would probably complicate scheduling if he agrees but anything for you sweetums. ~ charles the moderator aka jeez
REPLY3: sure, if the option is there. Make your plans and if I can come, I will – Anthony
Yes, check out McIntyre’s clearly written 20pg. submission to EPA. Among his other very important points regarding the EPA’s rules involved in its making of findings – peer review requirements and standards, transparency, methods and data availability, foi problems with the ipcc, etc., McIntyre notes that the very ipcc-basis for EPA’s “The Supporting Documents” might not have been actually “submitted” to the EPA in the first place, as required.
Just Want Results… (22:20:58) : The level of manmade co2 is rising faster than was predicted it would. Yet worldwide the level of co2 is falling and so are temperatures.
JWR you know I support you. Therefore I ask you to get your words correct, here. AFAIK the level of CO2 is not falling, it’s the rate of increase that’s falling. However, I seriously believe the levels should start falling some time… is anyone doing measurements comparable to MLO but independently (and not close to landmass forests / industries)?
Joel Shore (18:36:29) :
‘It is an approximate result that comes out of the models given their physics and assumptions about convective transport of water vapor, etc. And, this result has been now been well-verified by satellite observations.’
So Joel, where are all those high level, heat trapping clouds?
I found the Alan Carlin document very informative and a great summary of the arguments (in one place). Wondered about the inaccuracies but, then it’s always hard to know if someone is giving you a sales pitch. Thanks for the reminder on that.
Lucy, since the CO2 sinks are entirely modeled, and the decadel oscillations not even considered in the models, the CO2 source pump at Mauna Loa cannot be used as any kind of proxy for an accurate observed well mixed measure of atmospheric CO2 over decadel time scales. In fact, there are no “media active” monitors where CO2 is not (except maybe antarctica). I believe that the only way to know how much CO2 is in the air at any one time, and to show where it is and how it got there, without dubious modeling, it is to take actual measures of ground and atmospheric CO2 at a satellite level over time and plot it (much like oceanic temperatures at different depths are done and demonstrated). My hunch is that level, amount, and transportation of CO2 will demonstrate that industrial countries do not contribute significant amounts of anthropogenic CO2 world wide. It is more likely that natural and agricultural flora and fauna as well as oceanic sources are much more powerful sources of CO2, and not the internal combustion engine. However, the herds of animals on the Earth before agricultural sources came along may have been even greater. We are a pretty poor substitute, for example, for the vast buffalo herds that once roamed the midwest. This would lead us to propose that the Amazon jungle should be provided the opportunity to involve itself in the cap and trade scheme. And possibly King Triton.
One thing is completely clear to me from reading the public comment on the endangerment finding. There is no way that finding can survive a court challenge. The comments clearly show that the finding is illegal by both agency charter and executive orders still in force.
I wonder if there is a climate scientist out there worth his or her salt who would dare to begin a study with the null hypothesis and try every thing to prove that null hypothesis. One must therefore look for and study natural phenomena in order to then wonder at why the repeated and verified results show some unusual outliers. It seems to me that researchers these days skip that very vital first step, which is to prove that the normal distribution of the data is indeed normal. Could it be that we don’t yet know what is normal? Or rather, we refuse to consider what is normal and instead cherry pick our way to what becomes essentially a skewed distribution where all the data are outliers?
Many examples of “conclusions” based on biased, skewed, cherry picked bell curve distributions have led to tragic consequences. For example, the parents of children with autism were thought to be responsible for such a devastating illness, and in some cases, were accused of abuse where none existed, and thus lost custody of their children. In much the same way but on a much larger scale, humans are being charged with a disease that may be entirely part of the normal scheme of things (IE not caused by humans) and will experience the tragic consequences of misguided, enforced policies.
Which court?
Mark
“In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience; compare it directly with observation to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. It’s that simple statement that is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is — if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.”
-Dr. Richard Feynman, “The Character of Natural Law,” The MIT Press, 1965, p. 156.
By this simple, yet brutally effective criterion, any competent and honest scientist would necessarily reject the AGW hypothesis (note – it never did qualify as an actual scientific theory).
1. The Vostok ice core data that was originally claimed to prove that atmospheric CO2 forces warming, at a closer look revealed that increases in CO2 lag temperature increases by 600 to 1,000 years. This means that warming causes more CO2, not vice versa. The data can be explained by well-established natural mechanisms, principally by the predictable release of CO2 from the oceans as they warm (the solubility of CO2 in water decreases with increasing water temperature).
2. If increases in “greenhouse gases” do increase global temperatures, a reasonably consistent positive correlation over a long period of time should be observed. Instead, it has been observed over the last century and a half that while atmospheric CO2 levels have gradually but consistently increased, global temperatures have sometimes increased and at other times have decreased, decreasing most notably in the three decades from the early 1940’s through the early 1970’s. The most accurate global temperature data has been from NASA and NOAA satellite measurements of lower atmosphere temperatures from 1979 to the present. Over that forty year interval there have been peak fluctuations up to +0.8, -0.5 degrees Centigrade, but currently the global temperature is just 0.04 deg C over the mean temperature from Jan. 1979 to Jan. 1989. If anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions could possibly cause “runaway” global warming, some evidence to this effect would presumably be evident in the data by now, yet the measurements clearly do not support this hypothesis.
3. Whereas there is no significant correlation between greenhouse gases and global temperatures over the last century and a half, a very strong correlation has been established between solar activity and global temperature over the last four centuries, as explained in plain language in this video:
4. Three strikes and you’re out, AGW advocates.
“Climate Audit Submission to EPA”
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6354
PDF of Steve McIntyre’s submission to the EPA
Having just read Steve’s submission to EPA substantially questioning the “legality” of IPCC’s AR4 according to EPA’s own “Guidelines for Ensuring and Maximizing the Quality, Objectivity, Utility and Integrity of Information Disseminated by the Environmental Protection Agency,” and the OMB and EPA Peer Review Guidelines – I am impressed.
What is key here is that the lay person understand that EPA appears to have disregarded not only internal critical commentary (e.g. Alan Carlin) but, according to McIntyre’s submission, they overlooked their own rigorous standards of quality in accepting external (IPCC) reports.
Steve’s submission points specifically to his experience as an expert reviewer for IPCC AR4 and his attempts to access the underlying data used by papers he was reviewing. These attempts were imperiously rejected by IPCC’s Chair of Working Group I, with the statement that he was not entitled to such underlying data and materials. Yet the OMB/EPA Guidelines for Peer Review demand reviewers be given “sufficient background information, including access to key studies, data and models, to perform their role as peer reviewers.”
All this points to the likelihood that EPA’s Endangerment finding is fraught with legal and scientific weakness. How could it not be? To the lay person the Environmental Protection Agency has declared the bubbles in your soda pop a “pollutant.” Step back for one short moment and contemplate the abject ridiculae of such a finding!
That such a finding is in fact the basis for massive taxation of industrial nations without benefit of representation – is the hidden agenda. Thanks Steve for laying the groundwork for a plausible legal challenge to EPA’s endangerment finding and the subsequent Waxman Markey tax bill.
Gerry (09:40:40) :
3. Whereas there is no significant correlation between greenhouse gases and global temperatures over the last century and a half, a very strong correlation has been established between solar activity and global temperature over the last four centuries
The video is as slick as “An Inconvenient Truth (AIT)” and as wrong in its details. One of the most irritating errors is the notion that the Sun’s magnetic field ‘keeps the cosmic rays at bay’. This is incorrect, the Sun modulates the cosmic ray flux by a few percent, so the video should have shown 100 cosmic rays bombarding the Earth, then putting in the Sun and shown that 97 cosmic rays still bombarding the Earth. One could go over the rest and find many more errors, not unlike when a British Court found eleven errors in AIT, but we have gone over this ground often enough. What is a bit sad is that we apparently choose to combat AGW with ‘science’ just as bad. I take it that for the solar enthusiasts, that ‘science’ is settled, too.
I believe the video linked by Gerry (09:40:40) was a snippet from The Great Global Warming Swindle, which was wrong on a number of details but nonetheless named a number of scientists who have done good research.
Anyone watching GGWS had plenty of information to start googling the published research and find the likes of Friis-Christensen, Svensmark, Shaviv, Veizer and others free of the editorializing of folks who studied communications rather than physics or chemistry.
Similarly, the video snippet posted by Just Want Results… (22:03:06) appears to be the documentary Klimamysteriet (The Cloud Mystery), which keeps getting taken down from servers due to copyright issues. It seems there will be a release of a newer cut than this one from Danish TV this coming September:
http://klimamysteriet.dk/
Leif Svalgaard (10:29:53) :
Gerry (09:40:40) :
The video is as slick as “An Inconvenient Truth (AIT)” and as wrong in its details. One of the most irritating errors is the notion that the Sun’s magnetic field ‘keeps the cosmic rays at bay’. This is incorrect, the Sun modulates the cosmic ray flux by a few percent, so the video should have shown 100 cosmic rays bombarding the Earth, then putting in the Sun and shown that 97 cosmic rays still bombarding the Earth. One could go over the rest and find many more errors, not unlike when a British Court found eleven errors in AIT, but we have gone over this ground often enough. What is a bit sad is that we apparently choose to combat AGW with ’science’ just as bad. I take it that for the solar enthusiasts, that ’science’ is settled, too.
Reply from Gerry:
Leif,
Yes, the video is slick, but not fearmongering-slick, as is “An Inconvenient Truth.” I happen to like the video, even though I have nothing to do with its creation. We scientists are rightly concerned about getting the details right. Unfortunately, while we are unearthing the devil in the details, legislators pass laws that don’t make any sense.
True, the Sun’s magnetic field does not directly modulate galactic cosmic radiation appreciably. It does, as you well know, modulate the solar wind, which is currently in a relatively collapsed state. Also, those few highly energetic GCRs produce very impressive amounts of secondary radiation (nucleons and muons), as they enter Earth’s atmospere. These are the actual cloud-seeding particles in Henrik Svensmark’s hypothesis. Here is Shir Naviv’s succinct explanation of the successful SKY experiment:
http://www.sciencebits.com/SkyResults.
A CERN experiment is in the works, but not in time to stop any foolish climate legislation from possibly being voted in by the Senate.
Of course the science is not settled! But IMHO we can already rule out the notion that CO2 emissions are causing, or will in the next century cause, runaway global warming. I’ve looked at the alleged evidence behind this claim and none of the details, when examined closely, hold up scientifically. But if you know of any that you think do, I will certainly re-examine them.
However, as circumstantial arguments go, it is a strong one because it is exceeding unlikely in a statistical sense that such a rise in CO2 over, say, any century would occur coincidentally with the time that we have been significantly burning of fossil fuels for unrelated natural reasons.
I agree that the ~3% rise in CO2 contributed by man has caused a ~30% rise in CO2 levels over the past several decades. About half is absorbed by other sinks, the other half accumulates. Even this will level off depending on the persistence factor (currently in huge dispute) and the fact that CO2 input will not increase forever.
Yet CO2 rise and actual temperature rise correlate rather poorly. Multidecadal oceanic-atmospheric cycles correlate rather well.
Gerry (12:56:22) :
But IMHO we can already rule out the notion that CO2 emissions are causing, or will in the next century cause, runaway global warming. I’ve looked at the alleged evidence behind this claim and none of the details, when examined closely, hold up scientifically. But if you know of any that you think do, I will certainly re-examine them.
The way one looks at the evidence of a solar/climate connection should not be biased by one’s opinion on the CO2 issue. Sadly, that happens a lot. Since it is not CO2 [so goes the mantra] it must be the Sun [‘what else can it be’ brays the enthusiasts].
evanmjones (13:00:19) :
Yet CO2 rise and actual temperature rise correlate rather poorly. Multidecadal oceanic-atmospheric cycles correlate rather well.
The more you average the higher a correlation gets, average all the way down to two data points [1st half and 2nd half of the data] and the correlation coefficient has magnitude 1. As you look at longer and longer averaging windows the statistical significance decreases and eventually becomes zero.
I seem to be in the habit of spelling people’s names wrong! I thought I had typed “Nir Shaviv” in my last post, but apparently got a little dyslexic again and must not have reread this part before sending. My abject apologies, Nir!
This is certainly not the way to befriend fellow scientists.
evanmjones, we don’t have observed total atmospheric CO2 oscillations yet. We have partly modeled and partly local measurements, and this over less than one oceanic oscillation in many areas. Much of the land-based modeled flora calculations we have on CO2 absorption is extrapolated from enclosed greenhouse experiments, not in situ measurements. Oceanic CO2 levels are another thing all together with proxies as well as direct measures here and there, yet only one calculation is used for the whole oceanic shebang as if the oceans were a static stable entity. I would not bet my lunch money on current CO2 estimates.
Joel Shore (19:45:06) :
“Third of all, there is the isotopic evidence that shows the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is coming from the carbon in fossil fuels.”
My understanding is that the isotopic data proves that the increase in co2 is organic in origin.. Not necessarily proof of it coming from fossil fuels as such. That would be an assumption, that seems to be portrayed as a fact.
End of the day we contribute approximately 3% of annual emissions of co2, and thus 3% of the rise could be directly attributed to fossil fuels talking literally.
The thing is, as youve rightly pointed out, co2 levels are the highest theyve been in 750,000 years… but temperatures have been higher at every other interglacial than the present temperatures… and even warmer earlier than present climate at earlier times during this interglacial… in spite of considerably lower atmospheric co2 levels…
And for that matter their have been vastly more dramatic shifts in climate(100x present) previously during Holocene period during times of low atmospheric co2… Which certainly points a finger at other mechanisms having a greater influence on climate than atmospheric co2.
Leif, I agree about averaging in that the data noise is as important (if not more?) as the average in weather pattern variation science. This desire to average out the bumps in order to find a tiny signal is not well thought out. Why? Because I don’t believe the weather data noise is random. It is responding to drivers that the resultant averaged signal cannot distinguish between.
This reminds me of trying to get elicited auditory brainstem response (ABR) signals (which are deep and synaptically regular) to appear out of cortical random noise (which are nearer the surface, and in quiet, can be quite random). The electrodes placed on roughened clean skin on the head pick up a cacophony of brainwave signals. What we are looking for is a signal we are driving. The first experiment found only random noise with no evidence of the clicking noise going through the ear phones. But now we know why. The cortical impulses which are overwhelming stronger than the brainstem signals, must be made to be random, which is why ABR signals are best collected under a very nondistracting and quiet ambient atmosphere. In fact, it is made easier when the patient is asleep. Why do we need cortical brainwaves to be random? So that we can average them out (to near zero) of the total signals we are getting from the surface of the skin on the head so that we can see a signal we are actually driving. We know how the auditory nerve works. Any elicited response from that nerve using clicks or pips will show electrical synaptic regularity though at least wave 5, and in some folks with quiet brains, all the way to wave 7. Any non-elicited random response detected by the electrodes on the skin can be averaged out to zero because there is nothing eliciting it in any regular way. In quiet, these non-elicited brainwaves go up as much as they go down because nothing is driving them with regularity. With ABR signals, we know how loud the signals are, what frequency band they are, and how fast we are delivering them. We can then calculate where we would see the synaptic signals from the onset of the brainwaves we are picking up through the skin. And sure enough, after “washing” the data from the electrodes in a mathematical averaging bath, so to speak, we are left with a 5 to 7 waves that cannot be averaged out nearly as easily and are where we predicted they would be.
I apply this to climate trend analysis in noisy weather data. The mistake made is the assumption that out of weather noise, we can find the signal of an elicited driver, such as emitted CO2. But we cannot take weather noise out of the total signal because it is also elicited. It is not random noise. Therefore the rise, fall, or stable averaged statistic is nothing more than the weather. You cannot say anything else about it because you cannot average out weather pattern variation drivers any more or less than you could average out a Michael Jackson tune from brainwaves so that you could find the response to clicks or pips. Yet, climate modelers do exactly that. They assume that the non-random magical trend line is something else than the assumed random weather noise. They are wrong on both assumptions. They jump to a conclusion about the trend being something else than statistically averaged weather noise, and they jump to a conclusion that weather noise is random. It is therefore inappropriate, based on the weather temperature data, to use the statistical linear data as well as the modeled data to make these conclusions. The proof must be made elsewhere in order for AGW to be more than just hypothesized.
Search “Joe Barton, EPA suppression.”
Rep. Joe Barton, Texas is asking the questions…
The scientific purists here should bear in mind that the quality or accuracy of Dr. Carlin’s comments is irrelevant. The burden of proof is solely with the EPA to demonstrate that all such comments have been fairly considered.
Gerry (12:56:22) :
It is true the science is not settled. I have not heard that Henrik Svensmark or Nir Shaviv say that it is. But the aerosols are produced. I am glad that the CERN CLOUD work is being done. It will help define what Svensmark has found.
All new discoveries run in to resistance. After Einstein published General Relativity there were scientists who held conferences to denounce it. One scientists literally said Einstein should be killed for giving such an odd concept to the public.
p.s., The documentary, The Cloud Mystery, is wonderful. It is unjust to compare it to An Inconvenient Truth.
———————————–
CERN CLOUD :
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/spotlight/SpotlightCloud-en.html
Lucy Skywalker (01:32:25) :
Thanks for the friendly words Lucy. 🙂
Gerry (12:56:22) : A CERN experiment is in the works, but not in time to stop any foolish climate legislation from possibly being voted in by the Senate.
Enough science has already been presented to the Senate to convince them about this issue. If CERN CLOUD was already completed and its case laid before the Senate I don’t think they would listen to it either.
It looks like it’s going to come down to which Democratic Senators are worried about re-election in November 2010 and not about the science on if Waxman-Markey passes or not.
1. Not a “study”, but a critique based on the conclusions of others.
2. Carlin is part of “Global Cooling” cadre.
3. His conclusions on p. 64 – 66 render one incredulous.
It appears that Carlin may have a problem with attribution:
“EPA’s Alan Carlin channels Pat Michaels and the Friends of Science”
June 28, 2009
http://deepclimate.org/2009/06/28/epas-alan-carlin-channels-pat-michaels-and-the-friends-of-science/
“It was reassigning you or losing my job, and I didn’t want to lose my job,” Carlin said, paraphrasing what he claimed were McGartland’s comments to him. “My inference (was) that he was receiving some sort of higher-level pressure.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/29/gop-senator-calls-inquiry-supressed-climate-change-report/
Greg Goodknight (12:37:10) : …The Great Global Warming Swindle, which was wrong on a number of details…
I was unaware of these. Would you enumerate them?
Pamela Gray (09:00:00) :
I wonder if there is a climate scientist out there worth his or her salt who would dare to begin a study with the null hypothesis and try every thing to prove that null hypothesis.
I think a good start would probably be the uncorrected world temperature series
DaveE.
evanmjones (15:38:13) :
Sen. James Inhofe… told FOX News, saying he’s ordered an investigation. “We’re going to expose it.”
This is good news! This is the first flash of hope I have that Waxman-Markey can be defeated in Senate.
evan,
last Friday I was pretty pessimistic about what was going to happen when it was voted on in Senate. Thanks for posting this!!
p.s Anthony is fortunate to have the final report exclusive!!
Good onya Anthony!!
Luggo (15:37:21) : 2. Carlin is part of “Global Cooling” cadre.
Provide evidence for this talking point please.
Luggo (15:37:21) :
If you are looking for flaws have you spent any time analyzing An Inconvenient Truth? You can find a supply of them there.
Have you investigated it?
Luggo (15:37:21) : It appears that Carlin may have a problem with attribution:
Back to that old standby “may” again.
Luggo (15:37:21) : 1. Not a “study”, but a critique based on the conclusions of others.
I think you are referring to An Inconvenient Truth, aren’t you?
Here’s some more hope.
Harry Reid supposedly said he is not even going to introduce this bill to the Senate.
If that’s true, he must not have the votes for passage, much less cloture.
Luggo (15:37:21) : “may”
Where would global warming be without words like ‘may’, ‘might’, ‘could’, ‘if’, etc.?
Luggo (15:37:21) : 1. Not a “study”, but a critique based on the conclusions of others.
I’m not sure what your point would be.
I would recommend that you don’t take up occupation of lawyer.
Luggo (15:37:21) : the Friends of Science
Yes, a wonderful group of people. The are concerned with science.
Tell me Luggo, who are you associated with? Are you a friend of politicians? A friend of environmental activism? Did I miss anyone?
What really ticks me off is that elected officials, by law in some cases, cannot respond to emails sent by non-constituents. Yet these same elected officials can receive lobby groups from some 3rd world country and even give them @#%& snacks and a drink. What kind of twisted logic is that? It seems that lobby groups have greater access to elected officials than a single individual from the state of Oregon wanting to email a representative from a neighboring district in the state of Oregon who’s decisions have the potential to affect everyone from that state and everyone from every other state in the US. But if your a lobbyist, here, have a cookie and we’ll talk.
Pamela: I wouldn’t bet my lunch money on it, either.
But it is not unreasonable to stipulate that a 3%/yr. CO2 increase will partially accumulate up to but not past the level of persistence, resulting in a 30% overall accumulated increase.
New data findings (on levels and/or persistence) may falsify that at any point, of course.
My greater point is, “So what?” CO2 is probably a considerable benefit to biomass and demonstrably has a minimal effect on temperature trends.
I think a good start would probably be the uncorrected world temperature series
Yes.
I would prefer a reliable TOBS adjustment, but I won’t trust TOBS adjustment until they start reading the actual figures off the actual forms.
Luggo (15:37:21) : 3. His conclusions on p. 64 – 66 render one incredulous.
Maybe it is you, and those like you, who are rendered thus. You could switch the word ‘one’ for the word ‘Luggo’, i.e. , “His conclusions on p. 64 – 66 render Luggo incredulous.”
evanmjones (16:20:02) : My greater point is, “So what?”
I agree and say too, so what.
Leif Svalgaard (13:18:42) :
The way one looks at the evidence of a solar/climate connection should not be biased by one’s opinion on the CO2 issue. Sadly, that happens a lot. Since it is not CO2 [so goes the mantra] it must be the Sun [‘what else can it be’ brays the enthusiasts].
Gerry’s reply:
Let’s be clear about this. I’ve never said “Since it is not CO2 it must be the Sun.” But I do feel that those scientists who believe there is more evidence of the Sun being a climate driver than is CO2 are correct. I also understand that solar activity and galactic cosmic rays are not the only factors underlying cloud formation. One doesn’t have to be a meteorologist to realize that, but we certainly can all learn a great deal about climate from meteorologists, and I have a lot more respect for their knowledge than I do for the scientific knowledge of politicians.
Luggo (15:37:21) : 1. Not a “study”
You need to look things over more closely Luggo—no where is it claimed to be a study.
You’re shooting blanks dude.
Luggo (15:37:21) : 1. Not a “study”
You’re correct. It is not a study.
But it certainly was withheld! And it is a wonderful bit of news that it is now being investigated and revealed to the public!
As you look at longer and longer averaging windows the statistical significance decreases and eventually becomes zero.
Perhaps. But the cycles actually produce cooler/warmer SSTs and SATs. So there’s an actual measurable effect in evidence, not mere correlation.
Also, in the 1976 – 2001 interval we had the six most significant oceanic-atmospheric warm/cool cycles (PDO, SO, NAO, AMO, AO, AAO) go warm one after another.
That is an amazing lineup and given the variable lengths of these cycles, it is probably not repeated in pre-20th century iterations, so there will be less correlation.
Oh, and one more thing. Carlin never said that any of his points were proof-positive. He merely said that they deserve further consideration. If even one of them (and I read the whole draft) is correct or partially correct, it throws the whole EPA conclusion into a tizzy.
Luggo (15:37:21) :
I went to your link. All I can say is it’s so poorly written that it discredits itself.
Let’s not forget that the central tenet of the Carlin paper was simply to posit that the IPCC report was dated and that there was new information that cast doubt on many of those conclusions. Carlin cited a number of studies regarding feedbacks, hurricanes, etc. that were all more recent than the cut-off date of the IPCC, not to mention the temperature record of a statistically-level trend since 2000 or so.
EPA squelched this report, not because they were worried that they couldn’t refute it, but because they didn’t want to deal with the threshold matter of evaluating the scientific basis for CO2-driven global warming at all. From EPA’s persesctive, the IPCC had already made the necessary conclusions and all EPA thought they had to do was rubber stamp them. That’s why they thought a 1-week comment period was fine, and why Carlin’s report took them by surprise. You can’t weigh the IPCC’s conclusions against subsequently-discovered information without delving into the scientific basis that formed the basis for the IPCC conclusions in the first instance. EPA wanted to avoid making its own informed decision on the science at all costs, because that would have taken too much time.
Carlin’s report may well have included some inaccuracies. I remember when I read it that I had problems with the portion where he brought up correlation coefficients between temperature and presumed drivers like CO2, PDO, etc. The problem with this analysis was that the correlation between temperatures and PDO were so strong that the negative phase of the PDO would mask any correlation to CO2 during that phase. If you look at the graphs, you see that when PDO is positive, temperatures really go up, while in the negative phase they go down, but not by as sharp a rate as the uptick in the positive phase, leading to an overall upward trend. Trying to correlate CO2 rise to a temperature rise during the negative phase of the PDO is foolishness, even if CO2 does have a positive influence on temperatures.
On the other hand, however, what made the correlation to PDO so damned persuasive was the correlation to both increasing and decreasing temperatures. This eliminated any doubts I may have had about the temperature changes just happening to coincide with the PDO. The shifts happened in tandem like clockwork. CO2, on the other hand, could be entirely a coincidental correlation. CO2 is rising no matter what, and if the temperature just happens to be going up at the same time, e.g. as a recovery from the little ice age, then it’s a false positive.
Anyway, back to the original point, Carlin’s paper was impressive from the standpoint that it persuasively collated a lot of information, in the brief time he was permitted, that highlighted the many weaknesses in the IPCC report. Irrespective of whether you agree with everything in Carlin’s paper, I don’t think that any objective person could read the whole thing and think that there aren’t things that EPA needs to mull over before it just adopts the IPCC conclusions, in toto, without its own scientific review.
This latter point is the REAL ISSUE. Setting aside cap-and-trade on the assumption that if it passes any endangerment finding under the Clean Air Act gets mooted, the question is not whether EPA is supressing one side of a scientific inquiry, the issue is the threshold one of whether this country is going to hold its own official scientific inquiry at all. EPA sure doesn’t want one. The IPCC report has a number of procedural defects that won’t fly here in the US – look at Steve McIntyre’s commemts to the EPA regarding those. If EPA has to evaluate first hand the science behind global warming, then there really will be an opportunity to look at the data behind temperature reconstructions, model assumptions, etc.
But if your a lobbyist, here, have a cookie and we’ll talk.
You’ll have to make it a Dove bar.
Luggo (15:37:21) : 1. Not a “study”
It was never required to be a study to carry weight in it’s intended purpose.
Again Luggo, I wouldn’t recommend you become a lawyer.
Our local country radio station has a Morning Show that is live. The one doing news (Rob Lowery) picked up on the censored EPA-Carlin story and reported on it and the fact that he thought AGW was a scam. I expect he will get some negative feedback, although on a “country station” maybe not too much. I sent the following note.
kxle@elltel.net
Morning Show – Rob Lowery
While in the car this morning (Monday) I heard your comments regarding being a climate warming skeptic. You will probably get a few negative comments because of this. I, however, am in agreement and wrote a letter to the Ellensburg newspaper earlier this year saying why. Thanks for expressing your view on KXLE.
The following two sites are useful places for information:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/ Mostly not too technical, some silliness.
Owner/moderator is a degreed weather meteorologist.
http://www.climateaudit.org/ Often technical as the owner/moderator is a data analyst specialist. Both sarcastic and humorous at times.
The Morning Show is very entertaining – thanks for that too!
John F. Hultquist
Rural Kittitas County
Gerry (16:22:55) :
But I do feel that those scientists who believe there is more evidence of the Sun being a climate driver than is CO2 are correct.
There are many that believe it is mixture of the two, rather than an either/or thing. Throw in volcanoes and internal cycles of a complex system [ignoring external long-period orbital changes] and you have enough variables to fit just about anything. The important question is what the relative proportions of these different drivers are. And that is unknown. Unfortunately, Joe Sixpack and his elected officials can only comprehend one of the many causes [has a Hrair-limit of 1], so we have these meaningless vitriolic debates about whether it is this or that, rather than about how much of this, and of that, and that, and that, and …
Just Want Results… (14:45:53) :
let’s get with it and inform news agencies, like Drudge, about it.
And Drudge has it…
Leif Svalgaard (18:57:54) :
I just saw, thanks!
Landmark. Fox News reports Inhofe’s call:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/29/gop-senator-calls-inquiry-supressed-climate-change-report/
Ain’t MSM but significant NTL.
Luggo is correct. Carlin cribbed the premise and key sections of his report from PR disinformation spinmeister Pat Michaels’ World Climate Report, but appropriated it as his own.
See the latest:
http://deepclimate.org/2009/06/30/suppressed-carlin-report-based-on-pat-michaels-attack-on-epa/
Also:
http://deepclimate.org/2009/06/28/epas-alan-carlin-channels-pat-michaels-and-the-friends-of-science/
Deep Climate (19:28:30) :
I wasnt aware Carlin was laying claim to being the sole author of this document? When did this happen. As i understood it, it was a collection of points that bring into question the accuracy of using the IPCC data… Now if my memory serves me correct, on that IPCC assessment, there was a claim they where 90% confident in their climate predictions… Which is obviously an absurd proclamation when its pertaining too the modeling of a chaotic system. The simple fact that the models dont match the climate to date is totally conclusive proof that this assertion is wrong! Climate models ARE non linear. So this on its own should certainly open the door for discussion on this subject.
P.S. there are plenty o points i personally dont agree with in Carlins document. But thats not really the issue. Its a question of censorship of opposing views based on preconceived ideology.
[snip, policy – if you want to accuse people of plagiarism, put your name to it, 24 hour timeout for deepclimate]
The madness continues…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/crunch-time-eat-a-chip-reduce-co2-20090629-d2ix.html
The “P” word mentioned. I wonder how they will label fizzy pop? Most people I see while out shopping don’t check lables, unless it Gucci etc.
Deep Climate (19:28:30) :
I did visit your web site. You write for the National Inquirer? That is the style of writing I saw there.
Deep Climate (19:28:30) :
Do you have a problem with the report being withheld? Or is that part ok with you?
Also, I don’t see any significance in what you claim. Your point is irrelevant.
Deep Climate (19:28:30) :
Gavin who?
Deep Climate (20:31:16) : .…Carlin was completely unqualified to perform the review.
Following your line of reasoning Al Gore was ‘completely unqualified’ to make An Inconvenient Truth.
You would, of course, agree. 😉
Deep Climate (20:31:16) : That’s in addition to the facts that the entire report is utter and complete nonsense
I have noticed that environmental activists find science to be ‘utter and complete nonsense’.
Deep Climate (20:31:16) : It seems you are unclear on the concept of plagiarism.
Have you been in contact with these personalities you claim were ‘plagiarized’? Have they indeed confirmed your suspicions?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Deep Climate (20:31:16) :
Yes, your web site is deep something.
[REPLY – It was an internal report, not for publication, and, besides, it was fully footnoted. He neither claimed nor implied that he did any of the original research, himself. ~ Evan]
Evan,
You are sadly mistaken. None of the World Climate Report material that Carlin cut and pasted was attributed or footnoted. In fact, Carlin carefully removed all references to World Climate Report, as I explained in my first post.
evanmjones (17:29:30) : You’ll have to make it a Dove bar.
Lindt Lindor Truffles wouldn’t be available, would they?
evan,
“Republicans in the U.S. Congress, who warn that climate change legislation is the “biggest job-killing bill” ever, see a bright side: Some people who lose their jobs could be Democrat lawmakers who vote for the bill.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/8583541
Deep Climate (20:50:45) :
Your point is irrelevant. You should stop while you are ahead.
“He neither claimed nor implied that he did any of the original research, himself.”
“You are sadly mistaken.”
Please provide the evidence that he claimed it was his own original ideas.
Those inquiring minds want to see it.
I’ve been thinking about the following:
“The EPA official, Al McGartland, said in an e-mail message to a staff researcher on March 17: ‘The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward…and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision.’ ”
Why would Al McGartland say it that way? When he says your comments do not help the *LEGAL* case, isn’t he saying something like …. “we have to posture ourselves for the courts…they’ll be reviewing our process, you know?” It doesn’t seem like a good thing for bosses at the EPA to be passing down the line. Especially if a judge eventually sees it. It just seems like an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the court. It also probably opens the door up to all kinds of additional questions.
It’s one thing to say “we all have to pull together as an agency to create a policy that will work.” It’s another thing to add… “we have to pretend so the legal case looks good.”
Dr. Carlin was just interviewed on FoxNews (June 30, 8:48 am). He’s not a very eloquent interviewee, but the anchors did a good job of getting his story across.
Outstanding work Anthony and Charles!!!
Looks like it’s finally starting to mushroom… I’m on vacation this week, and while listening to the radio, Rush had it, Sean had it on radio and TV, it was raised on the floor of the house, Fox News just interviewed Alan Carlin, and the new google news result: 63 stories with “alan carlin EPA”. Glenn Beck spent some time on it last night, he won’t be giving up on this story anytime soon… He broke in several times: Michael Jackson Update: Still Dead.
Sen Inhofe is calling for an investigation.
Why no one is presenting the evidence and trying to educate the public I’m not sure, but this might open the door to some real debate. We’ll see.
Anthony Watts:
Before downloading, please read the paragraph above from Alan Carlin to get some perspective. Certainly, this document is not perfect. How could it be? The EPA gave an internal comment period of 1 week on the most far reaching “finding” the agency has ever dealt with. This short window was unprecedented. So ask yourself, could you produce a paper like this, covering many disciplines outside of your own, that is “perfect” on 5 working days notice?
The EPA’s procedure here is the culprit.
1 week? The fact that the EPA was going to have a ruling on endangerment has been known for two years since the Supreme Court ruling in 2007. Then there’s the fact that Carlin’s most recent iteration “in part builds on three previous reports (Carlin, 2007), Carlin (2007a), and Carlin (2008)”, a comment included in the original posted draft and removed from the final draft to be replaced by the “severe time constraints” disclaimer.
The claim of “1 week” is an unsupportable crutch.
In my opinion ,Carlin is quite correct in his statements asking for better clarification and review of the science behind global warming . Here are just some of the recent and new findings by NOAA just back in 2008. The IPCC report does seem to be obsolete when compared to these findings . The findings below are a partial list of the NOAA key findings .These findings are also in conflict with the recent Whitehouse & NOAA climate report where they claim 50 years of global warming but the findings below show that the warmest years only existed 1997-2006 and virtually all of the warming since 1951 occurred after 1970. So there appears to be some conflicting information between the various government, NOAA and EPA scientific points of view .
• Seven of the warmest ten years for annual surface temperatures since 1951 have occurred in the last Decade (1997 to 2006).
• Virtually all of the warming since 1951 has occurred after 1970.
• More than half of the warming is likely the result of anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing of climatechange.
• Changes in ocean temperatures likely explain a substantial fraction of the anthropogenic warming of North America.
• The spatial variations in surface temperature change over North America are unlikely to be the result of anthropogenic forcing alone.
• The spatial variations in surface temperature change over North America are very likely influenced by variations in global sea surface temperatures through the effects of the latter on atmospheric circulation,
especially during winter.
http://downloads.climatescience.gov/sap/sap1-3/sap1-3-final-all.pdf
Alan Carlin was interviewed this morning on Fox and Friends. A man taking a risk, I would think what with 38 years in a job and whatever benefits that brings. As he said, as of last night he still had a job but the work place is tense.
I did record so if not available can upload somewhere.
[Phil I’ve told you before, I will not have you accuse people who put their name to public documents of “plagarism” or anything else when you yourself won’t use your own name or your academic institution. Grow a spine or don’t post – Anthony Watts]
NOTE to Phil. and All posters on WUWT
If you wish to accuse people of things like plagiarism, then you need to put your name on it.
That goes for everybody. I don’t mind opinions under handles. But, if you are going to make an accusation like plagarism, that requires stepping up. Otherwise, such posts will be deleted. – Anthony
24 hour timeout for Phil.
Mick J: Here is a story about his appearance on Fox News. It wonders whether leftists will treat this whistleblower differently than other whistleblowers.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Suppressed-EPA-scientist-breaks-silence-speaks-on-Fox-News-49513762.html
This will be of interest: Alan Carlin appeared on Fox & Friends this morning. I posted the video here…
http://algorelied.com/?p=2377
I would read this report with a large grain of salt.
Alan Carlin is an economist at EPA, not a climate scientist. This is his first technical analysis of the current state of climate science, and he admits it has not be reviewed by others more familiar with the field.
Anyone can select literature that supports an initial prejudice, but that doesn’t accurately reflect the balance of the evidence.
He may be well-intentioned, but he may also be poorly informed.
[REPLY: Al Gore is not a climate scientist, yet he gets to testify before congress on the issue. Carlin writes a report several notches above Al Gore’s slide show in sophistication, yet his view is squashed at the starting gate. Gore has no science degree. Carlin is a senior analyst at the EPA, and Carlin has an undergraduate degree in physics from CalTech and a PhD in economics from MIT. If his entire background was economics, you might have a point. As it stands, you don’t. – Anthony]
“If his entire background was economics, you might have a point.”
The Czech President claims that as an economist he is trained in statistics and trends and he is quite happy that there is no provable influence of man of the climate.
The idea that only climate scientists understand climate science is immensely childish, though I concede that some people have to find excuses for their ignorance.
Real scientists, like Lief, while top of their field, show immense patience with the genuinely curious and can put complex ideas across in simple (ish) images.
Actually many advances have been made by scientists who didn’t seem to be scientists at the time, for instance a patent clerk had quite a good year in 1905.
Anthony, I have to say I find your policy stand regarding anonymous plagiarism accusations a bit disingenuous. After all, this is the same blog that took a considerable amount of pride in facilitating communications with an anonymous source within the EPA who was accusing the agency of suppression.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/25/source-inside-epa-confirms-claims-of-science-being-ignored-by-top-epa-management/
Regarding Deep Climate, he accurately points out that sections of Carlin’s report are lifted almost word-for-word from contrarian blog postings without attribution, with the pronouns in Carlin’s report indicating his personal ownership of the work. The evidence is openly there for anyone to examine. Whether or not DC associates his name with the discovery is immaterial, as you concluded with your anonymous EPA source. How those actions reflect on Carlin is for the reader to decide.
Michael Searcy (14:07:37) :
It is not plagiarism.
————————————————-
plagiarism–noun—1. the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/plagiarism
———————————————-
(n) plagiarism (a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work)
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=plagiarism
———————————————
Plagiarism…”use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism
———————————————
(v) plagiarize…(take without referencing from someone else’s writing or speech; of intellectual property)
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=plagiarize
———————————————
plagiarizing :
transitive verb : to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own : use (another’s production) without crediting the source intransitive verb : to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plagiarizing
———————————————–
plagiarism–“the deliberate or reckless representation of another’s words, thoughts, or ideas as one’s own without attribution in connection with submission of academic work, whether graded or otherwise.”
http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/plagiarism.html
————————————————
Carlin does not claim that it is his original ideas.
Can this be the end of the plagiarism accusations now please?
Class dismissed.
You guys are pathetic. Is this all you have? This is the only thing you can use to distract people away from the heart of this huge news story?
It’s all over the news now—except CNN for obvious reasons.
Klockarman (12:38:12) :
EXCELLENT VIDEO Klockarman!!
————————————————-
Anthony, would you consider doing a post on this video?
————————————————-
http://algorelied.com/?p=2377
Hopeful regards,
Gene JWT
I don’t want to be remissed and not add my real name to my request for a post on the Carbingate videos,
Best regards,
Gene Nemetz
aka, Just Want Results…
formerly,
Just Want Truth… (I’ve got the truth, now I want results)
“Michael Searcy (14:07:37) :
Regarding Deep Climate, he accurately points out that sections of Carlin’s report are lifted almost word-for-word from contrarian blog postings without attribution, with the pronouns in Carlin’s report indicating his personal ownership of the work.”
One problem is that Deep Climate jumps the gun and assumes that this proves plagarism. It does not. For one thing, if you look at the web site allegedly plagarized from, there is no attribution as to who wrote the article. We know that Carlin prepared and conducted seminars at EPA that were attended by climate scientists/reasearchers. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if, when presenting one of these seminars, Michaels or some of his colleagues were in attendance. It’s possible that the web article was based on Carlin’s or his co-author’s own work, i.e. it simply could have been a derivative of presentation material obtained from one of Carlin’s seminars and posted anonymously with his permission.
This is a perfect example of a tendency by AGW advocates to fail to think through all possible scenarios, and jump to a conclusion that they want to reach. I personally have no idea who was the original author of the seemingly identical material at issue here. Neither does Deepclimate. But without first identifying the name of the orignal author of the material, any allegation of plagarism is premature.
Just Want Results… (15:34:52) :
Carlin does not claim that it is his original ideas.
Statements such as the following say otherwise…
“In discussing their results I find some very interesting language, to say the least….Again, I tend to say this moulin link to drowning the World Trade Center Memorial is nonsense, and the empirical evidence is overwhelmingly in my favor.”
kurt (20:28:07) :
it simply could have been a derivative of presentation material obtained from one of Carlin’s seminars and posted anonymously with his permission
Possible? Sure. Likely? Not so much. Especially considering a year prior in 2007, “Carlin argues that the collapse of the major ice sheets is one of the most serious threats we face.”
So, could Carlin have been the source of the WCR posting? I guess anything is possible.
Of course, all of this sidesteps the fact that Carlin’s report relies on blog postings.
Of course, your postings sidestep one point (and the only point that is of any importance) –
The fact of suppression of this report.
The report could be complete junk. It could be total gibberish. All EPA needed to do is to say ” We looked at it and it is wrong”. Instead they suppressed it.
That is a critical mistake.
And no amount of you trying to dig dirt on the author of this report makes it go away.
You have to admit that point before we can intelligently discuss anything else.
“Michael Searcy (05:53:56) :
“Possible? Sure. Likely? Not so much.”
I don’t think we have enough information about Carlin’s activities within EPA or the source of posted content on Michael’s web page to assess the likelihood, one way or another. I certainly wouldn’t put money on the outcome that Carlin was the original source of the material on Michael’s site, but on the other hand, I wouldn’t be shocked if turned out that he was. The link you provide, if anything, makes it more plausible that Carlin was the original source given that we know that his material is publicly disseminated and that he drew from prior material of his when preparing his comments.
My point is that these kinds of possibilities should be considered before leveling a charge of plagarism at someone.
it is juvenile to continue to charge carbongate with plagiarism.
How about focusing on the science for once? That is the heart of the issue. And that is one thing you have talked about.
Care to talk about the science?
Statements such as the following say otherwise…
“In discussing their results I find some very interesting language, to say the least….Again, I tend to say this moulin link to drowning the World Trade Center Memorial is nonsense, and the empirical evidence is overwhelmingly in my favor.”
Where exactly do you see Alan Carlin saying these are his original ideas? I don’t see it anywhere. I think those ‘inquiring minds’ do.
This is silly!! But don’t let me stop you from looking silly.
Of course, all of this sidesteps the fact that Carlin’s report relies on blog postings.
I see. Is that the second wave of attempting to discredit the report–saying it’s all just some baseless blog drivel?
Have you noticed the world is in a cooling trend? Manmade co2 continues to rise rapidly. But the earth is cooling—are you ok with that?
Michael Searcy (05:53:56) :
BTW, thanks for putting ‘blog postings’ in bolds. It belies your insecurities.
I’m wondering if environmental activists were looking forward to a lot of money coming their way from Waxman-Markey and Carbongate is raining on their parade.
So they grasp at ‘plagiarism’ straws.
could someone tell me the difference between these?
http://eva.nersc.no/vhost/arctic-roos.org/doc/observations/images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.jpg
why are we below the anomoly in this one, but below it in other? etc.
@Mark:
Oh fer gawd’s sake. Who the hell cares about your wack job Haliburton conspiracy theories. BTW: MICHAEL MOORE owned stock in Halliburton, as well.
Wars have always been a financial boon for investors. If you want to bitch about profiteering, start with WWI. You have a lot of catching up to do.
Excellent report!! I knew there had to be scientists who dispute so called ‘Global Warming’. We are closer to ‘Global Cooling’. Thank you for sending this report for me to read – all 100 pages of it. A job well done. Thank you Alan Carlin.
From an actual scientific source, “Science Magazine”
IPCC concludes:
“Human activities … are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents … that absorb or scatter radiant energy. … [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations” [p. 21 in (4)].
IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members’ expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: “Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise” [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: “The IPCC’s conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue” [p. 3 in (5)].
Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).
Do you know the sentence “Et pourtant elle tourne”.
In the past Gallilée said that the Earth is not fix in the center and turn over the Sun. All the sientist at these time said “It is not true”. It’s quite the same thing today. It is not because the scientists said that the human is at the origin of warming that they are true.