While the GAO issues a report today saying that the US Historical Climatological Monitoring Network has real tangible problems (as I have been saying for years) the Inspector General just released a report this week saying that EPA rushed their CO2 endangerment finding, skipping annoying steps like doing proper review. The lone man holding up his hand at the EPA saying “wait a minute” was Alan Carlin, who was excoriated for doing so.
From Powerline Blog:
Here’s a refresher: in 2009, when the EPA announced its “endangerment” finding to justify its planned regulation of greenhouse gases under 
the Clean Air Act, Alan Carlin, a 35-year veteran EPA employee who ran the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics, produced a 98-page critique of the climate science the EPA used in its finding. Carlin’s report concluded, “We believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by the EPA.”
You can guess what happened next. The Obama Administration, the one supposedly dedicated to transparency and “restoring science” in public policy making, squashed Carlin’s report and told him to cease and desist any further analysis on climate change issues. Carlin’s supervisor (a political appointee) emailed his: “I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research, etc.” Shortly after this episode Carlin left EPA. (By the way, Carlin was the chairman of the Los Angeles chapter of the Sierra Club in California at one time, and helped with the Sierra Club’s campaign to stop two dam projects back in the 1960s. In other words, he’s no right-wing ideologue, as the smears of the climate campaigners would have you think.)
This story is relevant again this week not simply for the obvious hypocrisy and double standard (insert the old joke about liberals and double-standards here), but because the issue of the EPA’s climate science has resurfaced in the form of an EPA inspector general’s report that essentially says that Carlin was right about the EPA’s shoddy scientific review. Here’s the New York Times account from Wednesday:
In a report with wide-reaching political implications, U.S. EPA’s inspector general has found that the scientific assessment backing U.S. EPA’s finding that greenhouse gases are dangerous did not go through sufficient peer review for a document of its importance. . .
According to the IG report, EPA failed to follow the Office of Management and Budget’s peer review procedures for a “highly influential scientific assessment,” which is defined as an assessment that could have an impact of more than $500 million in one year and is “novel, controversial, or precedent setting.”
In particular, the document was reviewed by a 12-member panel that included an EPA employee, violating rules on neutrality. EPA also did not make the review results public, as required, or certify whether it complied with internal or OMB requirements.
In a statement, IG Arthur Elkins Jr. emphasized that his office “did not test the validity of the scientific or technical information used to support the endangerment finding.”
“While it may be debatable what impact, if any, this had on EPA’s finding, it is clear that EPA did not follow all required steps for a highly influential scientific assessment,” he said.
Roger Pielke Jr. observes how the climate campaigners are all circling the wagons, saying “move along, nothing to see here,” and noting that “I’d speculate that these observers would have had different reactions had this report been requested by Henry Waxman in 2006 about the last administration’s EPA. . . during the Bush Administration concern about processes to ensure scientific integrity were all the rage. At that time it was generally understood that process matters, not simply because it helps to improve the quality of scientific assessments, but also because it helps to establish their legitimacy in the political process. One sneers at process at some risk.”
More at Powerline Blog
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I’m proud to say that Alan used materials from WUWT in his report, and that he has been vindicated for standing up to the sloppy rush job.
Thank you Mr. Carlin, for having integrity where others did not.
UPDATE: Climatologist Pat Michaels sums up the whole affair pretty well at Forbes: The EPA’s Endangerment Finding Is Very Endangered
The EPA has no interest in science or truth only the power grab that following their own agenda will give. I see no change, unfortunately.
Well done Allan for your brave attempt to get the giant to follow the rules that it had ignored. Won’t change anything unless the new President is science savvy.
Seems Carlin had a point about the diligence of the peer-review, however this was a minor part of his critique. Most of his ‘report’ claimed that the science itself was invalid or unsupported. This was, and remains, pure balony.
Check out his 7 ‘failings’ – every last one is wrong. http://www.carlineconomics.com/files/pdf/end_comments_7b1.pdf
Sorry, but I don’t call this a vindication.
This article is a complete fabrication of the actual situation. Typical of WUWT.
It’s comprehensively refuted here for those with the open mind to read.
http://www.ericpooley.com/2011/09/29/how-inhofe-turns-balloon-animals-into-news/
It is all based onludicrous statement by Senator Inhofe questioning the EPA which has been shown to be an outrageous misrepresentation and waste of public money
Mark Harrigan,
Typically, your rant and your “comprehensive” link don’t link to the actual document at hand.
It was linked by Anthony in this post and I repeat it here.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=e0584e33-d3da-4fba-b95a-e93548105e09
Your “comprehensive” link refers only to the first sentence. Educated people generally like to view things in context.
mark harrigan says:
October 1, 2011 at 3:36 am
This article is a complete fabrication of the actual situation. Typical of WUWT
Eric Pooley is senior vice president for strategy and communications at the Environmental Defense Fund.
So this guy has no axe to grind in this debate?. You clown!! His mind is as open as ENRON.
What is it with you trolls. You talk of open mindedness without the first clue as to what the word means. Unbelieveable.
What is ludicrous is to declare CO2 and H2O as pollutants.
Senator Inhofe should be applauded and commended for his continued stand against this absurdity.
The EPA has been shown to support an outrageous misrepresentation and it is a waste of public money.
At an industry meeting in 2009, I asked EPA’s Gina McCarthy upon what body of science did EPA make it’s endangerment finding. Her response was “…IPCC, the pre-eminent scientific body on the question of climate change”. The room erupted into laughter.
@ur momisugly Phillip Clarke and mark harrigan
Very inflammatory statements being made by both of you. I would challenge both of you to take Carlin’s 7 statements and justify your positions. Directly for Clarke since you think nothing Carlin stated is true. And indirectly for Harrigan since you think that Inhofe is being political and is not making the challenge based on science. See below and comment.
Carlin’s 7 statements
1. Lack of observed upper tropospheric heating in the tropics (see Section 2.9 for a detailed discussion).
2. Lack of observed constant humidity levels, a very important assumption of all the IPCC models, as CO2 levels have risen (see Section 1.7).
3. The most reliable sets of global temperature data we have, using satellite microwave sounding units, show no appreciable temperature increases during the critical period 1978-1997, just when the surface station data show a pronounced rise (see Section 2.4). Satellite data after 1998 is also inconsistent with the GHG/CO2/AGW hypothesis
4. The models used by the IPCC do not take into account or show the most important ocean oscillations which clearly do affect global temperatures, namely, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, and the ENSO (Section 2.4). Leaving out any major potential causes for global warming from the analysis results in the likely misattribution of the effects of these oscillations to the GHGs/CO2 and hence is likely to overstate their importance as a cause for climate change.
5. The models and the IPCC ignored the possibility of indirect solar variability (Section 2.5), which if important would again be likely to have the effect of overstating the importance of GHGs/CO2.
6. The models and the IPCC ignored the possibility that there may be other significant natural effects on global temperatures that we do not yet understand (Section 2.4). This possibility invalidates their statements that one must assume anthropogenic sources in order to duplicate the temperature record. The 1998 spike in global temperatures is very difficult to explain in any other way (see Section 2.4).
7. Surface global temperature data may have been hopelessly corrupted by the urban heat island effect and other problems which may explain some portion of the warming that would otherwise be attributed to GHGs/CO2. In fact, the Draft TSD refers almost exclusively in Section 5 to surface rather than satellite data.
My position is that he has a very good case in EVERY one of these statements.
Bernie
Mark
That’s not a refutation, it’s a string of assertions joined together with unsubstantiated abuse of “deniers”. With an open mind, all one needs to do is read the actual report, not the spin put on it by one side or the other.
@ur momisugly John M.
Ok, it’s simple. The claim (touted by Inhofe and Carlin and mindlessly repated in the media thanks to Inhofe’s media manipulation) is that the EPA IG’s report is “proof” that the science on which the EPA has based its endangerment finding is flawed.
In fact the IG’s report says nothing of the sort and makes it abundantly clear that EPA’s endangement finding met all the statutory requirements.
Here’s the relevant statement from the EPA http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/d0cf6618525a9efb85257359003fb69d/64a85204a88e46a785257919006fce32!OpenDocument
The IG makes clear “We made no determination regarding the impact that EPA’s information quality control systems may have had on the scientific information used to support the finding. We did not test the validity of the scientific or technical information used to support the endangerment finding, nor did we evaluate the merit of EPA’s conclusions or analyses.”
In other words this about PROCEDURAL matters – not about the science at all.
Simple and clear enough for you now? Took me only a few minutes to google it.
What were you saying about educated people and context??
By the way – as far as I cant tell the link from WUWT to the actual IG statement is broken (curiously?) but the link to Inhofes misrepresentation is clear.
Here’s the link to the IG’s statement http://www.epa.gov/oig/reports/2011/IG_Statement_Greenhouse_Gases_Endangerment_Report.pdf
The bottom line is that the IG felt the EPA should have subjected their technical support document (TSD) to more rigourous peer review. The OMB actually disagrees and “believes that EPA reasonably interpreted the OMB bulletin in concluding that the TSD did not meet the bulletin’s definition of a highly influential scientific assessment.”
In other words it’s a procedural bunfight. NOT a finding or even a debate about the science.
REPLY: “as far as I cant tell the link from WUWT to the actual IG statement is broken (curiously?)”
Sorry case of “cant tell FAIL” …works fine. Probably PEBKAC – Anthony
When the Carlin Report came out, I had been newly assigned by my company to come up to speed on carbon capture technology. It was like drinking through a firehose. I was also totally unaware of the skeptical blogosphere and just knew something about the “science” did not smell quite right and the “concensus” disturbed me as a student of science. The Carlin Report was a solid anchor that allowed me to understand more about the subject. And the fact that he worked for the EPA also made an impression on me.
Not long after that, I became a frequent visitor to WUWT and other sites. Thanks, Anthony, for your efforts and thanks to Mr. (Dr.?) Carlin, as well.
Late last night, I started reading the IG’s report. I had a wonderful sound sleep, and woke up really rested this morning. I just wonder what type of academic background the investigators have. How could they write this much about that? After a while, it seemed they were just going in circles. Then my eyeballs started going in circles. That’s when I fell asleep.
mark harrigan says: October 1, 2011 at 3:36 am
[…]
It is all based onludicrous statement by Senator Inhofe questioning the EPA which has been shown to be an outrageous misrepresentation and waste of public money
You of course are referring to the EPA as to the “outrageous misrepresentation and waste of public money”.
Well done Bernie, focus on the science, not the spin.
Steve Keohane says:
October 1, 2011 at 9:50 am
“You of course are referring to the EPA as to the “outrageous misrepresentation and waste of public money”.
—
Actually, he was referring to the wasteful government funding of climate “science” (which, as I pointed out earlier, has seen MASSIVE growth in recent years. No greed there…nope…).
@Mark
It IS a debate about science (at least on this blog) but it is also a debate about economics and good science in order that we make good economic decisions. Of course the government organizations are concerned about procedures and so am I, but ultimately I am not interested in a lone political discussion without some solid science backing it up especially if that political discussion turns into a really stupid economic decision. I tend to agree more with John Who and Steve Keohane than you when it comes to “outrageous misrepresentation and waste of public money”. Policy coming out of the EPA lately is sloppy and flawed.
Bernie
I’m happy and gratified to see this, and for Alan’s vindication. The IG finding, which I have yet to read, seems to track one of the comments I had on the ANPRM for Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions Under the Clean Air Act. Extract follows
[Emphasis added.]
A few years ago, the EPA was forced to recant it’s rules on micro-particles when it was shown in court that they hadn’t followed their own procedures in implementing the rules.
Perhaps there is a chance that the CO2 rules can be stopped as well.
Well, I guess we heard it here first. “Minor procedural issues” are not something the EPA needs to dirty its little hands over.
And the New York Times is merely a mouthpiece for Sen. Inhofe.
Amazing what you learn from people who get all their information from one or two sentences out of an entire legal opinion and from one-page screeds at low-traffic blogs.
This IG finding will have zero impact on the EPA’s proposed CO2 regulations. The only thing that will stop their eventual implementation (after the 2012 election of course) will be either the election of a Republican president and Republican majorities in both houses of congress, or Anthony Kennedy waking up the day the Supreme Court decides the litigation contesting the finding, and deciding to put the law before his deeply felt desire to be liked by the New York Times.
Here ya go, something for the excitable trolls Telford, Clarke, and Harrigan to get upset about all over again.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmichaels/2011/09/30/the-epas-endangerment-finding-is-very-endangered/
Lawsuits are coming, it will be tied up for a couple of years. In the meantime, the science might change to be less alarmist while all that is happening. And, we can see 2012 from our house.
“Could have a potential impact of more than $500 million in any year on either the public or private sector…”
Could have a potential…? I think that Thursday between 2 and 3 a.m. the impact from their CAGW regulations will be greater than $500M.
That rule must be real old. I think they will want to update that to say $500 trillion instead.
That should give them the latitude they need to conduct their jobs at a basic level.
Bernie … here you go
“1. Lack of observed upper tropospheric heating in the tropics (see Section 2.9 for a detailed discussion).”
This is not a fingerprint of greenhouse gas warming – the subject of the EPA finding, and while there are considerable data issues with long term tropical troposherical data, the confidence intervals of the models and observations intersect.
See, for example http://www.skepticalscience.com/tropospheric-hot-spot-advanced.htm
“2. Lack of observed constant humidity levels, a very important assumption of all the IPCC models, as CO2 levels have risen (see Section 1.7).”
“Figure 2b shows the change in relative humidity, DRH, defined as RH in DJF07 minus RH in DJF08. The data show large regions of both positive and negative DRH. Variations in DRH tend to cancel, however, and Figure 3b shows basically no change in global-average RH between
800 and 300 hPa” Dessler et al 2008
“3. The most reliable sets of global temperature data we have, using satellite microwave sounding units, show no appreciable temperature increases during the critical period 1978-1997, just when the surface station data show a pronounced rise (see Section 2.4). Satellite data after 1998 is also inconsistent with the GHG/CO2/AGW hypothesis”
Pure cherry-picking, and wrong – why is the 19 years from 1978 ‘critical’? The period is too short to get a significant signal from natural variability. Consider all the data and the surface and satellite measurements are consistent with each other and exactly in line with model projections of greenhouse gas warming.
“4. The models used by the IPCC do not take into account or show the most important ocean oscillations which clearly do affect global temperatures, namely, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, and the ENSO (Section 2.4). Leaving out any major potential causes for global warming from the analysis results in the likely misattribution of the effects of these oscillations to the GHGs/CO2 and hence is likely to overstate their importance as a cause for climate change.”
The oscillations would be an output from a climate model and certainly the ENSO is simulated to a greater or lesser extent in some models. These oscillations merely move heat around the system, and cannot account for the long term average warming of the whole surface.
“The models and the IPCC ignored the possibility of indirect solar variability (Section 2.5), which if important would again be likely to have the effect of overstating the importance of GHGs/CO2.”
The models and the IPCC can only consider influences for which there is some evidence. You might as well say the IPCC and models ignored the possible climatic influence of leprechauns.
“The models and the IPCC ignored the possibility that there may be other significant natural effects on global temperatures that we do not yet understand (Section 2.4). This possibility invalidates their statements that one must assume anthropogenic sources in order to duplicate the temperature record. The 1998 spike in global temperatures is very difficult to explain in any other way (see Section 2.4).”
More leprechauns. The 1998 spike may have had something to do with the most powerful El Nino of the century, no? Besides I thought the ‘critical period’ was 1978-1997 – coveniently excluding the massive spike….
“Surface global temperature data may have been hopelessly corrupted by the urban heat island effect and other problems which may explain some portion of the warming that would otherwise be attributed to GHGs/CO2. ”
Except we now know, thanks to Fall et al, that station siting issues have no significant impact on the long term average, in the US at least.
See also http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/bubkes/
Indur M. Goklany
Your summary is exactly the way to apply critical assessment when jobs and public expenditure will be at stake. To do otherwise would be a waste of taxpayers money, and of course failure to do the job one is paid to do! What happened to pride and Integrity in ones work ?.
Thanks for that Indur- I guess that Telford, Clarke, and Harrigan are either spinning an interest agenda or protecting the indefensible.