Guest post by David Middleton
EPA chief Scott Pruitt, speaking on CNBC Thursday morning, made one of his strongest statements yet rejecting the science of human-caused climate change.
“I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,” Pruitt said on the program “Squawk Box.”
“But we don’t know that yet,” he continued. “We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.”
Pruitt’s statements fly in the face of the international scientific consensus on climate change — which has concluded that it is “extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” They also contradict the very website of the agency that Pruitt heads.
The EPA’s “Climate Change” website states the following:
Recent climate changes, however, cannot be explained by natural causes alone. Research indicates that natural causes do not explain most observed warming, especially warming since the mid-20thcentury. Rather, it is extremely likely that human activities have been the dominant cause of that warming.
Pruitt spoke with CNBC even as there is growing anticipation that the Trump administration will soon move to begin a rollback of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, an EPA policy capping emissions from electricity generating stations, such as coal-fired power plants.
[…]
“On Climate Change, Pruitt Contradicts EPA’s Own Website”… No schist, Sherlock.
Mr. Pruitt has been on the job for about three weeks. To my knowledge, he is the only Trump appointee in the EPA so far. Why is Chris Mooney shocked that Mr. Pruitt hasn’t had time to revise every bit of nonsense on EPA websites? He’s the EPA Administrator. He has a job to do, running the EPA. Erasing 8 years of propaganda from EPA websites is probably not at the top of his “to do” list. But, thanks to English major and former AGU board member, Chris Mooney, Mr. Pruitt knows which bit of propaganda the IT folks should tackle first.
Why would The Washington Post even think this is a newsworthy item? If I didn’t think The Washington Post was a reputable newspaper, I would call this “fake news.” As usual, any and all, sarcasm was purely intentional.
Great picture of Pruitt. I assume he’s showing how high it’s piled. He’s under-estimating, but it’s a good start!
No. I think he could be saying: ‘I don’t care how big you are, I can take you with one arm tied behind my back’.
The EPA and other government websites regularly make the claim that CO2 warms the atmosphere by the same process that warms real greenhouses. Thus the name Greenhouse Gas and Greenhouse Effect.
However, real greenhouses warm not by radiation, but by limiting convection. Thus, the EPA and other government institutions are contradicting themselves, because the CO2 greenhouse effect is believed to be due to radiation.
So which is it? Does CO2 warm the atmosphere by the same process as real greenhouses or not? And if the process is different, why is CO2 called a greenhouse gas.
This is a very fundamental question. If CO2 does not warm by limiting convection, then why is it called a greenhouse gas? Why is “radiation” called a greenhouse effect, when greenhouses do not warm as a result of radiation. Rather they warm as a result of limiting convection.
How can it be science, when the same term is used for two different effects with two different causes? How does it advance scientific understanding to use confusing and imprecise labels. Should we now call typhoid and influenza by the same name, because they both cause a fever in the patient?
” If CO2 does not warm by limiting convection, then why is it called a greenhouse gas?” HUH! Keep you day job, Ferd.
John, please clarify.
“The EPA and other government websites regularly make the claim that CO2 warms the atmosphere by the same process that warms real greenhouses.”
I don’t think they do. Got an example of that?
Crickets.
Ferd asks a very good question. A greenhouse warms by retarding convective cooling. The greenhouse effect warms by retarding radiative cooling.
They are two different processes. So, why is it called the greenhouse effect? Probably because no one could think of a better name for it and the processes are analogous. They both act by retarding something, as does the EPA, which works by retarding economic growth.
Now, the EPA does imply that it does work like a bathtub…
This is far more problematic than the greenhouse misnomer. The carbon cycle and human impact on it, isn’t even remotely analogous to a bathtub.
David, I can understand pointing out problems with the bathtub analogy, but it seems to be basically a reasonable one, and more than remotely connected to the carbon in the atmoshphere. There are sources (the faucet) and sinks (the drain). If one equals the other the level stays the same. If we increase the input, the level rises.
It even works at a slightly more sophisticated level because as the level rises, more water is lost to the drain. Just as if we increase CO2 in the atmosphere more CO2 is soaked by the sinks.
If we include the water from the drain collecting in a swimming pool and a pump from this to the faucet we have a better model as it demonstrates the cycle.
Fossil fuel burning is then represented by a small additional input to the bathtub from a hose perhaps.
This is a model to aid understanding, not to reproduce all the subtleties of the real system.
Seaice,
I really do appreciate your sincerity.
David,it is nice to be appreciated.
The bathtub analogy seams fine except for the statement
“As global temperatures increase, size of “drain” decreases.”
That is total bull crap and they know it.
It’s an abysmal analogy. The CO2 isn’t flowing into a system, like water from a faucet into a tub. It’s coming out of and then going back into the Earth.
http://www.biochar.org/joomla/images/stories/steiner-globalcarboncycle-correct.jpg
It’s currently coming out of the system slightly faster than it was before humans discovered fire.
No example even? Not one?
https://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/g.html
http://climatekids.nasa.gov/greenhouse-effect/
In defense of the EPA, they have corrected their previous error…
https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/kids/basics/today/greenhouse-effect.html
So far, so good.
The picture above looks gneiss.
Hence, no schist… 😉
It’s not gneiss to say such things. I am sure that this comments section will contain quartz of the by the time its is over.
The snowflakes of the world will have a difficult time cummingtonite over Pruitt’s announcement.
Can I take that for granite?
I think the actual German would be keine Scheisse
I was speaking Geologeese… Not German.
Sedimentary, my dear Watson!
Holmes apparently used elementary German.
As opposed to sedimentary geology?
“no schist” spoken like a true geologist David. But that rock Sherlock Homes is examining looks very gneiss
Hence, no schist… Must’ve drilled through a reverse fault, we just hit a repeat section.
Wow kamizedave! No one will beat that mineralogical gem!!
Your humour has hit rock bottom.
…taken with a grain of basalt…
It reminds me of that famous van Gogh painting Stauro Lite
+1
Best geo-pun of the group!
I thought StauroLite was a rock group…
Must be christian rock…
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/37/48/a9/3748a9face02269c43fbfe710e7157b7.jpg
Image credit Pinterest
That was goooood!
Yep, 3rd image over. Well, rock on.
You guys have this all wrong… Schist is another term for shale.
In fact what’s going on in the oil and gas patch a “Schist revolution” 2.0.
That is having really schisty consequences for the Russians, Saudis, Iranians and other assorted oil dictators, and my guess is they’re all pondering the realities of Watson’s comment “No schist, Sherlock” and Holmes’ first rejoinder ” frack that”, followed by “drill, boy, drill…”
Schist is shale that has been FUBAR’ed.
Good one, Mike Bromley!
Glad to see gneiss rock and schist friends having a crack on some boulder-line news! Keep in mind – it is not Pruitt’s Fault do sort out the rift in EPA – let alone the global drift!
I am still missing the volcanologists comments – the ones that have a Magma cum Laude – but are not rock solid. The main reason is they love ash holes and would comment on the Washinton post article! Geologist – rock on and don’t loose your luster!
Gneiss observation, David.
Only just idling in first gear – just wait until we get up to speed. It’s going to be very interesting !
So the first thing he should be (I hope) empowered to do is take down the fictional nonsense on the EPA’s web site. NOW IS THE TIME for all Climate Realists to GET THE WORD OUT that the CAGW hypothesis has failed, that there is no need at all to solve a “problem” called “carbon.” (CO2 to the sci-literate).
Gawd, I hate having to give the WashPo even ONE click. Time to bleach my keyboard . . . ackk, thppt!
“Recent climate changes, however, cannot be explained by natural causes alone.”
Yes, they can. Read further:
Climates change by definition, naturally.
Man, that was easy.
Andrew
Funny you should mention that…
According the the model depicted on the EPA website, Earth would have continued to cool after the 1970’s, which gave us this…
?w=720
There are very few publications poorer than Seance Noise for the quality of their seance. I threw the complete AAAS complex under the bus a long time ago. They were only capable of straight line extrapolating the recent past without regards to science.
So nothing changed till 1970 or so? All the warming came about only when CO2 after 1970 kicked in but CO2 before did nothing? I thought that warming started in the 1880’s or so.
Technically, the warming started around 1600. The model posted on the EPA website indicates that the anthropogenic effect became noticeable around 1960. Prior to about 1960, atmospheric CO2 was rising faster than cumulative anthropogenic emissions.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/07/a-brief-history-of-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-record-breaking/
This is why it is virtually impossible to segregate the anthropogenic and natural drivers of climate change.
“According the the model depicted on the EPA website”
And you believed them?
I believe that’s what the model depicts. The inputs on the other hand are GIGO.
Priceless that they are called “observations” as many times as the raw data has been adjusted.
My $4 reading glasses adjust my observations all the time… 😉
According to the EPA chart, there were some periods where human factors caused the temperature to fall. How could that be?
David Middleton:
Yet, equally impossible to fathom is the fact that ‘natural’ CO2 is supposed to lag T, yet ‘man-made’ CO2 is supposed to drive T – if the denizens of Mini-Truth are to be believed.
It does actually work that way, to the minimal extent that “man-made” CO2 affects temperature.
CAGW theory will one day be the poster boy lesson of “watch out for the confounding factor” and will hang in every science lab.
“Watch out for the confounding factor” makes a good bumper sticker too!
(Actually Pam, President Trump need this when dealing with press coverage)
With Michael Mann’s face on the toilet paper in the bathroom!
Oh, but I’m sure a surge of marches, placards, selfies and hash-tagged twitter-storms will convince the public that climate whatevers must be the greatest threat to the future of the planet. /sarc
You mean the new franchised march industry? It’s running low on energy and attention span.
But long on BS.
The BBC are fake-newsing this article on the grounds that Pruitt discounts *CO2* as contributory to global warming when he was clearly referring to MAN-MADE CO2.
The UK Guardian is doing the same. They portray him attacking their ‘god’ CO2.
Dave_G:
It is worse than you say.
On its main news programs the BBC is saying,
That is clearly wrong because there is no scientific evidence – none, zilch, nada – which shows CO2 is causing ANY global warming. There is only an hypothesis that CO2 may be causing global warming and models constructed to show what effects of that hypothesis may be.
There is no reason to wonder why the BBC is not citing any of the “scientific evidence” it is proclaiming: they cannot cite it, nobody can because it does not exist.
Meanwhile, the BBC is NOT reporting the petition from Lindzen et al..
Richard
richardscourtney
It is will known that CO2 absorbs an emits radiation. More the challenge is to determine what happens to water vapor, clouds, precipitation etc. Roy Spencer observes that about a 3% change in cloud cover could explain the warming – but we can’t measure clouds that accurately!
David L. Hagen:
Thankyou for supporting my post. You make two points and I expand on both.
Firstly, the Earth has been warming from the Little Ice Age since ~1600AD. This warming has been intermittent. Emissions from human activities (i.e. anthropogenic emissions) of greenhouse gases (GHG notably CO2) may have enhanced the warming from after ~1960 AD but if they have then the enhancement is too small for it to be discernible. This has been noted and commented by many people, most recently by Richard Lindzen in his letter to President Trump where he writes
In this circumstance the scientific null hypothesis applies; i.e. nothing is observed to be different from previously observed natural activity so it must be assumed that natural activity is responsible for what is observed.
Secondly, as you say, recent climate changes could be attributed to changes in cloud cover: clouds reflect sun light back to space so it does not reach the Earth’s surface.
Good records of cloud cover are very short because cloud cover is measured by satellites that were not launched until the mid-1980s. But it appears that cloudiness decreased markedly between the mid-1980s and late-1990s
(ref. Pinker, R. T., B. Zhang, and E. G. Dutton (2005), Do satellites detect trends in surface solar radiation?, Science, 308(5723), 850– 854.)
Over that short recent period of less than two decades, the Earth’s reflectivity decreased to the extent that if there were a constant solar irradiance then the reduced cloudiness provided an extra surface warming of 5 to 10 W/sq m. This is a lot of warming. It is between two and four times the entire warming estimated to have been caused by the build-up of human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that since the industrial revolution, the build-up of human-caused greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has had a warming effect of only 2.4 W/sq m.
Richard
It’s not Pruitt’s fault !
(Geo-pun intended) 😀
Shear folly …
That didn’t settle well.
Are you talking about a Pruitt fault line running through the greenie “schist”…?
to me it isn’t earth shaking news.
Or better yet …. it’s not CO2’s fault 😜
“Pruitt’s statements fly in the face of the international scientific opinion predetermined by our political masters (errr… “consensus”) on climate change …
There’s too much taking the mica going on here…
Well, none of this should be taken for granite.
My sediments exactly.
Every time he gets interviewed or is at a Congressional hearing, he is going to get asked the question “Do you deny that humans are having an impact on the climate?”
The questioner will wait with baited breath for the “gasp” moment: when he says he “doesn’t believe that climate change is proven.” Gasp, blasphemy, the not-to-be-spoken words, I can’t believe you just said that, you are anti-science then, what about the 97% of global warming scientists who get funding to study global warming.
I guess they’ll get over it at some point.
Your envisioned “gasp” moment will happen when he is brazen enough to speak, out loud, that which ” …should not be named.” genuinus coelum naturalia”
Nah! Its quartzite………………………….. as any fule knos
How come Curley Howard never got to use that?
My hero… Curly Howard + geology puns… Throw in John Belushi, and you have my college education… 😉
Mods, please, the bad puns…Do Something!!
[The mods wood never fund a bad pun they did not lichen.
Ask not for whom the mods troll, lest they troll for yew. .mod]
You sound like VIzzini.
“No more Rhyming now, I mean it!!!”
“Anybody want a Peanut?”
May Saints preserve us.
…At least during the home games!
So, Pop Piasa – Are you situated in NOLA, by chance?
I’m a little upriver of St. Louie, but I love going to N’Orleans for the music and ambience (partytown).
Will the flakes at EPA be metamorphosed now or become crustal plate relics?
…or perhaps impact ejecta?
fossils.
“Pruitt’s statements fly in the face of the international scientific consensus on climate change”
Lol. That’s a consensus of international global-government pushing leftists.
It’s a consensus of ideology, NOT of science.
Indeed, the science is on the skeptics side. See MIT’s Richard Lindzen’s letter to the president sent today: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/09/lindzen-responds-to-the-mit-letter-objecting-to-his-petition-to-trump-to-withdraw-from-the-unfcc/
No, sigh, it’s actually the truth.
Which truth, you miserable troll.
tony mcleod:
I don’t know what you mean by “truth” so let me provide you with some indisputable facts.
1.
There is no evidence that human activities are having any discernible effect on global climate: no evidence, none, zilch, nada.
2.
In the 1990s Ben Santer pretended to have found some such evidence
(ref. Santer B, et al. “A Search For Human Influences On The Thermal Structure Of The Atmosphere”, Nature Vol.382, 4 July 1996, p.39-46)
3.
but that was soon revealed to be an artifact of Santer’s improper data selection
(ref. Michaels P & Knappenberger P Nature Vol.384, 12 Dec 1996
4.
and the apparent and temporary effect Santer had selected was a result of observed volcanic and ENSO effects
(ref. Weber GR Nature Vol.384, 12 Dec 1996).
5.
Since then, research conducted world-wide at a cost of more than $3 billion per year has searched for evidence of a discernible human influence on global climate.
6.
The decades-long search for evidence of a discernible human influence on global climate has failed to find any.
7.
A finding of a discernible human influence on global climate would be rewarded by at least two Nobel Prizes (Physics and Peace).
8.
If Mr Pruiit were to constrain EPA expenditure on the search for a discernible human influence on global climate then that would reduce the waste of money that is the cost of the search.
Please say if you want any additional pertinent truth.
Richard
“tony mcleod March 9, 2017 at 3:15 pm”
Here is your chance to prove the 8 points of the post by Richard at 1:18 am wrong. It’s less than 18, so give it a go this time!
Probably best not to feed the trolls hunter.
Richard the truth I refer to is the fact “Pruitt’s statements fly in the face of the international scientific consensus on climate change”.
That statement is actually true, whether you agree with Pruitt or with a consensus of international scientests.
Perhaps there is plenty of evidence, it’s just that you don’t find it as compelling as I do. The earth has warmed by maybe a degree in a hundred years, if it keeps warming and warming quicker over the next say five or ten years, maybe that would change your mind. If it turns around and cools then maybe I’ll change my mind.
tony mcleod:
The consensus of scientists is demonstrated by – among other petitions – the petition of Lindzen et al. to President Trump. It is the exact opposite of what you assert.
Scientists study evidence. There is no evidence that human activities are having any discernible effect on global climate.
Pseudoscientists promote beliefs.
Pruitt is tasked with replacing pseudoscientists with scientists.
I hope I have made that sufficiently clear for you to understand it.
Richard
tony mclod.
I give you credit for an excellent evasion.
You admit that you have no idea what you are talking about and just have decided to believe one set of scientists over another. Mostly because the one set is saying what you want to hear.
So according to your last statement, Tony, your belief in global warming is predicated on whether or not the Earth continues to warm. That means you don’t really accept the theory. You actually just choose to see any warming as caused by humans. In other words, warming due to natural causes is caused by man while cooling is a natural phenomenon. You could be the poster boy for the illogical AGW artifice!
Abundantly.
As I said, if it is in the WaPo – do not believe it. Or know they are totally clueless!
File this under the big DUH.
Nah, just a bunch of Schist Heads
Schmidt heads.
Or at least the type of Schist they are purveying as news
Public sediment seems to be settling on Pruitt’s side precipitating a seismic shift in the entrenched strata of a solidified bureaucracy.
I hate to tell, you, Mooney, that what you tout as science is nothing but pseudo-science. Science is settled: carbon dioxide is not the cause of global warming. Educate yourself and take a look at the geologic history of Earth. Within the last 500 million years carbon dioxide and global temperature followed completely different paths. At no time did carbon dioxide run parallel to or cause global temperature increase during the 500 million years in question.
Ah, The dialogue finally changes. I thought the day would never arrive. Free at last, free at last ….. to be a proud skeptic.
Here’s what Scott Pruitt has to say about the Paris Agreement
http://dailycaller.com/2017/03/09/epa-chief-calls-paris-agreement-a-bad-deal-amid-internal-white-house-struggle/
EPA Chief Calls Paris Agreement ‘A Bad Deal’ Amid Internal White House Struggle
“Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt weighed in on an issue the Trump administration has been silent on since taking the reins of government in January.
Pruitt said the Paris climate agreement was “a bad deal” that should have been treated by the Obama administration as a treaty, instead of an executive agreement.
“I happen to think the Paris accord, the Paris treaty, or the Paris Agreement, if you will, should have been treated as a treaty, should have gone through senate confirmation,” Pruitt told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Thursday morning. “That’s a concern.”
Pruitt’s comments, first reported by Reuters, is the first time a top Trump administration official has weighed in on the agreement since January.”
end excerpt
Scott Pruitt rocks. He’s not just some flake. I can’t wait till he turns his flinty eyed stare on some lightweight reporter who asks him why he doesn’t believe in human caused climate change. “Why, it’s sedimentary, my dear Watson.”
Can’t do anymore guys. My pun skills shale in comparison to yours.
I just turned over to MSNBC (know your enemy:) and they were reporting on Scott Pruitt saying the science wasn’t settled, and they are also reporting that some environmental group (I didn’t get the name) is now calling for Pruitt’s resignation. 🙂
We’ve at least managed to keep the environmentalists to a status of ideologically authoritarian outliers. For true totalitarians a “resignation” equates to execution at dawn..
It’s time for people in government to call out the environmental movement’s interference in public affairs. The government is elected to govern. Not Greenpeace or the Sierra Club or the U.N. or any other special interest group.
I also saw an interview on MSNBC with a Republican representative from Florida, named Carlos Curbelo. He proved to be a real clueless fellow, when asked about Scott Pruitt’s statment that CO2 was not the controlling mechanism of the Earth’s climate. Rep. Curbelo said it was “Reckless and totally acceptable.” He said, “CO2 is VERY dangerous.” He said he is going to have a talk with Trump about this.
Rep. Curbelo did seem happy with Trump’s position on the “Dreamers”, the illegal aliens who were brought to the U.S. as young children, and have known nothing but America all their lives and are in effect Americans, and Trump has expressed sympathy for their plight, and Rep. Curbelo was happy about that.
I, personally, have no problem with allowing law-abiding Dreamers to stay in the U.S. They really are Americans for all intents and purposes. They grew up in American schools, they speak American, and many don’t speak any other language, and have no memory of any other nation. My only required qualifications for being an American citizen is that you abide by the law, you don’t become a tax burden, and you love the United States. So if Trump gives the Dreamers a break, some people might not like it, but I won’t have a problem with it, as long as they fit those qualifications.
Rep. Curbelo needs to get up to speed on the science or lack thereof, of human-caused global warming/climate change. He thinks he is up to speed, but clearly he is not. Trump will straighten him out, on that subject. 🙂
None of it is about saving the planet, or even the children, it is about job security and fleecing the taxpayers.
I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, they got sucked into the maelstrom and are fighting their way out.
Rescue is easy, just admit to a shadow of a doubt, then the whole façade falls apart and people get on with things.
Important things.
(sorry for the rant).
This failure to understand, or properly consider, natural causes is apparently widespread far beyond climate research. I just read a 2010 paper about conservation and restoration of eelgrass that disappeared in the north Atlantic rather suddenly in the 1930s. This paper did not discuss disease while citing the early papers from the period when a disease (wasting) was suspected. In those days diseases were important but now the emphasis is on eutrophication. While this is real, measurable and treatable the problem is really hypertrophication which has been blamed for just about everything in the marine ecology literature. Nitrogen, like carbon dioxide, is a critical element to life and fisheries production often correlates with its concentration. There are some still carefully studying nitrogen cycles.
While all this might be blamed on information overload which we all suffer from and long ago predicted to be serious, this particular paper came from a laboratory with a now old history of studying marine diseases.
It is also interesting that some of the early suggested possible causes were for a period of poor illumination and moon declination which could affect tides. The disease has received some more recent (1991) interest in other seagrasses due to a possible similar turtle grass mortality in Florida Bay so maybe it will eventually work out. These are very complicated soft rock geology (no schist or gneiss) shallow water systems that depend (of all things!) on climate and sea level. The current lack of interest in marine diseases has been lamented and I was taught that science had to consider all possibilities.
@ H. D. Hoese March 9, 2017 at 2:27 pm : My own experience with an unrelated grass in shallow estuaries (NZ), found that stormy summer growing seasons with much light-limiting floodwater would trigger a form of estivation. It disappeared until settled summers returned, but maintained viable systems under the tidal sand flats to that end.
Chaos is a model of systems and processes that are incompletely, and often insufficiently, characterized and unwieldy. Science is the human method and philosophy inspired by chaos and acknowledges that accuracy is inversely proportional to space (and time) offsets from the observer.
Yep, and errors in replication of DNA are a feature not a bug.
Sometimes they’re lucky errors, sometimes they’re not, yet they drive evolution.
(by the way, I have no clue what nn was trying to say.)
Sorry nn, it took a few minutes, but I understand now Chaos is difficult for old guys.
The much narrower mathematical definition of chaos is inherent in any system characterized by two features:
1. There are feedbacks.
2. Those feedbacks do not operate instantaneously (they are time lagged).
The mathematical name for such system is nonlinear (feedbacks) dynamical (lags).
Climate is just one of many. I wrote a 1991 peer reviewed paper showing this in heavy truck manufacturing, because has widespread manufacturing productivity implications in microeconomic theory. Just a specific non-climate example.
Thematic resonance with Peter Senge’s book, ‘The Fifth Discipline’
I recall J. Edward Deeming…..(IIRC)
In climate theory your heavy trucks would roll off the assembly line and ascend into heaven as atmospheric CO2 seeped into the chassis.
nn
For the mainstream greenie [mental] chaos is the norm – cognitive dissonance.
The incessant collisions between a deeply engrained belief system and incontrovertible facts that contradict it..
Paranoia and depression are well documented outcomes.
Mooney’s central WaPo assertion is simply false. There are two independent reasons.
1. Except for the now cooled 2015-16 El Nino blip, there has been no warming this century (except by Karlization). Yet this century comprises ~1/3 of all the rise in atmospheric CO2 since 1958 (Keeling Curve inception). And there was no warming from ~1945-1975, so this is a fair and rational comparison.
2. The warming from ~1920-1945 is essentially indistinguishable from the warming ~1975-2000. Yet IPCC AR4 WG1 SPM figure 8.2 explicitly said the earlier warming could not have been AGW; not enough rise in CO2. It was mostly natural variation. News Flash to Mooney and WaPo: natural variation did not cease in 1975.
Pruitt is correct and legally justified in contradicting the junk science on the formerly warmunist EPA website. Which should be taken down for major revision, as all US gov websites are subject to pre-existing information quality laws. But, in office only three weeks, the website is probably not a top tier priority compared to senior people issues.
If there has been “no warming this century”, what is causing the accelerated melting in the world’s glaciers?
World Glacier Monitoring Service
http://wgms.ch/latest-glacier-mass-balance-data/
Are you aware that what is observed at the so called tongue of a glacier in part reflects what happened weather wise at the upper reaches anywhere from 40-80 years ago?
Also, have you considered that even if there were raw verifiable data supporting statistically significant warming this century, that does not provide evidence that change is predominantly man-made.
No, actually it isn’t.
Its a class of mathematical equations that whist completely characterized, are essentially insoluble to a desired level of accuracy
LS, that is completely true, but IMO an understatement of the significance of mathematical chaos. Sensitive dependence (butterfly effect), bifurcations (discontinuous state transitions), stable strange attractors in n-1 Poincare space,… and much yet to discover. See Feynmans physics lectures, volume 2, chapter 41, The Flow of Wet Water (a joke, as he just added viscosity to the imaginary equations of Chapter 40, The Flow of Dry Water), last three paragraphs. He had intuited mathematical chaos long before it had a name, by experimenting for several years with Navier-Stokes. The chapter basically describes all his experimental results and struggles to explain them.
an analog to chaos is the n body problem in celestial mechanics.
with a single attractor (2 body problem), the system is well behaved mathematically. if the attractors are all on the same plane (n body 1 dimension) then the system is well behaved. However, outside of these regions, the solution is not well behaved mathematically.
Does this mean there is no solution for chaotic problems? No. It simply means that at this time we have no mathematical theory or numerical methods that provide a solution to chaos in a reasonable amount of time.
Because fundamentally we do have solutions to chaotic problems. The problem is that calculating the solution takes near infinite time. When we try and reduce the time, the error grows faster than the time saved, such that any answer reached in a practical amount of time is not reliable. It is mostly error.
How exaggerated are Mr. Mooney’s and the other monotonic morons’ reactions.
They seem like a bunch of prudish Mid-Victorian English dames who’ve gotten themselves into the gentlemen’s club, determined to be outraged at some salacious show, only to witness a completely different act: the “slow reveal” of rather boring facts.
“I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact…”
Shocking!
“I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see. We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.”
Gasp! Avert your eyes!
“Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind.”
“…the climate is changing, and human activity contributes to that in some manner.”
How dare he!
Mr. Pruitt has shown us the Full Monty… with nary a pasty in sight.
“I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do”
and
“we don’t know that yet,” he continued.”
but
“I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor”
Scott knows, his keepers have told him. As if he actually cares about further “review and the analysis”, he decided the science was settled long ago. Although science is the wrong word – Pruitt wouldn’t know a Bunsen burner from his bunghole.
“wouldn’t know a Bunsen burner from his bunghole.”
Yes, I’m sure your bunghole knows all about bunsen burners, McClod.
Your one contact with any real science.
Don’t all him short on his sci-awareness. But really all he needs to know is “the science is settled” and “97% consensus” are both antithetical to science. Hopefully he and the POTUS will have someone of Happer’s stature if not Happer’s himself at his elbow.
Don’t SELL him short.
“Pruitt wouldn’t know a Bunsen burner …”
Usually introduced to students before or in 9th grade science class.
Maybe I’m showing my age. Perhaps virtual flames are used now.
[Tony is a rake. Okay, not a geology pun. Sorry, I’m outa here.]
Pruitt….hmmm…48 years old, elected AG of a major state, excelled in law, accomplished and demonstrably brilliant vs internet self declared climate genius tony mcleod….who to believe….
tony mcleod:
Your post I am answering implies you want to know science, and it does indicate your ignorance of the subject. So, in hope of helping you, I refer you to my above comment addressed to you.
I apologise that my linked comment has some words of more than two syllables so you may need help reading it, but if you do manage to read it then you will have learned some science.
Richard
See above.
Put your mouth where your mouth is, Tony. Go ahead and refute what Pruitt said with something more substantial than,”Is Not!
Science according to tony, is whatever he declares it to be.
Most of the MSM are going to squeal and stamp their feet because they have been trying to sell the scary global warming BS for years .
Climate changes with or without humans , it’s been warming thankfully as we exit an ice age and the added CO2 from humans helps plants grow . All good . Yet the MSM and some science pretenders have been promoting the notion that humans can adjust the earths temperature to their liking by reducing a trace gas who’s greater abundance is actually highly beneficial to the planet and which has been much higher before Hollywood actors and comedians were flying around boinking super models .
How did $$ billions get wasted on such a transparent fraud ?
I find it interesting that there is an agency which employs experts in a particular field. This agency communicates the opinion of these experts in part via its website. A new leader is appointed who is not an expert in this field. This leader contradicts the distilled opinion of all the experts in this department as expressed in the website. Here, the leader is assumed to be right and the only problem is that this leader has not had enough time to overrule the experts’ opinions expressed through the website. Very weird.
“Mr. Pruitt has been on the job for about three weeks. To my knowledge, he is the only Trump appointee in the EPA so far. Why is Chris Mooney shocked that Mr. Pruitt hasn’t had time to revise every bit of nonsense on EPA websites? ”
I mean, seriously, look at this statement. Imagine it had nothing to do with climate. What it is saying is that this political appointee is entitled to replace the opinions of the experts within his department with his own. It is suggesting that the political appointee’s opinions are those that are presented as the department’s.
Put this into another context just to see how awful this really is. Imagine a political appointee declaring that vaccines do not work and demanding that such references be removed from Govt. web sites. Imagine a political appointee saying that minimum wage laws cannot cause unemployment, and requiring Govt. web sites to say this. Imagine a political appointee saying that Obamacare was great and requiring their department to say so on its website.
This sentiment is appalling and has no place in a sensible democracy. We must not allow political appointees to simply ride roughshod over their departments and tell the experts what they must say. This is authoritarianism and I thought this was very much the sort of thing this website would oppose tooth and nail.
seaice1:
Even by your standards, this assertion is outrageous bollocks
NO!
CLEARLY, YOU ARE AS IGNORANT OF DEMOCRACY AS YOU ARE OF SCIENCE!
The US President is a representative of the US people.
President Trump has appointed Mr Pruitt to apply the policies of the President. And the President will appoint somebody else if Mr Pruitt fails to apply the policies of the President.
Civil service “experts” are answerable to elected representatives of the people.
Elected representatives of the people are NOT answerable to civil service “experts”.
As politicians say this side of the pond,
Experts need to be always on tap and never on top.
Richard
So do you think the head of the agency should tell the experts what to say? Should the policies of the president be to dictate the conclusions experts come to? Did I say experts should be on top? My answers are no to all those.
I know you won’t answer these questions as you never do. You will probably just repeat what you have just written as though it is somehow made more significant through repetition.
False premise. The agency head is not telling any “experts” what to say. He is telling his EMPLOYEES what to work on.
YOu are working off of several false premises.
#1 – The EPA employs experts (I already asked you to name them)
#2 – The current head’s actions are unprecedented (and yet you surreptitiously admit that the previous one did the same thing).
#3 – That employers are not allowed to tell employees what to do.
No wonder you are confused.
seaice1:
You knew I would answer your questions because you know I always do, you nasty little troll you. But as you always do, you will ignore my answers, talk about something else, and pretend I said other than I did.
You ask
NO! The head of the agency should tell the experts what NOT to say.
They work for the head, not vice versa.
You ask
NO! Experts can be found who will sincerely reach different conclusions. All politicians appoint experts who provide conclusions which support their policies. Indeed, that is why any expert is hired by anybody (I doubt even you is too stupid to be unaware of this).
You ask
NO! I did, and I explained it. Surely, you are not gouing to pretend you are sufficiently stupid as to disagree with it?
Richard
seaice1:
Ooops! In my annoyance at your ridiculous trolling I made an ambiguous answer to the third question you put to me. I write to clarify it.
You ask
NO! I wrote
My words are a clear explanation of why your nonsense is a rejection of political accountability.
Surely, you are not going to pretend you are sufficiently stupid as to disagree with them?
Richard
Richard – that is a first, you did answer the questions.
1) Obfuscation. telling people what not to say is censorship. You are now on record as endorsing this.
2) Outside your wild imaginings, people do hire experts to inform them, not simply to confirm what they believe. Do not tar everyone with your own low standards.
3) Ok, that is fine. You were just making some unrelated point that had nothing to do with what I said. I don’t have a problem with that.
Thanks for answering!
seaice 1:
As you know full well, I ALWAYS answer questions put to me or say why I am not answering a question.
Apologise for your lie, troll.
And your responses display your complete rejection of democracy.
You say
NO! As usual, you have made daft assertions and claim your idiocy somehow reflects on another (in this case, me). I have obfuscated nothing and I have not advocated censorship.
Constraining employees to not oppose their employers’ policies is NOT “censorship”. If employees want to do that then they need to get an other job. This is true of ALL employees including civil servants.
You say
Don’t try to be clever: as this example demonstrates, you can’t do it.
Experts are employed to help the employers to achieve some objective. Their employers would not suffer the costs of employing them otherwise. And the usual help is to obtain information from the experts that can be used to further the employer’s objective.
You may want to waste money paying experts to ‘do their own thing’ instead of what they are employed for, but I know of nobody else who would: do not tar everyone with your stupidity.
You say
NO! How dare you!
I was refuting your basic premise that said
I repeat what I wrote because your claim that I made “an unrelated point” demonstrates you did not read it.
My direct refutation of your statement that I refuted and have again quoted here said,
Civil service “experts” are answerable to elected representatives of the people.
Elected representatives of the people are NOT answerable to civil service “experts”.
As politicians say this side of the pond,
Experts need to be always on tap and never on top.
Richard
Richard.
“Experts need to be always on tap and never on top.” yes, but since I never suggested otherwise this is not in response to anything I said. Nothing I said could reasonably be interpreted as saying that the experts should be in the driving seat. So my comment stands. I said the political appointee should not tell the experts what to say. That is totally different from saying the political appointee must do what the expert says. It is always up to the politician to use the advice as they see fit.
“As you know full well, I ALWAYS answer questions put to me or say why I am not answering a question.”
Maybe I am getting you mixed up with another richard. Since you have certainly answered the questions posed here I apologize for my mistake. Will you apologize for calling me a lying troll?
“Experts are employed to help the employers to achieve some objective. Their employers would not suffer the costs of employing them otherwise. And the usual help is to obtain information from the experts that can be used to further the employer’s objective.”
Yes, but consider for a moment that the employers objective might be to become better informed. This is not a wholly unrealistic goal. The employer would then employ an honest an competent expert, not an expert that they already know will support their own view.
“Constraining employees to not oppose their employers’ policies is NOT “censorship”. ”
It rather depends on those policies. If those policies are to silence the experts the it would be censorship. No reasonable policy for a public body would require that anything that went against the personal opinion of the leader should not be published. That would be censorship. That is what was described in the article when Pruitt was going to remove anything he thought was not right.
seaice1:
I see no need to apologise for stating a demonstrated truth.
You are a lying troll.
Indeed, your post I am answering demonstrates you are a lying troll. It says
Liar! My comment was in response to your demanding it when you wrote (and I quoted you having written it)
So you DID assert that “experts” should not be constrained by their heads of departments.
Also, and importantly, I pointed out that the issue is not about forcing the experts to say things their employer wants them to say. It is about stopping the experts saying things contrary to their employer’s policies.
Richard
Richard, you have a funny way of proving yourself wrong, then calling me a liar. I say nothing to the effect that experts should be on top. I said that experts should not be told what to say, I did NOT say that what experts say must be listened to. I repeated this several times. I clearly pointed out that experts should not tell their bosses what to do, but neither should their bosses tell them what to conclude. I said that it was fine for the bosses to tell the experts what to work on, but it was not fine for the bosses to tell them what to find. Your nasty, repeated and unfounded accusation encourage me to make an exception to my usual policy of keeping it polite. Since you seem to be sincere in your mis-understandings I have changed my opinion. I thought you were an unpleasant liar deliberately dissembling but I now see you are a nasty ignorant fool. Sorry if my insults do not reach you own standards, but I am not as used to it you are.
seaice1:
It seems your ignorance is willful and your stupidity is incurable so I am fed-up with your blathering.
Near the start of this subthread you said I would not answer your silly questions because I don’t answer questions. I responded to that lie saying
Now you are ignoring an answer I gave you, you are talking about something else and – importantly – you are claiming I said other than I did.
I have already wiped the floor with you in this subthread and I cannot be bothered to do it again.
Richard
Richard, I addressed the answer you gave but you have not the wit see it. Further exchange is pointless, so at least we agree on something.
seaice1:
You obnoxious little troll, you write
Say what!? I wrote,
That is true and “wit” is not relevant.
I don’t have eyes to see what does not exist, and if you had provided an answer then “wit” would not be needed to see it.
You are yet again making posts that bother me and are a waste of electrons. Clear off.
Richard
Who are the experts and why are the always shocked, stunned, surprised or confounded?
One becomes an expert when those who have already declared themselves to be experts recognize you as one.
an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until he knows nothing about everything
Name the experts.
Or perhaps you meant to say “employs bureaucrats”. I can understand how big words confuse you.
So, sea ice1, policy direction to Federal bureaucrats by Pesident Trump is somehow illegitimate, whereas President Obama’s was not?
Policy direction is fine. Removing specific content from websites because you don’t like it is not.
Yea, Gina McCarthy was a real pip. She not only removed content, she removed people.
@seaice1, you have just revealed you have never had a paying job in your life. When you have a paying job, there are two rules: 1) The boss is always right 2) should you have any doubts refer to Rule #1. Put another way, the Indians have gone off the reservation and are causing mischief and harm to the people that live around the reservation, and in fact have become so bold as to have the tribal newspaper publish their manifesto. So the President summons you, appoints you as the new Head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and sends you out to to said reservation to take control of the situation and end all dispute. Upon arriving you are met at the train platform by a local reporter (an Indian or at least an Indian sympathizer) who interviews you as to your intentions, and you answer truthfully. The next day the reporter’s article appears in the paper, “New Head of Bureau Contradicts Tribal Newspaper”… Need I continue pointing out the ridiculousness of your comment?
You’re oil shales for the petrochemical industry. 😉
For a series of questions ‘climate science’ must answer for skeptics to believe in man made global warming see the following — http://blog.dilbert.com/post/158159613566/how-to-convince-skeptics-that-climate-change-is-a
It’s extremely well written, and most points will be familiar here.
Please, everyone here, think about what this post is saying.
“Pruitt has been on the job for about three weeks. To my knowledge, he is the only Trump appointee in the EPA so far. Why is Chris Mooney shocked that Mr. Pruitt hasn’t had time to revise every bit of nonsense on EPA websites? ”
This acknowledges that Pruitt is a political appointee. It is saying that the opinion of this political appointee should prevail in what his department communicates to the public. This is simply authoritarianism and what I presume most readers of this website would abhor.
It is saying that the opinions expressed by the department should be those of the politically appointed person placed in charge. This is an appalling state of affairs and should be resisted by any lover of freedom, whatever their opinions on climate change.
I ask everyone here to think about the consequences of allowing this to happen. A political appointee may say that minimum wage laws cannot cause unemployment and require the Govt. web site to say so. A political appointee might believe that vaccines are harmful and require their department to say so.
It is against all principles of democracy that the opinion of the political appointee must be the one expressed by his department. Even if the appointee is right, this is not the way to go about things in a reasonable society.
The sentiments expressed here in the passage I quoted are anathema to freedom and democracy loving people. Whatever you opinions on climate change I implore you to think of the bigger picture and not undermine democracy by supporting authoritarian practices when they happen to line up with your beliefs. You do not know when these same principles will be applied to something you do not agree with, and of course by then there will be nobody left to stand up for you.
The Executive Branch isn’t a democracy. The bureaucrats at the EPA don’t get to vote on policies or how they are communicated to the public.
The Trump Administration has a constitutional obligation to undo all of the regulatory malfeasance and rectify all of the propaganda of the Obama maladministration.
David, are you saying that the department must reflect the view of the appointed leader? Are you sure you would want this to be a general principle of how Government works? This is a very serious question.
Google United States Constitution, Article II.
“David, are you saying that the department must reflect the view of the appointed leader?”
That’s precisely what happened under eight years of the Obama-Holdren regime, why do you believe it should be any different now?
It IS how government works! What rock have you been hiding under?
What you missed is that most here would prefer SMALLER government. That way they are merely big fish in a small pond and have little impact on our daily lives.
Catweazle, do you think it should be different? I certainly think it should.
yet you said nothing for the past 8 years. Hypocrite much?
“Catweazle, do you think it should be different? I certainly think it should.”
Funny how you certainly didn’t think so when Obama and Holdren were doing exactly that for eight years, but now the boot is on the other foot you’re getting all hysterical and whiny.
It isn’t a case of whether or not it should be different, that’s how it is.
It is self-righteous, patronising, condescending attitudes like yours that caused the reaction to the “Progressive” eliteist we-know-what’s-good-for-you policies you ardently espouse to the detriment of massive sections of the population that led directly to the election of President Trump.
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, sunshine.
You lot had your turn, you antagonised sufficient people that they decided they’d had enough of you and it was time for a change.
It’s the turn of the “Deplorables” now, and like it or not, you’re just going to have to live with it.
Catweazle, do you think it should be different? I certainly think it should.
I see that seaice has no use for democracy. For him, once the self declared experts have made their pronouncements, it’s up the rest of us to line up and salute.
Mark W. Your usual standard. I said no such thing. I said that it was a bad idea for the political appointee to silence the experts. Salute or not as you will, that is your right. It is the right of all of us to have access to information paid for by the public purse. You are quite free to ignore it.
“I said that it was a bad idea for the political appointee to silence the experts.”
But political appointees have been silencing the experts for the last eight years, and you had no problem then, why are you getting all excited now?
“Pruitt is a political appointee”…
All EPA Administrators have been political appointees.
Do you think that all
Ignorance of the US Constitution, the structure of our government and the fact that these United States are a constitutional (representative) republic is very common, even among Americans.
What a coincidence!
David Middleton. I am not questioning that. Of course they have been as they are appointed by the president. I was pointing out that this is confirmed in the article. So do you think it right that the political appointee directs what appears on the website? I think the leader should set parameters and strategy, not control individual pieces of information.
Seaice,
What part of “EPA Administrator” don’t you understand?
So are you saying that it is his job to dictate the conclusions that are published? Or not? I don’t know what you are saying.
I would have thought the administrator was there to administrate. To set objectives and direction and assign priorities, develop strategies and implement policies. It s not his job to decide what conclusions the staff come to once he has given them direction, nor to censor the website based on personal opinion.
If Pruitt wants to have the EPA stop research on climate change that may well be within his remit. I might not like it but have not said that is authoritarianism. But that is not what we are talking about. We are talking about the conclusions the EPA have reached based on the work done already. The article says that given time Pruitt will remove all those bits he doesn’t like, he just has not had enough time yet. This is a very dangerous thing to be applauding.
The EPA doesn’t publish climate science.
You are confusing the EPA with research scientists still.
And if they did employ any, yes, the company always gets to dictate what is published and what is not! If you do not like it, go to another employer or become self employed. But what you do at work IS the sole purview of the employer. PERIOD.
You really are granite.
Ah – seems to be missing the fact that all the EPA climate change focus was politically based on prior political appointments and had nothing to do with actual science.
Scott Pruitt is a political appointee that has stated he wants to return the EPA to sound science. This sounds vastly improved from the prior couple of decades of EPA history.
More importantly, Scott Pruitt wants the EPA to focus on real air and water pollution.
Scott Pruitt as leader can presumably have great influence on what EPA focuses on. That is OK. What he should not do is ” revise every bit of nonsense on EPA websites” Are you unable to see the difference?
No, being in charge of a department means controlling its public statements. It means that when EPA climate extremists post political hype then the Agency head gets to control the message. Team Obama had no problem pushing climate hype from the EPA con artist who led the EPA over the cliff.
“It is against all principles of democracy that the opinion of the political appointee must be the one expressed by his department. Even if the appointee is right, this is not the way to go about things in a reasonable society.”
The head of the EPA was no more and no0 more less of a political appointee when Obama was in the White House and Holdren was his science adviser.
And yet you had no problem when under the Obama regime, the EPA did what they were ordered to do by Obama according to his beliefs. Nor would you have had any objection if Hitlery had won and continued precisely the same policy.
” You do not know when these same principles will be applied to something you do not agree with, and of course by then there will be nobody left to stand up for you.”
You had no problem when the Obama regime operated under those principles, did you ? Because you agreed with his policies, didn’t you?
You didn’t stand up to the Obama regime because it never occurred to you that times were going to change, and that another regime might take over.
Principles that Trump’s supporters didn’t agree with were inflicted on them for eight years. You didn’t stand up for those tens of thousands of workers who were put out of work by the EPA on Obama’s say-so, it never occcurred that you might need someone to stand up for you, did it?
Now the boot is on the other foot, and you’re crying like a baby.
See, that’s it with the likes of you, you can dish it out, but you can’t take it.
“And yet you had no problem when under the Obama regime, the EPA did what they were ordered to do by Obama according to his beliefs. ” Even if that were true, do you think that it should stop? Wouldn’t it be better to allow the experts to publish their own conclusions?
Your argument is that Obama did it so it is good for Trump to do it.
If Obama did do it (although as far as i am aware there is no evidence that Obama was substantially more interfering than other presidents) there were no articles celebrating this interference.
This article is celebrating this sort of interference.
No, the argument is – Obama did it – why did you not object then?
“This article is celebrating this sort of interference.”
Great , isn’t it
The ELECTED POTUS, doing exactly what he was elected to do.
It must hurt you AGW scammers so, so much !! 🙂
@Seaice1:
But that is exactly what POTUS is doing: He is allowing the voice of sceptical experts (the very definition of a real scientist) to be heard, when in the past, under Obama, they were sidelined, ridiculed and victimised. The tide has turned and ALL voices can now be given a fair hearing (that’s novel). You just don’t like having to suck it up.
seaice1
Take a pill. You should have published your diatribe when Mr O was still in office – he was the one who institutionalized the use of in particular the EPA to effect policies he knew he’d never get Congress to approve.
Crocodile tears meet the Pruitt Swiffer mop
seaice1, your sanctimonious wordy b’s is flat out annoying. The EPA website is not an independent scientific journal. It is a political document. And If you are too stupid to realize the scrap you believe about the climate is wrong, then you really need the website changed.
seaice1:
I above refuted your attack on democracy in answer to the first time you posted it in this thread. To save anybody needing to find it, I copy my refutation to here.
Richard
seaice1:
Even by your standards, this assertion is outrageous bollocks
NO!
CLEARLY, YOU ARE AS IGNORANT OF DEMOCRACY AS YOU ARE OF SCIENCE!
The US President is a representative of the US people.
President Trump has appointed Mr Pruitt to apply the policies of the President. And the President will appoint somebody else if Mr Pruitt fails to apply the policies of the President.
Civil service “experts” are answerable to elected representatives of the people.
Elected representatives of the people are NOT answerable to civil service “experts”.
As politicians say this side of the pond,
Experts need to be always on tap and never on top.
Richard
Answer the questions Richard.
saeaice1:
I have <a href=here>here answered your silly questions.
Now, apologise for wasting space on the thread with those daft questions, seaice1.
Richard
Ouch! here
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/09/from-the-no-schist-sherlock-files-on-climate-change-pruitt-contradicts-epas-own-website/comment-page-1/#comment-2447315
Richard, you have indeed answered the questions, thank you for that. I now see why you don’t usually do so.
seaice1:
I ALWAYS answer questions put me or say why I am not answering them.
Apologise for your lie.
Richard
Richard – apology granted, see above.
Humans account for 3% of the CO2 which enters the atmosphere each year, according to NOAA and the IPCC.
Reflect.
10% is down to termites, apparently. Warmists should be killing termites perhaps.
DUH! (must be a WaPo reporter). It is a government agency. By DEFINITION it is authoritative! Maybe you should stop and think before you put pen to eye.
” Pruitt has been on the job for about three weeks. To my knowledge, he is the only Trump appointee in the EPA so far. Why is Chris Mooney shocked that Mr. Pruitt hasn’t had time to revise every bit of nonsense on EPA websites”
You are missing my point. The article applauds the political appointee revising the websites according to his opinion. That is wrong. Imagine for a moment if the EPA said that CO2 was not a problem and global warming was not anything to worry about. Then a political appointee was put in charge who thought that global warming was a problem, and demanded that all websites reflected his personal view.
I don’t think you would agree with that.
So for a moment look beyond the narrow issue and see what you are promoting. It is authoritarian rule where the political appointees dictate the view expressed by the agency.
This is something that people who contribute to this site usually do not like.
You’ve just described what Lisa Jackson and Gina McCarthy did during the Obama maladministration.
Oh no! Scandalous! They were Carnallite-ing? Even Fornecite-ing?????
David, if that were true do you think it is how things should be done? That is the way you like it?
Seaice,
Google United States Constitution, Article II.
Having looked up Lisa Jackson it seems that this is nothing like what she did. Can you provide evidence that she was deleting material she didn’t like? It seems that she is accused of the very things that I specifically said I was not arguing about here. Similarly with Gina McCarthy. They have not been accused, as far as I know, with removing data they didn’t like. Gina has been accused of steering the EPA in directions some people didn’t like, but I have specifically said that this is not my beef in this discussion.
I don’t mind people disagreeing with what I have said as I can defend my position. I don’t like people disagreeing with what I have not said and attributing it to me.
They were responsible for the lies and propaganda being on the EPA’s website.
David, can you point me to somewhere that discusses this? Some supporting evidence that they were directly responsible for lies on the EPA website? I searched the individuals but did not find any reference the the activities you describe. Of course my search was far from comprehensive.
They were responsible for the lies and propaganda on the EPA’s climate change website.
Who the hell do you think was running the EPA over the past 8 years? None of these lies and propaganda were on the EPA’s website before 2009.
David, just to be clear, you are saying that Lisa and Gina personally dictated the content of the website? they removed material they did not like opposed by the people who wrote it? I can find no reference to this.
Or are you saying that they were responsible for the direction and strategy of the EPA and it is this direction and priorities that have resulted in what you call propaganda being published?
Do you not grasp the concept of management?
David, are you being deliberately obtuse? I have described management as I see it at reasonable length above. Setting direction, choosing employees, implementing policy are all within that remit. What is not is telling the people you have employed what to say or not to say based on whether you as leader agree with it. As far as I can see Lisa and Gina did the former and Pruitt, according to the article, will do the latter. What Priutt is said to be doing is not management or administration.
Of course there would be a valid complaint if the agency were managed in a way that was partisan, wasteful and unreasonable. That is debate we should have. But that is is not this debate. That is not the point I am making.
Seaice,
You are the only person in this discussion whose behavior could be described as being obtuse.
Pruitt isn’t “said to be doing” anything. Chris Moonwy wrote a moronic article for the Washington Post, stating that the EPA’s website contradicts Pruitt’s position on climate change. The current EPA website represents the opinions of the Obama maladministration and its EPA Administrators.
My post stated that Pruitt hasn’t been there long enough or sufficiently staffed up to erase and/or correct the lies and propaganda that the Obma EPA posted on their website.
The passage cited by Mooney, which contradicts Pruitt, is a bald-faced lie. It is political propaganda. Pruitt has a constitutional obligation to rectify this.
The only way someone could fail to grasp this concept would be if they never had a real job in the real world and were clueless about the US Constitution and the structure of our government… Or through being intentionally obtuse. While I don’t care for the insults that some commentors have directed at you, Griff and Tony McCloud, my patience is wearing thin.
Now isn’t that exactly what went on during the Obama administration, seaice. Nothing at all wrong with correcting a very falsified record.
Late to the dance as usual
JVC
At least we can see where you are coming from. You think it OK for the current administration to do all the things you hated Obama for. Even if you think Obama was somehow able to interfere to that extent (dictating the conclusions experts come to) you should be advocating a change from such practices not celebrating it now your guy is in charge.
I agree with you. The high road would be better. Pruitt needs some some respected scientists, and capable science writers, to help him craft his comments for public consumption; a big part of the job of EPA is to educate the public. He can accomplish the goals you’ve laid out unapologetically, including re-doing the website, and still provide the necessary, accurate facts to support his actions. After the last eight years of Obama’s authoritarian regime, it would be a welcome change.
Roger that.
You have it backwards. A political appointee was in charge that said CO2 was a problem and causing runaway global warming. Then was replaced by Pruitt.
Seriously, crawl out from under that rock.
“You are missing my point. The article applauds the political appointee revising the websites according to his opinion.”
I think Scott Pruitt thinks the science is on *his* side. It’s not just his opinion, he has many scientists who say there is no evidence CO2 is changing the climate or has a role in changing the climate.
Scott Pruitt has his experts, and the alarmists have their experts, and now that Scott is in charge, he is going to favor the opinion of those who are skeptical that CO2 is having an effect on the Earth’s atmosphere.
The Alarmists got their turn at it under Obama, now it’s the skeptic’s turn.
He should appoint these experts and allow them to publish their conclusions. He should not go back over the conclusions of previously employed experts because he thinks a new batch of experts is probably going to support his view. Appoint the experts and let them support his view.
seaice1 March 9, 2017 at 5:11 pm
“You are missing my point.”
Nobody is missing your point. You are describing the Obama Administration, which demonstrated a complete lack of Scientific principles and understanding on the issue of CO2-Climate Change. That’s about to change.
You seem to think Obama was some sort of God that had the power to dictate the statements of climatologists all over the world. The USA EPA is not substantially out of step with worldwide opinion. How did Obama do this? What you are suggesting is absurd.
As the chief executive of the US government, the president has plenary power to run the executive branch. The EPA Administrator works for the executive branch. His boss is the President of these United States.
Furthermore, the statement website is a bald-faced lie and simply a parroting of the IPCC, as was the EPA’s bogus CO2 endangerment finding.
No one will be dictating “the statements of climatologists all over the world.” I don’t think the EPA employs any climatologists.
seaice1:
You are asking others to justify your delusions when you say
Obama appointed people who would do what he wanted done while he was in office.
Self-serving rent-seekers pretending to be climate scientists have been promoting pseudoscience since long before President Trump took office: they have been doing it for decades. To demonstrate this I need to do no more than cite to you a post I provided above to a different troll from you .
Richard
tony mcleod:
I don’t know what you mean by “truth” so let me provide you with some indisputable facts.
1.
There is no evidence that human activities are having any discernible effect on global climate: no evidence, none, zilch, nada.
2.
In the 1990s Ben Santer pretended to have found some such evidence
(ref. Santer B, et al. “A Search For Human Influences On The Thermal Structure Of The Atmosphere”, Nature Vol.382, 4 July 1996, p.39-46)
3.
but that was soon revealed to be an artifact of Santer’s improper data selection
(ref. Michaels P & Knappenberger P Nature Vol.384, 12 Dec 1996)
4.
and the apparent and temporary effect Santer had selected was a result of observed volcanic and ENSO effects
(ref. Weber GR Nature Vol.384, 12 Dec 1996).
5.
Since then, research conducted world-wide at a cost of more than $3 billion per year has searched for evidence of a discernible human influence on global climate.
6.
The decades-long search for evidence of a discernible human influence on global climate has failed to find any.
7.
A finding of a discernible human influence on global climate would be rewarded by at least two Nobel Prizes (Physics and Peace).
8.
If Mr Pruiit were to constrain EPA expenditure on the search for a discernible human influence on global climate then that would reduce the waste of money that is the cost of the search.
Please say if you want any additional pertinent truth.
Richard
” seaice1 March 10, 2017 at 1:00 am”
You won’t find “Consensus” listed in the Principles of Real Science. You will find that a Scientific Hypothesis is Falsified if its Predictions don’t eventuate in the the Empirical World. Attn seaice, meet CO2-Climate Change!
BINGO! The EPA is not supposed to act on “opinion”. Ergo, it does not matter what any “opinion” is. By law, they can only act upon science. And opinion aint science!
Do you understand yet?
I point you to http://www.paulcooijmans.com/psychology/pseudoscience.html
Noix March 10, 2017 at 1:24 pm I point you to http://www.paulcooijmans.com/psychology/pseudoscience.html
Read this seaice1. It describes exactly what you are trying to support: pseudo-science. If you think it isn’t something we skeptics haven’t known through long experience in dealing with CO2-Climate Change, just look at your comments and the responses.
Phil, let me walk you through it. The accusation is that Obama appointed people who would produce the results he wanted. The argument seems to be that the USA agencies (EPA, NASA, NOAA etc) only say that global warming is a problem because Obama’s power to manipulate the scientists. This has been exercised through some magnificent mechanism of time travel appointments, so that people who were employed before Obama was president are still compelled to bend to his will. My point is that even if Obama did have this power, how could he exert it over agencies in other countries? If the USA agencies only support AGW because of Obama’s corrupt influence, why do other countries agree? Is that down to Obama too? How does he influence those agencies?
seaice1, the global warming advocates in the US government under Obama were adherents of a mass movement, as defined by Eric Hoffer. The greens and their faction of warmists are a political/religious belief system, just like Marxists or animal rights activists.
Various politicians, many of whom were not adherents, found the warmist greens useful, and advanced their agenda.
Try studying the history of various “reform” movements and radical political parties, as I conclude you have fallen into the grasp of a cult.
George Bush, unlike Clinton before him, was NOT dictating policy through revision and control of scientific funding, scientific appointments, and scientific censorship and restrictions. (In fact, the ONE time a SINGLE issue did come up as a department head under Bush even TRIED to correct an politically-motivated, out-of-control minor bureaucrat who DID independently issue CAGW alarmist doctrine affecting policy decisions from his very junior position, the media and “social” protest IMMEDIATELY threatened the department head!
George Bush was president just as the 18 year “pause” was beginning, and thus had NO evidence of the false doctrinal, religious fervor of those who would use the CAGW “crisis” for the next 16 years to kill the economy and hurt billions through artificially high energy prices and deliberate energy restrictions on the world’s economies and food supplies.
Tom “The greens and their faction of warmists are a political/religious belief system, just like Marxists or animal rights activists.”
So it is not just Obama, but an international collective of,well who exactly, that have convinced world leaders the world over to appoint people to their agencies who promote this false view. Is Obama simply a victim then, of this immensely powerful group, the greens?
Not quite. Obama, and a good many quasi-socialist politicians elsewhere, are using the greens as a justification for what they wanted to do anyway, more control over the economy and diversion of funding to their supporters. I have seen no indication that Obama is a devout green, any more than he is a devout feminist, but he finds them useful.
OK, Obama and all world leaders are using the greens as a subterfuge to increase their power. In order to do this they have for decades been appointing people they knew would continue to produce false results, these people perhaps led astray by the greens so they would reject any standards of integrity for the greater good. Clearly the world leaders identified global warming as the one thing that would swing power in their direction. The world leaders all arrived at this way of doing things independently, or perhaps they all got together to plan this decades ago. As long as I know whats going on I feel better. More “in the loop”.
seaice1, environmentalism is a classic mass movement, and exploiting its followers has been useful for a good many politicians. Richard Nixon, in a manifestly failing effort, established the EPA, which got him near zero benefits. Some politicians are themselves greens, but not the majority of those making green gestures.
So that’ll be the same Washington Post that now has a $600m contract with the CIA? (more than twice the amount that one Jeff Bezos paid to buy the paper). You can only laugh at