EPA Quashed Report Skeptical of Global Warming 1057
theodp writes "CNET reports that less than two weeks before the EPA formally submitted its pro-carbon dioxide regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty 'decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data.' In an e-mail message (pdf) to a staff researcher on March 17, the EPA official wrote: 'The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward...and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision.' The employee was also ordered not to 'have any direct communication' with anyone outside his small group at EPA on the topic of climate change, and was informed his report would not be shared with the agency group working on the topic. In a statement, the EPA took aim at the credentials of the report's author, Alan Carlin (BS Physics-Caltech, PhD Econ-MIT), describing him as 'not a scientist.' BTW, the official who chastised Carlin also found himself caught up in a 2005 brouhaha over mercury emissions after top EPA officials ordered the findings of a Harvard University study stripped from public records."
News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:00 (Score:3, Insightful)
So, under the old boss, he leaned one way, and under the new boss he leans another.
Color me shocked.
enviro-terrorist (Score:2, Insightful)
debate is healthy, the fact that the EPA needs a step on anyone who disagree's means thier arguments are not as solid as they want us to think.
I wonder.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:3, Insightful)
They are not necessarily corrupt. The just adjust easily. Perhaps this is why they are called 'servants'.
Old adage (Score:5, Insightful)
The Administration modded this guy troll too! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)
There will ALWAYS be skepticism on a scientific theory as controversial as this. At some point we have to take action. And maybe this paper was given the bum's rush, but I think it was less "conspiracy to silence critics of the almighty environmentalists" and more "oh, God, let's just get on with this already."
The EPA is a federal organization that, at the end of the day, must side on the consensus of the scientific community. Not be paralyzed by every single dissenting opinion.
I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Administration modded this guy troll too! (Score:3, Insightful)
Stop giving them power (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop giving them power to take your money and make your choices for you. Then you don't care.
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
must side on the consensus of the scientific community
If you keep silencing dissenting scientific opinions, is it a true consensus?
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Administration modded this guy troll too! (Score:3, Insightful)
a little science sprinkled over a lot of save the world machoism is all there is to global warming.
Re:Yeah... (Score:2, Insightful)
You have to realize too that alarmist positions are great at gaining funds, which lead to much of the research being carefully edited to lead to even more alarmist predictions to gain more funds. Which are you going to support, the study that finds that within 10 years the sea levels are going to flood New York, and many animals will die. Or the study that says that if everything continues just right now with absolutely no variation we might possibly see a 2 inch increase of the sea level in 30 years.
If you don't stop to look at these things you end up charging into things much as how Bush did in Iraq. Only rather than chasing WMDs and screwing us of some speech and privacy rights and a bunch of tax dollars, we can charge into this and screw us of our economic rights and a bunch of tax dollars.
Re:The Administration modded this guy troll too! (Score:5, Insightful)
What irks me about the climate-change-CO2-fear-mongers is that we are forgetting about very real pollutants that are causing problems today. Just look at the current levels of mercury in the oceans. It has gotten to the point where it's not safe to eat many types of fish because the mercury content is so high. Sure, the global warming may be real and we might so happen to stop the planet from heating up, but then what? At that point other pollutants will have killed off all of our food sources.
Re:There's less here than meets the eye (Score:2, Insightful)
Listen up people! The talking-points are written. No need to think for yourself. Go read George Soros's RealClimate.org and repeat what it says there.
Whew!. That was close. Independent thought was only narrowly avoided.
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, the guy has worked for the EPA for almost 40 years but because he has an MIT PhD in economics, that makes it ok?
It wasn't ok when it was the other side, and it's not ok now. End of story.
Follow the money (Score:1, Insightful)
Just watch how much of the "cap and trade" taxes are sent to Al Gore's company.
Re:The Administration modded this guy troll too! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm fairly neutral on global climate *. I think both sides are entirely too biased, and reason is not prevailing.
Sure, pollution in the environment is bad. No shit.
Putting tons of hybrid cars on the ground (with the included extra huge batteries and short life spans such batteries dictate) is not the answer. Cows that burp less (WTF?) is not the answer.
I think the anti-environment group is being too extreme - nobody wants to live in 19th century London, ok? Everything covered in soot, the water toxic, etc. This is bad.
On the other hand, the pro-environment groups are just as bad. Sorry guys, but if you expend more coal-driven energy on being green than you would otherwise, you're just hurting yourself.
Rationality on the eco topics is as rare as on the sexuality topics.
Re:Yeah... (Score:2, Insightful)
If you silence people on the grounds of having a different opinion you are effectively becoming censors, no different than that of China or of Iran.
Re:And we want the gov to run health care? (Score:5, Insightful)
True... only you have alternatives to the corporate doctor, when the state takes full control, your options get pretty thin pretty fast.
Not really, because for the vast majority of americans it isn't the corporate doctor making the decision, but the corporate insurance agency bureaucrat who has a vested interest in not doing anything for you. With the government at least they have the ostensible purpose of administering your good health and outrageously bad decisions reflect on politicians concerned about being reelected. Outrageous decisions from the insurance companies result in them giving someone a promotion and bad press that comes to nothing because politicians care more about lobbying bucks than constituents.
I'm quite skeptical that the US government can create and run a reasonable socialized healthcare system, but I don't see any better alternatives. What we have now isn't working. We pay more than other countries for much less and it is one of the major factors destabilizing our economy. Half of personal bankruptcies are the result of medical problems. 75% of those were people who had health insurance that found a way to not ay or underpay to such a degree that the individual could not afford treatment. I've been through the system. I had some of the best healthcare available to the middle class when I became ill. I still ended up paying over $20K out of pocket to get treated which would have driven the majority of people (without my paranoiacly large amount of savings) into complete poverty. I can't even imagine how many people who are too poor for personal bankruptcy to make sense are driven into poverty by our broken healthcare system.
Medicine is one of those fields along with firefighting, law enforcement, and military defense where capitalism is a very poor fit.
Re:Stop giving them power (Score:1, Insightful)
You have it backward on civil liberties. Republicans are pro-civil liberties and Democrats are against them. The "Republicans are anti-civil-liberties" stuff is from 40 or 50 years ago, and even then it was over-hyped to make political points.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The sole purpose of government is politics. (Score:1, Insightful)
The verbal economy of your post is truly beautiful. Thank you. After only four words, I was assured I would find nothing of value there.
Re:The Administration modded this guy troll too! (Score:2, Insightful)
I know we shouldn't feed trolls, but I will bite. Isn't it funny how people dismiss so many rigorous physical studies that overwhelmingly indicate a close correlation between global warming and CO2 emission, yet they will readily accept some vague assumptions of economics, the "dismal science" that can't even predict market prices five minutes ahead?
If one assumes that "severe economic consequences" will result from lowering anthropogenic CO2 emissions, then those studies in economics should be much better, more precise, more accurate than the physical studies that predict the survival of a large part of humanity may be in danger if the current situation persists.
Re:Did anybody read his paper? (Score:2, Insightful)
"No warming in 11 years", in particular, is a wingnut claim
Er, no, actually, that's observation of the data.
It rather says quite a bit about this topic that a demonstrably factual statement is attempted to be labelled "a wingnut claim" doesn't it now?
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS%20Essay/GlobalTroposphereTemperaturesAverage.jpg [friendsofscience.org]
Even if you throw out the 11-year old peak El Niño as a complete freak because since you have your AGW-über-alles blinders on and therefore can make no sense of it (whilst the magnetic/solar theorists -- aka, REAL scientists and not humanity-hating Chicken Littles -- are pointing out that event is exactly is what one expects as a cycle climax ... but I digress) there still is no way to interpret the 2002-present data as anything but a sustained downward trend, is there now?
But sure would be nice if you could provide some sensible AGW-centric explanation for the way that C02 continues to climb monotonically whilst temperatures decline. The 'weather is not climate' thing is getting too old to believe by now if you have any kind of a brain, yes? And if not, just exactly how many years does the trend in the graph have to continue before you accept reality?
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:3, Insightful)
What does Al Gore have a degree in?
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:1, Insightful)
I have a physics degree (and PhD), but I don't consider myself more knowledgable on non-physics topics than someone who doesn't.
If there's one thing I did learn though, is that it's damn hard to go from a set of data to a sound conclusion. *Much* harder than non-scientists think. The unscientific ways of thinking of most of the "sceptic" (though "dogmatic" would be more appropriate) crowd are painfully obvious. Fortunately, my field isn't climate science, so most of the anti-global warming points only leave me banging my head against the wall relatively gently, rather than at skull-crushing speed.
Re:Did anybody read his paper? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it just looks like a brief downward excursion in a larger chaotic trend. We see exactly the same behavior in another chaotic system, the stock marker: even in a a bull market (good times), one finds downward trends.
Changes in temperature on this scale are exactly what you would expect to find, actually, in the context of an overall, long-term warming trend [cabq.gov].
Re:The Administration modded this guy troll too! (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, let's see. A higher average temperature means longer, warmer summers over more of the world, leading to longer growing seasons, bigger harvests and a larger food supply. A lower temperature leads to shorter growing seasons, smaller harvests, less food and, in extreme cases, crop failures. Granted, the one-twentieth of one degree that you refer to is probably not enough to make a difference, but I think the basic principle is clear. Cleaning up smog is good (Living near Los Angeles, I know how bad it can be.) and pouring endless amounts of CO2 into the air is probably not a good idea, but humanity has not only survived times when it was warmer than it is now, it prospered during htem.
Re:Did anybody read his paper? (Score:5, Insightful)
"No warming in 11 years", in particular, is a wingnut claim. And with a PhD in Economics, he's not a climate scientist.
First, have a look at the data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png [wikipedia.org]
"Global temperature" is a meaningless term in any case, but so long as measures are consistent (they aren't--the thermometer coverage in Asia dropped precipitately after the fall of the Soviet Union) the trend should have something vaguely to do with atmospheric heat content. On that basis, there was a large increase in atmospheric heat content from around 1900 to about 1940, then nothing much for the next forty years, then a sudden jump between 1980 and 2000. It's too soon to tell yet, and I've not run a statistical analysis myself (although one is trivial to do) but you'd have to be insane not to notice that the past decade looks a lot like noise.
Furthermore, the climate modelling community are now predicting "the possibility" of a reduction in global heat content in the next decade, making AGW an untestable hypothesis, globally. If temperatures go up: it proves we have global warming! If temperatures go down: it proves nothing because global warming can cause that too!
So now the ball is firmly in the court of AGW advocates: what facts would you count as evidence that AGW is NOT occurring? If you can't name any, then your belief is not science but faith. We'll argue about priors strength and whatnot after you've adduced the facts that you would count as evidence.
Secondly, with a B.Sc. in physics from Caltech he is one of the smartest people you could possibly imagine, with a better grounding in physics--and remember, climate science is nothing but a special category of physics, so anyone with a decent physics degree is qualified to do climate science--than many people with Ph.D.'s in the subject. I was a post-doc at Caltech, coming from a top-tier university, and felt myself in good company with the grad students, post-docs and profs there. The undergrads were like they belonged to a different species: focused, intelligent and intense beyond belief.
And I should also point out: no one doing "climate science" is a computational physicist, yet a huge amount of climate science is nothing but computational physics. As a computational physicist who has had a look at GCM's, I'm appalled by what I find there. Good science, certainly, but nothing like what I would want public policy based on.
I think there are good reasons to try to reduce our dependence on carbon-based fuels, and as a believer in free markets I am in general an advocate of cap and trade as a sustainable mechanism for imposing property rights and limiting dumping in the atmospheric commons. But as a scientist I think there are far more open questions on AGW than settled ones, and the public debate as pretty much abandoned any pretence of science, with each side arguing its own religion with no reference to any facts that would reasonably bear on the issue.
Re:The Administration modded this guy troll too! (Score:3, Insightful)
Putting tons of hybrid cars on the ground (with the included extra huge batteries and short life spans such batteries dictate) is not the answer. Cows that burp less (WTF?) is not the answer.
True. The real solution is to have less cars on the road in general and to raise fewer cows.
Reduce,Reuse,Recycle... In that order. Global warming or not, reduction of everything that polutes and/or excessively consumes resources should be the goal.
Re:Yeah... (Score:2, Insightful)
Your skepticism would have been laudable in 1960, but today, it's just a hindrance. The scientific community has studied the problem for almost 50 years, and except for the unavoidable lunatic fringe, has reached a strong and emphatic consensus on a solution.
What more do you want? What fact would, if presented, convince you that anthropogenic global warming is a real danger?
Re:Stop giving them power (Score:2, Insightful)
Civil liberties is much more than free speech, even though that is included.
I consider civil liberty to include right to bear arms, freedom from government intervention in my personal life and in business. Freedom from government intervention in marriage and religion.
The more the government intervenes, the less freedom we have.
Same on both sides of the fence (Score:4, Insightful)
This just serves to remind us, 'liberal' and 'conservative' alike, that political maneuvering and groupthink look pretty much exactly the same and have the same consequences, regardless on which side of the ideological fence it occurs.
Groupthink is groupthink, and it's ALWAYS bad.
That's why, as a liberal, I preferred Dennis Kucinich and am wary of Obama; Obama is far too good at mixing up the Kool-Aid and fomenting groupthink. Kucinich is a plain talker, and it apparently makes him unpopular for saying things that rattle people's delusions and make them uncomfortable. Obama NEVER does that. He's a playa.
Re:And we want the gov to run health care? (Score:3, Insightful)
Medicine is one of those fields along with firefighting, law enforcement, and military defense whee capitalism is a very poor fit.
This may be true, but Government control of medicine is actually worse. I live in Britain, where we have socialised healthcare in the form of the NHS. I pay for the NHS with a big chunk of tax money; all Brits are forced to do likewise, no choice, no opt-out. Still, many of us choose to buy private health insurance as well, paying twice simply because the quality of NHS care is so poor. It is poor because it is inefficient, and it is inefficient because it is run by a Government monopoly staffed by more bureaucrats than doctors.
For all its faults, I envy the American system and wish that we had it here. An American may lose his house to pay for an operation, but at least he gets the operation, while the Brits die from MRSA, waiting months for urgent surgery in a dirty ward, paying more (on average) for the privilege.
Re:Problems with the US Temperature Record (Score:2, Insightful)
I have an idea! Let's move them into space! Oh wait, we already did, as noted in the post you're replying to, which you apparently didn't read and/or understand.
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The sole purpose of government is politics. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Economists are the Rheumatologists of the the math world. If you want to diagnose some strange condition, that every other Dr tells you is all in your head, and no one is able to diagnose, you go to a Rheumatologist.
The economist's job is to spot and analyze trends. Since global warming has everything to do with trend analysis, I think an economist is the perfect person to evaluate the data.
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:3, Insightful)
I call paskahousut.
ANYONE with a physics degree can certainly comment on the physics of AGW theory.
[flame thrower on]An ecology degree or a degree in meteorology is what you you get when you can't do the math for your physics.[flame thrower off]
The problem with current AGW theory is that the data doesn't always match the theory as well as would be expected. Generally for people trained in the basic sciences this means that one needs to re-examine the original hypothesis or perhaps the models. Not for people that truly believe in AGW. These folks, scientists or not, can be pretty dogmatic. In today's climate that means that work is either censored, ignored, or the researchers attacked. I find it odd that people who publish works that don't follow the prevailing wisdom that writes the pay checks for AGW researchers are called skeptics or crackpots or are accused of being paid off by "Big Oil" (While money in the form of government grants and/or "green" organizations isn't tainted, ever)
The laws of physics change for no person. They just get occasionally refined (hat tip Einstein). If the basic physics upon which the theory is based doesn't work, then the theory is wrong. Period.
I suspect he was speaking more from his economics degree. If one is to make a decision as to what is better for the world, with a limited supply of resources (ie money) wouldn't having someone with an economics background help do the cost benefit analysis? -cluge
Re:I dunno... (Score:4, Insightful)
He has been working for the EPA as an economist. Not a climatologist.
His prior publications are in law and economics journals. Not science journals.
He is no doubt very qualified to asses the economic impact of EPA actions.
Not so much the veracity of various competing scientific theories of climate change.
Re:harsh but right (Score:3, Insightful)
If he were the lead guitarist in a rock band, that also wouldn't make him automatically wrong. What's your point?
Re:The sole purpose of government is politics. (Score:3, Insightful)
Or bribery, graft, patronage, embezzlement, nepotism, cronyism and kickbacks. Clearly government is about much more than simple politics.
Re:Stop giving them power (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as the government decides to give benefits for being married, it is up to the government to define what they accept as "proof of marriage". So either you have a religious ceremony with no legal implications at all, then who are you to forbid other people to have a similar ceremony with a similar name? Or you have something which has legal implications, then it has to be fair and open to all to qualify.
Re:I agree (Score:1, Insightful)
Personally, I majored in mechanical engineering as an undergrad. I studied materials science for my masters degree. I did my PhD in polymeric materials. And yet, my current work is completely biological (adult stem cells I might add). A higher degree merely gives you the ability to conduct proper research, regardless of the field. Scientists overlap their studies constantly. While some backgrounds are more suitable for some study than others, I wouldn't just throw away the findings on climate change because his degree is in economics. Either way, it's all math.
Now, have you actually read his report? I'm willing to bet the best scientific whistleblowers would be the ones in that lie outside of the field unbiased by the errata in the training of their "more suitable" counterparts.
Furthermore, WHAT degree does the EPA official have to give him the expertise to dismiss such a report in the first place?!?
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your argument that technology evolves is a red herring, and is irrelevant to the original point. Also, you never answered my question: In principle, what evidence would convince you that global warming is real, anthropogenic, and dangerous?
You'll need to support that with evidence, because from where I'm sitting, the places in the world with well-regulated market economies (Western Europe, Australia, Europe, Japan) are among the best places on earth to live, and measure better on virtually every quality-of-life index than less-regulated places like China and the United States. I wouldn't quite call that "ruin".
I don't see how this "don't let perfect be the enemy of good" factor applies in this situation. The cap-and-trade system of limiting carbon emissions is a system that works. I don't see what more-expedient-but-still-good solution is being held back by it.
Also, government funding doesn't "trap us" into looking for perfect solutions while ignoring good ones. You'll have to back that up with evidence.
First of all, I agree with this statement. A free and efficient market is mankind's best method for allocating resources.
The source of my disagreement with you lies in your implicit assumption that the market we have today is free and efficient. It is not, because it does not take into account the embedded costs of pollution in goods we produce. The whole point of the cap-and-trade system is to force the market to take into account these external costs and thereby become an even better allocator of resources.
Re:The sole purpose of government is politics. (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know why QuoteMstr's post was modded as flamebait. Several ultra-conservative media types (e.g. Ann Coulter) have attempted to use Obama's middle name as some kind of harbinger of doom and "proof" that this man is up to no good. Furthermore, there's never been a US president with a first name of Barack, nor with a last name of Obama. Using his middle name to avoid a case of mistaken identity is unncessary.
Therefore, I'm left to come to the same conclusion: parent poster only used his middle name as a form of feeble ad hominem.
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:3, Insightful)
almost (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Administration modded this guy troll too! (Score:5, Insightful)
And there's really no question whether it's happening or what's causing it. And it means serious Malthusian shit for a lot of people.
This is the problem with the way we handle public discourse on environmental issues. We'll focus on one aspect to the exclusion of the dozen other ways we're fucking ourselves.
Re:Stop giving them power (Score:2, Insightful)
Being able to read what you want is a critical component of free speech, after all what good is freedom of speech if people are prohibited from listening to you? And you should be able to listen to speech with the assumption of privacy, especially when in a private place.
The FBI uses due process to find out what someone has been reading and that means there's no free speech? I disagree. Courts and prosecutors can subpoena your diary, for god's sake. They could do that before the PATRIOT Act. Your argument is a tremendous stretch of reality.
You're going to let the Democrats regulate your energy usage and every aspect of your health but it's the Republicans who are harming your civil liberties by using due process to investigate terrorism. Maybe you don't really understand what civil liberties are?
Its freedom.
And no one will be free to disagree that they're married. If you treat them differently because you disagree, be prepared to be fined or arrested (or at least sued) for discriminating. And if your religion says they're not married, well you can forget your freedom to act according to your conscience.
This is the problem with modern faux libertarians. You don't really believe in freedom. It's just a mask.
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:4, Insightful)
The guy had a physics degree, and an economics degree. Neither which fully qualifies him to report on Global Warming.
What does, in your opinion?
The problem with "climate science" is that it really does require a broad application of disciplines - suggesting that someone with a degree in physics in not a scientist, or not qualified to report on GW is absurd. As for economics, this is an even more important discipline when it comes to determining what action, if any, should be taken (eg, cost benefit analysis of various approaches, etc).
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:3, Insightful)
He his just a servant. I would expect things to change with regards to the issue as years go by. Public servants have to adapt to direction changes in management.
Please let me had that I have always had concerns with regards to the way this whole thing is handled.
Of course I admit than man may cause global warming but I find that we sometimes seem to diverge from scientific reasoning when it comes to this matter. It should come back to a more scientific approach as years go by, the concept is pretty new relatively speaking ;-)
In short, people are generally classified in one of these 2 groups (good or evil):
1) The ones who believe that man is responsible from global warming. They are the "good" people.
2) The ones who believe that other factors might be involved. They are the "evil people", which must all have interests in oil companies.
At the local university, a teacher produced a paper after conducting scientific observations. He found that we may be jumping to conclusion to fast with this issue. The teacher lost his reputation, his neighbors quit talking to him. He is now viewed as an evil person who must secretly work for oil companies. This is scary when nobody is allowed to express a divergent opinion. It reminds me the middle ages.
On a funny note, after having had 3 extremely hot summers where I live, this summer is abnormally cold compared to the average temperatures of the last century, does this mean that global warming is over ? ;-)
Note: I am not affiliated with any oil companies, I do not drive a vehicle and I think pollution and waste of energy is stupid and ugly. I agree with the principle "Make the polluter pay". In short, I have leftish views with regards to the environmental issues but I am questioning the current way we handle this problem from a scientific perspective.
Re:He has shown forty years of bias (Score:5, Insightful)
Alan Carlin has no place in any serious discussion about climate change.
Ok then, so what's the solution? He has a point of view you--and presumably the Obama administration--disagrees with. As a 38-year long government employee, should he be fired for his views? After all, if as you say, he has no place in any serious discussion about climate change, why NOT fire him?
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:3, Insightful)
File Host (Score:5, Insightful)
Whilst it's not directly relevant to the decision in quashing the report it's interesting to look at who is pushing this. The file is hosted at by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an right-wing think tank who "seeks to overturn government regulations that the CEI regards as inappropriate, such as regulations pertaining to drug safety, rent control, and automobile fuel efficiency" See info at http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Competitive_Enterprise_Institute [sourcewatch.org]
They get significant corporation funding, including from the likes of Texaco.
However, I suspect that the reality of this is that the EPA commissioned a report under the previous government and chose someone who would give them the line the White house wanted, then with the change of President they cancelled it. It's politics. Don't let that stop any conspiracy theories though.
Most of these reports are poor, whether they support your point of view or not. They are intended to take a large body of primary material understandable only by experts and make it easy for politicians to get ideas from. Usually this results in an unacceptable simplification of that primary material.
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Bottom line: Carlin is a 60 year-old fart who has done no significant research in his entire career and has a political viewpoint that is coloring what little work he has done.
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:4, Insightful)
True, but no other branch of science is working within governments to literally tax every person on the planet under the guise of helping mother earth. But climatologists are so yes they get more scrutiny.
It doesn't make people feel warm and fuzzy when the guy that is supposed to be detached has become a "believer".
Alan Carlin was modded "-1, Troll" (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't you think it ironic to mention this in Slashdot, of all places, where questioning something will quickly send you to -1 oblivion, while going along with the herd mentality will raise you to +5 nirvana?
Science questions everything, yes, as long as those are pertinent questions. Scientists will listen to anyone at all [google.com], but don't expect any sympathy if no results are verified.
Re:Reversing Tide? (Score:2, Insightful)
OTOH: Maybe we should cut out the middle men at the CEI/EPA and put Texaco in charge of the environment, they did thourough job of managing the envioronment in Equadour.
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes and no. There is this idear of "competing theories" and the evidence used to be the arbiter. Science is supposed to be about more than belonging to the right clique. Skepticism is a prerequisite to good science - I don't give a flying hyena what you think, I care about what you can prove. Research "Null Hypothesis".
You've never heard of anyone having trouble publishing something that goes against current thinking?
Why yes I have but in general when a competing theory explains the observables as well or better than the current theory it's published. That's the way it's supposed to work, I'm sorry you missed the point.
-cluge
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:3, Insightful)
A creationist could use exactly the same argument to discredit evolution. And like evolution, I think the fact is that if you sit down and study it, the evidence leans in favor of the experts, which you are not.
There's a lot of people decrying the 'religious fanaticism' surrounding climate change science. However, the fact is that the people trying to discredit climate change are in fact those who ascribe to the church of the almighty invisible hand of the economy which will right all ills if we just leave it alone and let it do its business.
Cap and Trade Will Not Work (Score:3, Insightful)
That's simply not going to be the case.
What's going to happen is that more heavy, energy-intensive industry will move to India, China, and other less industrialized countries and C02 emission will stay the same (if not actually increasing due to lower levels of efficiency).
The only true solution is mitigation or sequestration.
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Couldn't disagree more. The reason economists are useful in analyzing global warming is that they understand economics. They actually have half a clue what will happen to the economy if we impose massive regulations on it.
PJ O'Rourke was writing about his experiences in a number of countries with major famines. He observed that there was always plenty of food around but that the thugs in charge didn't allow it to get to starving people. Nature, in a nutshell, doesn't cause famines, people do.
So if the science is settled, fine, but also realize that it's a historical fact that we could easily kill more of ourselves than global warming if we screw up the solution. So we need a debate about the economics and we need proper economists to weigh in.
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:4, Insightful)
You do realize that Mr. Carlin isn't an academic? I know plenty of engineers, doctors, lawyers who don't publish in academic journals. Do you know why that is? Because they are active practitioners doing the jobs they have trained to do. Mr. Carlin's report was not new science. New research isn't even the EPA's role. His report was a summary of papers counter to the holy scripture put forth by the political hacks running the show, political hacks in an agency that isn't supposed to be political. In fact he cites court cases that specifically state the EPA is supposed to be providing information on all of the positions around an issue. Not just the positions that support the executive branch's agenda.
So, how about, instead of the piss poor ad hominem hatchet job on this guy -- who is doing the job he is supposed to be doing -- why don't you explain why the EPA is failing to do its duty?
Re:Irony and Science (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe the relation between CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and temperature isn't linear?
Re:Read the article and understand for yourself (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:3, Insightful)
Economists are definitely not good at spotting or studying trends, it's taken an awfully long time for them to fess up and acknowledge that people don't make decisions in a cool logical fashion. It's a view which many have based upon a sort of survivorship bias, people generally forget that most economists get it wrong and just remember the couple that got it right. It was an embarassingly small number of economists that saw the current crisis coming, and it wasn't exactly a subtle one either.
Economists are the ones you consult with when you want to know about choices people make and why. I suppose game theorists might also be a good choice.
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:He has shown forty years of bias (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a Ph.D. student in engineering at MIT with a substantial background in physics. Does that mean that when I have a fancy MIT Ph.D. on my resume in a few years, my opinion be given as much impact as someone who's studied climatology? I'd hope not.
Re:He has shown forty years of bias (Score:5, Insightful)
Does that mean that when I have a fancy MIT Ph.D. on my resume in a few years, my opinion be given as much impact as someone who's studied climatology? I'd hope not.
You haven't been around here long, have you? You don't even need a degree in a related field to have your opinion be given as much weight as the consensus positions of the world's scientific academies, climatologists, etc. At least by this crowd.
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:4, Insightful)
"Money" is an abstract value for the actual costs are in terms of labor, materials, etc. Economics often involves money, but it doesn't have to. Similarly, astronomy isn't necessarily about optical telescopes.
In terms of the environment, we have a limited amount of CO2 and other forms of pollution that we can put into the atmosphere without causing large amounts of harm. Figuring out the optimal point for CO2 output versus the level of harm is valid area of economic study. Money could play a part here, but it doesn't have to.
Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
As it is, the governments seem very weak compared to corporate power.
The biggest corporation in the world at worst can offer you take it or leave it. The lowest hourly bureaucrat can ruin your life.
Re:Biased? (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, the GP points out flaws in the paper that anybody can see. You don't need to be a climatologist to see that there is no causal link between lifespan, crop yield and global warming despite a correlative link.
Re:He has shown forty years of bias (Score:3, Insightful)
After all, if as you say, he has no place in any serious discussion about climate change, why NOT fire him?
Because he might have valuable insights in his area of expertise? You know... law and economics?
Re:Stop giving them power (Score:1, Insightful)
The point is that the government does this all the time and the majority picks and chooses who gets what. Gay marriage is no different, except there seem to be a lot of people who know they're for it and it's an absolute right, but they can't deal with the simplest counter-arguments.
Part of the problem is that you 96ers put us gays on the defensive by making us explain to you why your stance is discriminatory. We have to show you how our relationships are enough like those of straights to justify calling both marriages, but you're not interested enough to listen.
icecap.us -- filled with strawman arguments (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't have to read very far into icecap.us to realize these guys are a fraud. The http://icecap.us/index.php/go/faqs-and-myths [icecap.us] is filled with strawman arguments like these:
# CO2 is a pollutant.
(Who claimed it was a pollutant?)
# CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas.
(Who claimed it was?)
# The greenhouse effect is a bad thing.
The greenhouse effect is necessary for life on earth as we know it, were it not for the greenhouse effect, temperatures on Earth would be about 60 degrees F (33C) colder than they are at present. The global warming discussions center on the claims that human enhancement of the greenhouse will raise temperatures, and that these will be large compared with natural variations. (http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/ and Sherwood B. Idso, Craig D. Idso and Keith E. Idso, "The Specter of Species Extinction: Will Global Warming Decimate Earth's Biosphere?,
http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/150.pdf [marshall.org])
# Modeling the earth's climate is nearly an exact science.
(Who claimed it was?)
# Summers will be extremely hot and dry.
(Who claimed it was? Some people prefer to call this effect 'climate change', because the effect on the climate is unknown).
Re:Stop giving them power (Score:5, Insightful)
If you treat them differently because you disagree, be prepared to be fined or arrested (or at least sued) for discriminating.
Yes, their freedom to marry is more important than your freedom to discriminate.
The FBI uses due process to find out what someone has been reading and that means there's no free speech? I disagree. Courts and prosecutors can subpoena your diary, for god's sake.
The FBI just sends a letter and there's no appeal, you have to comply. There is no due process, the FBI never had to get judicial approval. A subpoena has to be issued by a judge.
Scientist view on the matter (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's some scientists view on the matter. Apparently this report is typical for AGW deniers stuff in every way. You decide:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/bubkes/ [realclimate.org]
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:2, Insightful)
The ordinary view? WTF is THAT supposed to mean? Is it something like "consensus"?
FYI, very few real scientists have accepted some "ordinary view" or "consensus". You may go back as far as you like in history. Those individuals who discovered valuable and meaningful knowledge were generally frowned upon for challenging the "ordinary view".
Try Webster's or the Oxford dictionaries. Look up "scientific method", and "science". You'll find nothing in there about "ordinary view" or "consensus".
And, yes. I insist that today's generation is indeed subscribing to a new religion, generally accepted on nothing more than faith. There is over fucking whelming evidence that global warming and global cooling has happened repeatedly, both historically and prehistorically. Wild fluctuations that have gone above and below the extremes in which life "as we know it" might be supported.
The earth is warming. Evolution is at work. Adapt, or die. And, in the end, no one will give a shit which you do. Except maybe your grandchildren, however many generations removed.
The only good thing to come of the global warming alarm, is the growing attitude that we really shouldn't be polluting the earth. Man has been like a pig for the last couple hundred years - shitting in the drinking water, dumping garbage in the backyard, etc ad nauseum. Cleaning up our act can only be a good thing. But, don't expect that to cool the earth off. And, don't expect me to pay homage to the global warming gods, like Al Gore. They are all full of shit.
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:2, Insightful)
They are not necessarily corrupt. The just adjust easily. Perhaps this is why they are called 'servants'.
"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition."
Thomas Jefferson
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, sack the corrupt prick. (Score:4, Insightful)
Problem is that they are not his views they are the views of the CEI lobbyists as seen in email linked in TFS, and that's all they are views not evidence. The role of a civil servant is to speak truth to power not to push the barrow of a special interest group, particularly when that special interest is anti-science FUD. IMHO he should be sacked for incompetence, corruption, or both.
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:2, Insightful)
The strength of the AGW argument would be demonstrated by its expression in a manner convincing to the general critical thinker
The problem is that the subect is just really damn complex and any simplification to the argument immediately leads to some smartass claiming X hasn't been considered, e.g. all the posts about "it's increased solar activity" that regularly pop up on Slashdot when it's already been said ad nauseum that the solar activity is not sufficient to explain the change we're seeing. To avoid arguments like that numbers need to be posted ("the increase in energy we're seeing on the surface is X, the increase in energy output from the sun is Y") and once you start with numbers most people just throw their hands up in the air and stop listening.
Re:He has shown forty years of bias (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:4, Insightful)
Bush vs Obama on the subject of 'squashing dissent':
Bush:
1. Omitted DATA for 1000 years and mandated the insertion of qualifying words such as âoepotentiallyâ and âoemayâ that the result would have been to insert âoeuncertainty... where there is essentially none."
2. Demanded that data from a discredited study funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute be included in climate change reports.
3. Demanded that The elimination of the summary statementâ" noncontroversial within the science community that studies climate changeâ"that âoeclimate change has global consequences for human health and the environment.â
On the other hand:
Obama:
1. Despite the fact that Alan Carlin was no part of any group tasked with studying climate control, Obama allowed his unsolicited and unwarranted report to be analyzed and subjected to PEER REVIEW, and was subsequently REJECTED by his PEERS.
Yeah, that's the same exact thing.
The thing that should stand out to anyone is that Carlin claims in this "report": "There may be in the future. But global temperatures are roughly where they were in the mid-20th century. They're not going up, and if anything they're going down."
This is complete and utter HORSESHIT.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
I REALLY expect more from the /. crowd.
The consensus is "Inaction is inexcusable" (Score:3, Insightful)
Ummm, no it doesn't. It's just that you're about 10yrs out of date in the consensus game.
Please refer to the recent climate confrence in Copenhagen [realclimate.org] (basically an interim IPCC report), the confrence gave six key messages as listed in their report [pik-potsdam.de] (warning 5mb pdf). Key message #5 was Inaction is inexcusable
The conference was organised by a "star alliance" of research universities: Copenhagen, Yale, Berkeley, Oxford, Cambridge, Tokyo, Beijing - to name a few. It included 2500 participants from 80 countries and had 1400 scientific presentations.
The folk at Nature [nature.com] have also echoed their sentiments.
True this does not mean "at all cost" but that is a pedantic nitpick rather than a misrepresentation of the consensus opinion on the part of the OP.
Skeptical. (Score:2, Insightful)
Color me Skeptical.
I used to be on the environmentalist side of the global warming debate.
But now the same guys that installed a Monsanto guy as head of Department of Agriculture are telling me global warming is real.
Suddenly I'm doubting the whole thing, and suspect this is more about stripping individuals of their rights further, which seems to be the primary task of both the Republican and Democratic parties and the corporations that run them.
Re:He has shown forty years of bias (Score:3, Insightful)
He's had a career; what does it consist of?
As the articles noted, 38 years at the EPA, and as he was asked to respond to the drafts his opinion was obviously valued and relevant within the EPA. Frankly I can't think of many ways anyone could be more qualified than that. It's exactly this type of highly politicised and selective behaviour that makes me very sceptical about any conclusions or predictions about climate change.
And I say that with a thorough conviction that we should quit using fossil fuels ASAP; if the corruption, socio-economic misery and cost in human lives isn't reason enough to quit using them, the fact that they'll run out within a fairly short time is more than reason enough.
I'm just worried that highly political, high profile, and not entirely rigorous 'science' will give all science a bad name as a whole, that if the 'predictions' turn out invalid, it'll get to be a permanent case of the boy who cried wolf, and any necessary future adjustments might get completely ignored.
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:2, Insightful)
Wonderful. Now climate change is communism. See, I am a scientist. An actual one. My field, however is in no way related to climatology. I have, however a good idea on how consensus is formed, how it might be right or wrong.
I also know how jerks knowing nothing can invent an infinite stream of objections to anything they don't like (yet know nothing about) and demand careful debunking of each. And will whine if their demands are not met.
This has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with the fact that ignorance is not a valid opinion. If you don't know and aren't qualified, you should believe the consensus. Because as far as you can tell it is the best current bet.
Because the alternative is that all mainstream scientists in the field are lying. Possible, yes, but silly.
Be ready for the consensus to change however -- it is not a fixed thing -- but change is rarely dramatic. Only once in a century do we have deeply unsettling changes in consensus (think quantum mechanics). But the observations, they do not change...
Oh, and I love your Luddite "you'll never know". But then, seeing your wonderful grasp of the process of science, this is unsurprising.
Re:News Flash! Civil Servants Corrupt! News @ 11:0 (Score:1, Insightful)
If he is really as ignorant as you say, it should be easy to dismiss his work without resorting to ad hominem arguments. Proving that he isn't a climatologist does not prove that what he is saying is wrong. The two are logically independent.
Be afraid... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They said he's not a climate scientist (Score:3, Insightful)
So now all I have to do is prove that climate science is a subset of economics and the "how dare they say he isn't a climate scientist" outrage will be justified.
Any proposed fix to climate has a heavy economic impact. Some proposals would be similarly transforming human society as the original industrial revolution. We have a choice between doing nothing and a variety of mitigation approaches, each with their own costs and benefits. It's not that strange that economics is very relevant to climate change. In fact, I consider the ignorance of economic consequences one of the key problems with current climate study.
Re:Stop giving them power (Score:3, Insightful)
What's the point though? Why should folks listen? How does gay marriage help society?
It seems pretty obvious how traditional marriage helps society: forming families and providing a structure for the raising of children. That's why there are hundreds of thousands of years of history of marriages, all more-or-less the same as today's unions.
But gay marriages don't seem to benefit society. And honestly, beyond the advancement of certain political goals, I don't see how they benefit gay folks either. That may be part of the reason you can look at the entire history of all cultures throughout the world and not find gay marriage.
So why should folks in a society grant you a benefit? Why should they listen? In what way is this change a good deal for society? And what's the downside to society of just leaving things the same?
"I want it" is not really a persuasive argument.
Re:The consensus is "Inaction is inexcusable" (Score:3, Insightful)
And in fact "at all costs" is precisely the point an economist is most qualified to help address, is it not? We need to talk about all aspects of the issue if we want to come up with a solution that we all feel comfortable with.
Excellent point, and one that brings up another: this is not really about coming up with a. a correct diagnosis and b. an adequate solution. It is about the subjugation of science to international politics, with the ultimate purpose of decimating western industrial economies. The reality is this: even if America and its allies reduced their greenhouse emissions to ZERO (by eliminating all non-nuclear power production and all consumption of fossil fuels and going completely "green") the up-and-coming industrial nations aren't going to do a damn thing. They want the fruits of industrialization and they don't care how they get them, and furthermore they want us out of the way. We can flush ourselves down the tubes entirely and it won't make any difference.
... and we're worried about our carbon footprint? If global warming is a truly important issue to those nations, I say this: you first. Clean up your own acts. Stop bitching about the United States and start leading by example. Otherwise you're just hypocrites, who want to use the issue of global warming to further damage your enemies.
... will we really care about global warming anymore?
So, if they try and tell you that China and India or, for that matter, Mexico, give a collective crap about global warming or the environmental consequences of their rapid industrialization, feel free to laugh in their faces. And don't get me going on Russia and the way they flare off cubic miles of natural gas because they won't spend the money on the cryogenics required to store and transport it. U.S. companies can't get away with that. Ha
That our elected officials are going along with this is stupid at best, treasonous at worst. In spite of surface appearances, much of the environmental movement and our current President's policies seem to leave little room for humanity. Sure, it all sounds good, but when we've shut down the last manufacturing plant, turned off the last powerhouse
Re:I agree (Score:1, Insightful)
One of our most well-known climate scientists, Jim Hansen, has degrees in physics and astronomy. Head of IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri has PhD in Industrial Engineering and in Economics, Michael Mann, author of famous hockey stick holds degrees in Physics and Applied Math and PhD in Geology & Geophysics. Notice one interesting common trait between them? None of them have degree in "climate science".
I could go on, but I leave checking credentials of other pre-eminent climate scientist to others. I am not even sure there is such a "climate science" degree at all.
So far I had not heard a single objections to the report itself. Lots of ad homs but nothing real. You AGW guys must be very proud of your capability to make up dirt and put it on people you disagree with.