Can the EPA Rely on UN Science?
When did America risk coming to be ruled by foreign scientists and apparatchiks at the United Nations? The answer, it would seem, is ever since Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under President Obama, chose to issue a rule determining that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger the public health and welfare.
Administrator Jackson acted to make her so-called “endangerment finding” on December 7, 2009, and befitting the historically tone-deaf selection of Pearl Harbor day for her announcement, the precipitous action embodied in the endangerment rule will also unleash immense negative consequences for the American economy entirely unexpected by most of the citizenry.
What would come as an even greater surprise to the public is that the endangerment rule is inextricably rooted in science performed by UN-designated scientists and reports written by UN bureaucrats. “I cannot think of any instance where the EPA depended so heavily on non-EPA synthesis reports to justify proposed regulatory action in [its] almost 39 years of existence,” noted Dr. Alan Carlin alarmingly.
Economist Dr. Carlin has been an employee of the EPA for 38 of those 39 years, performing complex risk assessments for EPA regulations. So his qualifications to look back with a keen eye across EPA’s history are tough to match. And yes, this would be the same Dr. Carlin that the EPA attempted to muzzle last spring and summer for arguing, within the halls of the agency, that the endangerment rule was unsupported. In an administration that congratulates itself for being the most transparent in history, Dr. Carlin was directly told to stop his work on the endangerment rule.
EPA’s abdication of responsibility to the UN is troubling not just because it risks erosion of American sovereignty, but because it poses other serious legal issues. The Clean Air Act commits discretion to the EPA administrator to exercise “her judgment” to decide whether to promulgate an endangerment rule. Yet much of the critical science that she invoked was not open to the public because it was not performed under EPA auspices. The EPA administrator’s judgment is arguably on UN auto pilot, and that’s quite disturbing given the recent revelations in “Climategate” concerning the manipulation of data and the suppression of dissenting scientific viewpoints that several parties have raised in pending litigation in the D.C. Circuit brought to challenge the issuance of the endangerment rule.
During the Bush administration, environmentalists (including several now holding high posts within the Obama administration) were keen on arguing that because the Clean Air Act commits responsibility to the EPA administrator to make various policy and science judgments, it was unlawful for the president or officials at the Office of Management and Budget to even become involved in such EPA decisionmaking.
That position reflects a profound misunderstanding of our Constitution and its structure. The EPA administrator reports to the president. And the president’s involvement in decisionmaking is what gives decisions made by executive branch officials legitimacy, for only the president is elected by the American people. The United States is not a technocracy, let alone a UN-ocracy. It is a republic — but only for as long as we can keep it.
Yet, take these environmentalists at their pre-Obama administration word. If EPA’s actions under the laws must be ruled by the personal judgment of the EPA administrator, how can EPA now rely so heavily on UN-sponsored science performed outside of its control? Don’t hold your breath waiting for an answer.
Going further, it is difficult to imagine that President Obama was not involved in specifically directing that the endangerment rule be issued, and be released on December 7 on the nose. The rule’s release occurred only shortly before he departed to accept his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. And even more coincidentally, the rule was issued on the opening day of the UN’s Copenhagen conference on climate change, which President Obama went on to address. Major policy announcements are carefully coordinated at the White House. They are not the result of serendipity.
Speaking from Copenhagen herself, Administrator Jackson told reporters: “Certainly, I’m glad we were able to complete the finding and make that statement just before [Copenhagen]. We barely got it. But that wasn’t our impetus.” With all due respect to Administrator Jackson, it’s hard to accept that statement uncritically, if only because ordinary English speakers might naturally say: “I barely got my car inspected before the state registration sticker expired.” (Rushing to complete a deadline implies a causal connection.) They don’t ordinarily utter non sequiturs like: “I barely brushed my teeth before my car’s state registration sticker expired.”
UN processes must be watched carefully for erosions of U.S. sovereignty. Even more vigilance is required as to the endangerment rule — because, like much federal agency action, it moves beneath the radar screen of ordinary Americans. Though with the press attention to Climategate, that is rapidly changing.
C’mon.
These people don’t believe this crap. They don’t much care if we do either.
They use the legal mechanism they have access to to implement the goals they desire.
Unfortunately for all the rest of us, their treasured goals are the crippling of the US specifically and the reduction of western civilization generally.
Carlin has also made boneheaded false claims like;
This graph shows, and anyone with the slightest familiarity with the field would recognize, that statement is blatantly false. Since the data is readily available, I’m content to treat it as a ‘lie’.
He has also made such claims as;
… which is a boneheaded fail-atmos-phys-101 (from the statistical properties of the system we know that significant trends over periods as short as eight years are unlikely in the extreme, and from the physical properties of the system we know that global mean temperatures will not increase monotonically with co2 concentrations).
Alan Carlin is not a credible source, and PJM are not credible period.
There is nothing wrong with Dr. Carlin’s statement.
HADCRUTs data is worthless.
The entire CO2 business has been proven to be a hoax. Over and over again. There isn’t a shred of science behind the AGW myth, and there never was. Just a couple of computer models that were carefully tuned to show what the politicians wanted to see. Even then, the models failed miserably whenever they tried to make predictions.
So satellite data for the last 40 years shows some warming? But an 8 year tread is “extremely unlikely to be significant,” so where is the magic tipping point, 9 years, or 39 years? Please provide a link to the satellite data for say the last 4,000 years so a statistically significant comparison can be made in geologic terms.
Is it only a coincidence that back in the 80′s the solution to pending “man made global cooling” was gutting capitalism and re-distributing wealth, just like today it’s the solution to pending “man made global warming”? Or, is socialism really just a solution looking for a problem, with followers more than willing to use imaginary problems if necessary. I think it was Lenin who said something like, “tell the same lie enough times and it becomes the truth”.
Anybody who believes that any usefull long term trends can be determined from the surface based sensor network, probably also believes in unicorns.
Point of fact is we really don’t know much of anything. The statistical modeling is suspect for a number of reasons, and process modeling is virtually impossible…as for empirical evidence, it’s only empirical if we accept the premise.
woodfor trees .org?
The problem with all this is that we are sold that this is a crisis that we have to deal with immediately based on a dearth of real evidence. The likelihood that we won’t have advanced enough technologically to deal with GW problems should they arise (assuming we can have any influence whatsoever on outcomes)is slim, given the rate of change of technology advance. This is all an economic game, and most people don’t like being gamed. But the locomotive has left the station, and it’s likely the only way it will be stopped will be with a collapse of civilization as we know it (and then the technology bet is moot).
You can argue either way as to the cause, but the root cause is greed/power mongering under the guise of altruism.
In the meantime, plant more trees.
The US scientific community at large agrees with the UN position, so claiming some imagined loss of sovereignty seems more emotional ploy than anything, as is the claim that the UN reports are discredited to the point that they are utterly wrong. There is no fact finding US science court (as I feel there ought to be in this day and age) so that leaves the EPA, like it or not, as the agency charged with assessing the science and coming to a finding. This is why they are involved at all there’s no other choices. Some here will claim the EPA has no jurisdiction. This is also wrong; pollution is a problem across states (hence the 10th amendment argument falls flat.)
We ought to spend more and study more and get it right. Why? If it turns out that the world will get slightly warmer as predicted… who cares? This is a good thing. On the other hand if we’re able to inadvertently trigger a new ice age, we ought to know this before we do it. I’d certainly much rather have a couple more degrees of warmth rather than a mile of ice over my house.
The hobgoblin of fear that you’re flogging in this article is the assumption that the entire CO2 business is a hoax and little more than a leftist political ploy to exert control. As with all good lies there’s a kernel of truth to it: the CO2 business isn’t a hoax, but the left will certainly attempt to use it to their advantage. Going this route, you will lose. It would be better to NOT question the science and deal strictly with the political ramifications. The alternative, which you are flogging, is roughly akin to evolution denial in both flavour and probable outcome.
That the EPA has found as it does is a good thing in that this will certainly put this particular argument front and center with the US public. Certainly if the left decides to use this as an excuse to tax for no good reason, ALL Americans will be in opposition and taking to the streets in protest — as they should.
Another BS statement from the master of BS. There are very few scientists who believe that CO2 is more than a minor contributor to climate.
GL, as I’ve said before, I’m a “lukewarmist” — warming pretty certain, some anthropogenic contribution likely, magnitudes much less certain than advertised — but anyone with a serious interest in science would have to say that the IPCC as a source is pretty well discredited. Beyond the biggest, most headline grabbing stuff, like the Himalayan glaciers story we broke in PJ, there’s the underlying process problem that led to it — citing as a source an advocacy document that cited as a source a pop-science article that cited as a source a phone call. There’s a flat mis-statement of Roger Pielke, Jr (and others’) study on the impact of warming on storm damages. There’s the fact that this report, which used “fully peer reviewed science” turns out to have nearly a third of its references drawn from non-reviewed advocacy sources — and the IPCC’s response to that revelation.
There’s Mann et al’s various paleoclimate studies, in which the statistical methods are just flat wrong, they have no “skill”.
There’s the various studies since the Climategate leak forced greater access to both the raw data, and greater concentration of attention on the methods used by the “mainstream” climate community, that consistently show the degree of warming observed in the selected and homogenized data can only be generated by that particular method of selection.
Then, of course, there’s the issue that a very large proportion of the warming argued was in the last 40 years, and has nearly been wiped out by the cooling of the last ten.
The point is that the EPA finding, according to many sources, is based very heavily — almost exclusively — on the IPCC report, and the IPCC report simply must be considered discredited.
Charlie, as a fellow lukewarmer with what seems to be an identical take on the entire matter, I am sympathetic to the notion that the IPCC is less than what’s advertised due to excesses. There will always be excesses when politics manages to rear its ugly head. On the other hand, toss out excesses and the larger body of work still stands, hence my overall assessment of the IPCC *not* being discredited overall. Yes: Pachuri is useless, Mann’s a dendro-turf protecting liar, and… so? There’s a great deal more to climatology than this: basic black body physics, Mauna Loa data, UAH, RSS, and Arrhenius, just for starters.
However, the points in my reply still stand: 1) we don’t have a commission put together of US experts, so the IPCC (international scientific community) report, warts and all, is what there is to work with, and 2) this article, like others, seems to lean toward “it’s all a commie plot and a hoax” which is nonsense, and worse, nonsense that paints all skeptics with the same brush as fundamentalists denying science in general. My fear is that the “hoax” crowd will ruin all rational skeptical questioning and make things worse. (Actually it’s not even a fear — it’s more like certain knowledge that this will be the case — which is disheartening.)
You’re naive to think that there won’t be huge winners and losers as a result of this ‘science’. Some of the winners are not immediately recognizable. Others are hiding in plain sight…and Science will suffer for it. Green is in.
Can you point to a single, peer reviewed, reliable data base that shows more than a small amount of warming over the last 150 years?
HADCRUT, never peer reviewed, based on very questionable adjustments to the ground based system that was never certified as being accurate in the first place.
NASA, used the HADCRUT data.
Satellite data shows a small warming, way less than ground based measurement systems.
Have you reviewed the problems with the models? I have. The idea that we could make any kind of reliable projection with those things is utterly laughable. We are at least 100 years away from having a sufficiently grounded understaning of how the atmosphere works, much less the interactions between the atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere and oceans, and those spheres interactions with each other.
There is solid evidence that the mideival warm period was warmer than today. There is even better evidence that the Roman warm period was warmer than the MWP. And the Holocene optimum was even warmer than either of those periods. All without the help of CO2.
A few million years ago, CO2 levels were 20 times what we have today and not was the planet not destroyed, but life flourished.
CO2 is a plant fertilizer. There is absolutely no evidence that CO2 is harmfull and much evidence that it is good.
Charles and G.L.: Just a couple simple questions for you two. The IPCC relies on whose data and conclusions to make their pronouncements regarding AGW?
So you two are saying that in spite of the now refuted data sets, destruction of raw data, lack of original peer review data, the admitted falsification of data by Mann, Hansen and the CRU that you both STILL believe in AGW??
So science is okay no matter how discredited and fraudulent it is is okay because it agrees with YOUR conclusions.
GL, the core underlying issue, I think, is the question of whether there is selection bias in the statistical model. Right now, the methods used for the selection are neither documented nor peer-reviewed for any of the three massaged data sets, and the raw data shows much less warming; when urban heat islands are accounted for, the raw data might actually be read as indicating cooling. Mysterious anomalies, like hot Iceland recently, appear and disappear. When data sets are compared with raw, it turns out that 80 percent or more of the raw data is deleted, and very large areas are modeled with a single location — which happens to be the only location that shows warming.
So the base statistical model is pretty suspect. Then factor in that the main modelers are people, like Gavin Schmidt and James Hansen, who are dedicated advocates for the warming model, and selection bias, conscious or unconscious, has to be suspected.
Add to that the other points I mentioned: it’s clear that the IPCC process was very consciously pre-loaded to advocate for a particular position (hell, one of the editors has admitted as much on the record.)
The point is that the issue with the IPCC report isn’t that it’s a UN report; it’s that it’s desperately bad science. That’s the main reason it shouldn’t be a primary source, for the Endangerment Finding.
bear — You’re naive to think that there won’t be huge winners and losers as a result of this ’science’.
Never asserted. Plus, that’s obvious.
blotto — Charles and G.L.: Just a couple simple questions for you two. The IPCC relies on whose data and conclusions to make their pronouncements regarding AGW?
I don’t think you’re following. The IPCC is wrong to claim that man is solely responsible for GW. As best as can be determined, man contributes to change in the environment. See below.
GL, the core underlying issue, I think, is the question of whether there is selection bias in the statistical model.
Let’s backtrack. The science (in the aggregate) says GW is real and there’s some “A” to it. (i.e. aGW.) This is the lukewarmer position, and as far as I know is factual enough to be undisputed. The IPCC position is that it’s real and it’s all “A.” (i.e. Agw.) I agree with the facts/science, not the IPCC. At some point, whether aGW or Agw, the US government ought to start paying attention in case there’s a problem brewing. This is prudent.
This is why I said that there ought to be a US science court where this case can be ‘tried’ to the satisfaction of all. Outside the IPCC document there is no comprehensive catalogue, if you will, outlining the various studies. Much of the IPCC stuff references straightforward science. That some of it is outright advocacy and some of it appears to be wrong is expected since the IPCC is fundamentally about policy (i.e. politics.) This is not optimal, but where it concerns the EPA, what other comprehensive set of documents would you have them review for a finding?
G.L. Alston,
Where do they say that?
Lazar — Where do they say that?
The Hockey Stick isn’t portraying natural phenomenae.
Careful… recent variability being outside natural bounds does not imply that it has no natural component. Here, (lower graph) you can see the time evolution of radiative forcings from the IPCC. Note the decrease in volcanic activity in the first half of the twentieth century and the increase in solar activity in the second. The IPCC has never made nor implied the statement, “man is solely responsible for GW”.
G.L. Alston,
Careful… recent variability being outside natural bounds does not imply that it has no natural component. Here, (lower graph) you can see the time evolution of radiative forcings from the IPCC. Note the decrease in volcanic activity in the first half of the twentieth century and the increase in solar activity in the second. The IPCC has never made nor implied the statement, “man is solely responsible for GW”.
G. L. Alston
¨…so the IPCC (international scientific community)…¨
No: Intergovernmental Panel…..
Do you suggest there is a ´consensus´? What degree of confidence have you in IPCC pronouncements?
Who gets to pick the scientists who do the review?
If it’s the EPA, then it’s a foregone conclusion what the result will be.
I wasn’t aware that the UN did science.
Go along with the UN? Heck, any old excuse will do, as long as it furthers the advancement toward the real goal, and ultimately the renaming of the country once known as the USA. New name? The USSA, short for the United Socialist States of America.
Science you say! Science! She blinded me with Science. Science has math. Science has math that proofs. Science has peer review. Science has empirical verification via experiment. What the EPA has is feelings, nothing more than feelings. It’s another government agency that has to find a new crisis every day to justify their budget and headcount. When the planet was first formed the entire atmosphere was CO2. By their hysteria concerning CO2 and global warming, we should not be here and the planet should be a burnt out cinder. The only thing burnt out is the intellect of those in the EPA who see a ecological disaster behind very activity by humans. Lisa Jackson was the EPA administrator for the state in NJ. She was, in my opinion, an idiot then and continues to be an idiot.
CRU was forced to admit that they threw away the raw data for their studies. But don’t worry, so the claim that HADCRUT is the gold standard is utterly ridiculous.
I cringe when I hear the word “science”. And that is a sad state of affairs.
The peer-review process is supposed to stop science from being converted into propaganda. But when freedom of the press is suppressed the peer-review process is likewise suppressed and the result can be a mess — like “Climategate”
While the warmists claimed their theory was a matter of “settled” science there was also a petition signed by some 30,000 scientists contesting their claim that the planet was heating up and that human activity was the cause
the whole matter was rather disgusting and deserving of being thrown into the trash. But sadly they meant to penalize us all for trillions and by imposing a reduced standard of living on us by means of their “findings”.
“…if we’re able to inadvertently trigger a new ice age..”
Wow. I really want to meet your drug dealer. He must be getting you some primo stuff, man.
Seriously, if you’re so gullible as to believe that mankind is capable of any sort of long-term effect on the climate, then I suppose you’ll believe anything.
No. Just. N.0
http://www.nerdpocalypse.net/climate.html
There’s a lot of information supporting climate change. The finer points of the carbon cycle are quite complex. NOAA has rather a good compilation of data and shows that they, like all reasonable scientists, use a lot of different independent sources. This is quite hard to keep track of (especially on a blog), so a graphic listing would be the way to present it.
May I ask Dr, what your MD or PhD is in?
There is?
I’ve never been able to find any.
As to the points in your graph, most if not all of them have been refuted.
For example I see you list Russian warming. Russian scientists have shown that HADCRUT cherry picked which ground stations to include in their study. Only stations that showed warming were included. All other stations were excluded.
Kids — how to check claims;
The implication being that the EPA normally bases risk assessments on research conducted by EPA scientists.
Is this true?
1) Find the EPA website with google
2) Enter “endangerment” into the search box at the top of the EPA homepage
3) Scrolling through results quickly finds this;
4) Go to the end of the document where you’ll find the references to the scientific publications used as evidence
The overwhelming majority are not by EPA scientists. E.g. the first two are;
Addison, J. (1995), Vermiculite: A Review of the Mineralogy and Health Effects of Vermiculite Exploitation, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, 21(3), 397-405, doi:10.1006/rtph.1995.1054.
by a British scientist; Addison Lynch, 15 Abbeymount Techbase, 2 Easter Rd, Edinburgh EH7 5AN, Midlothian, Scotland
and
Amandus, H. E., R. Althouse, W. K. C. Morgan, E. N. Sargent, and R. Jones (1987), The morbidity and mortality of vermiculite miners and millers exposed to tremolite-actinolite: Part III. Radiographic findings, American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 11(1), 27-37, doi:10.1002/ajim.4700110104.
the four author’s affiliations are listed as;
1 Division of Respiratory Disease Studies, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Morgantown, West Virginia
2 School of Medicine, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
3 School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California
4 School of Medicine, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana
(note: NIOSH is not part of EPA)
How to check claims part two…
Is this the truth, the whole truth?
The endangerment finding says no;
So the author didn’t mention the relevance of those U.S. institutions USGCRP and NRC… why?
Lisa Jackson is a forriner scientist? Who knew! Oh, Einstein, Fermi, Pauli and Bohr were all wascally forriner scientists too.
The point being the scientists do science not the bureaucrats who make decisions. There seems to be some bizarre insistence that scientists be EPA scientists, or at least American scientists, based apparently, on nothing whatsoever.
Coming from the guy who wrote post #2, that’s funny.
I feel the basing of decisions by the EPA on the work of scientists whom are not on the EPA payroll would normally be considered a ‘good thing’. I would bet that if the scientists were all on the EPA payroll, PJM would be screaming ‘lack of independence’. But, ‘ya know when there’s an ideology to push, truth and consistency can be stood on their heads.
Coming from the guy who wrote post #2, that’s funny
What ideology would that be? It seems to me that the purveyors of a theory would be the folks responsible for producing the evidence to support that theory. For instance, I can say, we are all a product of evolution and it would not be incumbent upon you to prove me wrong. The argument is that global warming theorists haven’t produced any concrete evidence of anything, so far. In politics it doesn’t matter, but in science proof is needed before a theory becomes an axiom.
lazar: Oh come on. Independent and objective research is essential to study. But when the very scientists(?) admit that they did many things which discredit their research, they should no longer be considered reliable and objective. And Mann and the CRU were not independent anyway. They both received government grants and Soros funding. Independent-not so much.
All of this hoo-hah, still about the so-called science here … jeez!
A few things would have to be established to get reasonable people to believe any of this crap, and so far as I know they haven’t been, not in any way that makes sense to me.
1) That the whole globe has some measurable characteristics that we can call a global “climate” — and we can agree on what those characteristics are. (do we even know what we are talking about?)
1a) That we can make comparable, meaningful measurements about the rest of the solar system, Mars, Jupiter, Pluto etc… (Are we talking about something general to the planets around the sun, or only the one with people on it?)
2) That we have good, clean, credible measurements covering a long enough period of time to be meaningful in terms of geological time, or even just historical time. (do we have enough fact to provide a basis for hypothesis)
3) That some distinct identifiable long term change is happening. (is there any change going on? from what? to what? HOW DO WE KNOW it’s a long term change and not short term?)
4) Is there something different about the current change that sets it apart from ALL the previous changes in the “global climate”. (is anything NEW happening here?)
5) Is there something about that difference that suggests that people have anything to do with it? (What suggests that WE are the independent variable, rather than the sun or the earth itself).
6) Is there some reason why we should care?
7) Assuming there’s some reason why we should care, is there anything that we could do … that is better and cheaper than just dealing with the change in the weather?
……….
That all is a lot to show, and I’ve never seen or heard anybody convincingly get past step (2).
I have heard people convincingly argue that differences in how much water was in the air, or how much radiation was coming from the sun, or both, could have a general effect for a while, maybe even a long while. But it is unclear whether that is actually happening right now.
It’s also been proposed that Mars and Pluto seem to be undergoing general temperature changes, although how long it has been going on or is expected to continue, I haven’t heard. That would certainly suggest that whatever is happening is primarily due to the sun.
And clearly the planet has been meaningfully warmer as recently as, I think, about 500 or 1000 years ago — Greenland used to be, well … green. Doesn’t sound as though it was much of a problem.
Personally I’d enjoy some “global warming”. I think it would be a good idea.
And I kind of wish we had the wherewithal to make it happen.
A good argument can be made that we haven’t gotten past step one yet. At least in terms of defining what we mean by “global temperature”.
The EPA has an agenda and it has decided; now it will seek out “whatever”, no matter how lame, in support of that agenda; and will ignore any evidence, no matter how compelling, that does not support the “agenda”.
First off, I recommend to everyone to read A. W. Montford’s book: The Hockey Stick Illusion (a charitable title: it should really be called, the Hockey Stick Deception). You will discover that the “science” of global warming used by the UN is science fiction. There is no there, there. The deception was that Michael Mann and other so-called scientists cherry-picked the dedrachronological data to eliminate the Medieval Warming Period and then hide behind some seemingly fancy statistics to validate the deception. When confronted with the fact that the fancy statistics didn’t show what they said the statistics showed, they lamely said, that were not statisticians. Of course, Mann would not share his data or methodology with the skeptics, making it all that harder to validate what he had done. Can you imagine a drug company trying to bring a drug to market without making its findings public? The FDA would slap it down in a nano-second. Why aren’t these so-called scientists held to the same standards? After all, what they want to do is turn the world upside-down. When skeptics wanted to pulished their findings contradicting Mann others, for the most part they couldn’t. Mann and his minions had more or less captured the peer-review process, thereby preventing skeptics from being published. Mann and others then said the skeptics were not peer-reviewed. When a peer review article by two skeptics was finally published, Mann pooh-poohed the peer review process and then had the editor, who had allowed to article to be published, removed. We can thank Steve McIntyre along with Ross McKitrick for their tireless and selfless work in unravelling the deception, and we can thank Mr. Montford for having recorded the entire sordid matter.
Second – to Lazar – I urge you to read up on just how bad average temperature data are. There appears to be an inverse correlation between number of reporting stations and average US (and/or global temperatures). Today, there are many fewer stations than in the 1970s and the remaining stations are at lower latitudes (i.e., further south) and less rural than the stations of the 1970s; and many of the remaining stations do not meet the standars for unbiased temperature readings. Furthermore the algorithm to account for the urban heat island index does not seem to be right. Finally, when others get hold of the raw data that have not lost (the dog ate my data) they find that there has not be a noticeable upward trend in termperatures. Indeed, Phil Jones of the East Anglia CRU, has admitted that there has been no globabl warming since the mid-nineties, which validates Dr. Carlin’s statements. Finally, I need to point out that whatever effect CO2 has on global warming, humnakind’s contribution is at best marginal. That is for two reasons: There are many other natural sources for CO2 besides human activity, and those would be there irrespective human activity, and more importantly, it is the logarithm of CO2 that affects temperature. The nature of the logarithm is that it is the first couple PPMs that have the greatest effect; when you get up to 350 PPM, adding another PPM has a very, very small effect.
Jack,
Wrong (see here for context). In fact, the adjusted series show less warming than raw data.
a) No he didn’t
b) No it doesn’t
c) the stt “no global warming since the mid-nineties” is not supported by the data
This is wrong. Repeating stuff from conservative PR blogs / newspapers does not help understanding. Better to study textbooks and read the literature.
Lazar –
When I said there was no noticeable upward trend from raw data, I had New Zealand in mind: check out the graphs at this site:
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=146149.0
I think that is the case for the US as well. Anthony Watts and Joseph D’Leo have a paper which goes through the problems with the US data and the behavior of the raw data. Note, that losing the raw data (as claimed by HADCRUT and NOAA or GISS) does not allow replicability, and does not give one confidence about the direction of global temperatures.
Phil Jones said there was no global warming since mid-nineties: Here it is from the “horse’s mouth” so to speak: http://digg.com/world_news/There_has_been_no_global_warming_for_15_years_Phil_Jones?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+digg%2Fpopular+%28Popular+Stories%29
Your last statement is simply inconceivable. Most CO2 comes from natural sources. How would you explain much higher CO2 levels eons ago? Sure, there is a human contribution, but so what. It’s trivial and it’s effect is trivial. Remember, temperature is not linearly related to CO2 but logarithmically related. That means at current levels of CO2, additions to the amount of CO2 in the world by human activity have trivial effects.
At the end of the day, you have to ask the following questions:
1: Is the earth warming? The answer is, maybe.
2: If it is warming, is it beyond normal variation? The answer is no.
3: It if is beyond normal variation, what is causing it? Natrual effects or human effects. The most likely answer is natural effects.
4: Assume it is human activity (even though, at best, we don’t get past question 2). Are the effects substantive or marginal? The answer is that the effects, at best, are marginal, very marginal.
5: Assume that the human effects are not marginal; then what is the cost or benefit of reducing human effects on the weather? Here the answer gets interesting. Suppose, absent human effects, the earth would fall into an ice age; well, the cost of curtailing human activity to cool of the weather would be immense. Suppose again, absent human effects, the world would get cooler and growing seasons would be curtailed, forcing food up prices and causing starvation in some parts of the world. The cost again would be high. Suppose curtailing human activity slowed the pace of economic progress that would have lead to the handling of the warming effects by other means sometime in the future. Again – all cost, no gain. Do not assume that reducing human activity that might be affecting the weather is going to be beneficial.
The bottom line is that Michael Mann, Phil Jones and their minions have attempted to pull off a massive deception to try and convince the nations of the world to suppress human activity. But whatever the truth and falsity about global warming, right now there is no science It is all faux, and until some honest scientists get into climatology we have no idea what is happening, and so there is no justification to reduce human activity.
BTW I should have mentioned my feelings about UN involvement in this whole sordid matter: It is, that, because the UN is involved in this, we have to believe that whatever is produced on the subject by it is corrupt. The UN has become a cesspool of corruption and whatever it touches becomes corrupt. To say it has sunk to the level of the League of Nations is to do the latter an injustice.
Lazar – The following is the A’Leo-Watts paper I was referencing: Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception? You can find the paper in PDF format at:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/policy_driven_deception.html