The global warming consensus cools

[DarrinS]

Hard to believe this appeared in the San Fransisco Chronicle. I wouldn't be surprised if the author is in the unemployment line soon.

The global warming consensus cools (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/13/ED7O1A4IQU.DTL)





"What happened to global warming?" read the headline - on BBC News on Oct. 9, no less. Consider it a cataclysmic event: Mainstream news organizations have begun reporting on scientific research that suggests that global warming may not be caused by man and may not be as dire and imminent as alarmists suggest.


Indeed, as the BBC's climate correspondent Paul Hudson reported, the warmest year recorded globally "was not in 2008 or 2007, but 1998." It's true, he continued, "For the last 11 years, we have not observed any increase in global temperatures."

At a London conference later this month, Hudson reported, solar scientist Piers Corbyn will present evidence that solar-charged particles have a big impact on global temperatures.

Western Washington University geologist Don J. Easterbrook presented research last year that suggests that the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) caused warmer temperatures in the 1980s and 1990s. With Pacific sea surface temperatures cooling, Easterbrook expects 30 years of global cooling.

EPA analyst Alan Carlin - an MIT-trained economist with a degree in physics - referred to "solar variability" and Easterbrook's work in a document that warned that politics had prompted the Environmental Protection Agency and countries to pay "too little attention to the science of global warming" as partisans ignored the lack of global warming over the past 10 years. At first the EPA buried the paper, then it permitted Carlin to post it on his personal Web site.


In May, Fortune reported on the testimony of John Christy, University of Alabama-Huntsville Earth System Science Center director, before the House Ways and Means Committee. Christy is a 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report signatory who believes human effects have a warming influence, but rejects the disaster scenarios.

As Christy told the committee, climate models rely on land temperature data that are distorted and exaggerated by surface development - that is, asphalt and buildings. In a nice bit of research, Christy, who is also the Alabama state climatologist, debunked the temperature increase predictions made by NASA scientist James Hansen in 1988. "The real atmosphere," Christy testified, "has many ways to respond to the changes that the extra CO2 is forcing upon it."

Add Christy, Easterbrook and Corbyn to the long list of scientists who see climate as a complex issue rather than an opportunity to sermonize and lecture the general public.

Over the years, global warming alarmists have sought to stifle debate by arguing that there was no debate. They bullied dissenters and ex-communicated nonbelievers from their panels. In the name of science, disciples made it a virtue to not recognize the existence of scientists such as MIT's Richard Lindzen and Colorado State University's William Gray.

For a long time, that approach worked. But after 11 years without record temperatures that had the seas spilling over the Statue of Liberty's toes, they are going to have to change tactics.

They're going to have to rely on real data, not failed models and scare stories, and the Big Lie that everyone who counts agrees with them.

[DarrinS]

In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compare the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is—if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.

[Winehole23]

Basically you seem to be inferring that because some of the modeling is not predictive for what, geologically speaking, is a very small slice of data points (eleven years, let's say), that the modeling and all assumptions underlying it, are refuted.

Is that about the size of it, D?

[DarrinS]

Basically you seem to be inferring that because some of the modeling is not predictive for what, geologically speaking, is a very small slice of data points (eleven years, let's say), that the modeling and all assumptions underlying it, are refuted.

Is that about the size of it, D?


If a computer model can't predict short-term, I'd have serious doubts about it's long-term predictive capability.

[bobbybob0]

http://latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-epa-climate14-2009oct14,0,4010488.story

latimes.com

Bush-era EPA document on climate change released

The 2007 draft suppressed until now calls for regulation of greenhouse gases, citing global warming as a serious risk to the U.S. A finding by the Obama administration is nearly identical.

By Jim Tankersley and Alexander C. Hart

October 14, 2009

Reporting from Washington

The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday released a long-suppressed report by George W. Bush administration officials who had concluded -- based on science -- that the government should begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions because global warming posed serious risks to the country.

The report, known as an "endangerment finding," was done in 2007. The Bush White House refused to make it public because it opposed new government efforts to regulate the gases most scientists see as the major cause of global warming.

The existence of the finding -- and the refusal of the Bush administration to make it public -- were already known. But no copy of the document had been released until Tuesday.

The document "demonstrates that in 2007 the science was as clear as it is today," said Adora Andy, EPA spokeswoman. "The conclusions reached then by EPA scientists should have been made public and should have been considered."

The Bush administration EPA draft was released in response to a public records request under the Freedom of Information Act by the environmental trade publication Greenwire.

A finding that greenhouse gases and global warming pose serious risks to the nation is a necessary step in instituting government regulation. President Obama and congressional Democrats are seeking major climate legislation, but the administration has indicated that if Congress fails to act, it might use an EPA finding to move toward regulation on its own.

In April, the administration released its proposal for an endangerment finding. The newly released document from the Bush EPA shows that much of the Obama document embraces the earlier, suppressed finding word for word.

"Both reach the same conclusion -- that the public is endangered and regulation is required," said Jason Burnett, a former associate deputy administrator who resigned from the EPA in June 2008 amid frustration over the Bush administration's inaction on climate change. "Science and the law transcend politics."

The 2007 draft offers an unequivocal endorsement of the prevailing views among climate scientists. It includes a declaration that the "U.S. and the rest of the world are experiencing the effects of climate change now" and warns that in the U.S., those effects could lead to drought, more frequent hurricanes and other extreme weather events, increased respiratory disease and a rise in heat-related deaths.

The Obama version of the finding has gone through the necessary hearings and public comments. A final EPA version is expected to be released soon.

Although the 2007 and 2009 findings are nearly identical in their conclusions about climate change, the Bush version is far less detailed.

A current EPA official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly, said the sparse descriptions in the 2007 version suggested that EPA officials were worried about how the White House would respond.

"They honed it down to the essential language to explain an endangerment finding," the official said. "In 2009, those constraints are removed. . . . You don't see those same linguistic gymnastics."

[DarrinS]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124657655235589119.html




Wherever Jim Hansen is right now -- whatever speech the "censored" NASA scientist is giving -- perhaps he'll find time to mention the plight of Alan Carlin. Though don't count on it.

Mr. Hansen, as everyone in this solar system knows, is the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Starting in 2004, he launched a campaign against the Bush administration, claiming it was censoring his global-warming thoughts and fiddling with the science. It was all a bit of a hoot, given Mr. Hansen was already a world-famous devotee of the theory of man-made global warming, a reputation earned with some 1,400 speeches he'd given, many while working for Mr. Bush. But it gave Democrats a fun talking point, one the Obama team later picked up.

So much so that one of President Barack Obama's first acts was a memo to agencies demanding new transparency in government, and science. The nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Lisa Jackson, joined in, exclaiming, "As administrator, I will ensure EPA's efforts to address the environmental crises of today are rooted in three fundamental values: science-based policies and program, adherence to the rule of law, and overwhelming transparency." In case anyone missed the point, Mr. Obama took another shot at his predecessors in April, vowing that "the days of science taking a backseat to ideology are over."

Except, that is, when it comes to Mr. Carlin, a senior analyst in the EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics and a 35-year veteran of the agency. In March, the Obama EPA prepared to engage the global-warming debate in an astounding new way, by issuing an "endangerment" finding on carbon. It establishes that carbon is a pollutant, and thereby gives the EPA the authority to regulate it -- even if Congress doesn't act.

Around this time, Mr. Carlin and a colleague presented a 98-page analysis arguing the agency should take another look, as the science behind man-made global warming is inconclusive at best. The analysis noted that global temperatures were on a downward trend. It pointed out problems with climate models. It highlighted new research that contradicts apocalyptic scenarios. "We believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA," the report read.

The response to Mr. Carlin was an email from his boss, Al McGartland, forbidding him from "any direct communication" with anyone outside of his office with regard to his analysis. When Mr. Carlin tried again to disseminate his analysis, Mr. McGartland decreed: "The administrator and the administration have decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. . . . I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office." (Emphasis added.)

Mr. McGartland blasted yet another email: "With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don't want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate." Ideology? Nope, not here. Just us science folk. Honest.

The emails were unearthed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Republican officials are calling for an investigation; House Energy Committee ranking member Joe Barton sent a letter with pointed questions to Mrs. Jackson, which she's yet to answer. The EPA has issued defensive statements, claiming Mr. Carlin wasn't ignored. But there is no getting around that the Obama administration has flouted its own promises of transparency.

The Bush administration's great sin, for the record, was daring to issue reports that laid out the administration's official position on global warming. That the reports did not contain the most doomsday predictions led to howls that the Bush politicals were suppressing and ignoring career scientists.

The Carlin dustup falls into a murkier category. Unlike annual reports, the Obama EPA's endangerment finding is a policy act. As such, EPA is required to make public those agency documents that pertain to the decision, to allow for public comment. Court rulings say rulemaking records must include both "the evidence relied upon and the evidence discarded." In refusing to allow Mr. Carlin's study to be circulated, the agency essentially hid it from the docket.

Unable to defend the EPA's actions, the climate-change crew -- , led by anonymous EPA officials -- is doing what it does best: trashing Mr. Carlin as a "denier." He is, we are told, "only" an economist (he in fact holds a degree in physics from CalTech). It wasn't his "job" to look at this issue (he in fact works in an office tasked with "informing important policy decisions with sound economics and other sciences.") His study was full of sham science. (The majority of it in fact references peer-reviewed studies.) Where's Mr. Hansen and his defense of scientific freedom when you really need him?

Mr. Carlin is instead an explanation for why the science debate is little reported in this country. The professional penalty for offering a contrary view to elites like Al Gore is a smear campaign. The global-warming crowd likes to deride skeptics as the equivalent of the Catholic Church refusing to accept the Copernican theory. The irony is that, today, it is those who dare critique the new religion of human-induced climate change who face the Inquisition.

[LnGrrrR]

Hey, I honestly hope that the scientists ARE wrong, and that the global warming that had been occurring were merely a natural cycle, or a blip, or perhaps the stoppage of CFC's worked, or any number of items.

[Wild Cobra]

http://latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-epa-climate14-2009oct14,0,4010488.story

latimes.com

Bush-era EPA document on climate change released

The 2007 draft suppressed until now calls for regulation of greenhouse gases, citing global warming as a serious risk to the U.S. A finding by the Obama administration is nearly identical.

By Jim Tankersley and Alexander C. Hart

October 14, 2009

Reporting from Washington

The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday released a long-suppressed report by George W. Bush administration officials who had concluded -- based on science -- that the government should begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions because global warming posed serious risks to the country.

<>snip<>
OK, why should I believe the LA Times, especially when they don't link the report?

You expect me to believe what that liberal rag has to say?

[Wild Cobra]

spurstalk --

in a world, where people believe conservative columnists in large newspapers

but don't believe News stories in large newspapers

Care to look up the accuracy ratings of each?

[bobbybob0]

OK, why should I believe the LA Times, especially when they don't link the report?

You expect me to believe what that liberal rag has to say?

Here it is:
http://www.eenews.net/public/25/12762/features/documents/2009/10/13/document_pm_04.pdf

That comes from this NYT arcticle
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/10/13/13greenwire-epa-releases-bush-era-endangerment-document-47439.html

[Wild Cobra]

What do you guys think of the first paragraph of the Global Warming memo:
The Administrator proposes to find that the air pollution of elevated lefels of greenhouse gas (GHG) oncentrations may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public welfare.
Looks to me they are looking for way to control us.