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EPA May Have Suppressed Anti-Global Warming Study
Accusations are flying over leaked e-mails (warning: PDF) that the EPA suppressed an internal report that casts a skeptical light on using regulations to reign in carbon emissions and reduce global warming. The 98-page report (warning, PDF), primarily authored by Alan Carlin, argues that there is no reason to regulate carbon dioxide in the U.S. since much of the science cited by the Environtmental Protection Agency (EPA) in its recent pro-regulation recommendation to President Obama is outdated. Carlin claims that recent studies show that long-held assumptions about hurricanes in the Atlantic, the shedding of ice sheets in Greenland, and the trend of rising temperatures worldwide may be misguided.
A grain of salt is required however, since Carlin is also the man who postulated that managing sea levels and solar radiation would be more effective and less expensive than regulating carbon dioxide emissions. We are admittedly not experts on these topics, but it seems a tad far-fetched that it is more expensive to tell a company to stop pumping so much CO2 into the air than it is to find a way to artificially control the amount of radiation that enters our planet's atmosphere.
However there is no denying that the leaked messages look bad. An e-mail response to Carlin by Al McGartland, an EPA official, states:
"The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator and the administration has 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."The EPA defended itself, telling CNET that it listened to Carlin's claims, had doubts about his qualifications, going on to say:
"The individual in question is not a scientist and was not part of the working group dealing with this issue. Nevertheless, the document he submitted was reviewed by his peers and agency scientists, and information from that report was submitted by his manager to those responsible for developing the proposed endangerment finding. In fact, some ideas from that document are included and addressed in the endangerment finding."Of course, it's also possible that Carlin's comments were dismissed out of political expediency, especially since EPA administrator Lisa Jackson had been vocal earlier this year about pushing through a quick decision about carbon dioxide regulation by April 2nd -- in time for the 2nd anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Massachusetts v. EPA (PDF). In that decision the Supreme Court called on the agency to determine if greenhouse gases were harming the Earth, after states and private organizations sued to force the EPA to regulate carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act.
The importance of the date is clear, but to dismiss science for the sake of some self-imposed, politically-motivated deadline is simply not excusable. We were promised that "the days of science taking a back seat to ideology," were over, but clearly someone didn't get the message. The quality of Carlin's science may be debatable, but it's still important to refute his findings on a scientific basis, not just dismiss them because he disagrees with the agency's official stance on global warming. [From: CNET]
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Comments
18
Subscribe to commentsBill KettlerJul 2nd 2009 5:38PM
Surprise, surprise! Looks like the EPA idiots may have been caugh red-handed trying to foist their questionable science on us to help push Obama's new energy tax (cap and trade) and screw the American public as usual.
NickJul 2nd 2009 11:18PM
He's an ECONOMIST who happens to work for the EPA.
He complied the report in his free time, and none the sources are peer reviewed.
It would be like if I was a secretary at the FDA and in my free time I wrote a report claiming that Advil causes cancer and then claimed the FDA suppressed my report when they (obviously) refuse to release it.
MikeeJul 7th 2009 4:20PM
Bill Kettler: You're joking, right?
A report written by someone that thinks it would be cost effective to control sea levels and the amount of solar radiation entering our atmosphere is.. (drum roll) BULLSHIT.
If you can't see the evidence of global warming, I suggest pulling your head out of your ass. You might also be able to breathe a little better, too.
jakesurgJul 3rd 2009 3:54AM
There's no need to resort to offensive rhetoric in attempt to "prove" a point.
The fact of the matter is that within in the last 4 billion years ("ice caps now at lowest point in 800yrs"/4000000000=0.0000002), Gaia has seen multiple instances of global flooding. To suggest that several billion half-wits are capable of significantly altering this wonder upon which we are but less than a bacterium is almost comical. If we take earth's age and compare it to the time we'd been around it would amount to less than a second of a 24 hour day. Your egocentricity is matched only by that of the great inventor of the internet. Finally, the term scientist is painted with broad strokes these days. The highly controlled conditions of an applied physics lab can hardly be compared to "intelligent" inferences of geo-politico-anthropo-marxologists. Please, read a little before clicking those keys.
Wiedies4Jul 3rd 2009 2:33PM
If you believe in man made global warming why are the icecaps on Mars getting smaller? Last time we checked there was no industrial revolution going on Mars. Could it be that the sun is causing the planets to warm? You wack job environmentalists are ruining our country. All for nothing. Just follow the MONEY!
Karl HodgsonJul 2nd 2009 7:40PM
Global warming is junk science and Al Gore's little scheme of setting up a whole new trading market for the elite with carbon credits is just another way the elite can fleece everyone for even more including the British Royals-it's in London anyway. It's known as "Blood and Gore" and run by him and former Goldman Sachs people. SCAM!!! It's another tax providing nothing but money to the wealthy rulers. Yes the world is a finite ball in space and we have limited resources and need to cooperate and conserve to survive. However this ensures the elite fleece everyone with even less for most while they enhance their leech lifestyes. Here in Minnesota the winters have been getting COLDER for the past three years and the overall icecap on antartica is LARGER now. Al, go suck an egg you fraud!
jmJul 2nd 2009 8:15PM
One question...is Al Gore's house all green? If so, I might buy he " believes" in what he is backing. If not, he is full of it and a hypocrite. I judge by actions, not words.
GaryJul 2nd 2009 8:23PM
One Major volcanic eruption puts more crap into the atmospere than all the human beings in one year. The Earths balance has to be maintained, but not at the cost of the people.The elite trying to maintain the box they've backed themselves into while while informing us to do otherwise is Bull$h!t. The baglady on E. warren & Chicago in Detroit is just as important as Steve Jobs Of Apple.
A HUMAN BEING IS JUST THAT( BEING THE BEST THEY CAN WITH THE CARDS THEY"VE BEEN DELT) JUST LIKE YOU ARE.
NickJul 2nd 2009 11:24PM
Volcanoes emit, on average, 130 MILLION tons of CO2 per year.
Human activity emits, on average, 30 BILLION tons of CO2 per year.
Volcanoes emit less than half of a percent in CO2 than humans do.
It would have taken you 30 seconds to look that up on google.
Think.
Think before type.
drewJul 2nd 2009 9:45PM
wake up america government control of the car biz, of banks, of health care, cap and tax, passing bills without even reading them welcome to england. it's time to stop the madness after only 7 short months. where is the bi-partisonship the transparency. last friday most people i know knew about michael jackson's death but not that the house was in the process of passing one of the most resticted bills on a hoax in history. WAKE UP AMERICA!!!
cicsdrJul 3rd 2009 12:36AM
Mikee - Where is the rising water? All these glaciers have melted and New York City is still there. I live near the coast and the High Tides are still the same. That is truth not some special freak agenda using a computer model. Computers are used for E-Mail and playing games. You can make a computer model tell you anything just like statistics, I worked with statistics and we were made to make them come out the way they wanted them to look. Obama is out to control the taxes the Cap and Trade Act is going to tax even the poor, WAKE UP. Hilter is back and he is Black.
RichardJul 3rd 2009 12:21AM
Nick said 11:24PM on 7-02-2009
Volcanoes emit, on average, 130 MILLION tons of CO2 per year.
Human activity emits, on average, 30 BILLION tons of CO2 per year.
Volcanoes emit less than half of a percent in CO2 than humans do.
It would have taken you 30 seconds to look that up on google.
Think.
Think before type. ************ Nick, don't believe everything you read on Google, its not written in stone. By the way, what caused the last global warming trend before man appeared on earth??? Was it Dinosaur flatulence??? You are the one who needs to think before you type. There are more scientist now who say global warming is a hoax. LOOK OUT THE WINDOW PAL. New England is experiencing the coldest spring and summer in years. Al Gore is a phony hypocrite.
PaulJul 7th 2009 6:44PM
Uhhhh... Richard? I would like you to notice the comments above, then notice that there has been erratic spikes in seasonal temperatures, worldwide. Then compare those temperatures to that a decade, then two decades ago.
The writing is on the wall my friends, the writing is on the wall...The fact that winters are coming earlier is a sign, the fact that hurricanes and natural disasters are becoming more powerful is another, the droughts that are occuring in the western portion of the United States (the widening of the desert there anyone?) is another sign, heck, even the migration and the dying of some of our ecosystem is another.
What does this point to? The worsening of our enviornment due to the Greenhouse Effect.
Think about what you are saying. You are quoting those effects yourself. There is a shift in enviormental patterns, and to blame that on the Sun (which is believed to NOT burn out until close to 5 million years from now) would be about as comical as the "enviornment" bill that was just passed, as comical as Al Gore's "stance" on the enviorment, and DEFINATELY as comical as someone who isn't even a scientist saying that SCIENTIST ARE WRONG.
And this is coming from someone who is no where NEAR being a scientist.
deloprator20000Jul 3rd 2009 2:13PM
Simply because a report is "suppressed" doesn't make it true. For example I can write a report using Invalid scientific reasoning submit it to the EPA and when it is not Published I can claim it is "suppressed". Truth does not depend on whether or not something is "suppressed".
Talk to ACTUAL climate scientists about Human caused G-warming, in fact most respected climate scientists read the "suppressed" report and revealed that most of the science in the report is bogus:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/07/more-bubkes/
How to talk to a climate skeptic:
http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/
Dan PangburnJul 3rd 2009 4:53PM
The AGW mistake: In 1984 Hansen et al published a paper that showed a method to calculate loop feedback from temperature using separate calculations of feedback factors for each phenomenon. Climate Scientists calculated feedbacks for phenomena that they knew about and added them together. The calculation resulted in a net positive feedback from temperature. With net positive feedback the climate models predict significant future global temperature rise. The method assumes that the calculations of feedback factors are correct and that all feedbacks have been accounted for. The assumption is wrong. This mistake has propagated through most of the Climate Science community.
Many Climate Scientists appear to understand some relevant science poorly (it’s not in their curriculum) and therefore do not recognize the significance of accepted paleo temperature data. With understanding of the missing science and knowledge of the data it is trivial to show that NET feedback on temperature can not be significantly positive. Thus Climate Scientists have not calculated feedback correctly and/or all feedbacks have not been accounted for. Without net positive feedback, added atmospheric carbon dioxide has no significant influence on average global temperature. See the pdfs linked from http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true for the evidence, to identify the missing science and to see the cause of the temperature run-up in the late 20th century.
There is still the certainty of peek oil given the finite resource. Research money would be far better spent to modify the dna of some algae that are high oil producers to make them more robust and/or other algae that are robust to make them higher oil producers. (There was Government sponsored research to identify high oil-producing algae in the 90s that was not exploited because of cheap oil at that time) Calculations based on that work show that an open facility (which could be located in the desert) 120 miles on a side using only sunlight, sea water and genetically engineered algae could produce enough oil to meet all liquid fuel needs in the U.S.A. Alternatively fast breeder reactors with established technology could meet all of humanities needs for energy for millions of years.
Matthew MarshJul 3rd 2009 11:27PM
The environment is definitely a concern. Even the water supply is in danger from the plastics we have been putting in land fills since 1953. Check out this article on a solution to one of the problems. I found this link on a new green company producing green disposables. They are paper based biodegradables. This keeps plastics out of our landfills and toxins out of our aquifers. Check it out: http://www.prlog.org/10273168.html
Dan PangburnJul 4th 2009 8:02AM
Use once and throw away is being green? What's wrong with this picture?
What toxins are released when 'paper based biodegradables' biodegrade?
AlexJul 14th 2009 4:26AM
Beyond anything else, slight facts. The amount of CO2 in the air is higher now that it has ever been before, by a lot. CO2 is a greenhouse gas and causes more heat to be retained by the Earth. And while the Earth does have a cylical life, (Earth heats up to a certain point than we have an ice age) the increase by man made CO2 to the world, at the very least cause the cycle to move faster.
In the end wouldn't it be better to do something to reduce it and other pullution and be wrong, or not do anything and have the whole world freeze.