The following is excerpts from the technical support document from the EPA leading to the building to the regulations on climate change. I have to say this is unfortunately for me, another political post but global warming is political. I would encourage anyone interested to read the whole happy document at this link HERE.
Steve McIntyre has a quieter discussion of the issues in this document at Climate Audit.
As it is a political post, keep the comments reasonable. That’s about it.
I’ve clipped a bunch of sections from the paper which caught my eye. There is plenty more at the link above, I got tired.
Identify the enemy.
Declare consensus, ignore recent data.
Define the scope of the problem, make sure it’s big.
Let’s not forget that last point. All IPCC senereos show sea ice loss. What will they say if ice grows?
I wonder what Dr. Deep Climate would say about the curve fits in the above graph. This is about one of the most disingenuous presentations of temperature data I’ve seen anywhere and it’s THE featured temperature graph for policy makers. The intent and political bias of the author is clear. I’m sure I don’t need to point out the problems with the curve fits to this crowd though.
And of course one of my favorites, the proxy based temperature reconstruction. IMO everything on this graph is crap, including the exaggerated temperature trend stopping in 2001. These curves are artifacts of the mathematics used. I can say that because the only way to turn those noisy proxies into this is to sort them by what you’re looking for. The resulting shape of the reconstruction is the same always, (right to left) a sharp dip followed by a slow recovery.
Some day the truth of this will become common knowledge and those who make hockey sticks will be scorned throughout science like priests of the middle ages.
We know what the ice curves look like, does anyone here think these photos might be a slight cherry pick??? Jeeesus!
Policy makers don’t know this stuff but they don’t care either, it’s a chance to expand their power.
This just sounds like a bunch of horsecrap ad-libing so I put it in. You can see the dolts in congress remembering that warm spell one day and the two watt bulb turning on in their heads.
This last paragraph is one of the most scary, the govt. claiming to predict the outcome of policies on society based on computer models. If this had any chance of working we shouldn’t need to vote anymore. Socialists believe in this kind of thing for ‘enhancing’ government policy. This will probably be one of the next big battles after we’re done loosing the AGW battle.
Actually I’m optimistic that AGW will die a sad death. It will however come long after the politicians are done making idiotic rules that do nothing for us except harm the economy and provide additional mechanisms for corruption. Anyone want to guess weather or not the rules will be repealed after it’s discovered they are unnecessary?
the Air Vent 
I’m still betting that EPA and the Obama administration, despite what they’ve said, are going to try to circumvent Congress, particularly if Congress drags its feet, and establish the UN as the legal governing body for this issue because CO2 emissions have “global” environmental implications.
The whole report is basically a rehash of the UN sponsored AR4, anyway. Wonder why it took them 2 years to cut and paste?
The only thing to do is pressure Congress to dissolve EPA in it’s present form.
The “warming accelerating” graph is Extremely disingenuous.
The first warming and the second in the Twentieth century occurred at identical rates:
AGH! Okay, try again:
The fix is in. No new observations, analysis or discovery of obvious error will change anything. Prepare for rear-guard action. It will be amusing to see the populice (read: sheeple) paying cap and trade fees when they are freezing and food prices go through the roof.
TCO?
Tyler Cowen
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/
http://colinmarshall.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=297865
http://www.gmu.edu/jbc/Tyler
loosely fits
Thanks for the clips saves us the time to dig through it.
it’s no wonder that the laws are going to be screwed up.
Jeff,
this is not precisely on target, but I think you share my puzzlement with Steve McIntyre for snipping comments which flow naturally from the facts and characterizations that he lays out in his posts. I wrote the following over there(and suspect it will get snipped):
stan Says:
Steve wrote:
What annoys me throughout is the prima donna behavior by so many climate scientist, in total disregard for how this misbehavior taints the decision-making process.
Steve, you have expressed something extremely important here. I hope you don’t snip me for quoting you, but “total disregard” for the impact of one’s “misbehavior” is serious stuff in any profession or trade. And since, as you wrote, it “taints” the process, it ought to be the focus of a serious review. Professional misbehavior always impeaches the credibility of the experts to some extent, especially when the stakes to innocent people are large as they are in the present case.
This is more than a matter of mere “annoyance”. To repeat, the scientists at issue have engaged in behavior which impeaches their credibility. Were they testifying as experts in a jury trial, it would be wholly appropriate to point out to the jury that the cavalier attitude toward their ethical responsibilities made them untrustworthy. That is an obvious conclusion. For some reason, you don’t want your readers to make this observation in comments, even though it is a conclusion which flows naturally from the facts and your characterization of them.
At the most basic level, you are saying that these scientists are in breach of a critical aspect of the scientific method. When scientists do not follow the scientific method, their conclusions are unworthy of respect. That’s the case that you have made. Snipping your readers when they say “four” after you have added 2 and 2, doesn’t avoid the conclusion that you have added to four.
Jeff,
I don’t know if this is something you want to discuss, but I think the most compelling argument against AGW alarmism is the unprofessional behavior of the proponent scientists. It demonstrates incompetence, recklessness, and a lack of moral seriousness. I.e. “Based on our research we say that billions of the world’s poor must suffer greatly to save the world. Of course, we don’t need to replicate any studies, or even audit them. We make up stuff. We don’t bother to show our work or concern ourselves with quality control for the data measurements or data storage. We engage in all kinds of wild ass guesses. When asked for our work, we say the dog ate my homework.”
The hockey stick completely changed everything scientists believed about the temperature history of the globe. And no one even bothered to check the work. No one ever bothered to check the quality of the temperature monitoring sites. This is more than recklessness. It’s incompetence. And it’s immoral, given the stakes.
Steve points out all the incompetence and recklessness, but snips anyone who says that it constitutes incompetence and recklessness.
Stan,
I have to agree with your points. Even the last line there. He’s got to work with those people though, I just haven’t figured out the motivation. Steve sees gov’t as more reasonable than I do as well. The whole thing has been planned and pre-determined for some time. The document has all the most extreme and distorted conclusions in it too, not passing any chances to make AGW look worse than it is. That didn’t happen by accident.
I can’t be too critical though, I really enjoy his work and I’ve learned a lot from his site.
Feel free to vent.
RE #7
Stan, here’s my guess about the snips. I think Steve M looks for facts in the comments – information that he can use (nothing wrong with that). A lot of people feel as you do about scientific behavior (including me, but tend to express the same things over and ove, obscuring what might be nuggets of insight and making that threads boring in general for the casual viewer. Please don’t take what I’ve said as an insult. That’s just my guess about the snips.
left of the ) after “including me” – sorry
#10 You could be right. He runs a great blog, I’d like to clean up mine a bit. I asked him how he moderates and got a nice email with some good tips. It’s not in my nature to clip what people want to say but when something takes over, thats where it has to stop.
RE: #11
If you are interested in my 2 cents worth, I like the way you run the blog.
Yup. Or for silent scientists. That’s one of several reasons why I discourage “piling on”, venting and angriness.
Steve’s puzzlement with the process of Federal rule-making is interesting
He’s confusing regulatory rule making by an agency in the executive branch with law making by the legislative branch. But what exactly is the difference between the two? George Will argues that there isn’t any and that therefore the process of rule-making by the executive branch is unconstitutional. I guess the founders never thought that one branch of government would willing hand over most of its powers to another one. Maybe the arduous process of passing legislation was getting in the way of what Congress thinks is its true mission: Bringin’ home the pork.
Sorry if this is OT. I post it here ’cause Steve has made it clear he’s not interested in political discussions over at his place.
Jeff
Thanks for the link to the EPA document. I think there’s another strand that’s interesting and is also straight from the IPPC report:
“Carbon dioxide concentrations have increased substantially from pre-industrial levels”
“The CO2 concentration has increased about 38% from a pre-industrial value of about 280 parts per million (ppm) to 386 ppm (which is about 0.039% of the atmosphere by volume) in 2008”
The slight of (narrative) hand is the switch from “pre-industrial levels” (plural) to singular via “a pre-industrial value”. Levels (plural) could be read either as measured all over the globe at a single point in pre-industrial time or for all pre-industrial times.
If they were interested in real science they would also add to the next bullet:
“The present atmospheric concentration of CO2 exceeds by far the natural range over the last 650,000 years (180 to 300 ppm) as determined from ice cores (Jansen et al., 2007).”
This implies that this is all the data/ levels that we have. Of course they could validly add words to the effect that, “CO2 levels in the last 650k years are actually estimated to be orders of magnitude lower than possibly any other time in the last 600 million years” along with a GEOCARB III reference but that would be asking too much.
It’s might seem like semantics, but… pre-“pre-industrial” levels have been higher – and that blows away the deluded notion that everything was hunky-dory until messy mankind arrived with its dirty industry.
Good luck with the kidney stones. Ironically, there is a paper somewhere (or at least some churnalism) forecasting increased kidney stones due to future climate change. TCO is not Tyler Cowen, on that I’d be willing to bet.