Natural Science Forum / Earth Science / Meteorology / July 2009

Still posting Op/Eds from the WSJ ignoramus, Kimberley A. Strassel?

Carlin is an Economist, not a climate scientist.
<http://carlineconomics.googlepages.com/>

--------------------------------------------------[

   Real Climate - June 26, 2009
   Bubkes
   Gavin A. Schmidt
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/06/bubkes/>
   
   Some parts of the blogosphere, headed up by CEI ("CO2: They
   call it pollution, we call it life!"), are all a-twitter over
   an apparently "suppressed" document that supposedly undermines
   the EPA Endangerment finding about human emissions of carbon
   dioxide and a basket of other greenhouse gases. Well a draft
   of this "suppressed" document has been released and we can now
   all read this allegedly devastating critique of the EPA
   science. Let’s take a look...
   
   First off the authors of the submission; Alan Carlin is an
   economist and John Davidson is an ex-member of the Carter
   administration Council of Environmental Quality. Neither are
   climate scientists. That’s not necessarily a problem - perhaps
   they have mastered multiple fields? - but it is likely an
   indication that the analysis is not going to be very technical
   (and so it will prove). Curiously, while the authors work for
   the NCEE (National Center for Environmental Economics), part
   of the EPA, they appear to have rather closely collaborated
   with one Ken Gregory (his inline comments appear at multiple
   points in the draft). Ken Gregory if you don’t know is a
   leading light of the Friends of Science - a astroturf
   anti-climate science lobbying group based in Alberta. Indeed,
   parts of the Carlin and Davidson report appear to be lifted
   directly from Ken’s rambling magnum opus on the FoS site.
   However, despite this odd pedigree, the scientific points
   could still be valid.
   
   Their main points are nicely summarised thus: a) the science
   is so rapidly evolving that IPCC (2007) and CCSP (2009)
   reports are already out of date, b) the globe is cooling!, c)
   the consensus on hurricane/global warming connections has
   moved from uncertain to ambiguous, d) Greenland is not losing
   mass, no sirree..., e) the recession will save us!, f) water
   vapour feedback is negative!, and g) Scafetta and West’s
   statistical fit of temperature to an obsolete solar forcing
   curve means that all other detection and attribution work is
   wrong. From this "evidence", they then claim that all
   variations in climate are internal variability, except for the
   warming trend which is caused by the sun, oh and by the way
   the globe is cooling.
   
   Devastating eh?
   
   One can see a number of basic flaws here; the complete lack of
   appreciation of the importance of natural variability on short
   time scales, the common but erroneous belief that any
   attribution of past climate change to solar or other forcing
   means that CO2 has no radiative effect, and a hopeless lack of
   familiarity of the basic science of detection and attribution.
   
   But it gets worse, what solid peer reviewed science do they
   cite for support? A heavily-criticised blog posting showing
   that there are bi-decadal periods in climate data and that
   this proves it was the sun wot done it. The work of an
   award-winning astrologer (one Theodor Landscheidt, who also
   thought that the rise of Hitler and Stalin were due to cosmic
   cycles), a classic Courtillot paper we’ve discussed before,
   the aforementioned FoS web page, another web page run by Doug
   Hoyt, a paper by Garth Paltridge reporting on artifacts in the
   NCEP reanalysis of water vapour that are in contradiction to
   every other reanalysis, direct observations and satellite
   data, a complete reprint of another un-peer reviewed paper by
   William Gray, a nonsense paper by Miskolczi etc. etc. I’m not
   quite sure how this is supposed to compete with the four
   rounds of international scientific and governmental review of
   the IPCC or the rounds of review of the CCSP reports....
   
   They don’t even notice the contradictions in their own cites.
   For instance, they show a figure that demonstrates that
   galactic cosmic ray and solar trends are non-existent from
   1957 on, and yet cheerfully quote Scafetta and West who claim
   that almost all of the recent trend is solar driven! They
   claim that climate sensitivity is very small while failing to
   realise that this implies that solar variability can’t have
   any effect either. They claim that GCM simulations produced
   trends over the twentieth century of 1.6 to 3.74ºC - which is
   simply (and bizarrely) wrong (though with all due respect,
   that one seems to come directly from Mr. Gregory). Even more
   curious, Carlin appears to be a big fan of geo-engineering,
   but how this squares with his apparent belief that we know
   nothing about what drives climate, is puzzling. A sine qua non
   of geo-engineering is that we need models to be able to
   predict what is likely to happen, and if you think they are
   all wrong, how could you have any faith that you could
   effectively manage a geo-engineering approach?
   
   Finally, they end up with the oddest claim in the submission:
   That because human welfare has increased over the twentieth
   century at a time when CO2 was increasing, this somehow
   implies that no amount of CO2 increases can ever cause a
   danger to human society. This is just boneheadly stupid.
   
   So in summary, what we have is a ragbag collection of un-peer
   reviewed web pages, an unhealthy dose of sunstroke, a dash of
   astrology and more cherries than you can poke a cocktail stick
   at. Seriously, if that’s the best they can do, the EPA’s
   ruling is on pretty safe ground.
   
   If I were the authors, I’d suppress this myself, and then go
   for a long hike on the Appalachian Trail....
   
   
]--------------------------------------------------