Note: This is a guest post from Watt Up With That by Anthony Watts. His climate change investigations at WUWT that were used by Alan Carlin in his critique of climate science at the EPA. I have been a strong supporter of Anthony’s surface station project and encouraged him to continue the effort, as some day he would make a difference. And, here is one of the results. Why is this posted here? Without reliable tools to measure climate change we will be unable to warn the public of the coming changes, warming or cooling. Anthony and Alan Carlin have contributed to strengthening that tool set.
Posted on September 30, 2011 by Anthony Watts
While the GAO issues a report today saying that the US Historical Climatological Monitoring Network has real tangible problems as I have been saying for years the Inspector General just released a report this week saying that EPA rushed their CO2 endangerment finding, skipping annoying steps like doing proper review. The lone man holding up his hand at the EPA saying “wait a minute” was Alan Carlin, who was excoriated for doing so.
From Powerline Blog:
Here’s a refresher: in 2009, when the EPA announced its “endangerment” finding to justify its planned regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, Alan Carlin, a 35-year veteran EPA employee who ran the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics, produced a 98-page critique of the climate science the EPA used in its finding.
Carlin’s report concluded, “We believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by the EPA.”You can guess what happened next. The Obama Administration, the one supposedly dedicated to transparency and “restoring science” in public policy making, squashed Carlin’s report and told him to cease and desist any further analysis on climate change issues. Carlin’s supervisor a political appointee emailed his: “I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research, etc.” Shortly after this episode Carlin left EPA.
By the way, Carlin was the chairman of the Los Angeles chapter of the Sierra Club in California at one time, and helped with the Sierra Club’s campaign to stop two dam projects back in the 1960s. In other words, he’s no right-wing ideologue, as the smears of the climate campaigners would have you think.This story is relevant again this week not simply for the obvious hypocrisy and double standard insert the old joke about liberals and double-standards here, but because the issue of the EPA’s climate science has resurfaced in the form of an EPA inspector general’s report that essentially says that Carlin was right about the EPA’s shoddy scientific review.
Here’s the New York Times account from Wednesday:
In a report with wide-reaching political implications, U.S. EPA’s inspector general has found that the scientific assessment backing U.S. EPA’s finding that greenhouse gases are dangerous did not go through sufficient peer review for a document of its importance. . .
According to the IG report, EPA failed to follow the Office of Management and Budget’s peer review procedures for a “highly influential scientific assessment,” which is defined as an assessment that could have an impact of more than $500 million in one year and is “novel, controversial, or precedent setting.
”In particular, the document was reviewed by a 12-member panel that included an EPA employee, violating rules on neutrality. EPA also did not make the review results public, as required, or certify whether it complied with internal or OMB requirements.
In a statement, IG Arthur Elkins Jr. emphasized that his office “did not test the validity of the scientific or technical information used to support the endangerment finding.
”“While it may be debatable what impact, if any, this had on EPA’s finding, it is clear that EPA did not follow all required steps for a highly influential scientific assessment,” he said.
Roger Pielke Jr. observes how the climate campaigners are all circling the wagons, saying “move along, nothing to see here,” and noting that “I’d speculate that these observers would have had different reactions had this report been requested by Henry Waxman in 2006 about the last administration’s EPA. . . during the Bush Administration concern about processes to ensure scientific integrity were all the rage. At that time it was generally understood that process matters, not simply because it helps to improve the quality of scientific assessments, but also because it helps to establish their legitimacy in the political process. One sneers at process at some risk.”
More at Powerline Blog
via Congratulations to Alan Carlin on vindication | Watts Up With That?.
The Next Grand Minimum 