Carlin Economics and Science

On April 18, 2013 Professor Murry Salby, a widely respected astrophysicist and textbook author on atmospheric physics from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, delivered a devastating critique of the IPCC’s AGW climate science in a lecture in Hamburg, Germany:

This appears to be a much more comprehensive presentation of some of his conclusions included in an earlier presentation. The video from the new lecture has just recently been made available on YouTube.

The lecture announcement included the following overview:

“Atmospheric composition and temperature are found to obey a clear two-pronged relationship in the proxy record from ice cores, which represents ancient changes that operate on time scales longer than several thousand years. A similar relationship is found to be obeyed in the observed record of actual atmospheric measurements, which represents modern changes that operate on time scales shorter than a century. Supporting analysis shows that the two relationships are connected. It reveals a common physical mechanism behind changes of composition in the two records. The physics common to the records provides unified insight into recorded changes of greenhouse gases, those apparent in the proxy record of ancient composition as well as those actually observed during the 20th century. The governing relationship is then compared against the relationship that prevails in climate models, in their simulation of future changes.”

Salby concluded that anthropogenic emissions only have a slight impact on the global atmospheric CO₂ concentrations and that these concentrations are mainly a consequence of temperature changes. This relationship is known up to now only from the warming phases after recent ice ages. Prof. Salby extended this relationship to our current climate development. He concluded that the divergence between atmospheric CO₂ levels and temperatures “over the last decade and a half is now unequivocal. In the models global temperature tracks CO₂ almost perfectly. In the real world it clearly doesn’t.”

Salby then presented two charts for comparison, which when arranged side-by-side contrast the model world versus the real world:

In recent years interest in geoengineering has centered on the possibility of substituting it for reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions widely promoted as a solution to hypothesized global warming/climate change. Although it could be both more effective and cost-effective than GHG emission reductions for this purpose, a more fundamental question needs to be answered before geoengineering is seriously considered: Is it likely to be needed and under what circumstances?

I presented a paper at a conference in Moscow in 2011 on this topic. I explored the likely causes, primarily astronomical in nature, of climate change, summarized new observationally-based forecasts of future global temperatures based on recently proposed solar cycles which provide amazingly accurate hindcasts over the last 10,000 years, and then used these forecasts, as well as previous knowledge of ice age cycles, to suggest when geoengineering might be useful in avoiding climate destabilization. I argued that a new Ice Age is inevitable over the next few millennia unless humans undertake counter measures using geoengineering given the minor effects of changes in CO₂ levels. A new ice age would be catastrophic both environmentally and for human welfare, particularly for countries in the northern latitudes such as Canada, Russia, and the US.

Although the causes and timing of ice ages need to be still better understood, Greenland ice cores indicate that Earth’s temperatures have been dropping for over 3,000 years, as in previous interglacial periods. I proposed that the next ice age is most likely to start when the cyclical temperatures are likely to be lowest–near the middle of each millenial solar cycle. It is therefore vital that we better understand these cycles and formulate plans to reduce the chances of a new Ice Age onset before this catastrophe happens. Together with an analysis of temperatures during previous interglacial periods, this suggests that the next ice age may start between about 500 and 2,500 years from now.

My presentation can be found on pages 24-34 of a section of the conference proceedings, which became available last week. The 2011 Moscow Conference was on Problems of Adaptation to Climate Change and sponsored by the Russian Fedeation Government. The reference for the section proceedings is Yu. A. Izrael, A. G. Ryaboshapko, and S. A. Gromov, editors, Investigation of Possibilities of Climate Stabilization Using New Technologies, Proceedings of International Scientific Conference, “Problems of Adaptation to Climate Change” (Moscow, 7–9 November 2011), Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 2012.

Although there is little evidence for significant human impacts on climate, there is no credible evidence for human causation of extreme weather events, as I and many others have recently pointed out. Despite this, the US voted at a UN climate meeting in Doha, Qatar this week to establish a loss and damage mechanism under which developed countries would be responsible for losses supposedly resulting from extreme weather events in poor nations. The resolution was approved with the result that this is now an official UN position which would presumably be included in any future international climate agreement. There is reported to be a cap of $100 billion dollars per year on the total of such transfers.

I am not sure that US taxpayers, who might foot a significant portion of these international transfers if the US were to participate in such agreements with this provision, would be overly enthusiastic if they understood what the US and UN voted to approve.

On May 23 I made a presentation on EPA’s proposed carbon “pollution” standard for new power plants at the Heartland Institute’s Seventh International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC7) in Chicago.
My emphasis in the presentation was on my expectations as to what the Obama Administration would be likely to do concerning this and other proposed EPA regulations after the November, 2012 election. My point was that it appears likely that the Administration has been holding back on important aspects of the large range of expensive EPA regulations that it has proposed or is working on until after the election but can be expected to move rapidly afterwards to implement as many as possible, whether they win or lose the election. My presentation can be viewed here and my slides here.
My 2011 presentation on Obama’s Multifaceted GWD Agenda and What Might Be Done to Slow It Down at Heartland’s ICCC6 in Washington, DC can be viewed here and my slides here.
My 2010 presentation on EPA: The Administration’s High Risk but Pivotal Climate Gamble at Heartland’s ICCC4 in Chicago can be viewed here and my slides here. A writen version can be found here.

Anyone interested in viewing a succinct statement of the skeptic case with regard to global warming/climate change can find three short videos outlining the case here. This was presented to a film crew from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation making a documentary on climate skepticism but completely edited out in making the final version aired on ABC television recently.

Ever wonder why there was a Little Ice Age or a Medieval Warm Period? Or why global temperatures increased slightly in the late 20th Century? On March 8 a preprint of Nicola Scafetta’s new paper entitled “Multi-scale Harmonic Model for Solar and Climate Cyclical Variation Throughout the Holocene Based on Jupiter-Saturn Tidal Frequencies Plus the 11-year Solar Dynamo Cycle” appeared with a sophisticated answer to all these questions. The abstract reads in part as follows:

A simplified harmonic constituent model based on the above two planetary tidal frequencies and on the exact dates of Jupiter and Saturn planetary tidal phases, plus a theoretically deduced 10.87-year central cycle reveals complex quasi-periodic interference/beat patterns. The major beat periods occur at about 115, 61 and 130 years, plus a quasi-millennial large beat cycle around 983 years. We show that equivalent synchronized cycles are found in cosmogenic records used to reconstruct solar activity and in proxy climate records throughout the Holocene (last 12,000 years) up to now. The quasi-secular beat oscillations hindcast reasonably well the known prolonged periods of low solar activity during the last millennium such as the Oort, Wolf, Sporer, Maunder and Dalton minima, as well as the 17 115-year long oscillations found in a detailed temperature reconstruction of the Northern Hemisphere covering the last 2000 years. The millennial three-frequency beat cycle hindcasts equivalent solar and climate cycles for 12,000 years. Finally, the harmonic model herein proposed reconstructs the prolonged solar minima that occurred during 1900– 1920 and 1960–1980 and the secular solar maxima around 1870–1890, 1940–1950 and 1995–2005 and a secular upward trending during the 20th century: this modulated trending agrees well with some solar proxy model, with the ACRIM TSI satellite composite and with the global surface temperature modulation since 1850…. Finally, the model predicts that during low solar activity periods, the solar cycle length tends to be longer, as some researchers have claimed.

In brief, Earth’s climate can be explained by solar cycles of 983, 115, 61, and 130 years. Scafetta’s hindcast is spectacular. Scafetta’s paper represents the most sophisticated effort that I know of to explain Earth’s climatic changes in terms of observationally-based science. Unlike AGW-based climatology it actually contributes to our understanding of this important topic, and in my view represents the beginning of the Copernican revolution in climate science that I recently advocated.

For the reasons discussed in a journal article I published last spring, it is clear that the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) hypothesis does not satisfy the scientific method and thus does not explain global warming/climate change. So what does? The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that they cannot think of any natural cause, so in their view it must be CAGW, but of course this cannot be correct given the negative findings using the scientific method. But if there is a natural cause, one of the IPCC’s principal but very weak arguments disappears anyway.

This post will sketch one such possible natural hypothesis that has the major advantage that it much better explains the available global temperature data since 1850 on the subject than all of the general circulation models used by the IPCC in their 2007 report.

A Major Natural Cause of Climate Change Needs to Be Much More Carefully Examined

The possible natural cause is that Earth’s climate is primarily but not exclusively determined by variations in the sun, the source of all our heat and light. These variations may in turn be determined by changes in the effects of planetary orbits on the center of mass of the solar system. As the IPCC agrees, there is also an important effect of major volcanic activity, particularly in the mid-latitudes. The IPCC claims, however, that solar variations are too small to explain the observed variations in global termperatures. This appears not to be the case because of indirect effects that the IPCC chose not to examine.

The best known (but not necessarily the only one) of these indirect effects occurs because cosmic rays reaching the Earth’s atmosphere from outer space increase the production of small particles by more than a factor of ten (see Svensmark and Calder and more recently CERN’s Kirkby et al.). This appears to increase the probability of formation of low clouds, which in turn influences the reflection of solar radiation back into space. This, in turn, appears to influence global temperatures since low clouds generally reflect a much higher proportion of solar radiation than the earth or its oceans do. Global climate also appears to be closely related to various oceanic cycles.

There Is an Amazing Relationship between the Various Solar System, Solar, Oceanic, and Climate Cycles

In fact, unlike the poor correlations between CO₂ and global temperatures, all these effects–of solar system mechanics on the sun, of solar variations on cloud formation and oceanic cycles, and of cloud formation and oceanic cycles on global temperatures–appear to have amazingly similar cyclical properties. So although the system is quite complex and very little has been done to understand it, this astronomical explanation of climate change appears to be a much more likely hypothesis than the IPCC’s CAGW hypothesis.

Current research suggests that the major solar/global temperature cycles include 20, 60, and approximately 1,000 years, and possibly a 200 or 210 year cycle, in addition to the 100,000 year astronomical/ice age cycle. So if, as it appears, the 60 year cycle reached its peak in the last decade, the 100,000 year cycle about 6,000 years ago, and the 1,000 year cycle either recently, or at the latest, in the next few decades, the prognosis for Earth’s climate under this hypothesis would appear to be for a colder rather than a warmer climate. The only major cycle that may defy this shift, but only for the next ten years, is the 20 year cycle, which appears to be nearing its low point. Various observations of Earth’s climate over the current Holocene period can be explained by assuming reasonable strengths and phases for the solar cycles that have been examined so far. The ice age 100,000 year cycle has long been attributed to astronomical cycles. Why not the shorter cycles as well? Why are they alone unrelated to astronomical cycles as the IPCC argues?

The Need to Move Climate Research Out of Its Current Pre-Copernican, Medieval Mindset on the Earth Alone

Unfortunately, the US has spent well over $100 billion on CAGW research over the past two decades and almost nothing on astronomical hypotheses. I would argue that at least 50 percent of US-funded research should be on non-CAGW hypotheses in order to have a balanced program that gives equal weight to all the possibilities. Surely a major portion of this 50 percent deserves to be used to explore astronomical hypotheses. Some of the obvious tasks are to better determine the major cycles of the solar system, the sun, the oceans, and global temperatures, what phase each one is in, and the extent to which and the mechanisms by which these cycles influence each other.

It is time for climate researchers to go beyond the confines of Earth to seriously examine astronomical sources of climate change. Astronomers have done so for hundreds of years in seeking to understand Earth’s role in the universe; climate researchers need to follow their lead rather than continuing to pretend that the rest of the universe plays only a minor role in climate. It defies common sense to think that the sun that provides all our light and heat has little impact on Earth’s climate. But this is what the IPCC and other CAGW supporters do to this day.

Unfortunately, the underlying reason that little serious research has been done on the astronomical hypotheses for climate change is the same reason that the results of using the scientific method in determining the validity of the CAGW hypothesis have been ignored–little funding is available for non-CAGW research. Research follows the money and for several decades the funding has been primarily for CAGW. Until this changes we are destined to repeat the mistakes, waste, and bad policy prescriptions that have characterized the last two decades in climate research.

On November 8 I made a presentation on climate change causation and its implications for geoengineering at a conference sponsored by the Russian Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring (Roshydromet) in Moscow and supported by various United Nations organizations including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It was attended by the Panel’s Chairman and Deputy and roughly 800 other presenters and attendees.
My presentation, which can be found under Section 3 here, has since been supplemented by a list of sources and notes attached at the end of it. Some of the major points made in my presentation were the following:

Amazingly similar cycles. There is an amazing similarity between solar system, sunspot, oceanic, and global climate cycles. These similarities are so striking that they suggest possible cause and effect relationships, perhaps in the general order shown. In other words it may be that solar system cycles influence solar sunspot and oceanic cycles, which influence global temperature cycles.
Most major cycles appear to be entering their downward phase. Some important common cycles appear to be 20, 60, 200-210, and 1,000 years in length. Although there is some uncertainty with regard to the length of the 200 year cycle and the current phase of the 1,000 year cycle, evidence is presented that all except the 20 and possibly the 1,000 year cycles have passed the peaks of their current cycles. This means that most of the cycles may be starting on their downward phase after recent peaks.
Explains observed climate changes. This provides a natural, non-anthropogenic explanation for most if not all the observations concerning global temperatures over the last two millenia and possibly during the Holocene as a whole, including the upward movement of global temperatures over the last few centuries, the apparent end of the recent upward phase of a 60 year cycle of oceanic and global termperatures, why we now appear to be in a negative PDO, and the current plateau in global temperatures, and suggests that the next major change may be towards lower global temperatures.
Possible mechanism established. As a result of research by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Henrik Svensmark, and others there is now known to be a mechanism by which solar variations can significantly influence Earth’s climate, namely, by changing the intensity of cosmic rays impacting the Earth and thereby cloud cover and thereby the reflection of solar energy back into space and thereby global temperatures. There may be other mechanisms that we do not yet understand.
Implications for Climate Stabilization. This astronomical hypothesis has substantial implications for the optimal approaches to promote climate stabilization. In particular, the proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions appears to have even less promise than under the AGW hypothesis; geoengineering approaches that allow control of both adverse global warming and cooling, on the other hand, look even more attractive. Particular attention is devoted to a geoengineering approach called Solar Radiation Management using the insertion of particles into the stratosphere and to the possible use of geoengeering to prevent the next ice age, which also appears to be governed by astronomical cycles.

The USEPA Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued a review questioning the procedures used in preparing the Technical Support Document (TSD) on which EPA’s Endangerment Finding for greenhouse gases (GHGs) was based. The review argues that the TSD was a “highly influential scientific assessment” but that EPA did not follow the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) requirements for such assessments. EPA argues that it was not a “highly influential scientific assessment” and that they therefore did not have to meet the OMB requirements; I could not disagree more.

My comments on the draft TSD strongly advocated an independent EPA review of the science rather then relying on the science presented in reports prepared by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The OIG review does not deal with the validity of the science–only the procedures used in preparing the TSD. But among the OIG conclusions were the following that appear to be related to my recommendation:

“We found that EPA did not contemporaneously document how it applied and considered the assessment factors in determining whether the IPCC and other assessment reports were of sufficient quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity. EPA described the IPCC review procedures and how they met EPA data quality requirements in the proposed and final rulemakings. However, the Agency did not conduct any independent evaluations of IPCC’s compliance with IPCC procedures, nor did EPA document any specific processes it employed to evaluate the scientific and technical information included in IPCC’s AR4 prior to EPA disseminating that information.”

“Because EPA used information from other organizations to support its findings, EPA, in evaluating whether to disseminate that information, should have determined whether the assessments referenced in the TSD (e.g., IPCC’s AR4) complied with EPA’s information quality guidelines, and whether the peer reviews of these assessments met OMB’s requirements for peer review of scientific assessments. U.S. government acceptance of the documents did not relieve EPA of its responsibility to determine whether the data met EPA’s information quality guidelines before disseminating the information.”

For more information and a link to the OIG review see here.

On August 2, 2011 Professor Murry Salby, Chair of Climate Science at Macquarie University in Australia with visiting professorships at Paris, Stockholm, Jerusalem, and Kyoto, made a presentation entitled Global Emission of Carbon Dioxide: The Contribution from Natural Sources showing that changes in atmospheric CO₂ levels appear to be primarily related to natural temperature changes, not human CO₂ emissions. A summary by Jo Nova can be found here. As she puts it, “It’s not just that man-made emissions don’t control the climate, they don’t even control global CO₂ levels.” Salby analyzed the annual variations in atmospheric CO₂ levels as measured at Mauna Loa with temperatures and found a strong correlation. The largest increases year-to-year occurred when the world warmed fastest due to El Nino conditions. The smallest increases correlated with volcanoes which pump dust up into the atmosphere and keep the world cooler for a while. In other words, temperature controls CO₂ levels on a yearly time-scale, and according to Salby, man-made emissions have little effect. These findings appear to further support the conclusions reached in Section 2.2 of my recent paper summarizing climate change science and economics and the idea that natural global temperature changes such as those due to ENSO and volcanoes are the main drivers of global atmospheric CO₂ levels, not human emissions.

On June 30 I made a presentation at the Sixth International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by the Heartland Institute in Washington, DC, entitled “Obama’s Multifaceted Global Warming Doctrine Agenda and What Might Be Done to Slow It Down.” The slides from the presentation can be downloaded here in PDF format. They provide an overview of many aspects of the Obama Administration’s comprehensive but ill-advised efforts to reduce US carbon dioxide emissions and what might be done to slow down/stop these efforts. Heartland may soon post the video from the presentation on their conference website.

On June 30 and July 1, the Heartland Institute will present an International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-6) in Washington, DC, entitled “Restoring the Scientific Method.” The theme acknowledges the fact that claims of scientific certainty and predictions of climate catastrophes are based on unvalidated atmospheric models and post-normal science, which tries to substitute claims of consensus for the scientific method. This choice has had very adverse consequences for science and society. Abandoning the scientific method led to the Climategate scandal and the errors and abuses of peer review by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The Conference will be kicked off by Senator James Inhofe with a breakfast keynote address on June 30. There will be a debate between an Anthropogenic Global Warming supporter and a skeptic at noon on June 30. There will also be presentations by about two dozen other scientists and economists, including me, on the latest research on the causes, consequences, and policy implications of climate change. The full agenda can be found here. The Conference is open to the public or can be viewed live on the Web here.

Today my new paper on climate change science and economics was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, a peer-reviewed journal. The paper is unusual from a number of different perspectives.

Some Unusual Features

· The economic benefits of reducing CO2 emissions may be about two orders of magnitude less than those estimated by most economists because the climate sensitivity factor is much lower than assumed by the United Nations because feedback is negative rather than positive and the effects of CO2 emissions reductions on atmospheric CO2 appear to be short rather than long lasting.
· The costs of CO2 emissions reductions are perhaps an order of magnitude higher than usually estimated because of technological and implementation problems recently identified.
· CO2 emissions reductions are economically unattractive since the few benefits remaining after the corrections for the above effects are quite unlikely to economically justify the much higher costs unless much lower cost geoengineering is used.
· The risk of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming appears to be so low that it is not currently worth doing anything to try to control it, including geoengineering.

From a historical perspective, the paper builds on my Comments on Draft Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act, prepared for the US Environmental Protection Agency in early 2009, by presenting an expanded version of a few portions of that material in journal article format, incorporating many new or updated references, and explaining the implications of the science for the economic benefits and costs of climate change control. It is also particularly noteworthy for appearing in a peer-reviewed journal rather than the “gray literature,” such as a report to EPA, where many skeptic analyses end up–something that warmists never fail to point out. Although this article was not written for EPA, it has major implications for the scientific validity (or lack thereof) of the December 2009 EPA Endangerment Finding and the economics that EPA and many economists have used to justify current efforts to regulate the emission of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, cap-and-trade schemes, and other approaches to controlling climate change.

From a scientific perspective, the paper starts with a detailed examination of the scientific validity of two of the central tenets of the AGW hypothesis. By applying the scientific method the paper shows why these two tenets are not scientifically valid since predictions made using these hypotheses fail to correspond with observational data. (See primarily Section 2.)

From an economic perspective the paper then develops correction factors to be used to adjust previous economic estimates of the economic benefits of global warming control for these scientifically invalid aspects of the AGW hypothesis. (See primarily Section 2.) It also briefly summarizes many of the previous analyses of the economic benefits and costs of climate control, analyzes why previous analyses reached the conclusions they did, and contrasts them with the policy conclusions reached in this paper. (See primarily Section 5.) It also critically examines the economic costs of control. (See primarily Section 3.)

From a methodological perspective, the article argues that economic analyses of interdisciplinary issues such as climate change would be much more useful if they critically examine what other disciplines have to say, insist on using the most relevant observational data and the scientific method, and examine lower cost alternatives that would accomplish the same objectives. (See primarily Section 1.) These general principles are illustrated by applying them to the case of climate change mitigation, one of the most interdisciplinary of public policy issues. The analysis shows how use of these principles leads to quite different conclusions than those of most previous such economic analyses.

The Obama Administration has made many efforts to support its climate religion (climatism). Since this viewpoint has no basis in the scientific method, it is not science and would seem best characterized as religion. For a list of what the Administration believes they have done see page 27 here. The first item listed is $80 billion (with a “b”) for “clean and efficient energy in ARRA” (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, more commonly called the stimulus bill). Since most of this expenditure will not stimulate anything except the income of politically favored alternative energy providers and their suppliers and future higher cost energy for rate-payers, it is highly unlikely to be very stimulative for the economy as a whole.

The Administration Has Also Embarked on an Extensive Propaganda Campaign in Behalf of Climatism

Although not mentioned in the list of Administration efforts linked above but perhaps at least as worrisome, the Administration appears to have embarked on an extensive propaganda campaign to promote its climate religion to the general public at taxpayers’ expense. They have gone well beyond trying to defend their proposed greenhouse gas regulations by the US Environmental Protection Agency and are attempting to use other EPA programs and other agencies under their control to promote their viewpoint on this subject without the approval of and perhaps even the knowledge of Congress.

Recent news reports are that EPA is now proposing to require that information on greenhouse gas emissions by new automobiles be added to the mileage labels required on all new cars. Such Federal “educational” efforts are not limited to EPA, however. A recent news item reports that AmeriCorps is funding interns in Marin County Schools in California to assist with a climate change education program also designed to motivate students and their families to take voluntary energy efficiency actions to reduce their carbon footprint.

The Department of Education’s Plans for an “Education” Program

Even more recently, the Secretary of Education announced that his Department plans to “help advance the sustainability movement through education” through Federally subsidized school programs beginning as early as kindergarten that teach children about climate change and prepare them “to contribute to the workforce through green jobs.” His intention is that the Department’s efforts will “explain the science behind climate change and how we can change our daily practices to help save the planet.”

My comment is that one of the reasons that the Federal Government does not have primary responsibility for education is to avoid the possibility that it could directly inculcate the viewpoints of those currently in power on students throughout the country. But when funds for education at the state and local level are short, the Federal Government may believe that it has found a way around this restriction.

A National Park Service Effort

Most of this post, however, will deal with the expansion to the National Park Service (NPS), which may not have been so widely publicized but appears to be further along in its implementation so that it is easier to visualize what the “educational” efforts by other departments may look like when fully implemented. Because the Park Service is often viewed as an impartial source of objective information on natural history subjects, the NPS effort may carry added weight with citizens who view it, although the attempts to teach climatism to children as early as kindergarten may also be viewed as likely to be unusually “effective” by those desiring such an outcome.

The National Park Service’s Traveling Climate Change Exhibit

NPS/NASA Exhibit on Arrange for Change as photographed by Alan Carlin in NCNP (click to enlarge)

On a recent visit to the Visitor Center for North Cascades National Park near Newhalem, Washington, I encountered a large “traveling” exhibit panel entitled “Arrange for Change” with NPS and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) symbols indicating sponsorship. Rangers at the Visitor Center reported that it had been there for about a month and had come from Lewis and Clark National Historic Park and would soon move to another park. It was apparently intended as a temporary exhibit since the more permanent exhibit it replaced was still partially visible behind the large new exhibit in front of it. There were no handouts or other written material provided with the exhibit or available from those rangers asked so visitors would necessarily have to go by the exact contents of the exhibit in formulating their views on the subjects raised.

Last Section of NPS/NASA Exhibit on Arrange for Change (click to enlarge)

Briefly, the exhibit attempts to summarize the case for climatism with an emphasis on evidence from and impacts on national parks and ends by stating in the fourth of four sections (in the lower right of the written area of the exhibit and in the photograph above) that:

“Perhaps one of the best strategies for coping with change is for each person to become ‘carbon neutral’ in their daily lives. This can be accomplished by reducing energy use and investing in practices and alternate technologies that offset carbon emissons we are generating.”

Although the exhibit adheres closely to the standard climatism religion, and is therefore subject to the many general criticisms (see, for example, here and here) of it, I do have a number of questions and concerns about particular points made in the exhibit. First of all, the recommended strategy assumes a degree of altruism rarely seen in the real world since anyone who adopted the advice would have to engage in less energy-using activities and/or pay others to reduce their emissions through buying offsets. This is the reason that most advocates want mandatory standards so that everyone would have to endure similar losses whether they are altruistic or not.

The Rationale Is the Usual Climatism but without the Usual References

First Section of NPS/NASA Exhibit on Arrange for Change (click to enlarge)

The rationale for all this may be a little hard to understand by those not familiar with the climatism viewpoint. The first of the four sections in the exhibit states that:

“The scientific consensus is that global temperature in now rising at a rate unprecedented in the experience of modern human society (Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, 2004). Scientists also say most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.”

Accompanying these words is the Mona Loa CO₂ level chart showing steady increases over the years 1960 to about 2004.

This first section has a few problems. It relies almost exclusively on the authority of largely unspecified “scientists.” Since there is some evidence that temperatures rose at a similar rate in the 1920-30s, and, in fact for similar periods in the gradually rising 60 year cycles exhibited by global temperatures since the Little Ice Age (see here and my Comments, which can be downloaded from here), it is difficult to understand how the authors of the exhibit believe that global temperatures are “rising at a rate unprecedented in the experience of modern human society.” Perhaps more important is the lack of a citation (such as perhaps various IPCC reports) for the even more doubtful statement that most warming over the last 50 years is due to human activities. The implication of the Mona Loa chart would seem to be that the increasing levels of CO₂ are due to human activities, although this is certainly not stated and highly doubtful. Finally, no mention is made of the alternative hypothesis that the rise in CO₂ levels is an effect of rising ocean temperatures sometime in the past rather than anything humans may have done since rising ocean temperatures mean that the oceans cannot hold as much CO₂.

Exhibit Says Wildland Fires Have Increased–But Is This a Result of a Policy Change?

Lower Left Section of NPS/NASA Exhibit on Arrange for Change (click to enlarge)
The lower left section is entitled “Changes Disrupt Park Use.” The text states that:

“Higher temperatures in spring and summer and earlier melting of the snow pack in recent years have contributed to an increase in the frequency and duration of wildland fires. This increase in wildfires often causes park facilities to close. The 2006 fire season set a 45-year-high in the number of acres burned. 2006 was also the hottest January through July on record in America’s parks. In many parks, wintry weather is beginning later and ending earlier. Although this makes for a longer season of hiking and camping it reduces opportunities for recreational skiing and other winter sports due to inadequate snow cover. These impacts have economic implications.”

This section also has pictures of a plume from a forest fire and a cross-country skier.

No source is given for the temperature statement; it does seem odd that the period January through July was chosen rather than a full year, which would seem to be slightly more relevant (but hardly conclusive for assessing whether there really has been climatic change). Presumably most fires occur in the late summer or early fall, which is excluded from the period referenced. Also, I thought that the Park Service had changed its views concerning the role of fires in parks and now regards naturally-originated fires as good rather than a target for suppression. In some cases it even carries out controlled burns. Could it be that the increase in the number of acres burned was the result of this change in policy rather than climate change? The exhibit does not explain. It should also be pointed out that attempts to control carbon emissions also have economic impacts–and quite likely little, if any, impact.

Exhibit Claims Climate Change Is Happening on the Basis of Two Pictures and a Cute Endangered Pika

Upper Right Section of NPS/NASA Exhibit on Arrange for Change (click to enlarge)

The upper right section is entitled “Climate Change Is Happening.” It shows two pictures labelled Northwestern Glacier, Kenai Fjords National Park, 1909 and 2005, respectively. The former appers to show a much larger glacier and more mountain snow than the latter. No month or day of the year is provided for either photograph. The text states:

“Warmer winters and longer, more intense periods of melting have increased the rate of glacial retreat in many parks, as demonstrated by the Northwestern Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park. It is estimated by scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey that by 2030, many of the glaciers in Montana’s Glacier National Park will be completely gone. In Yosemite, the pike population is endanger of extinction as warming temperatures are shifting their cool habitat higher and higher on the mountainsides.”

A picture of a pika is provided.

There is undoubtedly some climate change occurring on Earth, just as there has been for billions of years, but this section of the presentation does not make a case for climate change due to human activity as opposed to natural forces. And unless there is change due to human activity, there is no basis for “solving” the “problem” by modifying human behavior. With regard to the claim in the exhibit that there has been climate change in the parks, since no month is given when the two photographs were taken it is not possible to say whether the change in mountain snow levels between them is due to differences in time of year or in climate.

Such is not the case, however, for the extent of the glacier since that is much less dependent on time of the year but is greatly dependent on the amount of precipitation in the form of snow. It is important to note that the year 1909 is at or near the low point in the 60 year natural climate cycle while 2005 is near the top of this natural cycle (see my Comments downloadable from here), so some or even all of the differences in the extent of the glacier may be explainable by the natural 60 year climate cycle or changes in snow precipitation rather than any change in human emissions. If so, there may be climate change, but not necessarily human-induced climate change.

Some Questions About the Appropriateness of Using Public Funds to Directly Influence Public Opinion on a Highly Partisan Issue

In addition to the substantive issues raised above concerning the statements in the exhibit, it is very important to question the appropriateness of having the exhibit in a national park, paying Americorps interns to teach climatism to students, or using Federal subsidies to teach climatism in the schools. The effort appears to be widespread enough in the Federal Government so that it may have been directed from the White House, but it is possible that these various efforts are the result of individual departments attempting to curry favor with the Administration by supporting known Administration viewpoints. It would be interesting, however, to learn just how widespread these efforts are in the Executive Branch and how much is being spent on them.

The critical question, it seems to me, is whether taxpayers should pay for trying to influence the opinions of park visitors or students concerning a highly partisan issue which has split the Democrats in Congress and united the Republicans in the Senate in opposition. The highly questionable views (see my Comments downloadable here) attributed to “scientists” presented by the exhibit make no effort to present a balanced viewpoint by the many scientists who have presented differing views on the subject. And if such attempts are made to influence public opinion is it not the Park Service’s and each school’s responsibility to present all viewpoints in a balanced way, which is presumably what they try to do with their many other presentations to the public/students? Have the Park Service and Americorps and the Department of Education become mere propaganda arms for the Executive Branch of the Federal Government? Since climatism is currently a highly partisan debate in Congress and some state legislatures, should these agencies use taxpayer funds to support one side of the debate with no mention of the opposing viewpoints?

I think the answer to these questions should be for Federal agencies to get out of the climate change education business. Big Brother should not be attempting to sell his religious views to students or park visitors. Since the Administration appears unlikely to do this on its own, probably the easiest way to implement such restrictions is to prohibit the expenditure of Federal funds for the purpose of promoting climatism to the public.

Warmists had little hope for a climate bill this year after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s July 22 decision not to push an energy bill this year containing cap and trade/tax provisions or renewable electricity standards. Reid’s decision yesterday not to bring even a greatly scaled down bill to a vote before the August Congressional recess because of a lack of votes further reinforced his earlier decision since if the Senate does not pass an energy bill soon it will be even harder to bring up a House-Senate “compromise” bill including the House-passed Waxman-Markey cap and trade/tax bill during a possible lame-duck session. This virtually ends any remaining possibility of a climate bill this year.

The future of climate change regulation now rides with what the US Environmental Protection Agency does or does not do. The Senate vote of 47-53 on June 10 on whether to prevent the EPA from pursuing climate regulations suggests that Senate support for EPA in this regard is fragile at best. If EPA should be prevented from pursuing climate change regulation, the worldwide climate regulation movement will probably be largely over as a viable political possibility (see here and here).

July 22 appears likely to mark a significant turning point in the long global warming/climate change control saga. Yesterday, the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, announced that the Senate would not consider legislation prior to the August recess that involved either cap and trade/tax or a renewable electricity standard. Although this outcome had been predicted for some time by some Republican senators such as James Inhofe, this amounts to a recognition of this reality by the Senate Democratic leadership. This decision makes it unlikely that such legislation will be approved this year. If, as some Republicans hope, the next Congress has more Republican members, such legislation would be even less likely in the next Congress. There remains a risk that such legislation would be passed in a lame-duck session at the end of 2010, but that may not be a strong possibility given the apparent lack of interest by all Senate Republicans and some Democrats.

So the only remaining realistic possibility for implementation of carbon emission controls is probably through actions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. On June 10 the Senate failed by a vote of 47/53 to disapprove the EPA Endangerment Finding of late 2009. It is possible, however, that a two year delay in EPA action will be approved by Congress later this year in accordance with a proposal by Senator Jay Rockefeller. But if this or other ways can be found to halt EPA’s efforts the remaining major risk of global “climate control” would be effectively ended in the US.

This development yesterday is likely to sooner or later result in the end of world support for such approaches if a way is found to end EPA’s threatened regulations. Those countries that choose to continue major governmental efforts to reduce carbon emissions will soon find themselves at a competitive disadvantage to those that do not. Few countries are likely to be willing to take such risks with their economies for very long.

President Obama tonight called for a major transition from “dirty” fossil fuels to “clean” energy sources, and claimed that the Waxman-Markey bill was a major step in that direction. He claimed that such a change would help to prevent future oil spills such as that experienced over the last two months in the Gulf of Mexico. So his new argument is not that cap and trade/tax would reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, which he never mentioned. Instead, his argument is that cap and trade/tax would prevent future major oil spills and other adverse environmental effects of using “dirty” fossil fuels.

This argument is weak to say the least. Conversion to his particular favored energy sources would take many years and prove exceedingly expensive, as the experiences of Spain, Denmark, and Germany with wind/solar energy illustrate. These favored sources each have their own environmental problems. In the meantime fossil fuel use will have to be expanded substantially to meet public and industry demand since the only way to prevent this would be to have a permanent and deepening recession. Finally, it does not really matter whether the proposed conversion starts now (as he said he wants) or many years from now since the alleged reduced risk of oil spills would not be realized for many years, if ever.

Realistic Alternatives to Reduce Dependence on Oil

If the purpose is to reduce major offshore oil spills, the obvious way to do that other than effective regulation (which the Obama Administration has clearly not done) is to prohibit specified types of “risky” offshore drilling until it can be made safe and encourage (not require) and at least not prohibit the development and use of other economical energy sources that will not lead to major offshore oil spills. Such oil-substitutes exist in abundance in the United States, and include land-based heavy oil and oil sands and oil shale and the conversion of coal to oil (for which technology has long existed). It may also prove economical to convert more large vehicle fleets to natural gas, given its falling price. All of these could be accomplished within a few years and with comparatively little cost to US energy users and would actually reduce our dependence on conventional oil and therefore reduce the demand for risky offshore drilling.

The President’s vague call for a change to “clean” energy and praise for the House cap and trade/tax bill as a way to avoid future major offshore oil spills is little more than pie-in-the-sky intended to promote his real aim, which still appears to be reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This is illustrated by his proposal recently to substantially expand off-shore oil drilling apparently as a way to buy votes for cap and trade/tax. Somehow the environmental risks of expanding off-shore drilling did not play any significant role when it came to promoting cap and trade/tax just a few months ago.

Unfortunately, his appeal tonight may result in passage of laws that provide preferences for his favored “clean” fuel sources. Since both coal and oil are currently out of favor, that presumably means solar, wind, and possibly (although he did not specify last night) nuclear. Each of these sources have their own environmental problems and share the common problem of being very expensive. Their use will inevitably lead to much higher energy prices. These problems will not go away by giving them national preferences. Preferences will primarily result in increased energy costs for industry and consumers and increasing non-competitiveness of the US economy in world markets.

Federal Preferences for Particular Energy Sources Would Be a Huge Waste of Resources Needed Elsewhere

So although preferences may be politically “popular,” they are nothing more than gigantic wastes of money which the United States needs for other much more useful purposes. Preferences will not make the technology develop significantly faster and will result in fewer, not more jobs, as shown by studies of the Spanish and Danish experiences with wind/solar energy. Other than providing a few limited incentives for economical alternative sources to oil such as described above, the best course of action for Congress is to keep the Federal Government out of the choice of energy sources (as described in an earlier post), and limit its involvement to effective regulaton of existing health, safety, and environmental laws. Increased concentration on this last but legitimate role for government should more than occupy the Government’s limited resources over the next few years.

As explained in a recent paper, there are only a few ways in which the US Environmental Protection Agency can be prevented from rewriting the Clean Air Act and issuing sweeping regulations to attempt to control emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. These regulations are not based on good science but rather largely on something called an “Endangerment Finding” issued late in 2009, which in turn is based on a US Supreme Court decision of 2007 that effectively expanded the reach of the Clean Air Act beyond anything mentioned in the Act. In other words, EPA is attempting to greatly expand its power and authority without any Congressional approval of what it is doing. The result is an EPA-initiated expansion of its already vast power over the economy and will result in very large adverse economic costs to the American public (especially “necessarily skyrocket”[ing] energy costs in the words of Barack Obama in the related context of cap and trade) with very little if any economic benefits.

This state of affairs is scheduled for its first real Congressional test on Thursday, June 10, when the Senate is scheduled to vote on the Murkowski Disapproval Resolution (S.J.Res.26), which uses the Congressional Review Act to dispprove the Endangerment Finding. Although further Congressional action would be needed to make the disapproval effective, its approval by the Senate would be a major first step towards this end. As of June 7 the vote was expected to be very close. Those who believe as I do that it is very important to prevent EPA from unilaterally vastly expanding its authority over the economy without approval by Congress can best influence the outcome of the vote by contacting their senators on June 8 or 9 and urging them to vote yes on S.J.Res.26.

Note: This post is the summary of the first section of a paper that I presented at the Fourth International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by the Heartland Institute, Chicago, Illinois, May 17, 2010. The second section drew heavily on a previous post. The full paper can be downloaded here. The briefing slides used in the presentation can be found here.
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This post explores why EPA plays a pivotal role in the worldwide climate change controversy, what should be done about it, and what longer term reforms are needed to prevent similar attempts to subvert public policy on the basis of bad science. This topic is crucial to understanding the current status of the climate change battle.

Why EPA Is Pivotal

The larger world climate change battle now hinges largely on the fate of the efforts by the US EPA to control some greenhouse gases. The rest of world will not commit economic suicide by agreeing to major greenhouse gas emission cuts unless the US does. On the other hand, the Senate will not approve Cap and Tax; so it all hinges on EPA. If EPA is stopped in its determination to impose carbon rationing, the effort to roll back the industrial revolution can and will be stopped since it is the last real possibility that the US might join some other developed countries in the effort. If EPA is not stopped, the world may well witness an attempt to impose the current green agenda. The Obama Administration will apparently ride the Supreme Court decision until its dying days, regardless of the resulting political damage, which may be severe.

In addition to the continuing importance of halting the implementation of the GHG control schemes, the time has come to start defining what policy and administrative changes might be advisable. What I propose is a series of longer-term reforms needed to decrease the chances that bad regulations based on bad science such as those now being proposed for controlling GHGs will be repeated in the future in the US in other regulatory areas. These include the following in the case of EPA:

* Insulate EPA from political control
* Require that EPA MUST carry out independent analyses and not use any other assessments
* Remove financial incentives for EPA managers to follow the Administration
* Periodically review and reassess major EPA regulations not already subject to review requirement
* Require that EPA use the scientific method in judging the merits of scientific hypotheses.

The following reforms would also appear desirable with regard to other agencies:

* End the new National Climate Service
* Split responsibility for climatic data gathering and climatic data interpretation.
* Get the Federal Government and state legislatures out of energy choice decisions; limit role to strictly R&D and conventional pollution control; no subsidies/taxes/preferences unless justified to bring prices into line with full social costs; so no renewable portfolio standards (RPSs)
* Rethink how Federal R&D decisions are made so that there is broad diversity of hypotheses researched and the process cannot be captured by groups advocating a single hypothesis in the future
* End all US funding of UN climate change efforts and aid to less developed countries based on climate change criteria.

Given the the apparent death of cap and trade legislation in the US Senate, the short-term outcome of the US debate on action that allegedly might reduce climate change may rest primarily on what the USEPA manages to actually do. So it is of some importance what criteria EPA claims to be using in determining the scientific merits of its endangerment finding. In US EPA’s view the UN IPCC reports and other assessments based on it are so satisfactory an assessement of current climate science that no independent EPA analysis was necessary, primarily because of the IPCC’s “rigorous” policy on peer review. EPA cites this review policy as the reason it accepts these reports rather than others, such as the NIPCC report. Recent reports show that as actually carried out the UN IPCC AR4 assessment was much less than rigorous in the application of its peer review guidelines, however. Lost in this exchange, however, is whether the yardsticks being used by the UN and the EPA are reasonable. Both organizations appear to assume that peer review is the important characteristic of valid science included in scientific assessment reports.

I maintain, on the contrary, that the important characteristic should be how well the hypotheses proposed by the UN IPCC corresponds with real world evidence. It is only this crucial correspondence that determines the scientific validity of a hypothesis, not how many or how distinguished the reviewers may be who agree with the relevant hypotheses. This should be evident since any widely held scientific view (such as that the Earth is flat some centuries ago) would have easily qualified as valid science using a peer review standard since the supporters could easily have gotten a large number of favorable reviews of their hypotheses. This is what has happened in the case of the AGW hypothesis. There are enough global warming supporters among climate scientists so that with a little careful selection favorable peer reviews can be obtained for any desired warmist hypothesis. Hence such views can pass the peer review standard whether a hypothesis really stands up to comparisons with real world data or not.

For example, the EPA claims in Response 1-12 to the public comments on the EPA proposed endangerment finding that the 880 page NIPCC report stands in sharp contrast to the IPCC and related reports:

“The [NIPCC] organization does not appear to have established any procedures for author selection and provides no evidence that a transparent and open public or expert review was conducted. Thus, the NIPCC’s approach stands in sharp contrast to the clear, transparent, and open procedures of the IPCC, CCSP, USGCRP, and NRC.”

So although there is some discussion of the arguments raised by the NIPCC report, no real effort appears to have been made to consider using the NIPCC report at least in part on the basis of whether the report had “adequate” peer-review guidelines. According to the EPA, only the IPCC and similar reports including such peer review meet EPA’s “exacting” review standards. How accurate or how closely the NIPCC and other skeptic reports correspond with real world evidence appears not to be of any real importance to the EPA–just how comprehensive the stated review process was supposed to be. Yet when deviations from these standards are detailed EPA maintains that the IPCC conclusions would not have been materially affected rather than admitting that their expressed confidence in the UN procedures was misplaced. This is also an argument that the substantive scientific merits of the non-IPCC assessments do matter, but only when the procedural aspects have not been comprehensively implemented. The reverse should be the case.

The Purposes of Peer Review

The basis for the underlying argument is what is fundamental to the scientific method: Correspondence with real world data or procedural review requirements. In examining this issue it is useful to recall the history of scientific peer review. It was basically introduced so as to decide which papers submitted to printed journals should be included and whether there might be improvements that could be made in those selected, primarily for the purpose of saving then precious journal space. This may have actually been useful in the days when journals were of limited size based on the printing and mailing costs.

Peer review subsequently served an added purpose–to provide a basis for discriminating between the output of various authors/professors and thus providing a basis for conferring academic tenure on some but not on others. The second purpose is still a rationale argument for using peer review, but the first purpose is technologically obsolete since Web publication of added papers is very low cost and may be almost free. Use of Web-based journals has the added advantage that they are normally free to all users rather than limited to the select few who can afford often very expensive subscriptions. And peer review of papers for journal publication has many very important disadvantages, of which the most important is that it often prevents publication of non-conventional ideas that may have great merit. This appears to have been too often the case with regard to the consideration of skeptic contributions to climate science in recent years.

So the extension of journal-based peer review to determining the scientific merit of competing hypotheses is a very important policy issue since it may lead to reducing the importance of comparisons of competing scientific hypotheses against real world data. This is exactly what appears to have happened in the case of the AGW hypothesis of global warming. In fact, warmists have widely cited better peer review as an important reason to support their hypothesis; according to the Climategate emails, leading warmist scientists actively conspired to prevent skeptic-oriented papers from being published in major climate-related journals.

The Fundamental Issue: How Should Scientific Hypotheses Be Judged?

All this highlights the fundamental issue of whether scientific hypotheses should be judged on the basis of whether they have appeared in peer-reviewed journal publications or on the basis of correspondence with observed real world data. I believe very strongly that it is the latter rather than the former that should be used. One important reason is that peer-review is subject to the same “group think” that science should seek to avoid in order to be objective and useful. And that is exactly what has happened in the case of the AGW hypothesis. Despite the absense of any relevant real world data comparisons to support their case, warmists try to use the widespread support (the so-called “consensus”) among sympathetic scientists for their hypothesis to argue that it should be accepted. Obviously if this was the standard, we would still believe that the Earth was flat and that the Earth was the center of the universe, to mention just two widely supported hypotheses disproved by their lack of correspondence with real world data.

It is very unfortunate and may even prove disastrous that EPA and other environmental regulatory institutions appear to have made peer review procedures of much more importance than correspondence with real world data. Scientific assessments need to determine the correspondence between hypotheses on the basis of real world data, not relative “peer review” procedures. This needs to be corrected before immense damage is done to our crucial criteria for judging scientific hypotheses and to our economy as a result of using faulty science for public policy purposes.