Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: James Calladine who wrote (4500)	2/21/2005 2:38:52 PM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

This is the way BUSH & CO operate...like homegrown Terrorists Opponents of 'Clear Skies' Bill Examined The GOP sponsor of legislation championed by Bush asks two groups to turn over financial records. One official calls it intimidation. by Alan C. Miller and Tom Hamburger WASHINGTON — The chairman of a Senate committee that oversees environmental issues has directed two national organizations that oppose President Bush's major clean-air initiative to turn over their financial and tax records to the Senate. There is not even any subtlety about this. This is a blatant attempt at intimidation and bullying so that experts will be afraid to speak out about a bill that rolls back air pollution protections for all Americans. US Rep. Henry Waxman Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), who heads the Environment and Public Works Committee, asked for the documents 10 days after a representative of the two groups criticized Bush's "Clear Skies" proposal before a Senate subcommittee. Inhofe is the leading sponsor of the administration bill, which is deadlocked in his panel. The executive director of the two organizations, which represent state and local air pollution control agencies and officials, charged that the request was an attempt to intimidate critics of the measure. Democratic senators on Inhofe's committee also were dismayed by his action, but declined to say so publicly because they were in the midst of sensitive negotiations with the chairman on the legislation, staffers said. The committee's majority staff director, Andrew Wheeler, said the request for the groups' documents did not stem from their criticism of the legislation. He said the panel wanted to determine whether the groups represented only regulators' views or whether they also were subsidized by outside interests, including environmentalists or foundations. The funding, Wheeler said, "goes to who they're speaking for." William Becker, the executive director of both groups — the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators, which represents 48 state air pollution control agencies, and the Assn. of Local Air Pollution Control Officials, which represents more than 165 local agencies — said they received no money from environmental activists or other private interests. The administration has proposed the "Clear Skies" initiative as part of its effort to overhaul the way the Clean Air Act forces power plants to cut emissions. The measure would set new emission standards for three major pollutants and introduce a market-based approach favored by industry. Proponents say it would reduce sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury emissions by 70%. Opponents say reductions could be achieved faster through tighter restrictions or other approaches, including existing Clean Air Act regulations. Inhofe delayed a vote on the bill this week after he determined that he did not have the numbers to send it to the full Senate. The panel's 18 members are split, largely along party lines. On Jan. 26, John Paul, an environmental regulator from Ohio, testified on behalf of both pollution control organizations. He told the Senate subcommittee that "Clear Skies" "fails on every one of our associations' core principals," was "far too lenient" on polluters and would undermine "states' abilities to protect air quality." After the testimony, several senators sent a letter to Paul with follow-up questions; Inhofe included a request for financial statements, membership lists and tax returns for the last six years for both groups. Paul is the vice president and incoming president of the local air pollution group. Inhofe's request was first disclosed by Cox News Service on Friday. The Senate committee asked for the information because it had long-standing concerns about the decision-making process of the state air pollution group, and was pursuing those questions as part of its oversight responsibility, Wheeler said. "It has nothing to do with 'Clear Skies,' " he said. "If we wanted to intimidate them, we would have done it before they testified, not after." Wheeler said there also were concerns about whether the state group purported to speak for all its members when some disagreed with its positions. The two groups represent the views of the state and local regulators before the Environmental Protection Agency and Congress. They also do training, surveys and publish newsletters. "We have a limited constituency — the 50 states and local agencies," Becker said. "These are the only ones for whom we can work." Becker said Inhofe's request appeared to be "some sort of retaliation against some very legitimate criticism of [Bush's] 'Clear Skies' proposal." Although the membership often is not unanimous on the state group's positions, Becker said, "We go to great pains to try to reach an overwhelming majority, not just a simple majority, and we succeed." Rep. Henry A. Waxman of Los Angeles, the senior Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, said: "There is not even any subtlety about this. This is a blatant attempt at intimidation and bullying so that experts will be afraid to speak out about a bill that rolls back air pollution protections for all Americans." A Republican who voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, Paul gained prominence in March 2004 when he told the Los Angeles Times that an EPA advisory committee he co-chaired had been abruptly shelved after it requested comparative data on the administration's proposal to control mercury emissions from power plants. The EPA never produced the information. He said he was "deeply disappointed" by Inhofe's request. © Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

To: James Calladine who wrote (4500)	2/22/2005 12:36:01 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 36917

Hockey Stick on Ice Politicizing the science of global warming. Friday, February 18, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST On Wednesday National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman canceled the season, and we guess that's a loss. But this week also brought news of something else that's been put on ice. We're talking about the "hockey stick." Just so we're clear, this hockey stick isn't a sports implement; it's a scientific graph. Back in the late 1990s, American geoscientist Michael Mann published a chart that purported to show average surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 1,000 years. The chart showed relatively minor fluctuations in temperature over the first 900 years, then a sharp and continuous rise over the past century, giving it a hockey-stick shape. Mr. Mann's chart was both a scientific and political sensation. It contradicted a body of scientific work suggesting a warm period early in the second millennium, followed by a "Little Ice Age" starting in the 14th century. It also provided some visually arresting scientific support for the contention that fossil-fuel emissions were the cause of higher temperatures. Little wonder, then, that Mr. Mann's hockey stick appears five times in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's landmark 2001 report on global warming, which paved the way to this week's global ratification--sans the U.S., Australia and China--of the Kyoto Protocol. Yet there were doubts about Mr. Mann's methods and analysis from the start. In 1998, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics published a paper in the journal Climate Research, arguing that there really had been a Medieval warm period. The result: Messrs. Soon and Baliunas were treated as heretics and six editors at Climate Research were made to resign. Still, questions persisted. In 2003, Stephen McIntyre, a Toronto minerals consultant and amateur mathematician, and Ross McKitrick, an economist at Canada's University of Guelph, jointly published a critique of the hockey stick analysis. Their conclusion: Mr. Mann's work was riddled with "collation errors, unjustifiable truncations of extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculations of principal components, and other quality control defects." Once these were corrected, the Medieval warm period showed up again in the data. This should have produced a healthy scientific debate. Instead, as the Journal's Antonio Regalado reported Monday, Mr. Mann tried to shut down debate by refusing to disclose the mathematical algorithm by which he arrived at his conclusions. All the same, Mr. Mann was forced to publish a retraction of some of his initial data, and doubts about his statistical methods have since grown. Statistician Francis Zwiers of Environment Canada (a government agency) notes that Mr. Mann's method "preferentially produces hockey sticks when there are none in the data." Other reputable scientists such as Berkeley's Richard Muller and Hans von Storch of Germany's GKSS Center essentially agree. We realize this may all seem like so much academic nonsense. Yet if there really was a Medieval warm period (we draw no conclusions), it would cast some doubt on the contention that our SUVs and air conditioners, rather than natural causes, are to blame for apparent global warming. There is also the not-so-small matter of the politicization of science: If climate scientists feel their careers might be put at risk by questioning some orthodoxy, the inevitable result will be bad science. It says something that it took two non-climate scientists to bring Mr. Mann's errors to light. But the important point is this: The world is being lobbied to place a huge economic bet--as much as $150 billion a year--on the notion that man-made global warming is real. Businesses are gearing up, at considerable cost, to deal with a new regulatory environment; complex carbon-trading schemes are in the making. Shouldn't everyone look very carefully, and honestly, at the science before we jump off this particular cliff? opinionjournal.com