2009-03-16 Comments on EPA DTS Document

2009-03-16 Alan Carlin US Environmental Protection Agency/unofficial \global warming/skepticism/arguments\PDFs http://www.epa.gov/foia/docs/Endangerment_comments_v7b.pdf Comments on Draft Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act Comments on Draft Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act Carlin's basic claim: As of the best information we currently have, the GHG/CO2 hypothesis as to the cause of global warming, which this Draft TSD supports, is currently an invalid hypothesis from a scientific viewpoint because it fails a number of critical comparisons with available observable data. Any one of these failings should be enough to invalidate the hypothesis... Carlin's objections are: Commentary: News:
 * 1) Lack of observed upper tropospheric heating in the tropics (see Section 2.9 for a detailed discussion).
 * 2) Lack of observed constant humidity levels, a very important assumption of all the IPCC models, as CO2 levels have risen (see Section 1.7).
 * 3) The most reliable sets of global temperature data we have, using satellite microwave sounding units, show no appreciable temperature increases during the critical period 1978-1997, just when the surface station data show a pronounced rise (see Section 2.4). Satellite data after 1998 is also inconsistent with the GHG/CO2/AGW hypothesis
 * 4) The models used by the IPCC do not take into account or show the most important ocean oscillations which clearly do affect global temperatures, namely, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, and the ENSO (Section 2.4). Leaving out any major potential causes for global warming from the analysis results in the likely misattribution of the effects of these oscillations to the GHGs/CO2 and hence is likely to overstate their importance as a cause for climate change.
 * 5) The models and the IPCC ignored the possibility of indirect solar variability (Section 2.5), which if important would again be likely to have the effect of overstating the importance of GHGs/CO2.
 * 6) The models and the IPCC ignored the possibility that there may be other significant natural effects on global temperatures that we do not yet understand (Section 2.4). This possibility invalidates their statements that one must assume anthropogenic sources in order to duplicate the temperature record. The 1998 spike in global temperatures is very difficult to explain in any other way (see Section 2.4).
 * 7) Surface global temperature data may have been hopelessly corrupted by the urban heat island effect and other problems which may explain some portion of the warming that would otherwise be attributed to GHGs/CO2. In fact, the Draft TSD refers almost exclusively in Section 5 to surface rather than satellite data.
 * /woozle: rated Bogus
 * 2009-09-24 Behind the Furor Over a Climate Change Skeptic (New York Times)

An economist working for the EPA raises seven points against an anthropogenic cause for global warming, claiming that any one of them should be sufficient to disprove the anthropogenic hypothesis.   