By Roger Pielke Jr.
The US Global Change Research Program has released a draft national assessment on climate change (here in PDF) and its impacts in the United States, as required by The US Global Change Research Act of 1990 (which incidentally was the subject of my 1994 PhD dissertation). There has been much excitement and froth in the media.
Here I explain that in an area where I have expertise on, extremes and their impacts, the report is well out of step with the scientific literature, including the very literature it cites and conclusions of the IPCC. Questions should (but probably won’t) be asked about how a major scientific assessment has apparently became captured as a tool of advocacy via misrepresentation of the scientific literature—a phenomena that occurs repeatedly in the area of extreme events. Yes, it is a draft and could be corrected, but a four-year effort by the nation’s top scientists should be expected to produce a public draft report of much higher quality than this.
Since these are strong allegations, let me illustrate my concerns with a specific example from the draft report, and here I will focus on the example of floods, but the problems in the report are more systemic than just this one case.
What the USGCRP report says:
Infrastructure across the U.S. is being adversely affected by phenomena associated with climate change, including sea level rise, storm surge, heavy downpours, and extreme heat… Floods along the nation’s rivers, inside cities, and on lakes following heavy downpours, prolonged rains, and rapid melting of snowpack are damaging infrastructure in towns and cities, farmlands, and a variety of other places across the nation.
The report clearly associates damage from floods with climate change driven by human activities. This is how the draft was read and amplified by The New York Times:
[T]he document minces no words.
“Climate change is already affecting the American people,” declares the opening paragraph of the report, issued under the auspices of the Global Change Research Program, which coordinates federally sponsored climate research. “Certain types of weather events have become more frequent and/or intense, including heat waves, heavy downpours, and, in some regions, floods and droughts.”
To underscore its conclusion, the draft report includes the figure at the top of this post (from Hirsch and Ryberg 2011), which shows flood trends in different regions of the US. In a remarkable contrast to the draft USGCRP report, here is what Hirsch and Ryberg (2011) actually says:
The coterminous US is divided into four large regions and stationary bootstrapping is used to evaluate if the patterns of these statistical associations are significantly different from what would be expected under the null hypothesis that flood magnitudes are independent of GM [global mean] CO2. In none of the four regions defined in this study is there strong statistical evidence for flood magnitudes increasing with increasing GMCO2.
Got that? In no US region is there strong statistical evidence for flood magnitudes increasing with increasing CO2. This is precisely the opposite of the conclusion expressed in the draft report, which relies on Hirsch and Ryberg (2011) to express the opposite conclusion.
Want more? Here is what IPCC SREX, the recent assessment of extreme events, says (here in PDF):
There is limited to medium evidence available to assess climate-driven observed changes in the magnitude and frequency of floods at regional scales because the available instrumental records of floods at gauge stations are limited in space and time, and because of confounding effects of changes in land use and engineering. Furthermore, there is low agreement in this evidence, and thus overall low confidence at the global scale regarding even the sign of these changes.
The SREX is consistent with the scientific literature—neither detection (of trends) nor attribution (of trends to human forcing of the climate system) has been achieved at the global—much less regional or subregional—levels. Yet, USGCRP concludes otherwise.
The leaked IPCC AR5 SOD reaffirms the SREX report and says (here in PDF), in addition to documenting a signal of earlier snowmelt in streamflows, no such signal of increasing floods has been found:
There continues to be a lack of evidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale
The IPCC has accurately characterized the underlying literature:
Observations to date provide no conclusive and general proof as to how climate change affects flood behaviour
Given the strength of the science on this subject, the USGCRP must have gone to some effort to mischaracterize it by 180 degrees. In areas where I have expertise, the flood example presented here is not unique in the report (e.g., Hurricane Sandy is mentioned 31 times).
Do note that just because the report is erroroneous in areas where I have expertise does not mean that it is incorrect in other conclusions. However, given the problematic and well-documented treatment of extremes in earlier IPCC and US government reports, I’d think that the science community would have its act together by now and stop playing such games.
So while many advocates in science and the media shout “Alarm” and celebrate its depiction of extremes, another question we should be asking is, how is it that it got things so wrong? Either the IPCC and the scientific literature is in error, or the draft USGCRP assessment is—But don’t take my word for it, check it out for yourself.
Anthony Sadar
CLIMATE OF CORRUPTION: POLITICS AND POWER BEHIND THE GLOBAL WARMING HOAX
By Larry Bell
Gallup’s annual environment poll conducted earlier this month revealed that “Americans continue to express less concern about global warming than they have in the past ...” even as their “self-professed understanding of global warming has increased over time - from 69 percent ... in 2001, to 74 percent in 2006 and 80 percent in the current poll.”
Nevertheless, the man-made-climate-catastrophe scientists, with enormous financial support from big government and the aid of media and PR promoters, continue to hawk their limited view of the atmosphere.
The challenge to convince the increasingly cognizant American public that their dependence on fossil fuels is dangerously raising global temperatures is not going to get any easier with exposes like “Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax” by University of Houston professor Larry Bell.
For those who simply want an introduction to government-sponsored climate research and results or for the “old timers” in the air-science profession like me, this is a good synopsis of the latest fads and fallacies of the ill-advised “industry” of global-warming science.
Mr. Bell divides his work into four reasoned sections to guide the reader through not only the history and hysteria surrounding the global-climate issue but also, as his subtitle reveals, the politics and power behind what he adeptly characterizes as a hoax.
In the first section, titled “Setting the Records Straight,” Mr. Bell reviews some of the ancient and more recent climate history; and notes, regarding science PR shenanigans, that a “basic tactic used by calculating ‘hysteria hypesters’ is to treat propaganda as obvious fact.”
In Section Two, “Political Hijackers of Science,” Mr. Bell continues the theme that ‘It is difficult to imagine a time in recent history when so much political hype has swirled around so little substance.” And he goes on to ask a key question many of us have asked: “Is it logical to wager trillions of dollars based upon flawed science practices and suspect agendas?”
A collection of chapters addressing cap-and-trade, climate science as religion, and “green” energy are found in Section Three, “Carbon Demonization Scams.” The book once again succinctly summarizes political and scientific problems with government schemes, backed by politically influenced science, to solve the critical national and global issue of energy supply and demand.
But, practical solutions are clearly spelled out in Section Four, “Retaking America’s Future.” Here Mr. Bell proposes the simple, effective path of re-energizing free enterprise, demanding truth and accountability in politics and scientific practice and recognizing, promoting and exercising America’s historic exceptionalism.
A distinguishing feature of “Climate of Corruption” is Mr. Bell’s own witty artwork that initiates the introduction and each chapter of the book. His able drawings provide pictorial understanding for each portion’s topic.
Throughout “Climate of Corruption,” Mr. Bell aptly demonstrates there are “big differences between environmental stewardship ideals, which most of us subscribe to, and the ideologically moralistic, antidevelopment, obstructionist activism that exemplifies much of today’s environmental zealotry.” But, to a great extent, it is this zealotry that substantially misguides efforts to identify and successfully address real threats to the environment, energy sufficiency and ultimately, humanity itself.
As massive natural disasters and momentous geopolitical turmoil continue to erupt, the American public, as indicated by Gallup’s poll, is continuing to put global issues into perspective. “Climate of Corruption” is a book that will buttress intelligent decisions about where U.S. dollars and traditional American ingenuity and compassion will do the most good to alleviate the real environmental and man-made calamities that affect the world community.
Anthony J. Sadar, a certified consulting meteorologist, is the primary author of “Environmental Risk Communication: Principles and Practices for Industry” (CRC Press/Lewis Publishers, 2000).
Tom Harris
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon often makes serious climate science mistakes. However, his December 5th statements at the UN Climate Change Conference in Doha, Qatar set a new low even for the UN chief.
“The climate change phenomenon has been caused by the industrialization of the developed world,” said Ban. “It’s only fair and reasonable that the developed world should bear most of the responsibility.” “Climate change is happening much, much faster than one would understand,” he added. “The science has plainly made it clear: it is the human beings’ behaviour which caused climate change, therefore the solution must come from us.” Ban is wrong on all counts.
The United Kingdom’s Met Office announced recently that there has been no overall warming, or cooling, of the planet for 16 years. As the November 29th open letter to the Secretary General from 134 experts “qualified in climate-related matters” explained, “Whether, when and how atmospheric warming will resume is unknown. The science is unclear. Some scientists point out that near-term natural cooling, linked to variations in solar output, is also a distinct possibility.”
Professor Bob Carter of James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, describes the uncertainty: “Science has yet to provide unambiguous evidence that problematic, or even measurable, human-caused global warming is occurring. Consequently, any agreements to reduce humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions are utterly futile.”
Many experts now view the climate scare as hopelessly misguided. Professor Ole Humlum of the Institute of Geosciences at the University of Oslo, Norway explains, “Today’s climate debate is essentially about the relative influence of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2) versus natural climate variations....the data available clearly show that the natural variations are the dominant of these two factors.... The net temperature effect of our CO2 emissions appears to be insignificant.”
As demonstrated by the Nongovernmental International Climate Panel on Climate Change, co-authored by Carter, warming alarmism has largely been fueled by computer-generated representations that bear little relationship to today’s climate or to its observed history.
So developed nations are in no way guilty of causing significant climate change. Climate changes all the time - warming and cooling - due to natural causes and there is nothing that we can do to stop it. However, to the degree possible, and considering our economic circumstances, developed nations still have a moral obligation to devote a proportion of their foreign aid to helping the world’s most vulnerable people adapt to natural climate events.
Carter sums up, “Governments need to recognize that the really dangerous climate hazards are natural events and change, and to prepare more fully to adapt to them when they occur.” No one wants to pour money down the drain on a non-issue. Yet, it is happening as a result of the climate scare. Expensive and ineffective wind and solar power projects are receiving vast government financial support in the belief that they will reduce the CO2 emissions that are wrongly blamed for causing dangerous global warming. Meanwhile, conventional power sources that we need for our very survival are starved of support.
A new approach is needed to address climate change. The no-regrets solution is to prepare for and adapt to damaging climate-related events as and when they occur, however caused.
But U.N. negotiations still focus on vainly trying to stop what might happen decades in the future, instead of what is happening right now. It is irrational and, for the many people who need help today, immoral.
Tom Harris is Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition and an advisor to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. Courtesy Troy Media. www.troymedia.com
The 18th Climate Change Summit in Doha is drawing to an end after once again failing to find common consensus on what it calls a major threat to human existence. Failure seemed inevitable after climate skeptic Lord Monckton crashed the event.
With less than a day left in the marathon 11-day UN summit being held in Doha, Qatar, the delegates in attendance are no closer to finding a solution to the current stalemate on climate change. The two-week meeting is due to end this Friday, and will likely end in deadlock.
With the Kyoto treaty the previous international climate treaty effectively dead in the water after the failure to extend it beyond 2012, ideas on how to revive the climate change debate have gained little traction.”
The other main agendas of the summit included acknowledging the need “for scaling up climate finance and pathways for the mobilization of USD 100 billion every year until 2020,” as well as “working out long-term cooperation action to be taken under the convention.
But no clear consensus was reached, with a group of leading NGOs, including Greenpeace, Oxfam and WWF, issuing a statement warning that the talks were “sleepwalking into disaster,” and calling for more clarity on climate finance.
“Does Doha want to be known as a place where ideas come to die?” a campaign coordinator at NGO tcktcktck remarked.
The most eye-catching moment was likely when Lord Monckton, a staunch critic of the climate change movement, gate crashed the summit by disguising himself as a delegate from Myanmar. Monckton switched on a microphone and said, “In the 16 years we have been coming to these conferences, there has been no global warming at all.”
Lord Monckton (screenshot from youtube video by user tcktcktckorg)
Secondly, even if we were to take action to try to prevent global warming the cost of that would be many times greater than the cost of taking adaptive measures later,” he added. “So our [the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow] recommendation therefore is that we should initiate very quickly a review of the science to make sure we are all on the right track. Shukran Iktir, “before he was escorted out for “violating the UN code of conduct” and “impersonating a party” amid confused murmurs and boos filling the hall.
Over 17,000 participants have attended the summit in what is the largest conference to have ever been held in Qatar, according to TTGmice.com.
The EU, Australia, Ukraine, Norway, Switzerland the main backers of the Kyoto Treaty are willing to extend legally binding cuts in carbon emissions from 2012 until 2020. However, these nations account for less than 15 percent of world carbon emissions. Meanwhile, Russia, Japan and Canada have all withdrawn their participation, since large developing nations like China are not participating.
A legally binding agreement preserving the Kyoto Treaty goals is seen as the backbone to creating a new, global agreement by 2015.
The issue of climate change has become a topic of heated debate in recent years. Supporters claim human activity is to blame for the rise in temperatures and sporadic weather changes seen in areas of the globe. Critics, however, say those claims are not substantiated with science, and argue that there has been little, if any, climate change over the course of human history.
Biased BBC
Excerpt: This is a ‘short’ heads up, a trailer if you like, for a longer post examining the BBC’s innumerable connections with the Green pressure and lobby groups, the scientists and the politicians, all with their own agendas and vested interests in selling us man-made global warming.
We were recently reminded about Dr Joe Smith’s (co-founder of the CMEP with the BBC’s Roger Harrabin) paper from 2005 which was essentially a ‘report’ detailing the discussions taking place within the CMEP seminars held at the BBC.
Held incidentally at the instigation, or authorised by, the new DG...Tony Hall when he was Director of News.
The presentation is 20 odd pages long and indicates that the BBC has long held the view that Climate Change is man made...but felt obliged to give the sceptics a voice. That all changed, or rather was admitted openly, in 2007 when the BBC announced that the science was settled and sceptics would no longer have very much of a voice on the BBC.
The BBC was essentially ‘captured’ by the green lobbyists and is now their mouthpiece campaigning on their behalf to win the Public’s acceptance of AGW...it was a massive coup for them that put one of the most powerful and trusted voices in the media world on their side of the argument...and the science is still an argument however much the BBC et al deny it.
This is what Smith tells us about the power of the BBC:
The “capacity to define potential risks and hazards is broadly aligned with the distribution of power among ‘credible,’ ‘authoritative,’ and ‘legitimate’ definers of ‘reality’ across the media field.”...[the BBC is] widely seen as an international leader in terms of balance, independence, and clarity. It is viewed as hegemonic within British broadcasting, helping to dictate the limits of what might be considered “news” in mainstream reporting.
The BBC ‘dictates the limits of what might be considered news’...in other words if it reports something then it is likely that the rest of the media will follow their lead...and the Public will listen to that ‘trusted voice’.
They’d better be right then hadn’t they?
We now know that the seminars that ‘persuaded’ the BBC to adopt that stance on climate change were not based on what top, ‘expert’, scientists were saying in them...there were few climate scientists there...we know that Professor Steve Jones who conducted a science review in 2010 for the BBC was hardly the impartial adjudicator of BBC science that such a review would demand...his career had stalled with no one willing to fund him and any of his research idea...he was ‘rescued’ from obscurity and failure by the BBC who put him to work and paid him handsomely.
We know the science does not yet prove any link between CO2 and global warming...in fact it shows the opposite...warming leads to a rise in CO2.
But here is something else...one of those lobbyists, the International Broadcasting Trust, put in a submission to influence (’Our lobbying work has produced significant results. Both the BBC and Channel 4 now have remits which place internationalism at the heart of their output.’
the BBC’s science review by Steve Jones and to attempt to change the way the BBC reports climate change...as did the sceptics such as ‘Bishop Hill’.
It’s a funny thing but having read Dr Joe Smith’s 2005 presentation and then read the IBT 2010 submission it is apparent that they are almost identical...not word for word...but idea for idea, philosophy for philosophy and demand for demand in the way that they would like the BBC to report climate science.
There are at least 10 major points of similarity that stand out...the conclusion I have come to is that either Joe Smith, or possibly Harrabin, wrote this submission for the IBT or someone at the IBT has taken Smith’s work almost verbatim, and submitted it to the BBC.
I would suggest that Smith wrote it...it is practically the CMEP ‘syllabus’...and Smith has a track record in working unacknowledged ‘behind the scenes’ on BBC projects and programmes that promote the idea of man-made climate change.
Those ten points are:
1. Journalists must resist framing the debate by putting up pro AGW advocates against climate sceptics.
2. Such an approach creates an impression of balance but in fact demonstrates that ‘balance is bias’...against the consensus and therefore wrong.
3. It is important to train new, young journalists in a new approach to climate change because they will then either take that with them to the higher ranks of the BBC or move to other media organisations where they can then have influence over how the science is covered.
4. Journalists must now present the science as a long term ‘process’ and not look for a ‘result’...do not debate the science...facts are not necessary.
5. It is the Media’s role and responsibility to ensure the Public get the correct message about the science so that they then proceed to behave ‘dutifully’ in response.
6. Sceptics lack the knowledge and scientific background to be qualified to challenge the consensus.
7. Climate sceptics put in danger both Democracy and the Planet...turn the debate into a ‘morality play’...guilt is good.
8. There needs to be a new kind of reporting...as said science as a ‘process’ but also introduce new voices...ignore the science, look at the consequences of global warming and the necessary responses...bring on economists, historians, politicians, social scientists and businessmen who will ensure the Public are made fully aware of the dangers of climate change according to the consensus.
9. Blur the boundaries between news and current affairs and other broadcast categories...drama, history, wildlife documentaries, anything that will further opportunities to influence the viewer’s perceptions and understanding of climate change.
10. There are no more facts to be found...the science is settled...that is now the ‘Orthodoxy’.
Liberal group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a self-described “watchdog” organization, has turned on President Barack Obama’s administration for its handling of EPA administrator Lisa Jackson’s alleged use of secret email accounts.
On Tuesday, CREW demanded the EPA’s inspector general, Arthur Elkins, investigate Jackson and other EPA employees for using the accounts.
CREW executive director Melanie Sloan said in a statement announcing the demand that Jackson’s “practice of using fictitious email accounts to conduct official EPA business, shielding the contents from public view, conflicts directly with her responsibility to follow federal records law.”
“The fact that others may have engaged in such conduct before her tenure is no justification,” Sloan said. “‘Everybody does it,’ is an excuse for kindergarteners, not cabinet officials.”
“Complying with the Federal Records Act is not optional,” Sloan added. “The EPA’s illegal and devious practices undermine the ability of Congress, outside watchdog groups, and citizens alike to request and receive full information from the agency. The IG should investigate immediately to ensure messages are being properly saved and learn what, exactly, it is that Administrator Jackson and other EPA employees are trying to hide from the American public.”
According to Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Chris Horner’s new book, “The Liberal War on Transparency,” Jackson created an alias email account under the name “Richard Windsor,” which she used in an apparent effort to hide her activities while on the job.
“That is the name - sorry, one of the alias names - used by Obama’s radical EPA chief to keep her email from those who ask for it,” Horner said. (RELATED: EPA chief’s secret email alias found in previously released emails)
CREW, which is partially funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros, touts itself as a “non-partisan” ethics and watchdog organization. But its behavior during Obama’s tenure as president suggests otherwise.
For instance, during the heat of the congressional investigation into Operation Fast and Furious, Sloan used CREW to attack House oversight committee chairman Republican Rep. Darrell Issa.
CREW accused Issa of illegal activity for using the “Speech or Debate” clause to slip Fast and Furious wiretap application documents into the congressional record, so that the public could see them.
Sloan admitted to TheDC, however, that she didn’t even the read the documents Issa put in the record. Those documents proved Attorney General Eric Holder was misleading Congress, by showing that senior Justice Department officials had approved the gunwalking operation that led to the murders of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican citizens.
Holder has continually blamed officials in Phoenix, claiming the gunwalking was a local operation and saying his Justice Department had nothing do with it. (RELATED: Soros group encourages Wal-Mart workers to strike on Black Friday)
An Issa spokesperson told The DC at the time that ”t is shameful that an organization purporting to support good and transparent government is instead making itself complicit in an effort to cover-up a reckless government effort that contributed to the death of a Border Patrol agent. While CREW’s liberal leanings and dependence on anonymous donors have long been known, this latest action further exposes the naked partisan nature of an organization run by Democratic operatives.”
See more here.
By Bonnie James
Deputy News Editor
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will not be attending the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP18/CMP8) in Doha, chairman Dr Rajendra K Pachauri has said. For the first time in the 18 years of COP, the IPCC will not be attending, because we have not been invited,” he told Gulf Times in Doha. COP18 is to be held from November 26 to December 7.
The IPCC, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, former vice president of the US and environmental activist, is the leading international body for the assessment of climate change. Currently 195 countries are members.
Dr Pachauri first hinted about his ‘anticipated absence’ at COP18, while speaking at the opening session of the International Conference on Food Security in Dry Lands (FSDL) on Wednesday at Qatar University.
Later, he told Gulf Times he did not know why the IPCC has not been invited to COP18, something that has happened never before. “I don’t know what it is. The executive secretary of the climate change secretariat has to decide. I have attended every COP and the chairman of the IPCC addresses the COP in the opening session” he explained. The IPCC was established by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation in 1988 to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of knowledge in climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts. Thousands of scientists from all over the world contribute to the work of the IPCC on a voluntary basis. The body reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change.
Earlier, in his address at the FSDL conference, Dr Pachauri said a reduction of up to 50% in crop output could happen in rain fed areas by 2020. “Climate change in mountain regions has a big impact on agriculture as mountains are the sources for over 50% of the globe’s rivers. “This also affects the populated lowland regions that depend on mountain resources for domestic, agricultural, energy and industrial supply. “Water resources for populated lowland regions are influenced by mountain climates and vegetation; shifts in intra-annual precipitation regimes could lead to critical water amounts resulting in greater flood or drought episodes. “For increases in global average temperature exceeding 1.5-2.5C and in
concomitant atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, there are projected to be major changes in ecosystem structure and function, species’ ecological interactions, and species’ geographical ranges, with predominantly negative
consequences for biodiversity, and ecosystem goods and services e.g., water and food supply.
“Globally, the potential for food production is projected to increase with increases in local average temperature over a range of 1-3C, but above this it is projected to decrease. “Regional changes in the distribution and production of particular fish species are expected due to continued warming, with adverse effects projected for aquaculture and fisheries. “Agricultural production, including access to food, in many African countries and regions is projected to be severely compromised by climate variability and change. “The area suitable for agriculture, the length of growing seasons and yield potential, particularly along the margins of semi-arid and arid areas, are expected to decrease.
“This would further adversely affect food security and exacerbate malnutrition in the continent. In some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50% by 2020. “Drought diminishes dietary diversity and reduces food consumption, causing an increased risk of mortality and diarrhea.
“Heat waves are going to be increased across the world and will occur once in two years instead of the current pattern of once in 20 years. “New ways have to be found to manage water resources. There is a need to focus
on the totality of the situation. Please convert your oil wealth to soil health,” he urged.
H/T Willie Soon
Available here, as well as other online sites.
The book summary reads
From endangered species protection to greenhouse gas regulations, modern regulatory interventions are justified by science. Indeed, legislators look to science for simple answers to complex regulatory questions. This regulatory demand for scientific answers collides with the scientific reality that on the frontiers of science, there are no simple answers, only competing hypotheses and accumulating but as yet often inconclusive evidence. Given inevitable scientific uncertainty, regulatory agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are put in the position of adjudicating unresolved scientific controversies. As the contributions to this volume show conclusively and in great detail, such agencies (and other assessment organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC) are far from unbiased in how they assess regulatory science. They instead act as advocates for those scientific positions that further the regulatory agenda of promulgating new regulations and increasing the scope of the regulatory state.
The book describes many accurate facts about how regulatory agencies use science to justify their regulations that may surprise and even shock many readers:
■In the area of climate science, where the IPCC is advertised as an objective and unbiased assessment body, the facts are that the Lead Authors for IPCC Assessment Reports are chosen by political representatives on the IPCC, and have no duty to respond in any way to the comments of outside reviewers of IPCC draft chapters. The oft-repeated claim that there are “thousands” of scientists involved in outside review of IPCC Assessment Reports is patently false, with generally only a few dozen truly independent outside reviews submitted even on key chapters. Perhaps most strikingly, the Editors with responsibility for overseeing the decisions of chapter Authors are themselves chosen by the same people (Working Group Chairs) who pick the Authors. An outside audit of the IPCC commissioned by the IPCC itself (done by the Interacademy Council) concluded that some body other than the IPCC should choose the Review Editors but acknowledged that there is no such outside body.
■Perhaps more than any other U.S. environmental law, the Endangered Species Act looks to science for clear answers regarding which species are imperiled and how to protect them. But as this book shows, for even the most basic threshold question - as to whether a population constitutes a species or sub-species - there is no scientific answer. As for the definition of a species, there are over a dozen competing definitions, and the categorization of a sub-species is even more problematic, with a plethora of approaches that have allowed the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and its biological advisers in the U.S Geological Service (USGS) to effectively declare sub-species at will, as even slight morphological or genetic differences are seized upon to indicate reproductive isolation and the propriety of categorizing a population as a sub-species. Even more seriously, the book recounts how USFWS peer review in cases of controversial taxonomic classification has involved the selective disclosure of underlying data to outside peer reviewers and has been actively controlled by USGS scientists with a strong self-interest in USFWS determinations. The book’s ESA chapters clearly show how supposedly scientific disagreement about whether a population is or is not a legally protected sub-species in fact reflect differing policy preferences, different weights that scientists attach to potential errors in triggering, or failing to trigger, legal protection.
■Perhaps the most dramatic case studies in the book come from the area of chemical toxicity assessment by the U.S. E.P.A. and National Institute for Environmental Health (NIEH). The book shows how the EPA has made determinations of chemical toxicity that deliberately ignore the most recent and most methodologically sound studies when those studies fail to support the agency’s preferred, pro-regulatory result of significant health risk at low doses. The case studies here include formaldehyde, where the National Academy of Science (NAS) itself concluded that EPA’s risk assessment “was based on a subjective view of the overall data” and failed to provide a plausible method by which exposures could cause cancer, a failure especially problematic given “inconsistencies in the epidemiological data, the weak animal data, and the lack of mechanistic data.” Equally dramatic is the story of EPA risk assessment for dioxin. Here, the agency continues to apply its decades-old assumptions that cancer risks at low doses can be extrapolated linearly from those actually observed in animal studies at high doses, and that there is no threshold level of exposure below which excess risk falls to zero. EPA continues to maintain these assumptions despite the NAS’s admonition that “EPA’s decision to rely solely on a default linear model lacked adequate scientific support.” Perhaps most disturbingly, the book provides examples of how supposedly unbiased outside scientific advisory panels are tainted by conflicts of interest. In the case of bisphenol A, for example, the NIEHS awarded $30 million in grants to study that chemical to scientists who had already publicly stated that the chemical’s toxicity was already well-researched and reasonably certain.
All told, the institutional details and facts provided by the authors’ of Institutions and Incentives in Regulatory Science paint a picture of a serious crisis in the scientific foundations of the modern regulatory state. But the authors go beyond this, by providing suggestions for reform. These proposals span a wide range. In climate science, author proposals range from calling for a much more open and adversary presentation of competing work in climate science to the abolition of the IPCC as a standing body. In endangered species regulation, proposals range from more strictly science-based thresholds for sub-species determination to a separation of the science of species determination from the legal consequences of listing under the ESA. In environmental regulation, some authors call for a more open and transparent process of scientific assessment in which agencies such as the EPA publicly acknowledge and fully discuss the science on both sides of complex regulatory decisions, while others call for the strict separation of scientific assessment from regulatory authority.
The authors possess a unique combination of expertise and experience: Jamie Conrad is a principal of Conrad Law & Policy Counsel and author editor of the Environmental Science Deskbook (1998);
Susan Dudley, former Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in OMB, is the founding Director of the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University’s Trachtenberg School of Public Policy;
George Gray, Professor of environmental and occupational health and director of the Center for Risk Science and Public Health at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Sciences, was formerly science advisor at the U.S. E.P.A. and Executive Director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis;
Jason Scott Johnston is the Henry L. and Grace Doherty Charitable Foundation Professor of Law and the Nicholas E. Chimicles Research Professor in Business Law and Regulation at the University of Virginia Law School and the author numerous articles appearing in both peer-edited law and economics journals and law reviews;
Gary E. Marchant, formerly a partner at Kirkland & Ellis is Lincoln Professor of Emerging Technologies, Law, and Ethics and Executive Director and faculty fellow at the Center for Law, Science and Innovation in Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University;
Ross McKitrick, Professor of Economics at the University of Guelph is the author of Taken by Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming (2003) and of numerous articles appearing in peer-edited climate science journal such as Geophysical Research Letters ;
Rob Roy Ramey II, principal of Wildlife Science International, has consulted on several of the most significant Endangered Species Act listing decisions of the past decades and is the author of numerous scientific papers appearing in journals such as Science and Animal Conservation;
Katrian Miriam Wyman, Professor of Law at New York University Law School, is the editor and author (with David Schoenbrod and Richard Stewart) of Breaking the Logjam: Environmental Protection that Will Work (2010).