Who Is and Isn't Qualified to Speak on Global Warming

Mere days before Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry are scheduled to introduce their version of controversial global warming “cap-and-trade” legislation — if several months after EPA whistle-blower Dr. Alan Carlin drew attention to the fact that the recent published scientific literature presents a decided tilt against prevailing “global warming” scientific wisdom — the New York Times has run a piece diminishing Dr. Carlin’s stature and findings.

This meme is picked up by those running with the Times’ “news”. For example, today’s trade press outlet “E&E Daily” styles their #2 story this way: “Employee lacked credentials for endangerment views”.

That’s odd.

Carlin has been with EPA since its inception in the early 1970s, having earned a degree in physics from CalTech. His lack of the same qualifications implicitly possessed by our law-givers comes from his having gone on to attain a PhD in economics from MIT.

This is different than the Times’ (and others’) treatment of and lack of interest in the academic training of the individual regularly cited without such “just an economist” commentary as a leading and essentially unimpeachable authority, the economist and former railway engineer Rajendra Pachauri. The Times has even hailed Pachauri in the past as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s chief “climatologist”. Climatology is a specialty field if ever there was one but a qualification which Pachauri, for all of his other virtues toiling for years in the UN vineyards, attained by virtue of being appointed to head the IPCC. This is unfairly disparate treatment.

Carlin’s findings have been used to counter those of the body led by Pachauri, and both will be aired by competing sides next week as supporting their advocacy for and against “cap-and-trade”. Carlin’s danger to the agenda is that he reaffirms and reminds us how EPA (and IPCC) have actually avoided making the case for said agenda, which in fact has never been made beyond a flimsy and fatally flawed syllogism: CO2 concentrations have increased, Man is responsible for a lot of that, ergo Man is responsible for climate change. Causation, not a minor point, is missing there.

As to what distinctions might explain this disparate treatment, besides what are on paper Carlin’s more appropriate academic and other relevant training, is that Carlin objected to using these claims to advance an agenda requiring much, much more and very Big Government. Pachauri heads a group whose charter expressly charged it with supporting international governance on the basis of the issue.

Maybe if Carlin stayed at a Holiday Inn last night — oh, and repented his heresy — he would be a world’s leading climate scientist, too. Until then, think about this next week when you are told of the IPCC’s glories and Carlin’s deficiencies.