A reader reacts to the Kim Strassel excerpt Greg posted the other day.
Alan Carlin is an ECONOMIST. He is not a climate scientist. He presented an unsolicited report which has been criticized in the scientific community. So yes, science is not taking a backseat to ideology as it did during the Bush days. The ideologues are trying to turn Carlin into an EPA martyr, when he’s clearly just another person who is not fit to weigh in on climate change. The difference between Carlin and Hansen is that Hansen was at least established in the field of climatology. Get your facts straight.
I suggest you read Chris Mooney’s piece on this subject. Carlin is, as has constantly been pointed out in the aftermath of McCullagh’s article, an economics expert, not a climate scientist. And as climate scientists have considered his claims, they have withered.
Climate researcher Gavin Schmidt of NASA, for example, has written a very devastating analysis of the claims made in Carlin’s paper, calling it “a ragbag collection of un-peer reviewed web pages, an unhealthy dose of sunstroke, a dash of astrology and more cherries than you can poke a cocktail stick at.” For instance, much like Washington Post columnist George Will notoriously did earlier this year, Carlin’s report claims the globe is in a cooling trend. This is an egregious misreading of the last 10 or so years of global temperatures, and is based quite literally on a trick: If you begin with the hottest year on record — 1998 — then of course it looks like we’ve been cooling since then. . . .
Economist R. K. Pachauri could not be reached for comment.