@Stradee,
Stradee, thanks for the welcome back - - - it's always good to be home. I liked the video.........
sumac - good article.......!
IZ - a poem. You're the first in my 70 yrs to do that. Thank you.
ehBeth, what a nice and sweet article about your mom. WOW! What a lady.
Aw quicked today.......... Pics a comign. (haha Iz)
@danon5,
Hi High Seas - - - Great going............... What a good thing you are doing.
All you need is a tat and you could be with the squad of animal rescuers in Stradees video....... "It's a good thing." (to quote one of my favorite ladies)
@danon5,
LOL Danon - I don't know if my security man has any tattoos (only ever see him in suits or rollneck sweaters with long sleeves) but otherwise he's a shoe-in for a starring role in Stradee's video, being 6ft 5, pitch black, weighing about as much as a small APC (for those not into initials, that's armored personnel carrier). But my Siberian Huskies adored him, so appearance is irrelevant.
@High Seas,
Good news, Hoft!
Many loving homes are available plus, you may wish to give the local Malmute rescue center a call with your information.
@danon5,
Dan, its good to see you home safely, and Happy 70th Birthday!
The video was from an ad here at a2k - and of course i immediately clicked the link. What i really like is that they save all types of animals, then find the appropriate placements. Some fantastically good work from the team.
Hoft, just exactly what our animal friends need. An awsome force! Hurray!
More from sue's article....beautiful photos of the Saxon Treasure can be seen here:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8272370.stm
So many good videos. Animal Planet also shows animal rescues.
That was a wonderful article about your mom, ehBeth.
And the pictures of the Anglo-Saxon find are stunning. What workmanship.
Clicked.
September 25, 2009
Behind the Furor Over a Climate Change Skeptic
By JOHN M. BRODER
WASHINGTON " Alan Carlin, a 72-year-old analyst and economist, had labored in obscurity in a little-known office at the Environmental Protection Agency since the Nixon administration.
In June, however, he became a sudden celebrity with the surfacing of a few e-mail messages that seemed to show that his contrarian views on global warming had been suppressed by his superiors because they were inconvenient to the Obama administration’s climate change policy. Conservative commentators and Congressional Republicans said he had been muzzled because he did not toe the liberal line.
But a closer look at his case and a broader set of internal E.P.A. documents obtained by The New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act paint a more complicated picture.
It is true that Dr. Carlin’s supervisor refused to accept his comments on a proposed E.P.A. finding, since adopted, that greenhouse gases endangered health and the environment, and that he did so in a dismissive way.
But the newly obtained documents show that Dr. Carlin’s highly skeptical views on global warming, which have been known for more than a decade within the small unit where he works, have been repeatedly challenged by scientists inside and outside the E.P.A.; that he holds a doctorate in economics, not in atmospheric science or climatology; that he has never been assigned to work on climate change; and that his comments on the endangerment finding were a product of rushed and at times shoddy scholarship, as he acknowledged Thursday in an interview.
Dr. Carlin remains on the job and free to talk to the news media, and since the furor his comments on the finding have been posted on the E.P.A.’s Web site. Further, his supervisor, Al McGartland, also a career employee of the agency, received a reprimand in July for the way he had handled Dr. Carlin.
Dr. McGartland, also an economist, declined to comment on the matter. But top officials of the agency said his decision not to forward Dr. Carlin’s comments to the E.P.A. office that would be writing the final report had been his own and not directed by anyone higher up in the agency.
Adora Andy, the agency’s chief spokeswoman, called the accusation that Dr. Carlin had been muzzled for political reasons “ridiculous.”
“There was no predetermined position on endangerment, and Dr. Carlin’s work was not suppressed,” Ms. Andy said in an e-mail response to questions. “This administration has always welcomed varying scientific points of view, and we received much of it over this process.”
Dr. Carlin said he was concerned less about how he had been treated than about what he described as the agency’s unwillingness to hear the arguments of climate change skeptics. He said there was an obvious “imbalance” between the billions of dollars the government had spent building a case for dangerous climate change and the lack of attention to a handful of skeptics like him.
The affair began in March as the E.P.A. was rushing to document the scientific justification for its proposed finding that emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases endangered public health and the environment. The finding was largely an updated version of a similar report, prepared last year under the Bush administration, that came to the same conclusion. But the Bush administration never acted on the research or issued an actual finding.
The agency’s officials were acting in March under severe time constraints to prepare the finding for the E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, who was planning to issue it in mid-April, fulfilling a presidential campaign pledge by Barack Obama. The finding set the stage for the government to regulate greenhouse gases for the first time, an initiative that will resonate through the economy for decades.
Dr. Carlin, long known as a skeptic on global warming, was not invited to submit comments on the document. But he was determined that his views be heard.
He rushed out a 93-page report that cited a variety of sources in raising questions about global warming and the usefulness of government action to combat it. In an accompanying e-mail message to superiors, he said the belief in global warming was “more religion than science” and warned that regulating carbon dioxide would be “the worst mistake that E.P.A. has ever made.”
Agency officials and outside experts who reviewed his report as a result of the outcry over the episode have said they found it wanting in a number of ways. It included unverified information from blog posts, they found, quoted selectively from journal articles, failed to acknowledge contradictory information and may have borrowed passages verbatim from the blog of a well-known climate change doubter.
In the interview Thursday, Dr. Carlin admitted that his report had been poorly sourced and written. He blamed the tight deadline.
“There are numerous problems with it,” he said. “I wouldn’t dream of sending it to a journal in its current form. It is totally unacceptable for that type of thing. But it was either do it in four and a half days or don’t do it. I had to take some shortcuts.”
According to e-mail messages that were among the documents obtained this week under the Freedom of Information Act, Dr. McGartland had earlier tried to discourage Dr. Carlin from filing comments on the proposed finding and told him that whatever he submitted was not likely to affect the final report, implying that the decision had already been made. After receiving Dr. Carlin’s comments, Dr. McGartland told him that he would not forward them to the office preparing the final report.
“The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round,” he wrote on March 17. “The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision.”
A few minutes later, he instructed Dr. Carlin to “move on to other issues and subjects.” He also told Dr. Carlin not to discuss climate change with anyone outside his immediate office.
The e-mail messages most embarrassing to the E.P.A. came to light in late June, when someone sympathetic to Dr. Carlin leaked them to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative group that regularly produces studies critical of research that advances a case for climate change and government actions to address it. The institute distributed the material widely, and a number of conservative commentators and Republican lawmakers seized on it as an example of what they called Democratic suppression of science.
Dr. McGartland was “counseled” by his superior “to assure that professional differences are expressed in appropriate and considered ways,” according to one of the newly released documents.
Dr. Carlin said he and Dr. McGartland had not spoken to each other since June.
@sumac,
Quote:In the interview Thursday, Dr. Carlin admitted that his report had been poorly sourced and written. He blamed the tight deadline.
Quote:Dr. Carlin said he was concerned less about how he had been treated than about what he described as the agency’s unwillingness to hear the arguments of climate change skeptics. He said there was an obvious “imbalance” between the billions of dollars the government had spent building a case for dangerous climate change and the lack of attention to a handful of skeptics like him.
Appears Mr. Carlin's been heard.
http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674
@Stradee,
In the first three months of his 2001 term in office, Pres Bush removed all EPA provisions regarding business and in most cases, the Nat'l Park system. He left it wide open to business for our environment to be exploited without any oversight.
I love the comment of the Russian Pres this morning on the Nat'l News - he said that he liked Obama because he could talk with him and not be dictated to as in the past. Talk about your ugly American - (((And, he is NOT from TEXAS!!!!!))) GW Bush is from Connecticut!!!! A damn carpetbagger!!!!
Oh well, that's politics.
Clicked.
@danon5,
I shudder recalling those enviornmental nightmares appointed to the DOI!
LOL, a carpetbagger? {laughing}
A new Proclamation from Obama
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Presidential-Proclamation-National-Public-Lands-Recognition-Day/
@Stradee,
Here is a pic of the place we stayed at in Taos, NM. Georgia O'Keefe used the room shown as her studio when she stayed at the hotel.
The Pueblo at Taos is over 1000 yrs old. It is maintained and lived in the same today as in the past - no electricity and no running water.
Another view of the Pueblo.
Hope all this works........ ((That reminds me of the tribe that wasn't quite sure of things - the HOPI tribe.))
@danon5,
Here is a pic of Kit Carson's gravestone. In the Kit Carson Cemetary ((imagine that - what a coincidence!!)) I think that is his third wife with him - she was 14 yrs old when they married - he was close to 50. Also, the dime novels made Kit famous - even he couldn't believe all the things written about him. He was only 5 ft 5 inches tall - people traveling through couldn't believe it was him when they met. His actual first name was Christopher - the dime rags changed it to Kit.
Here is a room in his home at Taos. There are only three rooms - living room, kitchen and bedroom. Big home for the times. I was told by the museum guide that most of the Native American tribes still hate Kit for killing so many of their ancesters.
@danon5,
What a fabulous place to stay! Very nice
Where does the Pueblo get their water from, Dan? Are there wells? The architecture is marvelous! Is the Pueblo on Hopi land? So much history. What a great trip!
@danon5,
He was born in 1809 and died in 1868. Thats a long life for a person of the era. Yep, the Navaho had every reason to not like Kit Carson.
Gosh, when you read some of the stuff printed about him, you wonder how he managed to stay alive.
I really like the photo's Dan. Carson started out as a saddle and harness maker. Were the saddles pictured constructed by him?
@Stradee,
Stradee, There are 19 different tribes that have actually banded together to govern themselves. This Pueblo is on the Taos Native American land. They get their water from a really good sized stream of clear mountain water that is about 100 ft behind me from the places I took the photos.
The dime novels had Kit Carson dying from an Indian arrow to the chest. In real life he was ill during most of his advanced years and had developed a heart condition. His doctor while he was in Colorado (he traveled from home a lot) told him he was dying and should go home to give his goodbyes to family and friends. That is what he did, and died soon after of a heart attack.
The saddles are only representative of the era. Almost all the things in the museum are not his but only placed there to fill space. There are copies of some photos of him on the wall as you enter - I noticed the older ones when he was younger were signed C. Carson - later copies were signed Kit Carson. So, I'm thinking he liked the infamous character made of himself by people back East. You may have read that during the American Civil War he rose to the rank of Brig General. That's true and he remains to this day the only general officer in the history of the US Army who was illiterate (he could only sign his name but couldn't read or write).
The dime novel people were out to sell books. They made up fictional events about almost all the "Old West" good guys. However, some of the old 'good guys' were for real. James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok for example participated in the ONLY recorded street gun fight in history - the old B/W western movies made those street gun battles seem to be everywhere all the time. Wild Bill was called out by a man in Springfield, MO - on the day and time, Wild Bill started to walk the street towards the man - at approximately a block away, Wild Bill pulled his gun and being an excellent shot - shot the man in the chest. That was the only "street gun fight" ever actually written about. All the other gun fights were inside the saloons when drunken men started shooting at each other and everyone else who was unfortunate enough to be in the way.
And, the stories about Wyatt Earp are almost to a fact real. The man participated in not only the OK Corral incident, but, many other gunfights and never received even a scratch. Amazing.
The novels and the movies made the Western Native Americans seem to be the "bad" guys also. In real life there is no record of ANY wagon train "circling" for protection from Indians. The Indians were there - but only for trading with the settlers. There were, of course, small bands of Native Americans who were bandits (just like we palefaces). They only attacked single wagons. I read about a family who fell ill and had to drop out of a wagon train in Wyoming Territory. The local Native Americans tried to help them but the parents died and left five children. The tribe elected a small group to escourt the children to St Louis, MO and reunite them with their family. Stories like that don't sell tickets at the movie boxoffices.
Also, (finally) the Native Americans didn't "scalp" people until a French Lieutenant during the French and Indian War prior to our American Revolution started paying the local Indians who sided with them for killing local citizens and soldiers. As proof, he asked for a piece of the body before he paid the Indian. Usually it appeared as a piece of scalp - but sometimes was other parts.
Enough of this. The movies and novels have always distorted the truth about things in order to sell stuff.
