William M. Briggs, Statistician » The Great Government CO2 Power Grab

There is strong evidence of the investigator effect in these papers, which in these cases translates to an odd desire on the part of researchers to be the first to say how fast we are going to hell in a hand basket. My evidence for this is that there have been almost no studies that show any good thing that can happen in a warmer, more CO2 rich climate, and that it is impossible for there not to be good or helpful effects.

There is a hidden component here. Even if the climate changes significantly because of humans, and even if those changes might be harmful, then we must also believe that it will be impossible to avoid or mitigate the harm. We must believe that humans will not be able to effect a technological or economical solution to the problems we might face.

Now, if and only if all these things are true—if humans do significantly influence climate, and only harmful things can happen in a changed climate, and humans will be too stupid or will have no power to mitigate these harms—then the EPA has done the right thing.

Else it has done the wrong thing, which it obviously has.

NSIDC’s Dr. Walt Meier on Catlin and Ice Survey Techniques « Watts Up With That?

Walt sent me this essay unsolicited, and I think it is very useful for establishing some baseline techniques. There’s more useful information on techniques here than in the entire Catlin Arctic Survey website. - Anthony