UPDATE: Uproariously laughable now, the White House state climate impact report claims there are 31 counties in Hawaii, when there are actually 5, see below – Anthony
This is verbatim from the White House Blog today, see my comments below:
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State-by-State Reports: President Obama’s Plan to Cut Carbon Pollution and Prepare for Consequences of Climate Change
On Tuesday, President Obama laid out his comprehensive plan to cut carbon pollution, prepare our country for the impacts of climate change, and lead global efforts to fight it.
Climate change impacts — ranging from more frequent and severe storms, floods, heat waves, and wildfires, to increased risk of asthma attacks and longer allergy seasons — are already affecting our security, our economy, and our communities. In 2012 alone, the cost of weather disasters exceeded $110 billion in the United States, and climate change will only increase the frequency and intensity of these events. Today, we already set limits for arsenic, mercury and lead, but we impose no limits on how much carbon pollution our power plants release– despite the fact carbon pollution is one of the largest drivers of climate change.
As the President explained yesterday, we have a moral obligation to leave our children a planet that’s not polluted or damaged, and by taking an all-of-the-above approach to develop homegrown energy and steady, responsible steps to cut carbon pollution, we can begin to slow the effects of climate change so we leave a cleaner, more stable environment for future generations. The President’s plan is a comprehensive approach to cutting the pollution that causes climate change and threatens public health, setting us on a path to make our communities healthier, safer, and more resilient.
The state-by-state reports below detail some of the impacts of extreme weather and pollution across the country, and underscore the importance of acting now to cut carbon pollution and protect the health of our communities.
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OK here is the laughable part. I decided to click on my state, California, and was presented with this:
The Threat of Carbon Pollution: California
We have a moral obligation to leave our children a planet that’s not polluted or damaged, and by takingan all-of-the-above approach to develop homegrown energy and steady, responsible steps to cut carbon pollution, we can protect our kids’ health and begin to slow the effects of climate change so we leave a cleaner, more stable environment for future generations.
Climate change impacts including severe weather, asthma attacks, prolonged allergy seasons, and sea-level rise are affecting our security, our economy, and our communities. In 2012 alone, the cost of weather disasters exceeded $110 billion in the United States, and climate change will only increase the frequency and intensity of these events. Today, we already set limits for arsenic, mercury and lead, but we impose no limits on how much carbon pollution our power plants release. Carbon pollution is contributing to a higher risk of asthma attacks and more frequent and severe storms, floods, heat waves, and wildfires, driving up food prices and threatening our communities. The President’s plan is a comprehensive approach to cutting the pollution that causes climate change and threatens public health, setting us on a path to make our communities healthier, safer, and more resilient.
THE IMPACT OF POLLUTION AND EXTREME WEATHER IN CALIFORNIA
In 2011, power plants and major industrial facilities in California emitted more than 100 million metric tons of carbon pollution metric tons of carbon pollution—that’s equal to the yearly pollution from more than 21 million cars.
Recent incidents provide a reminder of the impacts to our public health and costs due to extreme weather in California. Although we cannot say that climate change is responsible for any individual event, climate change is already increasing our risks from these events.
- A dry winter in 2011-12 meant that the snow pack, which provides critical drinking water and water to irrigate farmland, was the third lowest on record in the West.
- In California, there were over 32,700 hospital admissions for asthma in 2011, with an average charge of over $35,800 for each stay.
- In 2009, there were 4,073 emergency room visits in California due to heat stress.
- Changing temperature and precipitation patterns can affect the life cycle and distribution of insects, many of which transmit disease that already pose problems to public health in California. In 2010, there were 126 cases of Lyme disease in the state.
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Really, “carbon pollution” causes asthma and Lyme disease? This is the best they can do?
I don’t know of any credible study (or incredible for that matter) that suggests large scale impacts of asthma and Lyme disease for California. And look at the numbers, compared to the most recent census data. Infoplease says the 2010 resident population of California is: 37,253,956 people.
126 cases of Lyme disease in the state. – thats 0.000338% % of the population
4,073 emergency room visits in California due to heat stress – thats 0.011% of the population
32,700 hospital admissions for asthma in 2011 – thats 0.087% of the population
For these small numbers, we need to apply a draconian policy that affects EVERYONE in the state?
And, the section of the California impact report titled: ANTICIPATED CLIMATE-RELATED RISKS IN THE SOUTHWEST, doesn’t even mention California. It mentions Phoenix and Las Vegas. Where’s the Beef?
These aren’t even remotely worthwhile justifications.
And, get this comparison:
In 2011, power plants and major industrial facilities in California emitted more than 100 million metric tons of carbon pollution metric tons of carbon pollution—that’s equal to the yearly pollution from more than 21 million cars.
First, proofreading anyone? There’s a repeated phrase in the PDF issued by the WH:
in California emitted more than 100 million metric tons of carbon pollution metric tons of carbon pollution
Embarrassing sloppiness.
Plus, California DMV says there are 22,083,049 cars in California, and the fact that power plants and industry emitted less than the number of car-equivalents…this is a concern… how?
This is the best justification research they can offer? What the hell are they smoking there in the White House?
I’m sure readers can find more silly examples in the state links above.
UPDATE: Hawaiian born Obama seems to think there are 31 counties in the state of Hawaii. From the White House Hawaii state impacts report:
The US Department of Agriculture designated 31 counties in Hawaii as primary natural disaster areas due to damages and losses from drought in 2012.
Screencap from the PDF:
10 seconds with a search engine can clear that up, from the University of Hawaii, there’s 5 counties in Hawaii (though some say each island is a county, as there is confusion by due to small Kalawao County):
It is sometimes said that each of the five major islands of Hawaii are counties. This is not true. Kauai is Kauai county. The Big Island [Hawaii] is Hawaii county. Oahu is Honolulu County. But both Molokai and Maui are Maui county.
The inhabited islands relate to counties as follows:
- Hawaii County comprises Hawaii.
- Honolulu County, officially the City and County of Honolulu, comprises Oahu and the small islands northwest of Kauai and Niihau extending from Nihoa to Kure except for Midway. Prior to 1959 Palmyra, located about 1000 miles south of the Hawaiian chain, also was included.
- Kauai County comprises Kauai and Niihau.
- Maui County comprises Kahoolawe, Lanai, Maui, and Molokai, except that Kalawao County occupies a small portion of Molokai.
Here are the FIPS codes, showing five:
Of course I’m sure its pretty hard for Obama to keep track of when he’s there for the beach or the golf course. 😉
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I for one am relieved that Syria, NSA, unemployment, crumbling road and bridges, Benghazi, debt and deficit have all been cured and no longer are even worth considering talking about! Great news! Now there is all kinds of money available to solve a rainy day. And Obama is only 10% into his 2nd term! Hooray!
/snark
Well clearly the alarmists are determined to keep the public alarmed – before the public find out they don’t have to be. I’m sure it’s scary being an alarmist right now, they are running in faster and tighter circles than ever before! I’m waiting for them to implode.
What a maroon!
Ok for Colorado they list:
[b]The Waldo-Canyon Fire of 2012
was the most destructive wildfire in the state’s history. It consumed over 346 homes, burned more than 18,200 acres, forced the evacuation of more than 32,000 residents, and cost $8.8 million to contain.[/b]
This was an event that was caused by stupid zoning, and home owners who did not have a clue about good practices in wild land fire in the urban wild land interface. This sort of fire in Colorado was predicted and talked about extensively in emergency management circles almost 30 years ago. It had nothing at all do do with weather or global warming it was an inevitable consequence of building very expensive homes “snuggled up” to a pine forest that burns every 50 -120 years. it was not a question of if, but just a question of when these sorts of wild fires would come to Colorado with a forest composed of fire species and our hot dry down slope winds that happen from time to time.
[b]Colorado experienced over $1.0 billion in hail damage due to a series of storms in June 2012.[/b]
In 1990 (11 July 1990) we had a single hail storm that cost $ 630 million in damages in 1990 dollars ( 2012 dollars would be $1,122.84 billion dollars ) This is nothing new or unusual for an area that has significant hail risk due to our high altitude and the relatively low freezing level in our severe storms.
[b]In Colorado, there were over 4,300 hospital admissions for asthma in 2011, with an average charge of over $19,600 for each stay.[/b]
[i]What on earth is this supposed to mean?[/i] It is a random observation with no association with carbon emissions. (full disclosure my older brother died of an asthma attack here in 1986).
High asthma admissions here just might have a whole lot more to do with our being the home of one of the leading respiratory research hospital institutions in the country.
http://www.nationaljewish.org/
Talk about red herring arguments! This entry is not only stupid, but down right criminal in its implications when the obvious explanation has nothing at all to do with climate or carbon emissions. Colorado has been a recommended destination for people with respiratory problems since the time of Doc Holiday due to our low pollution levels, low humidity and the perceived value of this high altitude climate to help reduce respiratory problems from high pollen and pollution levels seen in other parts of the country.
[b]An outbreak of the mountain pine beetle in 2006 killed 5 million lodge pole pines in one year, a four-fold increase over 2005. The infestation covered nearly half of all Colorado’s forests.[/b]
This is a perfectly natural consequence of living in pine beetle country where the forests (lodge pole pines being a primary host for the endemic pine beetles) were all logged out by the mining industry in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. As a result all our forests are approximately the same age. Add in the relatively recent restrictions against wood burning stoves and fire places reducing natural clearance of beetle kill timber by residents to near zero and 50+ years of zero burn policies (forest fires being one of the natural methods of controlling beetle kill and breaks in the forest which inhibit beetle spread) this outbreak was also inevitable and part of the natural cycle of the forest here.
This is the only item that is even obliquely related to global warming, in that the other mechanism that mother nature uses to control pine beetle infestations is hard cold winters where cold snaps are intense enough to freeze a portion of the beetle larvae before they can mature. That will take care of itself over the next 30 years as we move back into a cooler weather cycle.
If the other states segments are as hokey as my state, this is a classic case of propaganda to serve an agenda not a serious attempt to resolve any real problem.
Drat wrong style of format tags —
The Thirty First County used to be the 57th state, until they left the union.
The Florida ‘report’ is a complete joke.
There is a statement of hospital admissions in 2011 due to asthma, but it is completely vacuous. There is no context, no per capita, no trends, nothing. It is the worst sort of CACC.
There is a statement of 3323 emergency room visits in 2009 due to heat stress, but it is completely vacuous. There is no context, no indication if 2009 was warmer than normal, no per capita, no trends, nothing. It is the worst sort of CACC.
There is a statement that Florida had its wettest summer in 2012, in part due to hurricane Isaac and TS Debby, but it is completely vacuous. They fail to mention that 2012 had normal annual rainfall. There is no context, no trends, no indication of whether the wet summer was a good thing (alleviating drought conditions), nothing. It is the worst sort of CACC.
Then the piece de resistance! Since there has been a paucity of hurricane landfalls in Florida, the writers decided to mention that a lot of Floridians live on the coast. This was listed with the above items as ‘a recent incident that provides a reminder of impacts to our public health’ blah blah blah. What a pile of CACC.
And of course there is the disclaimer- “Although we cannot say that climate change is responsible for any individual event, climate change is already increasing our risks from these events.”
Unbelievable. What an execrable smear of pap.
Actually Delaware could be in big trouble.
They may be threatening to send Joe Biden back.
In Maryland they actually had to mention increases in lyme disease. Really???
These reports must have been written by a political appointee. None of the harms mention can be reliably linked to anthropogenic emissions of CO2.
Love it…. for Florida they cite 3300 emergency room visits for heat stress. It’s FLORIDA for gosh sakes, people were dropping over from heat here back in Ponce de Leon’s time!
Yup,,,,,,, so tell me how entertaining this old commercial is now?
Is rediculous becoming reality?
II can only speak for myself, but this is getting a bit crazy.
I equate the current scenario to the “Battle of the Bulge” .
No?
So the administration of the guy who said during his first presidential campaign that we have 57 states now can’t get the number of counties in Hawaii right……….at least he’s consistent (ly obtuse).
I must say Anthony I thoroughly enjoy your dissection of these issues in WUWT, but it would appear that you and your main contributors have no credibility with the MSM. Read any GW/CC article in any leading publication and the blogs are predominantly critical of the articles’ pro-MMGW bent, but we never, ever see any detailed, counter-arguments being published. Do you have any real credibility out there? Obama calls you ‘the flat earth society’ and gets a free pass.
GOODBYE, AMERICA. !!
The White House report fails to mention Phlogyston. It’s as relevant as anything else they have dragged up.
Is it Hydrogen pollution when I pee?
4,073 emergency room visits in California due to heat stress – thats . 000011% of the population
32,700 hospital admissions for asthma in 2011 – thats .0000878 % of the population
Probably even less than as its likely to be the small set of the population repeated admitted to hospital.
As the President explained yesterday, we have a moral obligation to leave our children a planet that’s not polluted or damaged.
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or in hock up to their eyeballs. Tax slaves to interest on the debt from previous generations, from birth to grave. Why not get rid of the debt? Have the EPA pass a regulation.
Are you seriously telling me that asphalt highways are not pollution? That they do not damage the planet? They are rivers of hardened tar spread over the land, not much different than oil spills on the ocean. How about airports? They certainly damage the environment and cause pollution. Just ask the folks that live under the flight paths. Everything made of plastic rots from the jet fumes. Not to mention the health effects of the noise.
So are going to get rid of asphalt highways and airports at the same time? And what about houses…
What about dihyrdous monoxide pollution? Clearly H2O is a danger to HI residents.
I looked at the boilerplate for the New Mexico write up. I wonder if they realize that Phoenix and Las Vegas are actually in Arizona and Nevada. Oh we do have a Las Vegas, NM too but it is a fairly small town in the northern part of the state not the power hungry one in Nevada. Which gets some of its power from a “non polluting” hydro electric source anyway.
New Mexico has a very significant agricultural component to the economy which will most likely thrive due to elevated CO2 levels. And I suspect this administration has no clue that there is no medical air quality issues for these “higher” levels of CO2. Human exhaled breaths depending on the level of activity one is involved in can be from 3 to 7% CO2 (at 30,000 to 70,000 ppm) well above the present innocuous 400 ppm levels. Harmless to men, women, and children for now and into the future.
Our present drought conditions are related to PDO and AMO climate change cycles rather than
anything humans are or can be doing to the climate. NM saw droughts early last century, in the 1950s and now. Just look at the PDO for that time period (all cooling PDO cycles). Certainly not CO2 related. In fact we are in a cooling PDO cycle right now so even if the globe is warming the western US is not. And droughts relate to La Nina events not El Ninos. And the fires referred to in the boilerplate are likely to be related to drought not necessarily global warming and certainly not CO2.
Bernie
To all you people who are reading and criticizing the report:
YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO READ THE REPORTS!.
If congress votes on laws without reading them, what makes you think you should actually read (and criticize) a report justifying the coming Executive Actions. If you feel that you must read these reports, please remember the BASIC TENENT of Global Warming Science:
“IT IS APPROPRIATE TO HAVE AN OVER-REPRESENTATION OF FACTUAL REPRESENTATIONS (LIE ABOUT) HOW DANGEROUS (GLOBAL WARMING) IS.”
If you will simply remember the basic tenant, you will not get so upset.
If you insist on reading the report and you are still upset after considering the BASIC TENANT of Global Warming Science, I recommend that you think about the SECOND TENANT of Global Warming Science:
“I THINK THAT THOSE PEOPLE (GLOBAL WARMING SKEPTICS) ARE IN SUCH A TINY, TINY MINORITY NOW WITH THEIR POINT OF VIEW. THEY’RE ALMOST LIKE THE ONES WHO STILL BELIEVE THAT THE MOON LANDING WAS STAGED IN A MOVIE LOT IN ARIZONA AND THOSE WHO BELIEVE THE EARTH IS STILL FLAT. THAT DEMEANS THEM A LITTLE BIT, BUT IT’S NOT FAR OFF.”
President Obama referred to the SECOND TENENT of Global Warming Science when he noted that he did not have time to meet with the flat-earthers.
Please just calm down.
Thanks.
Regarding the spread of diseases (with global warming) it should be noted that the great plaques struck Europe in colder periods and malaria was endemic across most of Europe and England during The Little Ice Age as was yellow fever in USA. Climate change can be a scapegoat for government inaction.There are many examples in the literature. For example, Dengue fever afflicted more than 4,000 Mexicans in 1995, while just across the border Texas only had 8 cases. The difference was not climate but living standards and sound public health (Allen 2011).
Like our politicians in Australia, your President wants to leave the White House with a legacy but trying to control climate with taxes can only result in failure. Unfortunately, like our Prime Minister, he is getting poor advice.
Yes, he is on it! But the question, what is he on?
So …. if we graphed the number of counties in Hawaii before and after we swore when he took the oath of office it would look like yet another Hockey Stick?
The report says that in Utah, in 2009, there were 155 emergency room visits in Utah due to heat stress. Wow, I am alarmed! This is hot, dry, desert state with five national parks, and countless other natural attractions. It’s amazing there were only 155. I’d say we’re doing really well.