Marlo Lewis writes at Fox News about the National Climate Assessment: (cue funeral dirge music)
Tuesday the U.S. Government’s Global Change Research Program released its latest “National Assessment” report on climate change impacts in the United States.
As with previous editions, the new report is an alarmist document designed to scare people and build political support for unpopular policies such as carbon taxes, cap-and-trade, and EPA regulatory mandates.
Also in keeping with past practice, the latest report confuses climate risk with climate change risk.
Droughts, storms, floods, and heat waves are all part of the natural climate. Our risk of exposure to such extremes has much more to do with where we happen to live than with any gradual climate changes associated with the 1.3F – 1.9F increase in average U.S. temperature since the 1880s.
The new report is an alarmist document designed to scare people and build political support for unpopular policies such as carbon taxes, cap-and-trade, and EPA regulatory mandates.
Since even immediate and total shutdown of all carbon dioxide-emitting vehicles, power plants, and factories in the U.S. would decrease global warming by only a hypothetical and undetectable two-tenths of a degree Celsius by 2100, it is misleading to imply, as the report does, that the Obama administration’s climate policies can provide any measurable protection from extreme weather events.
The Assessment is flat out wrong that climate change is increasing our vulnerability to heat stress. As hot weather has become more frequent, people and communities have adapted to it, and heat-related mortality in the U.S. has declined.
Cities with the most frequent hot weather such as Tampa, Florida and Phoenix, Arizona have practically zero heat-related mortality. That is the most probable future for most U.S. cities if global warming continues!
The report also foolishly predicts that climate change “intensify air pollution.” As EPA’s own data show, despite allegedly “unprecedented” warming, U.S. air quality has improved decade-by-decade since 1970 as emissions declined.
The report blames climate change for the Midwest drought of 2012. But the government’s own analysis concluded otherwise: “Neither ocean states nor human-induced climate change, factors that can provide long-lead predictability, appeared to play significant roles in causing severe rainfall deficits over the major corn producing regions of central Great Plains.”
Complete story here: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/05/06/national-climate-assessment-report-alarmists-offer-untrue-unrelenting-doom-and/
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I have work to do, so one comment and then I’ll be out of here.
wws: I’m sure I’m viewed as a troll in these parts; but I’m not saying anything that isn’t supported by every major scientific organization in the world, and I’m not trying to be nasty. I’m raising a question which, if pursued, should cause any reader of this site who is not ideologically dug-in to wonder if they’ve got it right. The question is: If AGW really is wrong, why is it that no coherent counter-argument has appeared in the professional literature? The only way to explain this is to invent a conspiracy theory in which thousands of scientists have formed a united front of corruption. Many here are all too happy to believe this, but as one who has lived and breathed physical science for decades, and who knows that community from the inside, I find this explanation to be, well, ridiculous.
Alan Carlisle: Despite numerous claims to the contrary on this site and others like it, climate models actually do pretty well in explaining the broad response of the climate to changes in insolation, atmospheric composition, and the like. These models are uncertain, but the uncertainties are quantifiable. The models show very clearly that severe disruptions are well within the range of uncertainty; even at the low end of the range, we’re faced with many expensive adaptations (e.g., the near certainty that Miami won’t exist in, say, 2200). It’s become a shibboleth that computer models cannot be trusted, but they certainly work well across a wide range of science; also, one must not lose sight of the fact that they are not expected to predict fluctuations (e.g., El Nino events), but rather to predict ensemble averages. Even if one distrusts the models, the basic radiative transfer physics of CO2 is very well understood, and it clearly shows that CO2 must warm the climate.
@palindrom –
First, you lied. That was more than one comment
Second, your opinion is worthless. And so far that is all you have given. You can claim the models more accurate than an exacto knife. But the track records show you wrong. They are not even close.
Stop the trolling. if you want to contribute, do so. But stop lying about what you are doing.
Jeff Alberts says:
May 6, 2014 at 7:50 pm
” As hot weather has become more frequent, people and communities have adapted to it”
Again, where has “hot weather become more frequent”??
Hot weather oft times shows up here in northern Michigan in July, August and part of September.
Other than that not so much.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/05/06/just-7-percent-of-journalists-are-republicans-thats-far-less-than-even-a-decade-ago/
Why waste time? I suspect the percentage of climate scientists, certainly “consensus” scientists are even lower than journalists. It’s opinion based culture “science” like economics or “women’s studies” are Berkeley. This is what “skepticism” should focus on. The “science” of climate can always be distorted and cherry picked, it’s the corruption of advocate sources that is obvious.
Of course the report looks the way it does, it’s fruit of the same poison tree of liberal agenda.
Pallindrome said – “… find some qualified experts to build a truly persuasive, scientifically defensible case that AGW theory is wrong…”
You are missing the point. The basics of AGW are largely agreed upon. They are not likely to be shown to be wrong, certainly not in a single publication. The problem is the alarming interpretations and extrapolations springing from but going innapropriately well beyond the basics.
Charle’s Darwin’s theory of evolution has held up pretty well, but it has been used inaapropriately to support eugenics and various crackpot ideas. Attacking mistatements, exagerations, mis-projections, over-extensions, harmful remedies and the like is not an attack on the basic science. Scientists should not be able to protect themselves and their own misapplications of science by hiding inside of the cloak of the founding basic science. Doing so is a terrible mis-service to the scientific process.
Alan Carlisle says:
May 7, 2014 at 5:49 am
No-one in their right mind denies that humans influence climate — we’ve been doing that since we invented agriculture;
Huh? Whatever influence agriculture has on climate, it is localized, and the overall effect on the climate worldwide trivial and of no consequence whatsoever.
Palindrom has work to do – he’s a busy Alarmist troll.
The cash presently being dangled by a couple of billionaire marxists in front of dems for the next election campaign-coffers is causing a climate of psychosis.
One might guess the Obama junta/Dems are also trying to deflect attention away from the myriad scandals. If you can’t convince them w/facts, baffle them with bullsh*t….
It got even colder in the 1800s than in the Medieval Chill that drove the Norse from Greenland and multiply decimated Europe, but because of the Industrial Revolution the damage was far less. Regardless of whether it heats or chills, economic growth is the key to survival. Greens believe in subjugation of Man; Man demurs.
Um, is there a chance we could take the authors, and paymasters, of the National Climate Assessment Report to court on charges of voter fraud?
Ok, I’m kidding.
Uh, maybe I’m not.
palindrom says:
May 7, 2014 at 6:13 am
And when CO2 fails to “warm the climate” for nearly 20 years, then the models are clearly wrong.
Most would agree that CO2 in a test tube warms as advertised. Happily, neither does Earth reside in a test tube, nor is there any way to duplicate Earth’s atmosphere in one.
~
Remember, the goal posts have been moved. All of the mitigation was deemed appropriate when the threat was catastrophe, as in Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, CAGW.
Skeptics: always frame the debate with the original goal posts. Without impending doom, there’s no reason to give up our light bulbs and coal-fired power plants.
None.
Climate alarmists’ heads continue to go further up their rear ends, trapping more of the hot air they release. That’s the cause for the pause.
And all for unrelenting donations and leverage in the budget to reward favored congressional districts! Get it?
Well, my post has generated the usual points-refuted-a-thousand-times rebuttals. Terry Oldberg’s post links to an article that argues from philosophical grounds that the case is not proven, but does not present any physical explanation for the warming that has occurred. Steve P. claims that warming has stopped — which it emphatically has not — and that there is therefore no need to consider remediation.
I will never persuade “the regulars” here of anything — they probably think I’m the Devil incarnate — but perhaps a lurker or two will see a dissenting voice. My point, again, is that the work presented on this site gets no traction at all among people with relevant expertise. Argument from authority is perfectly fine if the authority is properly constituted — and based on my own knowledge and my acquaintance with the scientific community, I am confident colleagues in earth and atmospheric sciences do in fact know their business.
Best to everyone here, and thank you for letting me raise a dissenting in your forum.
@palindrom
opinions never do. Facts however are a different matter. Until you can learn the difference, your life will be a constant frustration.
Devil incarnate? Hardly. Just an alarmist. And not even one of the better ones. At least they come armed with facts.
palindrom (May 7 2015 AT 10:19 AM):
I gather that you have no quarrel with my conclusion that the case is not proven. This conclusion is, however, inconsistent with the confidence that you express in the competency of your colleagues in earth and atmospheric sciences. After the expenditure of an enormous sum of money on research they have: a) provided no basis for making policy and b) done their utmost to convince naive laymen that there is such a basis.
palindrom says:
May 7, 2014 at 10:19 am
Argument from authority is perfectly fine if the authority is properly constituted — and based on my own knowledge and my acquaintance with the scientific community, I am confident colleagues in earth and atmospheric sciences do in fact know their business.
I believe you have just invented a new logical fallacy, a version of the Ignorance Fallacy one might call the Idiot Fallacy. Congratulations.
Inhofe telling the truth:
http://www.wnd.com/2014/05/white-house-americans-literally-destroying-the-earth/
They’ve jumped the shark with this. I hope.
wws,
You overlook the EPA, which Congress long ago granted special independent regulatory authority. And a “conservative” SCOTUS recently confirmed EPA’s power to regulate CO2 as a “dangerous pollutant”. It will take more than both houses of congress to stop the EPA – it will also take The White House – and there is no guarantee a Trojan Horse republican from a liberal state like, say, New Jersey will repudiate AGW.
phil — Thanks for your concern, but my life is just fine.
Terry Oldberg —
I didn’t say that.
palindrom:
Can you refute the argument that I make at http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=7923 ? If so, what are the details?
palindrom,
You are brave, still having a fine life in the face of imminent doom and untold suffering which you believe is rushing towards us. Gosh, I admire you.
@werner brozek –
Yes, the most interesting aspects of the video were (1) Bill Nye the Superstition Guy trying to shout down the Heritage Foundation guy (how characteristic of alarmists!), and (2) the CNN moderator pointing out Nye’s bullying and attempts to silence dissent.
Let’s hope this is a trend at CNN. Fox has been having to go it alone for far too long..
I am not a philosopher, nor a semanticist. Your article is primarily about semantics. There is no physics in it. All it does is quibble about what it means to confirm a model; it strikes me as a bonfire of the strawmen.
So, I’m not refuting your argument — I simply think it has nothing to do with the substantive scientific issue.
palindrom (May 7 2015 AT 10:19 AM):
Here’s the relevancy: By logical rule, one cannot draw a conclusion from an “equivocation,” that is, an argument in which a term changes meanings in the midst of this argument. In making arguments about global warming, climatologists routinely do that.
Alarmists and skeptics are alike in doing that. If stripped of an ability to draw logically illicit conclusions from equivocations, climatologists of all stripes are unable to provide guidance on policy. The body of research over which climatologists have presided for several decades is revealed to have been a complete failure.
As presently constituted, global warming climatology is a pseudo-science. Wrenching changes must be made in in if it is to join the scienc3es.
palindrom:
Firstly, I congratulate you on your excellent trolling of this thread. In particular, your encouragement of Terry Oldberg in his promotion of his usual nonsense is superb: a better example of thread deflection is hard to imagine .
I write to answer trolling you provide in your post at May 7, 2014 at 6:13 am where you write
Clearly, your promise to be “out of here” was a falsehood, and it was below your usual high standard of trolling. In my opinion you would have done better to have omitted it.
However, your invention of a conspiracy theory is a both a ‘straw man’ and a ‘red herring’. This is much more typical of your high standard of thread disruption.
And you make that invention as a purported answer to your own question; viz.
There are many papers in the “professional literature” which provide severe doubt to the hypothesis of anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) global warming (AGW). A list of over a thousand is here.
Importantly, a paper providing “coherent counter-argument” would be reversing the null hypothesis
The Null Hypothesis says it must be assumed a system has not experienced a change unless there is evidence of a change.
The Null Hypothesis is a fundamental scientific principle and forms the basis of all scientific understanding, investigation and interpretation. Indeed, it is the basic principle of experimental procedure where an input to a system is altered to discern a change: if the system is not observed to respond to the alteration then it has to be assumed the system did not respond to the alteration.
In the case of climate science there is a hypothesis that increased greenhouse gases (GHGs, notably CO2) in the air will increase global temperature. There are good reasons to suppose this hypothesis may be true, but the Null Hypothesis says it must be assumed the GHG changes have no effect unless and until increased GHGs are observed to increase global temperature. That is what the scientific method decrees. It does not matter how certain some people may be that the hypothesis is right because observation of reality (i.e. empiricism) trumps all opinions.
Please note that the Null Hypothesis is a hypothesis which exists to be refuted by empirical observation. It is a rejection of the scientific method to assert that one can “choose” any subjective Null Hypothesis one likes. There is only one Null Hypothesis: i.e. it has to be assumed a system has not changed unless it is observed that the system has changed.
However, deciding a method which would discern a change may require a detailed statistical specification.
In the case of global climate no unprecedented climate behaviours are observed so the Null Hypothesis decrees that the climate system has not changed.
Importantly, an effect may be real but not overcome the Null Hypothesis because it is too trivial for the effect to be observable. Human activities have some effect on global temperature for several reasons. An example of an anthropogenic effect on global temperature is the urban heat island (UHI). Cities are warmer than the land around them, so cities cause some warming. But the temperature rise from cities is too small to be detected when averaged over the entire surface of the planet, although this global warming from cities can be estimated by measuring the warming of all cities and their areas.
Clearly, the Null Hypothesis decrees that UHI is not affecting global temperature although there are good reasons to think UHI has some effect. Similarly, it is very probable that AGW from GHG emissions are too trivial to have observable effects.
The feedbacks in the climate system are negative and, therefore, any effect of increased CO2 will be probably too small to discern because natural climate variability is much, much larger. This concurs with the empirically determined values of low climate sensitivity.
Empirical – n.b. not model-derived – determinations indicate climate sensitivity is less than 1.0°C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 equivalent. This is indicated by the studies of
Idso from surface measurements
http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/Idso_CR_1998.pdf
and Lindzen & Choi from ERBE satellite data
http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf
and Gregory from balloon radiosonde data
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/OLR&NGF_June2011.pdf
Indeed, because climate sensitivity is less than 1.0°C for a doubling of CO2 equivalent, it is physically impossible for the man-made global warming to be large enough to be detected (just as the global warming from UHI is too small to be detected). If something exists but is too small to be detected then it only has an abstract existence; it does not have a discernible existence that has effects (observation of the effects would be its detection).
To date there are no discernible effects of AGW. Hence, the Null Hypothesis decrees that AGW does not affect global climate to a discernible degree. That is the ONLY scientific conclusion possible at present.
But, of course, that is science and, therefore, it has no interest to members of the ‘Cult of AGW’ such as yourself.
Richard
richardscourtney:
Your theory is not scientific but rather is pseudoscientific, as I have proved to you on numerous past occasions. By the way, when one’s theory is truly scientific, one does not have to resort to ad hominem arguments, including labeling one’s opponent as a member of a cult, in defending it.
I’m puzzled. Since when is raising points that may be valid — indeed, are considered valid by the vast majority of expert opinion — “trolling”? I’m sensing the dread epistemic closure.
richard, the ‘null hypothesis’ as you frame it is long since refuted. There is no serious question that the climate is much warmer than normal trends can account for (see, e.g., the Nature Geosciences pages2k reconstruction); there is no question that CO2 absorption in the outgoing spectrum of the earth has strengthened over time. The warming effect is pretty much on the money. Fluctuations over 20-year timescales are insignificant — that’s not moving the goalposts, it’s a correct statement of what climate science claims to do. The PopTech list you link is full of gross misinterpretations (many authors on the list protested indignantly that their work was being misunderstood). There still is not a single paper that offers a refutation of global warming that experts find persuasive. If there were, surely folks like Judith Curry and Roy Spencer would be citing it triumphantly, rather than nibbling about the edges as they do.
Palindrom
”.If you folks would like to reverse this trend, another tack would be to find some qualified experts to build a truly persuasive, scientifically defensible case that AGW theory is wrong, and then get it published in a high-quality peer-reviewed journal. I am afraid you will have a difficult time doing this, not because the journals are rigged — they’re not — but because no such argument is known”
Not sure how you’ve missed the volumes of Peer reviewed work by so many well respected qualified expert scientists, who absolutely reject the CAGW theory.
This theory has always been controversial, because of lack of a truly persuasive, scientifically defensible case. It’s long past any possibility of gaining credibility with it’s current assertions. It also parted company with honesty and integrity in favour of a more politically driven agenda.
I am always interested to hear both sides of the debate, and indeed welcome your opinion here, but your confidence in the Climate models, is naïve. The lack of any significant warming over the past 17+ years is well established and accepted on both sides of the debate. This is why there are so many attempts to explain it away by those who didn’t see it coming.
All the best to you too, hope we all get to enjoy a nice warm summer. It would be nice to get a bit of warming instead of the cold version of Global warming, for a change.
Eamon.
Eamon Butler:
Common to the arguments of the “two sides” is the logically illicit practice of drawing a conclusion from an equivocation, an “equivocation fallacy.” Thus, there is an often unrecognized third side which observes that no such conclusion may logically be drawn.