There’s lots of hype flying around the newly released report by the Obama administration.
I didn’t comment much yesterday, I decided to read the report and consider it. Having done that, I’ll throw in my two cents with this statement.
To me, this looks more like a glossy sales pitch from a company that is pushing a product they know people may not need, but if marketed just right, it would be something they’d buy. It reminds me of some insurance commercials I’ve seen in the past, where the commercial portrays all the bad things that could happen to you if you don’t get covered. Basically, they are trying to make people afraid of the weather, and then they pitch a solution to that fear in a way that’s right up there with the best traditions of salesmanship:
Who wouldn’t want better weather? Just buy our product.
The marketing and hype is right up there with the “Affordable Care Act”and makes me wonder how much they spent on this somewhat dysfunctional website http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/ pushing the report, which crashes my browser due to all the flash video content they built into it. Swirling cloud backgrounds and multi-level forced web wading to get the basics don’t do anything for getting your information across.
Below is some commentary from others on the report, including Judith Curry and Roy Spencer.
Dr. Judith Curry writes:
While there is some useful analysis in the report, it is hidden behind a false premise that any change in the 20th century has been caused by AGW. Worse yet is the spin being put on this by the Obama administration. The Washington Post asks the following question: Does National Climate Assessment lack necessary nuance? In a word, YES.
The failure to imagine future extreme events and climate scenarios, other than those that are driven by CO2 emissions and simulated by deficient climate models, has the potential to increase our vulnerability to future climate surprises (see my recent presentation on this Generating possibility distributions of scenarios for regional climate change). As an example, the Report highlights the shrinking of winter ice in the Great Lakes: presently, in May, Lake Superior is 30% cover by ice, which is apparently unprecedented in the historical record.
The big question is whether the big push by the White House on climate change will be able to compete with this new interview with Monica Lewinsky 🙂
See her complete point by point breakdown here: http://judithcurry.com/2014/05/06/u-s-national-climate-assessment-report/
Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. writes in a comment to Dr. Curry’s essay:
Hi Judy Excellent analysis of the NCA. Your text
“The report effectively implies that there is no climate change other than what is caused by humans, and that extreme weather events are equivalent to climate change”
“The failure to imagine future extreme events and climate scenarios, other than those that are driven by CO2 emissions and simulated by deficient climate models, has the potential to increase our vulnerability to future climate surprises”
succinctly shows the major failure of their report.
With respect to their equivalence of climate change to just that driven by CO2 emissions, this issue was clearly refuted in
National Research Council, 2005: Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties. Committee on Radiative Forcing Effects on Climate Change, Climate Research Committee, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Division on Earth and Life Studies, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 208 pp. http://www.nap.edu/openbook/0309095069/html/
and
Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413. Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union.
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/r-354.pdf
The failings of the models with respect to multi-decadal climate predictions (projections) is documented, for example, in
Pielke Sr., R.A., and R.L. Wilby, 2012: Regional climate downscaling – what’s the point? Eos Forum, 93, No. 5, 52-53, doi:10.1029/2012EO050008. http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/r-361.pdf
and the Preface to
Pielke Sr, R.A., Editor in Chief., 2013: Climate Vulnerability, Understanding and Addressing Threats to Essential Resources, 1st Edition. J. Adegoke, F. Hossain, G. Kallos, D. Niyoki, T. Seastedt, K. Suding, C. Wright, Eds., Academic Press, 1570 pp. http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/b-18preface.pdf
That much of the media accepted the NCA without questioning its findings and conclusions either indicates they are naive or they have chosen to promote a particular agenda and this report fits their goal.
Dr. Roy Spencer has also made a point by point rebuttal:
Follow the money, folks. This glitzy, 840-page report took a lot of your tax dollars to generate, and involved only those “experts” who are willing to play the game. It is difficult to answer in its entirety because government has billions of dollars to invest in this, while most of us who try to bring some sanity to the issue must do it in our spare time, because we aren’t paid to do it. It is nowhere near balanced regarding science, costs-versus-benefits, or implied policy outcomes. Like the previous two National Assessment reports, it takes global climate models which cannot even hindcast what has happened before, which over-forecast global average warming, which are known to have essentially zero skill for regional (e.g. U.S.) predictions, and uses them anyway to instill fear into the masses, so that we might be led to safety by politicians.
Caveat emptor.
(Oh, and if you are tempted to say, “What about all the Big Oil money involved in our need for energy?” Well, that money was willingly given to Big Oil by all of us for a useful product that makes our lives better. Government money is taken from you (I’m not anti-taxation, just pointing out a distinction) that they then use to perpetuate the perceived need for more government control. If “Big Oil” could make a profit by becoming “Big Solar”, or “Big Wind”, they would.)
His initial thoughts on the 12 major findings from the latest National Climate Assessment are here: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/05/my-initial-comments-on-the-national-climate-assessment/
And, John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, writes on Facebook:
The sky is falling. “Climate Change” is running wild and disaster is certain unless we immediately stop burning coal and oil and move quickly to “green energy” to eliminate use of fossil fuels. Heat waves, huge floods, powerful storms, droughts and rising seas are on the verge of killing millions of us and destroying our civilization. That is my summary of the new Federal Assessment of Climate Change issued by a Obama administration team of more than 300 specialists guided by a 60-member federal advisory committee produced the report. It was reviewed by federal agencies and a panel of the National Academy of Sciences.
This 600 page litany of doom and gloom has received extensive coverage by the panting anchors of the national media who feel important when tell their audience that “the sky is falling.” Horrible pictures of storms, floods, drought and heat waves leaped out of the TV sets as the New York and Washington DC headquartered media was particularly excited to tell us how the huge increases in floods and storms was the worst in that part of the nation.
If you accept the picture painted by this report, the weather was just right, steady and nice in the historic past but because our industrialized society has powered its heating and air conditioning, its transportation by train, plane, cars and trucks, generated it’s electric power to run our lights, computers, television and smart phones with fossil fuels it has triggered this nightmare of awful storms, droughts and heat waves.
I am deeply disturbed to have to suffer through this total distortion of the data and agenda driven, destructive episode of bad science gone berserk. The only good news is that I least where I am and on the channels and websites I saw I was not further insulted by fawning TV Weathercasters visiting the White House and interviewing the President. I best I can tell, on a national level, that turned out to be a non-event (thank goodness).
Please allow me to hold your attention for a few minutes to explain why I don’t buy into this Climate Change alarmism. The climate of Earth has never been “normal” or stable. It has continuously changed through this planet’s 4.5 billion year history. Powerful storms, floods, droughts, heat waves and ice and snow storms have come and gone as long as Earth has existed.
The current bad science is all based on a theory that the increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the exhaust of the burning of fossil fuels leads to a dramatic increase in “the greenhouse effect” causing temperatures to skyrocket uncontrollably. This theory has failed to verify and is obviously dead wrong. But the politically funded and agenda driven scientists who have built their careers on this theory and live well on the 2.6 billion dollars of year of Federal grants for global warming/climate change research cling to this theory and bend the data spread to support the glorified claims in their reports and papers.
When the temperature data could no longer be bent to support global warming, they switched to climate change and now blame every weather and climate event on CO2 despite the hard, cold fact that the “radiative forcing” theory they built their claims on has totally failed to verify.
They call people such as me who debunk their non-scientific silliness as “deniers” and claim we are flat-earthers and shills for “big oil”. It is insulting and maddening. But I will not be silenced. And neither will the thousand others, many of them with Ph.D.’s and on the faculties of major universities who are working to stop this bad science that labels CO2 as a pollutant and blames it for every shift in the weather.
We will be gathering, we global warming skeptics, at Heartland Institutes 9th International Conference on Climate Change, July 7 – 9, 2014 in Las Vegas. You can learn about that conference at http://climateconference.heartland.org/. I will be one of the speakers at the breakfast session on Tuesday July 8th. Look at the list of speakers on the website and you will see an impressive group. A group of the powerful Ph.D.’s in the group have recently published a complete scientific document that totaling destroys the climate change alarmism of the US Democrat Party and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. You can find that publication on line at http://climatechangereconsidered.org/.
Investors Business Daily Newspaper says:
‘It has nothing to do with climate, everything to do with power. It’s a green coup’
Obama using report to ‘simply declare an emergency and wield power without consent or involvement from Congress’ -‘It asserts as fact, for instance, the unknowable and unprovable: That the climate’s many effects are “expected to become increasingly disruptive across the nation throughout this century and beyond.’ – ‘It’s not the disruption of the climate that we should be worried about; it’s the disruption of our economy and constitutional rights.’
Delingpole in Brietbart London says: Obama’s Last Shot – Climate Change – And Why It’s Doomed To Fail
‘Fortunately, there’s some good news too: you don’t need to believe a word because, just like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s reports, this document is much more a political one than a scientific one.’
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.”
— Frantz Fanon
This explains why global warming goes no where – it is pure politics without verifiable facts.
“You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you.
You are right because your data and reasoning are right.”
— Benjamin Graham
Take away the money and power in DC ans shut down EPA, IRS, BLM and offending agencies.
http://articlevprojecttorestoreliberty.com/article-v—group-overview-and-proposal.html
I think this pretty much nails it.
Mark Bofill says:
May 7, 2014 at 8:58 am
Obama using report to ‘simply declare an emergency and wield power without consent or involvement from Congress’
I think this pretty much nails it.
Well, Obama and a good portion of the Democrats.
Lewinsky, Lewandowsky. Hard choice.
Mike Bromley the Kurd says:
May 7, 2014 at 9:07 am
Lewinsky, Lewandowsky. Hard choice.
Lewinsky for hands on,
Lewandowsky for hands up.
The political spin of the new report IS hard to swallow. I jumped to the “Climate Science Supplement” to see if there was any new, hard science to support the political posturing, but couldn’t get past the first talking point, aka “Supplemental Message,” which said, “Although climate changes in the past have been caused by natural factors, human activities are now the dominant agents of change.”
The 12 “Supplemental Messages” reminded me a lot of the Benghazi memo’s talking points.
To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.
Margaret Thatcher
This Pres is like a shooting star that came from nowhere. On appearance there were many Oohs and Aahs (Awes ?). Nothing good has happened. Liberty, the very heart of the American dream, has been battered. Read George Will. On Natural Liberty.
However, the Man needs a legacy. He is doing a lot of damage and will be so remembered. Unlike a shooting star – gone but not forgotten.
I was saddened to see a stock photo of lightning in the WSJ story covering the report release. Is increased lightning in the report–no?
Sorry about the link — need to get the ” ” signes replaced:
Read George Will. On Natural Liberty.
Insurance companies learned long ago the fear does not do a good job at selling insurance; people tend to tune out. Look at the GEICO TV commercials to see if you can find fear in their ads. I recall the book the Hidden Persuaders covered the motivational psychology topic. Obviously, the folks at the White House haven’t consulted with competent sales people.
Given their failure with Obamacare and that “glitzy brochure”, this one is destined to fail as well. But I will give them credit for doing a little better the second time around. However the errors are just too gross for even all but the most mind-closed alarmists to sign on to.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken
We need some Edward Snowdens of climate science and policy to come forward with info, data, and true intent from behind the curtains. But there are few places on the planet to use as exile with UN redistribution of wealth in the wings.
Reblogged this on Sierra Foothill Commentary and commented:
This is information you need to know when the MSM starts spouting the gloom and some of climate change. A few facts will sooth your concerns.
The skepticism needs to be a little more directed as we reach the extremes of Voodoo climate extremism as more policy. It isn’t enough to comment that the report is “political” when in fact it’s prototypical “Left-wing, greenshirt political”. Call it for what it is, if a few liberal (or hypersensitive “about science” doctrinaires) skeptics can’t handle it that is the cost of victory.
Skeptics who are squeamish of the actual political narrative in play should grow a spine and stop worrying about offended liberal skeptics or peers if they happen to be left-wing skeptics. Dr. Curry does this disservice all the time. Why should greenshirt politicization, core to the AGW movement for over 40 years, be left unspoken and indirectly referenced?
Most understand the driver yet the discussion gets cowed into abstractions and false equivalences. Only one side has a real greed agenda and has being willing to drag “science” into the gutter to achieve it. During a power grab acceleration like this you realize, or should, that the core effort was never based on sound science to begin with. Warming Hoi Polloi in fact understand this while skeptics are delusional about what the agenda really is and play this game endlessly. Curry and Pielke in particular are frustrating in their obtuse political connections and acknowledgements.
I’m sick of skeptics willing to play the role of Belgium in the First World War.
…..”I am deeply disturbed to have to suffer through this total distortion of the data and agenda driven, destructive episode of bad science gone berserk.”
You and me both, John.
I could be wrong, but doesn’t the Weather Channel promote this climate farce? I stopped watching it because they were still harping on Hurricane Sandy. I know I’ve seen their weather casters pitching this “scary” change before.
IBD has it generally right but in fact this will all go away after the crushing defeat come November mid-terms is finally at hand. Then the hand waving exercise will end, XL pipeline will get approval and Obama will triangulate the carbon boom which is going on in North America.
Greens will eat their “Che” Tee-shirts in the endgame.
They have zero congressional gravitas and that explains why the farm is being remortgaged on regulatory strong arming to file up the base. So it’s class war, race baiting and green daydreaming until November.
Victoria says:
May 7, 2014 at 9:56 am
All the rationalist were forced out of the Weather Channel years ago. Some have started new competing ventures to weed out the propaganda aspects of the current Weather Channel.
The Weather Channel now a powerful member of the global warming alarmist team. Any Meteorologist who works there either supports the “sky is falling” scenario or has to be very, very quiet. I know there are skeptics on the staff but I understand that keeping ones job and feeding the family is a basic requirement of life. So we unencumbered skeptics have to fight the battle in their behalf.
Resourceguy says:
May 7, 2014 at 9:46 am
You are assuming politics are rationally based when in fact it’s 95% emotions 100% of the time.
Green politics make zero rational sense but solve so many emotional needs. It permits the affluent to feel victims, the evil to perceive themselves “doing good” and justify their totalitarian desires with moral authority. AGW in-capsules all of these emotions.
Anthony. I think you just called them used car salesmen
Who would have thought that O’Bama’s legacy will to be remembered as being more destructive and divisive than his predecessor? Hopefully the people who choose the Nobel peace prize laureates will learn a lesson from this.
If the temperature of the atmosphere at the surface is 288 K, to raise it 1 K by heating from CO2 (one molecule in 2,500 of air), the CO2 would need kinetic energy 2,500/288 = 8.7x the kinetic energy of the other 2,499 molecules. Where does it get said energy? 15-micron OLWIR is generated from the surface when it is like -70C, rather anemic source of heat.
Somebody help me out here?
Charles Krauthammer and George Will unloaded on the Climate Assessment report on Special Report ( FoxNews, 6 pm, May 6, 2014). You can find some clips, and summaries, but I cannot find the transcripts. So I am taking the time to create them myself.
Part 1: Charles Kruthammer ( FoxNews, Special Report, May 6, 2014 )
video clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGfeVs77H3I&feature=player_embedded#t=0
(39:10 of original broadcast )
What they tell you is that you should be scared of what is happening today;. Of course if it is very cold in the winter, they blame it here in the North East, they blame it on Global Warming. And that the report it says is that the summers are hotter and the winters are generally shorter and warmer.
Any scientific theory that explains everything explains nothing. And no matter what happens, in climate that is unpleasant, the word is WEATHER, it is attributed to Global Warming. If we continue with Global Warming in the in the North east, we are going to freeze to death.
The most important element is what McConnell is talking about. The negligible gain. Assume they are right about global Warming. Assume that it is all caused by man. The United States has reduced carbon emissions since 2006 more than any other country on earth. We are right now at 1992 levels according to the International Energy Agency. And yet carbon emissions have gone up globally. Why? We don’t control the carbon emissions of the other 96% of humanity. Especially China and India. As we dismantle the coal plants in our country, China and India together are adding one coal plant A WEEK. The net effect is to ship US coal energy generating industry from here to India and China. It will have Zero Effect.
If we could have a pact with other countries in which everybody would reduce their emissions I would sign on. In the absence of it, all we are doing is to committing Economic suicide in the name of do-good-ism that will not do an iota of good. (41:00)
Another clip: transcript to come:
“I’m not impressed by numbers”
http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/05/06/foxs-krauthammer-on-climate-change-im-not-impre/199196