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.’
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It is much worse than that. What they are marketing is akin to a slow-acting poison, put in a fancy bottle and marketed as an elixir which will ward off climate evils. The poison is a triple-whammy; it robs us of economic strength and vitality, it places unconstitutional powers in government and their lackeys greedy grubby hands, and it threatens the very foundation of science and education itself.
Hey Bloke-down-the-pub. That is our sentiment here in the States as well. Even hard core Republicans came to dislike GW Bush and I think the hope was that this current cretin would end up being no more destructive than his democratic predecessor in the Oval Office whose White House years we can safely characterize in retrospect as benign buffoonery. But alas…. the history of civilization is littered with incorrect hopes.
“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”-WUWT
“RICO (ˈri koʊ)
n.
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act: a U.S. law, enacted in 1970, allowing victims of organized crime to sue those responsible for punitive damages.
Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.”
“A racket is a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such as for a problem that does not actually exist, will not be affected, or would not otherwise exist. Conducting a racket is racketeering.[1] Particularly, the potential problem may be caused by the same party that offers to solve it, although that fact may be concealed, with the specific intent to engender continual patronage for this party.”(WIKI)
Hoe much do oil companies make off of a gallon of gas? How much do all levels of government together make off of a gallon of gas? Who is “Big Oil?”
I like the way Judy Curry opened her post: “My main conclusion from reading the report is this: the phrase ‘climate change’ is now officially meaningless.”
Mods, I don’t want to cause any trouble for anybody, so I’d like to request if the following is ok.
Ok, I feel a little bit mischievous. How about, as a mass token of displeasure with this report, everybody call our public employees to, shall I say, demand our money back. At the bottom of this report is a contact number: 1-(202)-223-6262.
I’d say call that number. All at once. Everybody. Every single one of you out there. Pick a time. Compensate for your time zone. Synchronize watches. And call them. Ask for the operator. Line’s busy? Too many calls? Well, call again. Still no answer? Call again. Keep calling. Can’t get through? Leave a message in voicemail: a long descriptive message about how you don’t like your tax money used for nonsense. And call again. Load up that voicemail. All together now: one; two; three – call. Tell them they’re not going to do this to us. Tell them over. And over. And over again. Let’s pick a time.
Continuation of the transcript of Special Report, May 6, 2014, Part 2.
(41:35) Mara Liasson (National Public Radio) : …. Eventually this problem has to be dealt with. I think the science is pretty overwhelming now. It is real. It is Climate CHANGE, not just Global Warming. It is extreme weather all over the place. And it is costing a lot of money and making a lot of changes and we have to decide whether we are going to mitigate it or try to adapt to and live with it.
(41:55) George Will: There is, however, NO EVIDENCE for the increase in extreme weather.
I own a home on an island in South Carolina looking SOUTH in the direction of hurricanes. And after Katrina, I was REALLY INTERESTED when they said this was a harbinger of increased hurricane activity. Which since then HAS PLUMMETED.
Now Mr. Holdren, who introduced this report, has his on record of very interesting failed forecasts. Not to mention Al Gore, who in 2008 said, by 2013, (for those of you keeping score at home, that was LAST YEAR) the ice cap at the North Pole would be gone. It’s NOT!
Now, there is, as Charles said, the policy question is “How much wealth do we want to spend directly or in lost production in order to have no discernible measurable effect on the climate?”
People say, “Well what about this report?”
There is a sociology of science. Scientists are not saints in white laboratory smocks. They have INTERESTS like everybody else. If you want a tenure track position in academia, don’t question the reigning orthodoxy on Climate Change. If you want money from the biggest source of direct research in this country, the federal government, don’t question ITS orthodoxy. If you want to get along with your peers, conform to peer pressure. This is what’s happening.
Brett Bier: So you don’t buy ” the 97% of scientists who study the issue…”
George Will: Who counted them? Who measured? Where did that figure come from? They pluck these things from the ether. I DO NOT!
The New Yorker Magazine, which is impeccably… upset about Climate Change recently spoke of the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as THE LAST WORD on Climate Change. Now, try that phrase, “The last word” on microbiology, quantum mechanics, physics, chemistry…. Since when does science come to the end? The New Yorker has discovered the end of this. Who else has? (43:47)
cwon14:
At May 7, 2014 at 9:51 am in your post at here you attack and denigrate Curry and Pielke because they have made stalwart defence of science against the misuse of climate science for political ends. You want them to promote your political falsehood instead.
They have the courage of their convictions and deserve respect. You insult them for their courage while you hide behind the cowardly shield of anonymity which deserves contempt.
And your political assertion is a distraction because it is a falsehood. The reality is as Richard G says at May 7, 2014 at 11:22 am here.
Richard
No professional scientist or engineer taught standard physics accepts the IPPC ‘consensus’. Ultimately, it’s a failure of science teaching from mistakes made by Carl Sagan. He messed up aerosol optical physics which led him to conclude the surface of a planet emits net IR to the atmosphere as if to a sink at absolute zero and that lapse rate warming is a GHG effect; it’s not.
This mistake, to confuse a Thermal Radiation Field with a real net energy flux, has been taught to Atmospheric Scientists for about 40 years, and has crept into mainstream Physics. However, real heat transfer science has lived on in engineering, which has to get the right answer.
The best Physics’ institutions, e.g. Brookhaven, are busily throwing Engineering Thermodynamics at problems to solve mainstream science failure. The Earth’s surface emits net IR at c. 0.16 black body level, most directly to space; there is near zero CO2-AGW, no ‘extended GHE’.
The real GHE is from clouds; AGW was from a decrease of cloud albedo due to Asian industrialisation. What we see with the Obama administration is a last ditch effort to survive by those most deeply compromised by Green corruption.
They’ve jumped the shark with this. (I hope.) May it live in infamy.
Well, I called this number 1-(202)-223-6262. And I got: “Sorry, that mailbox is full…”
Sigmund Freud once said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But, as Monica Lewinsky is well aware, sometimes a cigar is not.
The actual “product” being marketed is politicians or probably a bit more precisely, rent seeking.
Anthony,
I posted this at Dr. Spencer’s place and hope you don’t mind it copied here also.
Dr. Spencer,
Extremely well stated and debunked using KNOWN science.
As a tv meteorologist for 11 years(been trading commodities using the influence of the weather on crops and energies the past 21 years) I took special interest in reading this yesterday:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/06/barack-obama-climate-change-us-weather-forecasters
“Barack Obama to make climate change case to weather forecasters”
“A 2010 study by George Mason University’s centre for climate change communications found that only 19% of TV weather forecasters accepted that human activity was the main driver of climate change.
“Many TV meteorologists remain climate change sceptics, in part because they are skilled at forecasting weather over short time periods, which can make them doubt long-range projections from climate science computer models,” wrote Andrew Freedman, who covers climate change for Mashable. “Many TV meteorologists also lack specific training in climate science.”
My thoughts were: TV meteorologist’s actually use atmospheric(weather) models every day. They forecast using real world empirical data and must be accountable when their forecast busts……….which it does often enough to give them the humility to recognize limitations in forecasting ability based purely on mathematical equations that represent the physical laws of the atmosphere fed into a computer.
Many meteorologists don’t have PHD’s but we studied the same atmospheric principles that drive the atmosphere as did climate scientists and took the same classes.
Jeff Masters was a friend in college and in many of my classes at the University of Michigan(Dr. Spencer got his undergraduate degree in meteorology taking those same classes).
How does one account for people with similar educational backgrounds having such different views on science in their area of expertise?
“Specific lack of training” is clearly not the case(but is sited often by those wanting to discredit the great number of meteorologists that are skeptics.
Climate scientists and global climate models that project 50 or absurdly 100 years out are not held accountable because we will all be dead when the true skill level can be assessed………at the end of that forecast.
Currently, this is causing an increasing denial(ok, let’s use lack of acknowledgment) on the part of those using theory to project global temperatures. The divergence between the real world, that meteorologists must acknowledge every day on the job, and the forecast is not there.
15 years of the climate models busting the forecast is being explained away by half a dozen possible, temporary factors but not one of them is that the global climate models need some adjustments.
BTW, those weather forecasters that Obama was supposedly making the climate change case to, were all hand picked.
“The meteorologists interviewing Obama on Tuesday include: Al Roker, co-anchor of NBC’s Today Show; Ginger Zee, meteorologist on ABC’s Good Morning America; John Morales, chief meteorologist of NBC 6 in Miami, Florida, and Jim Gandy, meteorologist of WLTX-TV in Columbia, South Carolina.”
Why not take his case to John Coleman, Anthony Watts, Roy Spencer or Judith Curry?
This would be like the pope, having a press conference and announcing that he will be taking his case, about why the Catholic faith is the true religion, to pastors and leaders of all faiths by inviting a group of his bishops over.
[snip -over the top – Anthony]
“Obama using report to ‘simply declare an emergency and wield power without consent or involvement from Congress”
and
“Who would have thought that O’Bama’s legacy will to be remembered as being more destructive and divisive than his predecessor?”
It appears to me that the “Global Warming Emergency” is very very similar to a certain controversy about whether there were “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. Get the Congressional Hearings underway.
Cold in Wisconsin says:
May 7, 2014 at 12:22 pm
It appears to me that the “Global Warming Emergency” is very very similar to a certain controversy about whether there were “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. Get the Congressional Hearings underway.
Well, except that at one time there actually were WMDs in Iraq while there hasn’t been a “Global Warming Emergency”.
Otherwise, “very similar”.
🙂
“Currently, this is causing an increasing denial(ok, let’s use lack of acknowledgment) on the part of those using theory to project global temperatures. The divergence between the real world, that meteorologists must acknowledge every day on the job, and the forecast is not there.”
Should be RECOGNITION of the divergence between the real world, that meteorologists must acknowledge every day on the job, and the forecast is not there.
cwon14 says:
May 7, 2014 at 12:19 pm
Weak and probably understated.
“cwon14 says:
May 7, 2014 at 9:51 am
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.”
You are absolutely right, but much of the “greenshirt” impulse is a reaction to the fear of discovery that large business entities are manipulating and managing the game. Basically, the psychological nuttiness of the American right-wing scream machine.
But if I was to choose target, the first would be Appendix 3, the “science”. The scam-scientists are trying to deal with the “pause” as something that does NOT harm IPCC like science, “The pause, “appears to be related to cyclical in the oceans and in the sun’s energy output,” quite a concession, eh? Target one would be what is the basis of THIS report’s cyclical argument. What studies support their graphs?
Also, the modeling bit about “averaging” models as a scientific pursuit. Funny.
My Lord, Anthony. You actually READ the report? You are NOT supposed to do that, you of the Great Unwashed. You are supposed to (if I may paraphrase a Great Mind) wait until they implement it to find out what is in it. You spoiled the surprise.
Cheater.
Cwon says:
“…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…”
Your post really bothers me. Dr Curry deserves immense credit for living and working in what has become a deeply toxic academic environment and, despite that, still speaking out, to the very possible detriment of her career. She is a hero. Most of us can speak our minds with no repercussions whatsoever. It’s easy to do if there is nothing to lose. She has everything to lose, and speaks out – and in a way that some fellow scientists – at least those with any integrity and credibility left – just might accept and appreciate. You rarely change minds be being nasty all the time.
When this CAGW charade finally runs its course, I believe many who supported this farce will be greatly rewarded, and, unfortunately, those like Dr Curry who refused to fall in line might get hurt, despite being 100% correct. That, unfortunately, is the way things often work in this broken world. Dr Curry probably knows this better than we do, and still pursues truth, in a way that just might convert some others.
Well done, Dr, Judith Curry!
Hansen on a hot day with AC sabotaged.
Al Gore and “An Inconvenient Goof”.
Obama and the National Assessment Report.
If at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again.
Gunga Din,
I’m surprised and somewhat pleased you are on this site. I would have rather guessed you would be ensconced on a CAGW site complaining about irrigation issues in the American Southwest; or perhaps on another quasi-academic site carrying water for Michael Mann, Al Gore and the IPCC.
Yeap! The so called climate communication is all about marketing and branding an environmental construct which is feeding on scientific ignorance and emotions. Always has and always will.
Roy Spencer is right in saying , follow the money . If you follow the money , you also should follow the politics of the money This report has been timed to buy the support of environmentalists and to support democrats preparing for the fall US election. However no rational politician democrat or otherwise will go out among the public selling measures to fight a non existent global warming threat after a record cold winter and 17 years of past cooling winters and declining annual temperatures . There are much bigger issues where the money is needed
Yes the money flows form the many many many Agencies of the Federal government – some States are even flowing money to the AGW CO2 researchers in the Universities. There is a big number of so called scientists that are used to make speeches in front of many industry groups after which they demand GREEN MAIL or suffer the wrath of the agencies.
Globally there has been several trillion funneled into the GRANT SCIENCE – result purchased or no more grants/jobs.