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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cwon14:
At May 8, 2014 at 8:24 pm you ask me
Do not misrepresent me, and please refrain from pretending to be more stupid than you are.
I do not “whine” about you or any other troll.
I make clear objections to trolls including you promoting falsehoods in furtherance of a warmunist agenda.
In this thread you have consistently attempted to set AGW-sceptics against each other as a method to deflect AGW-sceptics from opposing pro-AGW propaganda. I object to your unpleasant, dishonest and dirty tactics which are typical of anonymous pro-AGW trolls such as yourself.
Richard
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/05/08/Leading-climate-scientist-defects-no-longer-believes-in-the-consensus
You’ve lost the argument, been exposed as another of a long list of people with embarrassing personal political views that can only be exist in conjunction with AGW rationalism without elaborate Sophistry of the “it’s all about science”. It’s a commonality with every “defector” as such mentioned on the link; Dr. Curry, Lennart Bengtsson, James Lovelock, Fritz Vahrenholt, George Monbiot. In varying degrees EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM obfuscates their political culture that drove their AGW advocacy. They sit and lament “politics” and “politicization” as if they weren’t on board with the core of the AGW Greenshirt movement, even if some later grew bored and tired of the agenda. It’s all referred to as if they were always above such crass motivations. Perhaps they only defected in the face of stark defeat and humiliating exposure as GREEN HACKS that fills their resumes.
So keep name calling Richard, you’ve been exposed as the disinformation skeptic who can’t handle or admit the most basic truth of the AGW canard, it’s a leftist/green extreme narrative for political control. We’re forced in your explanation to pretend it isn’t politics first and likely personal politics all along, which is dishonesty of the worst order. While it’s a positive sign that ideologues fracture as the article reports it isn’t rational to accept their feeble accounting of their prior political philosophy as if it were absent from their AGW advocacy or the totality of the current dispute as it remains. It’s a total falsehood. It is no more “about science” now then before. It’s disinformation about the very basic nature of AGW advocacy motivations. So even as “skeptics” these people are STILL DOING HARM and often are living in a world of insincere recanting for the terrible culture they might still support in a broader sense.
Let’s just think about where they (or perhaps you) would be if the wind was blowing the other way and the world was even closer to the brink of the sort of World Government authoritarian that remains a dream come true for millions of like minded people and many skeptic “defectors”. Babbling, endlessly about “it’s a science debate” and “right wing extremism” are usually two indicators of the sort of incoherent skepticism that guarantee another generation of AGW prattle.
I acknowledge there are left-wing rationalist of climate from the very beginning, Dr. Lindzen being something of an example. That all people are idiosyncratic, no doubt. Regardless the phenomena of skeptic orthodox that demands it be politically obfuscated (it’s about science) to conform to prior or existing personal views is destructive and dishonest in the broader debate. You’re counter productive Richard Courtney, as are the list provided in the article because the overall debate can’t afford basic distortions of motives. That this offends liberal (socialist) political correctness can’t be helped. So as long as Dr. Curry, for example, lament “politics” as if this was an equalized travesty instead of a blood lust leftist fanatic movement at the core and from the darkest outgrowth of 60’s and 70’s academic radicalism I can never assume she is clean in the forum. A million euphemisms and allusions to this reality can’t cut it, defectors especially shouldn’t support the meme, “it was and is about science” publicly when almost everyone at an academic cocktail party (liberal or conservative) knows that is total garbage in private. It doesn’t pass the laugh test, I feel your embarrassment Richard Courtney but I simply don’t care in fact. As for Dr. Curry, she just needs to cross the Rubicon and come clean directly. It will be 20+ years late of course but that’s how Whittaker Chambers status is achieved.
cwon14:
I see that at May 9, 2014 at 5:57 am you continue your trolling to promote the AGW-scare in a silly post which begins
Your link has no relevance unless it is intended to imply that I am somebody other than myself.
You claim that I have “lost the argument”. At their request I helped the Chinese to win the argument which defeated attempt to replace the Kyoto Protocol at the Copenhagen CoP. That seems like I helped in winning the argument to begin the end of the AGW-scare.
My political views are sound. And your assertion (at May 8, 2014 at 8:24 pm) that I have “stated hatred of “right-wing” parties” is merely another of your lies. I abhor neo-naz1s but not all right wingers. Indeed, on separate occasions I have mounted platforms to oppose AGW together with right-wing Lords Monckton and Lawson. Also I support the right-wing US Heartland Institute and at its first climate conference I provided two presentations and chaired one of its sessions. And I have assisted US Republican Senator Inhoffe who has spoken of me and my support in the US Senate.
Your claim that I refuse to accept the AGW-scare is a political issue is a ridiculous lie: I pointed out that Margaret Thatcher intended to start the AGW-scare before she started it. She pushed it while it was politically useful to her and dropped it when it ceased to be politically useful (see here).
All in all, your attempt to cause internal dissent among AGW-sceptics is a failure. And the main reason it is a failure is because your assertions are not only offensive and untrue, but they are also daft.
Richard
cwon14,
You write,
Richard says,
You are not communicating. Richard does not say ‘it’s all about the science.’
Listen, it’s always tempting to characterize the psychopathology of the lust for power as an attribute of the opposing side, but that’s naive in my view. Those who are determined to obtain power need not be constrained by a specific ideology. It’s an attribute of some humans, not liberals exclusively.
That said, in the United States right now, CAGW alarmism is being championed by our political left, obviously. I don’t think anyone is disputing that.
Sorry, psychopathology of the lust for power.
[Reply: Fixed. -ModE]
Mark Bofill says:
May 9, 2014 at 8:36 am
The continued ancient distraction of Margaret Thatcher speaks volumes. RC is incoherent and malevolent character at that.
I’ve made my point about false apolitical renderings in the debate in particular to fifth column “skeptics”, I’ll just move on from here and RC
[snip -OK you’re done on this thread – Anthony]
This is just FUD marketing. Fear Uncertainty and Doubt.
That is a useful acronym / concept. The term was used in the ’80s (and perhaps eariler) with respect to IBM Mainframe sales. They used the FUD that ‘nobody ever lost their job for buying IBM’ and related.
Unfortunately, it works very very well. And yes, Insurance comanies use it too. Who else? Lots of folks…. especially local government and State Government when budgets are being threatened…
USAToday Editorial: <a href=Climate change vs. GOP: Our view, May 9, 2014.
[Reformated and annotated by me for rebuttal. ]
As a way of getting back to where it was a few years ago, the Republican Party might want to start with three basic questions:
[U1] Is the globe warming?
[U2] Is the change primarily caused by human activity?
[U3] And, if so, what can and should be done about it?
[U1a] The first question ought to be beyond dispute at this point.
[U1b]The new climate assessment found that U.S. temperatures have warmed (link) 1.3 to 1.9 degrees since 1895, with most of the increase coming since 1970.
{U1c] Sea levels have risen a foot or more in some U.S. cities,
[U1d] flooding rainstorms have increased in the Northeast and
[U1e] droughts have worsened in the West.
[U2a] The second question is a bit more complicated.
[U2b] The climate is always changing
[U2c] because of natural variability and
{U2d] factors such as volcanic activity and
[U2e] solar radiation.
[U2f] Even so, 97% of climate scientists agree that the burning of fossil fuels is the primary driver of the warming observed in recent decades.
[U2g] Should policy really be based on the minuscule chance that they’re wrong?
[U3a] The third question, though, is far more difficult to answer.
[U3b] New limits on emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane,
[U3c] needed to prevent global warming from getting totally out of hand,
[U3d] would likely have a dampening effect on the economy,
[U3e] at least in the near term.
[U3f] It’s not an appealing prospect for voters, who’ve shown little willingness to
[U3g] sacrifice now to protect future generations.
[U3h] What’s more, unilateral U.S. action would have little effect if reluctant industrializing countries, particularly China, cannot be persuaded to act as well.
[U3i]In that context, what to do — and at what cost — is a debate worth having.
My, my. Such a target rich environment.
But let’s focus on the whoppers, first.
U2f: (link) “97% of climate scientists agree that the burning of fossil fuels is the primary driver of the warming observed in recent decades.”
USAToday’s own link says nothing of the sort!
In that case, Put me in that 97% camp, too. Global warming is happening —- without linkage to humans or fossil fuels, much less as the primary drivers over past decades.
U1: Global Warming is happening. Yep. <a href=Global Cooling is happening, too. it depends upon the time scale. It is a lot warmer today than when Chicago was under two miles of ice 18,000 years ago. It is cooler today than when the Vikings farmed Greenland.
(Continuaiton of 1:45 pm above: Rebuttal to USAToday Editorial)
U1: Global Warming is happening. Yep. Global Cooling is happening, too. it depends upon the time scale. It is a lot warmer today than when Chicago was under two miles of ice 18,000 years ago. It is cooler today than when the Vikings farmed Greenland.
On U1b: 1.3 to 1.9 degrees since 1895, Deg C or F? Even if deg F, we have this problem of apparent bias in the adjustment of historical temperatures, an adjustment that has itself added 1.5 to 1.8 deg F ( 0.8 to 1.0 deg C) of warming over the historical recorded temperatures from 1888. Coincidently, most of the adjustment occurs after 1970, too. Which begs the question, how can it be that our most recent records have the greatest increase in the trend of adjustments. How can our measurement taking be so bad these last 40 years?
U1c: …in some cities. That word “some” is key. The some cities are subsiding, the ground is sinking tectonically, like some cities in California, eustatic rebound like in New York City, or by compaction, like in New Orleans. These are not Global sea level problems. Over what time frame? Global sea level rise is less than one foot in 100 years.
U1d: flooding increased in Northeast Like changes in urban landscapes are not the cause? The Northeast is not very Global.
U1e: droughts in the West . Droughts in the west have a long history. They come and go whether or not man burns coal. And again, the West is not very Global.
Speaking of droughts, rate of major hurricane landfalls in the US has PLUMETTED. The most recent Cat 3+ storm was Wilma in Oct. 2005. We are in a record drought of Cat3+ Hurricane Landfalls. Even the Global hurricane rate is down. Not all droughts are bad, eh?
In any score of years, you will find some places in the country that are wetter than before and others that are drier than before. That is natural Climate Change (see U2). Tying that to Global Warming, much less man caused through fossil fuels, is an enormous leap of illogic.
It has all the hallmarks of superstition. “The sky is falling!: Break out the dunking chair! Warm up the rain dances! Round up virgins to sacrifice to the Gods!” Those ill-conceived reactions are likely to have just as much effect on Climate as shutting down coal fired and scrubbed electrical generation plants.
CO2 is a “trace gas” in air, insignificant by definition. It absorbs 1/7th as much IR, heat energy, from sunlight as water vapor which has 188 times as many molecules capturing 1200 times as much heat making 99.9% of all “global warming.” CO2 does only 0.1% of it. For this we should destroy our economy?
The Medieval Warming from 800 AD to 1300 AD Micheal Mann erased to make his “hockey stick” was several degrees warmer than anything “global warmers” fear. It was 500 years of great abundance and peace for the world.
The Vostock Ice Core data analysis show CO2 increases follow temperature increases by 800 years 19 times in 450,000 years. That makes temperature change cause and CO2 change effect; not the other way around. This alone dashes the anthropogenic global warming argument.
Carbon combustion generates 80% of our energy. Control and taxing of carbon would give the elected ruling class more power and money than anything since the Magna Carta of 1215 AD.
Most scientists and science educators work for tax supported institutions eager to help government raise more money for them. And, they love being seen as “saving the planet.”
Google “Two Minute Conservative,” http://adrianvance.blogspot.com and When you speak fine ladies will swoon and liberal gentlemen will weep.
” Mike Bromley the Kurd says:
May 7, 2014 at 9:07 am
Lewinsky, Lewandowsky. Hard choice.
Not for me, Mike. The cigar definitely goes to Monica.
😉
(Sorry)