Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I fear that Science magazine has beclowned itself as badly as the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. They’ve published a “scientific” policy paper by the noted climate scientist Barack Hussein Obama. Not a paper with Obama as one of the signatories. No, Science magazine claims that the President wrote the deathless prose all by himself, not a co-author in sight.
Here’s an example:
At the same time, evidence is mounting that any economic strategy that ignores carbon pollution will impose tremendous costs to the global economy and will result in fewer jobs and less economic growth over the long term. Estimates of the economic damages from warming of 4°C over preindustrial levels range from 1% to 5% of global GDP each year by 2100 (4). One of the most frequently cited economic models pins the estimate of annual damages from warming of 4°C at ~4% of global GDP (4–6), which could lead to lost U.S. federal revenue of roughly $340 billion to $690 billion annually (7).
Ignoring “carbon pollution” will lead to loss of US Federal revenue? OMG … can’t have that.
Now I gotta ask … is there anyone on the planet who thinks that:
a) Barack Hussein Obama was the sole author of this piece of drivel? … or that
b) Any of this is anything but politics? … or that
c) We should get our climate science advice from op-ed political pieces by outgoing politicians? … or that
d) Science magazine is doing its reputation any good by publishing this puff piece? … or that
e) Obama made it into Science magazine (or to be the Editor of the Harvard Law Review) on his own merits?
January 20th … could you hurry up please?
w.
My Usual Request: If you are commenting please QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU ARE REFERRING TO, so we can all understand what you are discussing.
My Blog: As some folks know, I’ve started my own blog called “Skating Under The Ice“. There I discuss, well, interesting stuff. Come over and take a look, follow the blog … enjoy.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
At least there was only one, er, author for this “paper”. Didn’t a wise fellow devise a formula that relates the increasing number of authors to a decreasing level of validity?
/snark
V = 1/n,
where V = validity
n = number of authors
1, thus, rates as high validity
Of course, Nick S. will chime in to challenge my math. (^_^), and so this could get verrrrrrrrrrrry involved.
Can’t help but remember the #1 Obama rule “Don’t EVER do anything unless there is a political reason”. He has been consistent with this rule for his entire presidency. It is somewhat worrisome that he perceives a political gain from this particular bit of faux ‘scientific’ drivel.
Why is there any sense of surprise or shock in this post at all? The AAAS proudly boasts 90% + non- Republican membership. They consider themselves the largest Science organization in the world and WUWT contributors are Holocaust Deniers. The climate cabal is largely leftist in nature globally and here in the US specifically. Most of baseline science academics is run through debt and government grant systems, bought and paid for. Of course Science magazine is going represent its culture and do anything Obama might wish to do.
What kind of world do you think you’ve been living in?
I find the list of rhetorical questions somewhat obtuse to the reality most on the board seem to understand. If you want on the Trump bandwagon you might want to consider just what a farce the debate “about science” has been all through the AGW peak of 2006 on. It was always “about politics” first and last and if you want a healthy skeptical contingent that’s the first thing that needs to be acknowledged.
Another comment to be deleted Anthony?
I don’t think we’re really shocked or surprised. We’re just having fun with the painfully obvious.
You gotta laugh to keep from crying, or maybe laugh so hard that you DO cry. We all cope with stupid differently. (^_^)
Obama is looking under a microscope to find some economic growth, which was the weakest 8-year recovery since the 1940’s under his administration.
I wonder if he found any?
None to be seen
I assume that this is the same Barack Obama who said he had trouble following his (then) 15 year old daughter’s math homework.
Barack who?
Bomber Barry got a Peace Nobel (actually, just an Oslo Emmy, not a real one from Stockholm) then proceeded to drop up to 26000 bombs a year, mostly on behalf of the M-Brotherhood and its offshoots, head-loppers personally known to John McCain..
Barry is great at copping applause for stuff he once promised to do…long after he started doing the opposite. I think he’d make a great science communicator in this age of Publish-or-Perish. John McCain can help by organising the muscle while Barry does his soaring rhetoric schtick.
According to Willis the only qualification to be a scientist is to be published in a science magazine.
The essence of Obama’s claim for reducing ghg is replacing coal with natural gas. The best I can tell, this is not a result of any of Obama’s policies.
This is what you get when the population encourages leader worship. Leaders will tend to rise to the occasion and think themselves infallible. Let us not make the same mistake with Trump.
But it could make for good Saturday-morning TV. … Remember Mystery Science Fiction Theatre ?
What you are seeing here could easily be a scene from one of those episodes:
This picture is really cool ! Is Obama studying Climate with a Microscope ?
I can’t wait till Jan-20-2017
True.
I said something to the effect before or during the primaries that we need someone who use the abuses of the executive branch to undo what those abuses have done and then eliminate the ability of a future President to continue the abuses.
(I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong, but the ability for a president to issue “executive orders” is hinged upon there existing “a state of emergency”. Congress has never declared that the “state of emergency” that started that started the mess is ended.)
I think of George Washington. He had the support of the army. He could have been the first King of The United States. But he turned that opportunity for personal power down in favor of the ideals of The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution and The Bill of Rights.
Some have been twisting all three to become King (or Queen).
Hillary personified what we don’t want. No integrity.
We can only hope and pray that Donald is more like George.
(And that the individuals that make up Congress remember and honor the goal. There were no “parties”, Democrat or Republican, when the Declaration of Independence was written and signed …at the risk of the signer’s lives.)
No one has replied.
I genuinely would like a correction if I have that wrong.
Wait, I just checked, and apparently it’s not April 1st, or an article by the Onion.
Seriously? History and lack of warming is someday going to roast these people in hindsight.
To be fair, the paper is about The irreversible momentum of clean energy, not climate change so upfront, it just accepts statements on climate change and economic damage from Stern Garnaut etc as fact and then draws conclusions about the desirability and success of renewable energy schemes.
It doesn’t stop the whole piece being hogwash but let’s tar and feather it for what it is rather than as a climate change piece.
OK. It’s an assumption based on an unproven and questionable theory. Is that more PC for you?
Yeah, and I am perhaps one of the few who believes that Obama actually wrote the paper, and I think that he did a good job at the writing. … This says nothing of his interpretation, however, for which the term, “hogwash”, seems like a good candidate as a descriptive term.
I once knew a guy who was seemingly the nicest, most likeable person you could meet, but he turned out to be a sociopathic thief. He knew how to act so that people would like him and trust him. I’m not suggesting that President Obama is such a person. I’m just saying that appearances can look really good, while hiding something really bad. It’s called “showmanship”, and I know a thing or two about that, having screwed up parts of some of my stage performances on a few occasions (years ago), but pretended so well that these were not screw ups that audiences did not see that they were screw ups.
This is justification for the continuation of tax policy which favors inefficient means of energy production, over efficient means of production. The justification is climate models designed to produce global warming. The output of these models is fed into economic models designed to produce lost economic output. The output of those models are fed into tax revenue models designed to produce decreasing revenue. The output of those models is fed into public opinion models that are designed to produce public policy based on the need to fix all the problems caused by all the models. There is no need for reality, or measurements in any of this. It is models all the way down.
4oC is a science fiction scenario. Mr. Obama is perhaps going to transition from political fiction?
Re the photo: Someone told him to please do not touch the equipment.
This paper along with all his other boasting of how great his many accomplishments have been for the nation reminds me of how Castro, Putin, the North Korea leader , and others in history find it necessary to pontificate and constantly tell their “subjects” how omnipotent and accomplished they are in everything they undertake. This takes narcissism to the extreme level. Obama is trying to write his legacy apparently afraid it may not look too good if left to history. .
I’m sincerely impressed. Notwithstanding all his other responsibilities, the President finds time to publish under his own name an article on climate science in Science magazine and a scholarly article on criminal punishment in the Harvard Law Review. Amazing.
In the interest of fairness, I can name one unqualified good thing that’s come from getting 8 years of Obama.
And that is we didn’t get 8 years of Hillary. Not in 2008, and not in 2016. We can unironically thank Obama for that.
This is “post-modernism” at it’s best : 1. the laws of physics are just personal views 2. facts and opinions are fully interchangeable and as a result 3. the truthfulness of an assertion depends completely on the authority speaker, not on it’s content.
Were did we see this before? Ahh , the church. Endless repetion and meteorological threats make religious theses become true as long as heretics are silenced, of course.
But in one respect the church is more realistic stating that the future is unknown (in God’s hands).
Quacks and false prophets however pretend to know the future and sell their seeming certainties.
Post-modernism, yes, … it’s all about individual expression, to the extent of deconstructing traditional forms to make a personal statement.
Does he get another Nobel on the way out the door?
Apparently they are giving them out for doing nothing constructive, and that is exactly what Obama has done for the past 8 years.
President O’bama just past interview for his next religious vocation.
We have a similar climate expert spokesman in the U.K. – he happens to be a member of our royal family (aka “The Firm”) and has university qualifications to in the history of art (I believe- or something equally relevant) and apparently he is taken seriously by all the trees he talks to.
The “to” slipped in. Sorry pardon.
They make a lot of claims but provide absolutely no proof. They think we should just take their word for it. That is what religion does.
Now that is funny!
And a quick scratch calculation: if using fossil fuels without restriction increases growth by 0.1% annually over decarbonisation (pretty conservative I would venture to suggest) that accounts for 8.6% increase in the world economy by 2100. So accounting for a 4% reduction, use of fossil fuels improves the world economy by 4.6% by 2100, this is likely to be an under estimate and it includes the rather dubious assumption 4 degrees is a reasonable expected warming from that use of fossil fuel.
Are these people really that stupid that they cannot do this calculation?
Apparently, Obama is also a biologist…
“Blood flukes” are parasites, so, OK.
A “hairworm” is a also a parasite, so, OK.
An “insectivorous lizard” feeds on the life of others, so, OK.
I didn’t follow the link to find out what the other 6 are.
But I’m not surprised that some scientist have named parasites and those that the life out of others after him.