State of the Air 2019 Report packed with climate alarmist propaganda

Guest essay by Larry Hamlin

The American Lung Association recently released its State of the Air Report for 2019 which continued the scientifically unsupported hype from its 2018 Report falsely alleging that “climate change” driven global temperature increases are creating increased high ozone days across the U.S.

The report further and falsely claims that the failure of the U.S. to implement Obama’s unnecessary and costly government mandated Clean Power Plan (CPP) aimed at coal plant reductions were impacting both increased CO2 emissions that drive global warming and increased particulate emissions.

Specifically the 2019 Report notes:

“The State of the Air 2019 report adds to the evidence that a changing climate is making it harder to protect human health. The three years covered in this report ranked as the hottest years on record globally. High ozone days and spikes in particle pollution zoomed, putting millions more people at risk and adding challenges to the work cities are doing across the nation to clean up.”

“As climate change continues, cleaning up these pollutants will become ever more challenging. Climate change poses many threats to human health, including worsened air quality and extreme weather events. The nation must work to reduce emissions that worsen climate.”

“Ozone pollution worsened in much of the nation. Of the 25 most-ozone-polluted cities in the U.S, 17 had more high ozone days on weighted average during 2015- 2017, than in the 2018 report that covered 2014-2016. Eight of the 25 cities had fewer days, three reaching their fewest days ever.

Increased heat in 2017 likely drove this increase in ozone. Warmer temperatures stimulate the reactions in the atmosphere that cause ozone to form, and 2017 saw the second warmest temperatures on record in the United States. All three years covered in this report rank as the three warmest years ever recorded.”

“To protect public health, the nation must act to fight climate change. This means dramatically cutting carbon pollution. Unfortunately, the current EPA has taken steps to dismantle our nation’s best federal plan to limit carbon pollution from power plants, the Clean Power Plan, and has proposed a weaker approach that would increase harmful emissions.

Scientists tell us that carbon pollution contributes to a warming climate, enhancing conditions for ozone formation and making it harder to reduce this lethal pollutant. The increased ozone problems reflected in this year’s report came in large part because 2015, 2016, and 2017 represent the three warmest years in global history. Climate change also leads to particle pollution from worsened droughts and wildfires, leading to many of the high particle pollution days recorded in 2015-2017 and documented in this report.”

These ridiculous claims are nothing but climate alarmist driven propaganda and indicate that the American Lung Association is pushing a political climate alarmist campaign instead of addressing solid science.

The Report tries to make a completely erroneous connection between recent global temperature anomaly measurements and increased high ozone days in the U.S.

UAH satellite data, the most comprehensive, accurate and proven global temperature anomaly measurement data, shows the top ten global temperature anomaly years with 2016 being the highest with that years temperature anomaly driven by the huge naturally occurring El Nino event of 2016.

The 2019 report makes no mention of the naturally occurring El Nino event driving the 2016 global temperature anomaly nor does it mention the naturally occurring El Nino events of 1998 and 2010 that also drove increased global temperature anomalies during these years. Nor does the 2019 report mention that since these naturally occurring El Nino events of 1998, 2010 and 2016 the trend in increasing global temperature measurement anomalies has leveled.

Most importantly the 2019 report fails to note the fact that the global temperature anomaly measurement differences between years 1998 and 2016 are statistically insignificant and lie within the measurement uncertainty ranges indicating that as Dr. Richard Lindzen noted warming during this period has ceased.

“The emphasis on “warmest years on record” appears to have been a response to the observation that the warming episode from about 1978 to 1998 appeared to have ceased and temperatures have remained almost constant since 1998. Of course, if 1998 was the hottest year on record, all the subsequent years will also be among the hottest years on record, since the temperature leveled off at that year and continued into the subsequent years—all of which are now as hot as the record year of 1998. None of this contradicts the fact that the warming (i.e., the increase of temperature) has ceased.”

The 2019 report also fails to note that the global temperature anomaly measurement data has fallen since the peak in 2016.

Notwithstanding the flawed attempt by the 2019 report to falsely claim that rising global CO2 levels are driving global temperature increases the report in an even more significant flaw completely ignores the temperature anomaly record of the U.S. which shows absolutely no connection to the trend of global temperature anomaly global measurement data thereby making a mockery of the reports claims that global temperature anomalies are increasing temperature anomaly trends and high ozone days in the U.S. [1]

Compounding the reports obvious shortcomings in trying to falsely fabricate connections between global temperature anomaly measurements and U.S. high ozone days is the reports absurd claims that the failure of the U.S. to implement Obama’s costly and unnecessary government mandated CCP requirements aimed at reducing coal plant operations has allowed CO2 emissions to climb driving global warming and increased particulate emissions.

It is painfully obvious that the writers of this 2019 climate alarmist propaganda report are clearly ignorant of what has happened to U.S. CO2 emissions and use of coal fuel as a consequence of the extraordinary market driven benefits of low cost and increased availability of natural gas brought about by fracking technology.

The U.S. has significantly reduced its CO2 emissions levels since its peak year 2007 levels largely through the increased use of natural gas which has replaced through economic market forces the need for increased coal fuel use.

The U.S. is leading the world in reducing CO2 emissions while lowering energy costs and increasing energy reliability with its CO2 emissions forecast to be between 870 million to a billion metric tons below peak 2007 levels through year 2050 as noted in EIA data presented below.

Furthermore the U.S. has significantly decreased the use of coal fuel with higher efficiency lower cost natural gas thus decreasing particulate emissions as a benefit. The 2019 Report claims about increasing coal fuel particulate and CO2 emissions reflect extraordinary incompetence by the reports writers.

An additional major flaw contained in the 2019 report is the premise that actions taken by the U.S. to further reduce its CO2 emissions will lower global warming and that such reductions represent a valid justification for “fighting climate change”. This claim is completely idiotic.

The CO2 emissions reductions achieved by the U.S. already lead the world’s nations. The emissions levels of the U.S. are already irrelevant to future global CO2 emissions growth that are overwhelmingly dominated by the world’s developing nations. Those climate alarmist activists who constantly clamor about the need for the U.S. to take on more costly and economically burdening actions to reduce CO2 emissions to “fight climate change” (clearly one of the most politically contrived and dumbest climate alarmist claims ever made) are completely out of touch with the reality of global energy needs and future growth.

The 2019 report also completely ignores the facts always concealed by climate alarmists that the incredibly costly and massively bureaucratic proposals represented by the Paris and Obama’s CCP government dictated schemes will do essentially nothing to lower global temperatures as addressed by an analysis by Bjorn Lomborg.

“This article investigates the temperature reduction impact of major climate policy proposals implemented by 2030, using the standard MAGICC climate model. Even optimistically assuming that promised emission cuts are maintained throughout the century, the impacts are generally small. The impact of the US Clean Power Plan (USCPP) is a reduction in temperature rise by 0.013°C by 2100. The full US promise for the COP21 climate conference in Paris, its so-called Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) will reduce temperature rise by 0.031°C. The EU 20-20 policy has an impact of 0.026°C, the EU INDC 0.053°C, and China INDC 0.048°C. All climate policies by the US, China, the EU and the rest of the world, implemented from the early 2000s to 2030 and sustained through the century will likely reduce global temperature rise about 0.17°C in 2100. These impact estimates are robust to different calibrations of climate sensitivity, carbon cycling and different climate scenarios. Current climate policy promises will do little to stabilize the climate and their impact will be undetectable for many decades.”

Unfortunately the American Lung Association in its 2019 State of the Air Report has allowed politically driven climate alarmism activists to botch up how this report was developed so that propaganda that contained completely erroneous information falsely addressing global climate and energy issues was incompetently included in the report.

[1] https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/time-series?datasets%5B%5D=uscrn&parameter=anom-tavg&time_scale=p12&begyear=2004&endyear=2019&month=3