The Obama administration clearly hoped to generate political momentum with release of its National Climate Assessment, but the document landed with a thud after being sharply criticized on a variety of fronts.
The Assessment claims human-induced global warming is causing a wide range of harms to the environment and human health, including an increase in extreme weather events and declines in crop production.
Written by Activists
Staffers from activist groups such as the Union of Concerned Scientists, Planet Forward, The Nature Conservancy, and Second Nature had lead roles writing the report, said Heartland Institute senior fellow James Taylor, who is managing editor ofEnvironment & Climate News, in a press statement.
“Even those scientists who are not overtly affiliated with environmental activist groups were almost uniformly on the record as global warming alarmists before being chosen to write this report,” Taylor added.
‘Laughable’ Abuse of Science
The media reported on criticisms of the Assessment. A United Press International article on the Assessment noted in its lead paragraph that Taylor described the Assessment as “laughable.”
“This laughably misleading report is the predictable result when hard-core environmental activists are chosen to write up a climate assessment for, and subject to the approval and revisions of, the Obama administration,” UPI quoted Taylor as saying.
In interviews on national radio programs such as the Mark Levin show and the Michael Medved show, Taylor pointed out politics trumped science in final Assessment, documenting that the Obama administration reviewed a draft of the Assessment and sent edits back to the authors before the authors submitted the final Assessment.
No Recent Warming
Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Peter Ferrara documented in a Forbes.com column some of the Assessment’s many substantive flaws.
“Global temperature data shows there has been no global warming for 17 years and 8 months now, even though human global CO2 emissions have continued to accelerate that entire time, to unprecedented levels,” wrote Ferrara. “Indeed, the Economist reported last year that from 2000 to 2010, human carbon dioxide emissions totaled roughly 100 billion tons of CO2, which equaled about one-fourth of all human emissions since the early rumblings of the industrial revolution in 1750.”
“Soon, the more recent period of no global warming will be longer than the older period of actual global warming, which lasted only about 20 years, from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. Preceding that were 30 years of global cooling, generating alarms regarding a new ice age,” Ferrara explained.
“The foundation for the establishment’s argument for global warming is nothing more than broad theory, which does nothing to specify how much warming and when, and 73 climate models collected by the UN’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). But the problem is that the warming trends projected by these models are all diverging farther and farther from the real world trend of actual temperature observations,” Ferrara observed. “Not only have these models never been validated, which means that their projections at this point are nothing more than fabrications; at this point, these models have been falsified by real world temperature data.”
Data Contradict Assessment
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and global agricultural bodies report U.S. and global crop production continue to increase as the Earth warms, despite the assertions of Obama’s National Climate Assessment. Similarly, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data show a decline in hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, and other extreme weather events despite alarmist claims in the Obama National Climate Assessment.
“This report is contrary to peer-reviewed studies and observations,” said Marc Morano, publisher of the Climate Depot website. “By every measure, so-called extreme weather is showing no trend or declining trends on 50-100 year timescales. Droughts, floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes are not increasing due to manmade global warming.”
‘Predetermined Science’
“Why does the report now call ‘global warming’ a new name, so-called ‘climate disruption’? Simple answer: Due to earth’s failure to warm—no global warming for nearly 18 years—another name was necessary to attempt to gin up fear. Now every storm is offered up as some sort of ‘proof’ of global warming,” Morano explained.
“This report is predetermined science. Choose scientists and activists who agree with your political climate narrative, and then have them endorse scary predictions of the future,” Morano added.
Alyssa Carducci ([email protected]) writes from Tampa, Florida.
