Some "news" reports never seem to change. Each time, impending climate doom will be far worse and will occur much sooner than ever before. This all-too-familiar alarm-siren blares once again with the Nov. 23 release of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Climate Science Special Report (2017).
The purportedly "expert study" issues a dire warning that climate change will have devastating economic impacts, possibly costing 10 percent of annual U.S. GDP by the end of this century. And if this isn’t scary enough to get your attention, it also predicts that insect-borne diseases, including West Nile virus cases, could more than double by 2050.
The mainly steaming media eagerly amped up their editorial adrenalin into a full frenzy mode. As CNN breathlessly reported, "Higher temperatures will also kill more people. The Midwest alone, which is predicted to have the largest increase in extreme temperature, will see an additional 2,000 premature deaths per year by 2090."
Fortunately there is still a small desperate glimmer of hope. CNN noted, "However, it [the report] suggests that if the United States immediately reduced its fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions, it could save thousands of lives and generate billions of dollars in benefits for the country."
By ironic timing, a separate federal report released on the same date concluded that fossil fuel emissions in North America have been steadily declining for the past decade due to gradual transitioning from coal to natural gas (also a fossil fuel). As a result, North America’s share of global carbon emissions dropped from 24 percent in 2004, to about 17 percent in 2013.
To emphasize warming, the Executive Summary of this latest U.S. Global Change Research Program’s report leads off with a bold print message, "Heatwaves have become more frequent in the United States since the 1960s, while extreme cold temperatures and cold waves are less frequent."
Almost comically, the banner headline avoided flagging appropriate attention to the fact that these recent record daily temperature highs have occurred least often during the summer months and that they have occurred most often during winter months. This means longer growing seasons for veggies we all depend upon. And with this bounty, our GDP and health quality would clearly benefit as well.
And why did the report only reference heatwaves since the 1960s, when the 1930s were even warmer? As noted in Anthony Watts highly respected wattsupwiththat.com climate blog, we should actually be very grateful.
The report’s reference chart data shows clearly that temperature extremes for the contiguous United States have become more moderate over the last 118 years, with the coldest daily temperatures warming, and the warmest daily temperatures cooling.
The misleading missive then predicts that, "over the next few decades (2021-2050), annual average temperatures are expected to rise by about 2.5 degrees F for the United States, relative to the recent past (average from 1976-2005), under all plausible future climate scenarios."
Not highlighted, was a disclaimer buried in Chapter 6 which addresses "Temperature Extremes." It states, "Scientific ability to predict climate at the seasonal to decadal scale is limited both by the imperfect ability to specify the initial conditions of the state of the ocean (such as surface temperature and salinity) and the chaotic nature of the interconnected earth system."
My good friend Jay Lehr, the Heartland Institute’s science director, characterizes the National Climate Assessment Report as a scientific embarrassment, "Not only does it rely on computer models to predict the climate through the end of the century, it relies on computer models from five years ago that have been laughably wrong, failing to get even close to reality since 2013."
As University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson, a former U.N. sustainable development committee member, advises, "Here’s one of the worst things about the whole [politicized climate prediction] mess, so, as you project outwards with regards to your climate change projections, which are quite unreliable to begin with, the unreliability of the measurement magnifies as you move forward in time, obviously, because the errors accumulate."
Wall Street Journal columnist Holman Jenkins, Jr., observed, "Quite apart from its [questionable] assumptions, the U.S. [Global Change Research Program’s] report is a poorly organized, over-lengthy piece of junk that hardly fills one with confidence in the motives of the authors.
"And that goes double for reporters and headline writers who pronounced doom based on a report they apparently didn’t make the slightest attempt to understand."
Unfortunately, many of these agenda-driven doom-speakers really do understand very well. The release of this report by Obama administration holdovers was transparently timed to heat up the political media climate immediately in advance of tomorrow’s start-up of U.N. COP 24 meetings in Katowice, Poland.
The conference goal is to finalize rules for implementing the Paris Agreement on Climate Change which the Trump administration prudently dumped.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. He is the author of several books, including "Thinking Whole: Rejecting Half-Witted Left & Right Brain Limitations" (2018), "Reflections on Oceans and Puddles: One Hundred Reasons to be Enthusiastic, Grateful and Hopeful” (2017), "Cosmic Musings: Contemplating Life Beyond Self" (2016), and "Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom" (2015). He is currently working on a new book with Buzz Aldrin, "Beyond Footprints and Flagpoles." — Click Here Now.
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