The federal government’s Fourth National Climate Assessment, released on Friday, has gained praise from leftists and left-wing environmental groups as a dire warning of the coming death and destruction in the United States if we don’t stop global warming.
But critics of the report, including scientists, have slammed it as “exaggeration,” bad science and even said its conclusions are “false.”
“This latest climate report is just more of the same – except for even greater exaggeration, worse science, and added interference in the political process by unelected, self-serving bureaucrats,” Tim Huelskamp, president of the Heartland Institute said in statements released by the free-market think tank following the report’s release.
“With a new volume out in December, The Heartland Institute has published 4,000 pages of the Climate Change Reconsidered series by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), Huelskamp said. “Those reports cite many hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers that show how every conclusion of this latest government report [is] false.”
“This report from the climate alarmist Deep State in our government is even more hysterical than some United Nations reports,” Huelskamp noted. “The idea that global temperatures could rise as much as 12 degrees in the next 80 years is absurd and not a shred of actual data and observation supports that.”
“This report is a scientific embarrassment,” Jay Lehr, science director at the Heartland Institute, said. “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.”
Lehr said the report is filled with “blatantly absurd conclusions” designed to put more money and power into the hands of the United Nations.
As Breitbart News reported, the assessment includes predictions of dire consequences from climate change, including people dying because of increased temperatures.
“Higher temperatures will also kill more people, the report says,” CNN reported. “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.”
The report also said there would be more insect-borne diseases, including West Nile cases, which could more than double by 2050, according to the report.
The wattsupwiththat.com website pointed out that Chapter 6 of what it called an “alarmist” report on climate change contradicts some of its claims:
Temperature changes in the United States of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s recently published Climate Science Special Report (2017) clearly shows and discusses, under the heading of “6.1.2 Temperature Extremes”, how 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. In other words, temperature-extreme-related climate in the United States has improved.
Critics also have advice for President Donald Trump, who has said man-made climate change is not a concluded fact.
“President Trump was required by law to release this report, but he is not required to take it seriously – and he surely will not,” Huelskamp said. “To do so would undermine his sensible, deregulatory agenda and restart the war on fossil fuels.”
“Happily, President Trump has on his advisory staff Dr. William Harper [of Princeton University], who knows how flawed these models are and will advise the president to not base a single aspect of U.S. policy upon them,” Lehr said.
“This is the Deep State run amok,” James Taylor, a senior fellow on environment and energy policy at Heartland, said. “The Trump administration needs to root out the embedded leftists who are responsible for this one-sided propaganda report that is even less credible than Al Gore.”
“The left has already politicized the science, and President Trump has every right to populate the executive branch agencies that produced this report with climate realists,” Taylor said.
Lehr and 18 reputable scientists wrote a 54-page critique of the Global Change Research Program’s 2017 report, which was similarly alarmist, according to Heartland.
The critique can be found here.
@ yamit82:
Yamit, I was reminded of an old cartoon in the “Dublin Opinion”,(now defunct) which was a humourous magazine I used to buy weekly for many years. Like the Irish version of “Punch’ in England, only much better.
The drawing shows the Dublin Observatory in the Phoenix Park and the weather expert, paper and pen in his hand, in the process of making up his daily weather report, puts his nose into the next room and says….” Mullarkey, are ye shure yere corns is aching…”
Bundle Up: Scientists Predict ‘Mini Ice Age’ Will Hit Earth in Five Years
Weather forecasters have problems in predicting the weather a month, a week, or even a day into the future. They cannot even accurately forecast recurring weather events like El Nino or La Nina in the Pacific until these are already underway. But, they confidently say, we can forecast world temperatures 20 or 30 years from now. And we can tell what will cause this: manmade carbon dioxide in the atmosphere!
Why don’t journalists ask them the real question: show me some published predictions you (the scientists) published 25 years ago that actually came true? Answer: because the media doesn’t want to rain on this politically-correct earth-warming subject that frightens people, sells magazines, and glues viewers to their TV.
In the 70s it was: Warning- an Ice Age is Coming. Haaaa Maybe they were Right!!! 😛
Ice Age Imminent
Chicago Slammed with 13 Inches of Snow — Worst Winter Storm Since 1975
@ adamdalgliesh:
The Heartland Institute was right to question the sacred cows of smoking. Bizarrely, for a long time, it is wrongly claimed, that second hand smoke is more dangerous than smoking.
Yet, the Surgeon General on February 15, 2018 determined that lung cancer caused by smoking is responsible for nearly 135,000 U.S. deaths per year. Compared to that, on June 7, 2017 the Surgeon General determined that secondhand smoke causes approximately 7,330 deaths from lung cancer.
So second hand smoking, assuming the Surgeon General is right, and his objectivity is to be doubted, the true figures could be safer, only causes about 5% the deaths as smoking, and is not more dangerous than smoking.
Heartland was right to question bizarre allegations. But due to the Stalinist terror evident in academia, further scientific research on smoking will not be conducted anymore.
Against this backdrop of hypocrisy, in the end there may have been some truth to Philip Morris’ claim that exposure to second hand smoke is as risky as drinking a glass of water. We will never know the real answer to this.
It is similar to the mass hysteria against the dumping of the Brent Spar oil rig in the North Sea, after its use was discontinued. It would have been the environmentally responsible and economic solution.
Eventually though, Shell had to give in to public pressure and towed the rig to shore to be scrapped. After fact, Greenpeace had to admit its estimates on supposed pollutants in the rig, which would have polluted the sea were wrong.
Moreover, endangered cold-water coral Lophelia pertusa were found growing on the legs of the platform. The disposed rig would have been an enrichment to seabed environment, as Shell had claimed all along.
Objective science does not matter anymore in the present climate of lies and deception.
Heartland has long questioned the links between tobacco smoking, secondhand smoke, and lung cancer and the social costs imposed by smokers.[31] One of Heartland’s first campaigns was against tobacco regulation.[7] According to the Los Angeles Times, Heartland’s advocacy for the tobacco industry is one of the two things Heartland is most widely known for.[32]
During the 1990s, the Institute worked with tobacco company Philip Morris to question the links between smoking, secondhand smoke and health risks.[3] Philip Morris commissioned Heartland to write and distribute reports. Heartland published a policy study which summarized a jointly prepared report by the Association of Private Enterprise Education and Philip Morris. The Institute also undertook a variety of other activities on behalf of the tobacco industry, including meeting with legislators, holding off-the-record briefings, and producing op-eds, radio interviews, and letters.[3]:233–34
A 1993 internal “Five Year Plan” from Philip Morris to address environmental tobacco smoke regulation called for support for the efforts of the Institute.[33][34] In 1996, Heartland president and chief executive officer Joe Bast wrote an essay entitled “Joe Camel is Innocent!,”[7][33] which said that contributions from the tobacco industry to Republican political campaigns were most likely because Republicans “have been leading the fight against the use of ‘junk science’ by the Food and Drug Administration and its evil twin, the Environmental Protection Agency.”[35] In the “President’s Letter” in the July 1998 issue of The Heartlander, the Institute’s magazine, Bast wrote an essay “Five Lies about Tobacco”,[7][33] which said “smoking in moderation has few, if any, adverse health effects.”[36][37] In 1999, Bast referenced the essays in soliciting financial support from Philip Morris, writing “Heartland does many things that benefit Philip Morris’ bottom line, things that no other organization does.”[33] A Philip Morris executive, the firm’s manager of industrial affairs, was a member of the board of directors of the Institute.[33] In 2005, the Institute opposed Chicago’s public smoking ban, at the time one of the strictest bans in the country.[38]Heartland has long questioned the links between tobacco smoking, secondhand smoke, and lung cancer and the social costs imposed by smokers.[31] One of Heartland’s first campaigns was against tobacco regulation.[7] According to the Los Angeles Times, Heartland’s advocacy for the tobacco industry is one of the two things Heartland is most widely known for.[32]
During the 1990s, the Institute worked with tobacco company Philip Morris to question the links between smoking, secondhand smoke and health risks.[3] Philip Morris commissioned Heartland to write and distribute reports. Heartland published a policy study which summarized a jointly prepared report by the Association of Private Enterprise Education and Philip Morris. The Institute also undertook a variety of other activities on behalf of the tobacco industry, including meeting with legislators, holding off-the-record briefings, and producing op-eds, radio interviews, and letters.[3]:233–34
A 1993 internal “Five Year Plan” from Philip Morris to address environmental tobacco smoke regulation called for support for the efforts of the Institute.[33][34] In 1996, Heartland president and chief executive officer Joe Bast wrote an essay entitled “Joe Camel is Innocent!,”[7][33] which said that contributions from the tobacco industry to Republican political campaigns were most likely because Republicans “have been leading the fight against the use of ‘junk science’ by the Food and Drug Administration and its evil twin, the Environmental Protection Agency.”[35] In the “President’s Letter” in the July 1998 issue of The Heartlander, the Institute’s magazine, Bast wrote an essay “Five Lies about Tobacco”,[7][33] which said “smoking in moderation has few, if any, adverse health effects.”[36][37] In 1999, Bast referenced the essays in soliciting financial support from Philip Morris, writing “Heartland does many things that benefit Philip Morris’ bottom line, things that no other organization does.”[33] A Philip Morris executive, the firm’s manager of industrial affairs, was a member of the board of directors of the Institute.[33] In 2005, the Institute opposed Chicago’s public smoking ban, at the time one of the strictest bans in the country.[38]