President Obama proclaimed in the SOTU address “...If anybody still wants to dispute the science around climate change, have at it. You will be pretty lonely because you’ll be debating our military, most of America’s business leaders, the majority of the American people, almost the entire scientific community and 200 nations around the world who agree it’s a problem and intend to solve it.”
Yet just 23% of voters agree that the scientific debate is over and 46% believe change is caused by planetary or other factors while just 44% believe humans are to primarily blame according to an August 2015 Rasmussen poll. There is widespread and growing skepticism among scientists that climate change is man made and an issue though it should not surprise you that the scientists who are on the receiving end of the billions of dollars of government grants and support will voice support for the ‘theory’ even as every day facts emerge that prove it has failed. The military and other agencies carry out the administration’s will and are not experts in science and industry will sign on to any cause if they think it will improve profits. Finally most of the 200 nations signed onto the UN volunteering pledge because they believe that they will financially benefit.
ICECAP Aside: A post by Anthony Watts in 2008 reviewed a paper I had posted on Icecap.us which did a comparative analysis of CO2 versus other natural factors and temperatures. Other follow up papers have been done, peer reviewed and published since then and another set is under review for an upcoming book for Elsevier. They show natural factors drive climate changes. Here is a recap of the original work and a link to one of the updates.
Here is a story by Steve Goddard on Real Science on the Endless Stupidity at the New York TImes and here one on Twenty Years of the Same Climate Stupid. And speaking of stupid, here is another in a series of stupid scientists - this one Bill Nye.
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The Heritage Foundation in their fact check of the SOTU found on the topic:
President Obama said feel free to question the science behind climate change but doing so will leave you “pretty lonely” because “you’ll be debating our military, most of America’s business leaders, the majority of the American people, almost the entire scientific community, and 200 nations around the world who agree it’s a problem and intend to solve it.”
This “problem” of climate change is hardly one at all. Natural variations have altered the climate much more than man has. Proponents of global action on climate change will argue that 97 percent of the climatologists agree on climate change. There is significant agreement among climatologists, even those labeled as skeptics, that the Earth has warmed moderately over the past 60 years and that some portion of that warming may be attributed to manmade carbon dioxide emissions. However, there is no consensus that temperatures are increasing at an accelerating rate and we’ve seen them plateau for nearly two decades now.
Even studies that have attempted to refute the 18-year pause in global warming show that the temperature trend is much less than that projected by climate models. And even though man-made greenhouse gas emissions have increased, the world has not experienced trends in the increased frequency or magnitude of extreme weather events.
Heritage research has shown that the statistical models that the administration relies on to quantify the economic impact of climate change are heavily dependent upon certain assumptions and extremely sensitive to very reasonable tweaks to these assumptions. In fact, under some assumptions one of the models that the administration relies on suggests that there may even be net benefits to global warming. That’s right: benefits.
The climate data simply does not suggest that man-made global warming should be at the top of the list of public concerns. Most importantly, even if you do believe the planet is heading toward catastrophe, the Obama administration’s climate agenda will drive up energy costs by driving out affordable energy sources for no meaningful climate reduction. We could grind all economic activity to a halt, hold our breaths forever, and cut carbon emissions to zero in the U.S. - and still only wind up lowering average temperatures by no more than 0.2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
Politicians might want to start listening to those “lonely” climate voices and have an objective, scientific debate on climate change.
By Nicolas Loris, Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow and Kevin Dayaratna, senior statistician and research programmer
Thanks to Michael Mann, Andrew Dessler and Seth Borenstein, we can rate the candidates as to how independent the candidate are on thinking relative to climate change. Those at the top understand the scientific method while those at the bottom like the three authors haven’t a clue.
