What’s New in the Latest U.S. Climate Assessment

Below is the first part of an NYT article. It is totally uncritical.  The days of journalists examining evidence critically are now gone -- except for anything favouring Mr Trump, of course.

Yet the report has glaring holes.  Attributing South coast flooding to global warming without mentioning all the reports showing land subsidence there is just not serious reporting. It is a perfunctory restatement of an item of faith.  It is a sort of chant of the global warming religion, not anything scientific


Global warming is now affecting the United States more than ever, and the risks of future disasters — from flooding along the coasts to crop failures in the Midwest — could pose a profound threat to Americans’ well-being.

That’s the gist of Volume Two of the latest National Climate Assessment, a 1,656-page report issued on Friday that explores both the current and future impacts of climate change. The scientific report, which comes out every four years as mandated by Congress, was produced by 13 federal agencies and released by the Trump administration.

This year’s report contains many of the same findings cited in the previous National Climate Assessment, published in 2014. Temperatures are still going up, and the odds of dangers such as wildfires in the West continue to increase. But reflecting some of the impacts that have been felt across the country in the past four years, some of the report’s emphasis has changed.

Predicted impacts have materialized

More and more of the predicted impacts of global warming are now becoming a reality.

For instance, the 2014 assessment forecast that coastal cities would see more flooding in the coming years as sea levels rose. That’s no longer theoretical: Scientists have now documented a record number of “nuisance flooding” events during high tides in cities like Miami and Charleston, S.C.

“High tide flooding is now posing daily risks to businesses, neighborhoods, infrastructure, transportation, and ecosystems in the Southeast,” the report says.

As the oceans have warmed, disruptions in United States fisheries, long predicted, are now underway. In 2012, record ocean temperatures caused lobster catches in Maine to peak a month earlier than usual, and the distribution chain was unprepared.

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Scientists trash new federal climate report as ‘tripe’ – ’embarrassing’ – ‘400-page pile of crap’

The new federal climate report, the National Climate Assessment, released on Black Friday, is being hyped by climate activists and the media. But scientists are rebuking the study and its claims.

Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore ripped the new federal climate report: “The science must be addressed head-on. If POTUS has his reasons for letting this Obama-era committee continue to peddle tripe I wish he would tell us what they are,” Moore told Climate Depot.

“This new federal climate report even flies in the face of the  UNIPCC admission that there is no evidence of a connection between AGW (anthropogenic global warming) and extreme weather. Ms. Hayhoe reigns supreme. Very worrying,” Moore added.

The National Climate Assessment report by the National Academy of Sciences, is basing one of its headline scare scenario on a study funded by climate activist billionaire Tom Steyer. Climate expert Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. noted on November 24 that the claim of economic damage from climate change is based on a 15 degree F temperature increase that is double the “most extreme value reported elsewhere in the report.” The “sole editor” of this claim in the report was an alumni of the Center for American Progress, which is also funded by Tom Styer.” “Shouldn’t such an outlandish, outlier conclusion been caught in the review process?” Pielke Jr. added.

“Not a good look that sole review editor for this chapter is an alum of the Center for American Progress … which is funded by Tom Steyer. Even rudimentary attention to COI (conflict of interest) would avoided this,” he added.

“By presenting cherrypicked science, at odds w/ NCA Vol,1 & IPCC AR5, the authors of NCA Vol.2 have given a big fat gift to anyone who wants to dismiss climate science and policy,” Pielke Jr. wrote

Dr. John Dunn lamented that he was disappointed that President Trump has not halted these federal reports written to promote climate fears. “Two years into the Trump administration it is sad to see this 400-page pile of crap,” Dunn told Climate Depot.

As Climate Depot has previously reported:

“This is pre-determined science. If you are reading this report and you say: ‘This sounds like a press release by environmental groups’ — that’s because it is! The lead authors are activists with environmental group Union of Concerned Scientists.”

“The government is paying our National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to come up with alarming report with a bunch of scary climate computer models. (NAS is almost entirely dependent on federal funding).

The lead authors of this report Donald Wuebbles and Katharine Hayhoe, have come out and said every storm is now impacted by global warming. It is a political report masquerading as science. We knew what it was going to say before it was issued. The media is hyping a rehash of frightening climate change claims by Obama administration holdover activist government scientists. The new report is once again pre-determined science.

The 2017 National Climate Assessment report reads like a press release from environmental pressure groups — because it is! Two key authors are longtime Union of Concerned Scientist activists, Donald Wuebbles and Katharine Hayhoe.

Wuebbles is on record as believing global warming has powers and abilities far beyond those of any other phenomenon. “There’s really no such thing as natural weather anymore,” Wuebbles said in 2011.  “Anything that takes place today in the weather system has been affected by the changes we’ve made to the climate system,” he added.

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Give thanks that we no longer live on the precipice

Fossil fuels helped humanity improve our health, living standards and longevity in just 200 years

Paul Driessen

Thanksgiving is a good time to express our sincere gratitude that we no longer “enjoy” the “simpler life of yesteryear.” As my grandmother said, “The only good thing about the good old days is that they’re gone.”

For countless millennia, mankind lived on a precipice, in hunter-gatherer, subsistence farmer and primitive urban industrial societies powered by human and animal muscle, wood, charcoal, animal dung, water wheels and windmills. Despite backbreaking dawn-to-dusk labor, wretched poverty was the norm; starvation was a drought, war or long winter away; rampant diseases and infections were addressed by herbs, primitive medicine and superstition. Life was “eco-friendly,” but life spans averaged 35 to 40 years.

Then, suddenly, a great miracle happened! Beginning around 1800, health, prosperity and life expectancy began to climb … slowly but inexorably at first, then more rapidly and dramatically. Today, the average American lives longer, healthier and better than even royalty did a mere century ago.

How did this happen? What was suddenly present that had been absent before, to cause this incredible transformation?

Humanity already possessed the basic scientific method (1250), printing press (1450), corporation (1600) and early steam engine (1770). So what inventions, discoveries and practices arrived after 1800, to propel us forward over this short time span?

Ideals of liberty and equality took root, says economics historian Deidre McCloskey. Liberated people are more ingenious, free to pursue happiness, and ideas; free to try, fail and try again; free to pursue their self-interests and thereby, intentionally or not, to better mankind – just as Adam Smith described.

Equality (of social dignity and before the law) emboldened otherwise ordinary people to invest, invent and take risks. Once accidents of parentage, titles, inherited wealth or formal education no longer controlled destinies, humanity increasingly benefitted from the innate inspiration, perspiration and perseverance of inventors like American Charles Newbold, who patented the first iron plow in 1807.

Ideas suddenly start having sex, say McCloskey and United Kingdom parliamentarian and science writer Matt Ridley. Free enterprise capitalism and entrepreneurship took off, as did commercial and international banking, risk management and stock markets.

Legal and regulatory systems expanded to express societal expectations, coordinate growth and activities, and punish bad actors. Instead of growing, making and buying locally, we did so internationally – enabling families, communities and countries to specialize, and buy affordable products from afar.

The scientific method began to flourish, unleashing wondrous advances at an increasingly frenzied pace. Not just inventions like steam-powered refrigeration (1834) but, often amid heated debate, discoveries like the germ theory of disease that finally bested the miasma theory around 1870.

All this and more were literally fueled by another absolutely vital, fundamental advance that is too often overlooked or only grudging recognized: abundant, reliable, affordable energy – the vast majority of it fossil fuels. Coal and coal gas, then also oil, then natural gas as well, replaced primitive fuels with densely packed energy that could power engines, trains, farms, factories, laboratories, schools, hospitals, offices, homes, road building and more, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

The fuels also ended our unsustainable reliance on whale oil, saving those magnificent creatures from extinction. Eventually, they powered equipment that removes harmful pollutants from our air and water.

Today, coal, oil and natural gas still provide 80% of America’s and the world’s energy for heat, lights, manufacturing, transportation, communication, refrigeration, entertainment and every other aspect of modern life. Equally important, they supported and still support the infrastructure and vibrant societies, economies and institutions that enable the human mind (what economist Julian Simon called our Ultimate Resource) to create seemingly endless new ideas and technologies.

Electricity plays an increasingly prominent and indispensable role in modern life. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine life without this infinitely adaptable energy form. By 1925, half of all U.S. homes had electricity; a half century later, all did – from coal, hydroelectric, natural gas or nuclear plants.

Medical discoveries and practices followed a similar trajectory, as millions of “invisible hands” worked together across buildings, cities, countries and continents – without most of them ever even knowing the others existed. They shared and combined ideas and technologies, generating new products and practices that improved and saved billions of lives.

Medical research discovered why people died from minor wounds, and what really caused malaria (1898), smallpox and cholera. Antibiotics (the most vital advance in centuries), vaccinations and new drugs began to combat disease and infection. X-rays, anesthesia, improved surgical techniques, sanitation and pain killers (beginning with Bayer Aspirin in 1899) permitted life-saving operations. Indoor plumbing, electric stoves (1896) and refrigerators (1913), trash removal, and countless other advances also helped raise average American life expectancy from 46 in 1900 to 76 (men) and 81 (women) in 2017.

Washing visible hands with soap (1850) further reduced infections and disease. Wearing shoes in southern U.S. states (1910) all but eliminated waterborne hookworm, while the growing use of window screens (1887) kept hosts of disease-carrying insects out of homes. Petrochemicals increasingly provided countless pharmaceuticals, plastics and other products that enhance and safeguard lives.

Safe water and wastewater treatment – also made possible by fossil fuels, electricity and the infrastructure they support – supported still healthier societies that created still more prosperity, by eliminating the bacteria, parasites and other waterborne pathogens that made people too sick to work and killed millions, especially children. They all but eradicated cholera, one of history’s greatest killers.

Insecticides and other chemicals control disease-carrying and crop-destroying insects and pathogens. Ammonia-based fertilizers arrived in 1910; tractors and combines became common in the 1920s. Today, modern mechanized agriculture, fertilizers, hybrid and biotech seeds, drip irrigation and other advances combine to produce bumper crops that feed billions, using less land, water and insecticides.

The internal combustion engine (Carl Benz, 1886) gradually replaced horses for farming and transportation, rid cities of equine pollution (feces, urine and corpses), and enabled forage cropland to become forests. Today we can travel states, nations and the world in mere hours, instead of weeks – and ship food, clothing and other products to the globe’s farthest corners. Catalytic converters and other technologies mean today’s cars emit less than 2% of the pollutants that came out of tailpipes in 1970.

Power equipment erects better and stronger houses and other buildings that keep out winter cold and summer heat, better survive hurricanes and earthquakes, and connect occupants with entertainment and information centers from all over the planet. Radios, telephones, televisions and text messages warn of impending dangers, while fire trucks and ambulances rush accident and disaster victims to hospitals.

Today, modern drilling and mining techniques and technologies find, extract and process the incredible variety of fuels, metals and other raw materials required to manufacture and operate factories and equipment, to produce the energy and materials we need to grow or make everything we eat, wear or use.

Modern communication technologies combine cable and wireless connections, computers, cell phones, televisions, radio, internet and other devices to connect people and businesses, operate cars and equipment, and make once time-consuming operations happen in nanoseconds. In the invention and discovery arena, Cosmopolitan magazine might call it best idea-sex ever.

So, this holiday season, give thanks for all these blessings – while praying and doing everything you can to help bring the same blessings to billions of people worldwide who still do not enjoy them.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, economic development and human rights.





Oil plunges to lowest price in a year

Fracking is doing its job

Oil prices slumped more than 6 percent to the lowest in more than a year on Friday amid fears of a supply glut even as major producers consider cutting output.

Oil supply, led by U.S. producers, is growing faster than demand and to prevent a build-up of unused fuel such as the one that emerged in 2015, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is expected to start trimming output after a meeting on Dec. 6.

But this has done little so far to prop up prices, which have dropped more than 20 percent so far in November, in a seven-week streak of losses. Prices were on course for their biggest one-month decline since late 2014.

A trade war between the world's two biggest economies and oil consumers, the United States and China, have weighed upon the market.

"The market is pricing in an economic slowdown - they are anticipating that the Chinese trade talks are not going to go well," said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago, referring to expected talks next week between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires.

"The market doesn't believe that OPEC is going to be able to act swiftly enough to offset the coming slowdown in demand," Flynn said.

Brent crude fell $3.13, or 5 percent, to $59.47 a barrel by 1:01 p.m. EST (1801 GMT), after earlier touching $58.41, its lowest since October 2017.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) lost $3.35, or 6.1 percent, to trade at $51.28, and earlier touched a low of $50.53, also the weakest since October 2017.

For the week, Brent was on track for a 11 percent loss and WTI a 9.4 percent decline.

Market fears over weak demand intensified after China reported its lowest gasoline exports in more than a year amid a glut of the fuel in Asia and globally.

Stockpiles of gasoline have surged across Asia, with inventories in Singapore, the regional refining hub, rising to a three-month high while Japanese stockpiles also climbed last week. Inventories in the United States are about 7 percent higher than a year ago.

Crude production has soared as well this year. The International Energy Agency expects non-OPEC output alone to rise by 2.3 million barrels per day (bpd) this year while demand next year was expected to grow 1.3 million bpd.

Adjusting to lower demand, top crude exporter Saudi Arabia said on Thursday that it may reduce supply as it pushes OPEC to agree to a joint output cut of 1.4 million bpd.

However, Trump has made it clear that he does not want oil prices to rise and many analysts think Saudi Arabia is coming under U.S. pressure to resist calls from other OPEC members for lower crude output.

If OPEC decides to cut production at its meeting next month, oil prices could recover, analysts say.

"We expect that OPEC will manage the market in 2019 and assess the probability of an agreement to reduce production at around 2-in-3. In that scenario, Brent prices likely recover back into the $70s," Morgan Stanley commodities strategists Martijn Rats and Amy Sergeant wrote in a note to clients.

If OPEC does not trim production, prices could head much lower, potentially depreciating toward $50 a barrel, argues Lukman Otunuga, Research Analyst at FXTM.

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Giving Thanks for Climate Authenticity

The philosopher Aristotle once observed, “The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.” This is true of many political movements. It’s also applicable to the issue of climate change. Simply by revisiting 20th-century climate predictions, we can see that the extreme fear generated by global cooling-turned-warming was unfounded. Yet the climate alarmists’ outlook today continues to worsen despite a dearth of verification.

This week we were handed yet another overheated forecast. Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii at Manoa is the lead author of a comprehensive new study on forthcoming climate conditions. According to NBC News, “Mora’s team combed through more than 3,200 studies to try to paint a broad picture of what climate change is going to do to people over the coming century. They cross-referenced their findings against known disasters.” Here’s how The New York Times summarized the team’s findings:

Global warming is posing such wide-ranging risks to humanity, involving so many types of phenomena, that by the end of this century some parts of the world could face as many as six climate-related crises at the same time, researchers say. … The paper projects future trends and suggests that, by 2100, unless humanity takes forceful action to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change, some tropical coastal areas of the planet, like the Atlantic coast of South and Central America, could be hit by as many as six crises at a time.

Dr. Mora even likened this outlook to “a terror movie that is real,” while NBC warned that “climate change is going to make life on Earth a whole lot worse.” Yet it’s worth asking how such conjectural precision is even possible given past failures. The short answer is that it’s not. As meteorologist Joe Bastardi muses in an email to The Patriot Post, “It’s their strategy — blame every event on climate change. Never mind that most of the planet is peaceful and the area affected is trivial. There just happen to be people living in the affected areas who are recording every event with their cameras. There are also people who refuse to look at both sides of the issue.”

To the Times’s credit, it also notes, “The authors include a list of caveats about the research: Since it is a review of papers, it will reflect some of the potential biases of science in this area, which include the possibility that scientists might focus on negative effects more than positive ones; there is also a margin of uncertainty involved in discerning the imprint of climate change from natural variability.” This is a pertinent point that is frequently overlooked.

As reported by space.com this week, another study purports: “As Earth’s tectonic plates dive beneath one another, they drag three times as much water into the planet’s interior as previously thought.” This would appear to mitigate sea-level rise, which is among climate scientists’ top concerns. In fact, most dire outlooks are predicated on sea levels rising.

Which brings us full circle to Aristotle’s point. Social and political movements that are borne out of fear eventually reach a point at which “deviation from the truth is multiplied … a thousandfold.” Global warming is surely real, but it’s obvious that the assertions behind it are increasingly cock and bull. Despite the clamorous predictions of doomsday, humanity continues to survive and adapt. All the while, scientific analysis is fluid and in constant flux as research evolves.

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