The forecast from a new report by the Obama administration on global warming warns North Carolina's beaches could be swallowed up by the sea, New England's long winters could last two weeks and Chicago? Watch out for deadly heat waves.
But scientists who have evaluated the warnings and forecasts says it is a "scare" report that has little relation to reality.
"This is not a work of science but an embarrassing episode for the authors and NOAA," said meteorologist Joe D'Aleo, the former chairman of the American Meteorological Society's Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting.
The scientist, who publishes the
IceCap.US report, said the report "starts out day one being wrong on many of its claims. ... They gave the administration the cover to push the unwise cap-and-tax agenda."
According to the
Guardian, the original report was unveiled recently and cited "heavy downpours, rising sea levels, and blistering summer heat waves produced by man-made climate change."
It warned of possible sudden death for humanity, because the "projected rapid rate and large amount of climate change over this century will challenge the ability of society and natural systems to adapt."
The release of the report, "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States," was orchestrated by a media consulting company and comes just as Congress is approaching a vote on plans for huge new taxes on energy.
Jane Lubchenco of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told a press conference at the release the report is a "game-changer."
The report claims the average temperatures in the U.S. have risen by 1.5 degrees across five decades, and sea levels are up eight inches.
That has disrupted salmon, shifted butterflies and raised asthma rates, the report said.
And without immediate intervention, it said climate models suggest temperatures 11 degrees higher by the year 2099.
The result? Declining wheat and corn crops, food poisoning and the spread of diseases. Also, 2,400 miles of roads in the Gulf Coast could be swamped and electric grid failures are possible because of the demand for air conditioning.
The report was released by 30 NOAA scientists, environmental activists and media strategists, but according to a
report on
Climate Depot, amounts to scaremongering.
The
Climate Depot is a project of the
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, which "works to help people find better ways to provide for food, water, energy and other essential human services."
"There are a number of hurricane experts (including myself) that would disagree strongly..." said Stanley B. Goldenberg, an atmospheric scientist.
Geophysicist David Deming, associate professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma, described it as a "scare report."
"After following this subject now since the mid 1980s, I become more skeptical every year. I am now beginning to conclude that global warming simply does not exist," he wrote.
Citing possible deficiencies in the report, he said there has been no sea level rise for three years, tropical storm activity is at a 30-year low and a survey of weather stations - so far - reveals "an astonishing 69 percent" with possible "serious errors."
"Apparently the report will make up for having all the science stripped out by spending a lot of time on gaudy worst case scenarios,"
wrote a blogger at
Climate Skeptic.
A forum participant on the site wrote, "They are not lying, they just choose the scariest numbers which appear to sell it best. ... It's an embarrassment to me as an environmentalist, it's a step backwards."
The 196-page document was given to Congress under a 1990 law requiring status reports on climate change. It claims heat-related deaths in Chicago will rise 10-fold by the end of the century and insect and plant diseases will gain new territory becuase of warmer winters.
It was
only a week ago when Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, asked Congress in its new tax debate to consider the opinion of 31,478 scientists, including more than 9,000 Ph.D.s, who agree humans have nothing to do with any "global warming."
In a statement to the U.S. House, Paul said, "before voting on the 'cap-and-trade' legislation, my colleagues should consider the views expressed in the following petition that has been signed by 31,478 American scientists."
He was referring to the
Petition Project, which actually was launched nearly 10 years ago when the first few thousand signatures were assembled. Then, between 1999 and 2007, the list of signatures grew gradually without any special effort or campaign.
But in the last few years, and especially because of the release of the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore, the campaign has been reinvigorated.
"Mr. Gore's movie, asserting a 'consensus' and 'settled science' in agreement about human-caused global warming, conveyed the claims about human-caused global warming to ordinary movie goers and to public school children, to whom the film was widely distributed.
Unfortunately, Mr. Gore's movie contains many very serious incorrect claims which no informed, honest scientist could endorse," project spokesman and founder Art Robinson has told WND.
Robinson, a research professor of chemistry, co-founded the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine with Linus Pauling in 1973, and later co-founded the
Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.
Paul cited the petition results in his statement to Congress.
"Our energy policies must be based upon scientific truth - not fictional movies or self-interested international agendas," Paul said. "They should be based upon the accomplishments of technological free enterprise that have provided our modern civilization, including our energy industries. That free enterprise must not be hindered by bogus claims about imaginary disasters."
The petition states: "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."
Robinson has warned that there are some very serious ramifications to assuming "global warming" results from mankind's actions and therefore those behaviors all need to be halted.
"The campaign to severely ration hydrocarbon energy technology has now been markedly expanded," he said. "In the course of this campaign, many scientifically invalid claims about impending climate emergencies are being made. Simultaneously, proposed political actions to severely reduce hydrocarbon use now threaten the prosperity of Americans and the very existence of hundreds of millions of people in poorer countries," he told WND.
WND also
reported recently when Steven Chu, who was appointed by President Obama to be the U.S. Energy Secretary, said white paint is what's needed to fix global warming.
Chu told the
London Times that by making paved surfaces and roofs lighter in color, the world would reduce carbon emissions by as much as parking all the cars in the world for 11 years.
He was speaking recently at the St. James' Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, in which the
Times partners for media events, when he described his simple and "completely benign" ... "geo-engineering" plan.
He said building codes should require that flat roofed-buildings have their tops painted white. Visible sloped roofs could be painted "cool" colors. And roads could be made a lighter color, he suggested.
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