Is The Administration’s Position on Global Warming Scientific?

Across a broad range of issues, liberals ignore the relevant science. Perhaps global warming is foremost on this list. For an elegant, brief statement of why this is true, let’s turn to climate scientist Judith Curry. This is an excerpt from her observations on Obama’s “Clean Power Plan.”

Do you think Obama’s messaging about climate change is true to the science?

Well, the one thing you don’t hear President Obama mention is how much his proposed emissions reductions will reduce global warming. My recent Congressional testimony cited the following numbers for President Obama’s commitment to the UN: It has been estimated that the U.S. INDC of 28% emissions reduction by 2025 will prevent 0.03 degree C in warming by 2100. It has been estimated that the U.S. INDC of 80% emissions reduction by 2025 will prevent 0.11 degree C warming by 2100. And these estimates assume that climate model projections are correct; if the climate models are over sensitive to CO2, then amount of warming prevented will be even smaller.

The models are obviously over-sensitive to CO2, since they say we should already have experienced a considerable amount of warming that hasn’t come to pass.

The economic argument is rather dicey; economic impact models are far more uncertain even than climate models. The social cost of carbon estimates made by the White House require assumptions out to the year 2300 for drastic CO2 reductions to be cost effective.

The public health arguments are even weaker. CO2 has absolutely nothing to do with asthma. Extreme weather events are not increasing with increased CO2; extreme weather events are dominated by natural climate variability. Particularly in the U.S., extreme weather was substantially worse in the 1930’s and 1950’s.

So, in other words, the Democrats’ plan to cripple our economy in order to enrich Big Green is entirely unscientific.

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