The Climate Horror Picture Show, Brought to You by Dodgy Science

“There is medium evidence and high agreement that long‐​term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change”?

• a) Someone who does not know how to write
• b) The Koch Brothers
• c) The Cato Institute
• d) The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Well, it’s obviously “a”, and not likely to be “b”, as Charles Koch writes very clearly. Nor would such a poorly constructed sentence have gotten by the Cato editors (“c”).

Which leaves “d.” That’s right, it’s in a recent report on “climate extremes” from our pals at the UN. Of course they couldn’t come right out and say it, so it’s up to others to translate to common English: any trends in weather‐​related losses are not related to dreaded global warming.

But that hasn’t stopped the $3.5 billion per year U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). Instead, their draft “National Assessment” of climate change in the United States flogs more “extreme” climate in just about every one of the 30 chapters in this 1200‐​page doorstop.

The USGCRP is just about every organization that consumes an oodle of the multibillion dollar pie. It therefore considers its pronouncements to be the consensus of climate scientists.

So does the IPCC. They can’t both be right.

One thing that’s apparent in the new Assessment is that federal funding is awarded preferentially to those who thrive in a data‐​free environment. Weather‐​related damages are not increasing, as percentage of GDP. When you produce more stuff (increasing GDP), there’s more stuff to get hit by bad weather.

The “Transportation” chapter of this climate horror picture show asserts that pernicious climate change is “reducing the reliability and capacity of the U.S. transportation system”. Really? But, here is reality:

Does this look like reduction in capacity?

Does this?

Or is this related to global warming?

The fact of the matter is the vast balance of evidence is that the current National Assessment is an incredible exaggeration of the effects of climate change on the United States.

So why was it done?

Consider the “mission statement” of the USGCRP: “Thirteen Agencies, One Mission: Empower the Nation with Global Change Science”.

The operative word is “empower,” which is the purpose of the Assessment. It is to provide cover for a massive regulatory intrusion, and concomitant enormous costs in resources and individual liberty. History tells us that when scientists willingly endorse sweeping governmental agendas fueled by dodgy science, bad things soon happen.