Democracy Has Prevailed.

May 10, 2015

The Tribune-Review Editorial Board Misleads On Climate Change. Yet again.

Recently NOAA posted this:
The average temperature across global land and ocean surface temperatures combined for March 2015 was 0.85°C (1.53°F) higher than the 20th century average of 12.7°C (54.9°F). This marks the highest March temperature in the 136-year period of record, surpassing the previous record of 2010 by 0.05°C (0.09°F).
So, of course, the brain trust publishes this (not understanding what exactly it is they're reading):
Chicken Little climate cluckers issue one failed doomsday prediction after another. Think of, eight years ago, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change declaring that “as little as eight years were left to avoid” global-warming catastrophe.
Their mistake (intentional or not) is subtle but still very telling.  Look at what they want you to think.  They want you to think that the IPCC declared eight years ago a "global-warming catastrophe" would occur within eight years (meaning "by now").  Since this "doomsday prediction" hasn't happened, they must be reasoning, the climate cluckers must've been wrong.

But let's look at exactly what was being reported in 2007.  From The Guardian:
Yesterday's report follows two studies by the IPCC this year, which said unrestrained greenhouse gas emissions could drive global temperatures up as much as 6C by 2100, triggering a surge in ocean levels, destruction of vast numbers of species, economic devastation in tropical zones and mass human migrations.

The report said global emissions must peak by 2015 for the world to have any chance of limiting the expected temperature rise to 2C, which would still leave billions of people short of water by 2050.
But that's just the reporting on the report. What did the IPCC actually report in 2007.

I direct your attention to page 15 to Section D:

Mitigation in the long term (after 2030) [Bolding in original]

Subsection 18:
In order to stabilize the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere, emissions would need to peak and decline thereafter. The lower the stabilization level, the more quickly this peak and decline would need to occur. Mitigation efforts over the next two to three decades will have a large impact on opportunities to achieve lower stabilization levels (see Table SPM.5, and Figure SPM. 8) (high agreement, much evidence). [Bolding and Italics in original]
 And then there's Table SPM-5 (for size purposes, I'll only post the relevant part):


By the way, the average CO2 concentration worldwide is now above 400.

I see you shiver with anticipation over what this all means.

It means that the IPCC did not predict that the "global warming catastrophe" they were warning us 8 years ago (the one that would would be mitigated quickest if the CO2 levels peaked within 8 years) would be taking place now.  If the braintrust actually did any research they'd see that that information was found in a section talking about the long term.

They make the same mistake with their next "example":
Alarmists' proclamations of a “tipping point” beyond which disaster can't be prevented go back to a senior U.N. environmental official's 1989 call to keep rising sea levels from wiping out nations by 2000. And The Daily Caller cites similarly off-base statements.
And this is what was actually reported in 1989:
UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.
I know that reading carefully might not be among the skill set of our friends on the Trib braintrust, but take a close look at that sentence.  It's a rather simple "if/then" statement.  I'll map it out for you:
  • IF the...trend isn't reversed by...2000
  • THEN entire nations could be wiped off...the Earth.
See how that works?  See how the original quotation is not about "rising sea levels...wiping out nations by 2000"?

They're misleading you.  Yet again.


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