The first thing one needs to recognize about the GCCI report is that it is not a scientific document — it is a 170-page long press release from an advocacy group, with all the detailed, thorough science one might expect in a press release from the Center of Science and Public Interest writing about the threat to mankind from Twinkies. By the admission of the Obama administration, this is a document that has been stripped of its scientific discussion and rewritten by a paid PR firm that specialized in environmental advocacy.
I have not read every word, but it is pretty clear that there is no new science here on the causes or magnitude of warming. In fact, if I had to describe the process used to prepare the first part of the report, it was to take past IPCC reports, strip out any wording indicating uncertainty, and then portray future forecasts using the IPCC mean forecasts as the lowest possible warming and whatever model they could find that spit out the highest forecast as the “worst case scenario.” Then, the rest of the report (about 90%) creates a variety of hypothesized disaster movie plots based on this worst case scenario.
You know that this is an advocacy document and not science right of the bat when they write this:
1. Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced.
Global temperature has increased over the past 50 years. This observed increase is due primarily to humaninduced
emissions of heat-trapping gases.
Just look in wonder at the false religion-like certainty. Name three other scientific findings about horribly complex natural processes that have been studied in depth for only 20 years or so that one would use the word “unequivocal” for. OK, name even one.
If you can’t read the whole report, read the list of disasters on page 12. If I had shown this to you blind, and told you it from from a Paul Ehrlich the-world-will-end-in-a-decade book from the 1970s, you would probably have believed me.
This entire report assumes global warming to exist, assumes it is man-made, and assumes its future levels are as large or larger than those projected in the last IPCC report. The first four or five pages merely restate this finding with no new evidence. The majority of the report then takes this assumption, cranks it through various models, and generates scary potential scenarios about the US and it would be like if temperatures really rose 11F over the next century.
Since data indicates warming has stopped for several years (only temporarily, we’re assured by ‘Climate Change’ proponents), should these predictions be contingent on its resumption? Or do they apply, as would seem the case, irrespective any actual natural events?
If they are absolute, “unequivocal” with respect to actual reality, doesn’t they make them, in every sense of the word, “super-natural”?
If so, they are clearly Religion, and not Science, by any definition of those terms.
So, you are saying this report is IPCC LITE??
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
As always, one ~must~ remember: The effect can ~never~ overcome the cause.
To me it looks like they are following the IPCC’s assessment report dictum, whereby The Summary for Policy Makers is first written and released, followed months later by the science to support it (and excluding science that might case doubt). In the case of the GCCI however, no science was provided.
The U.S. National Academy of Sciences published a book in 2005 titled “Decision Making for the Environment: Social and Behavioral Science Research Priorities”. On page 86, the book says: “By focusing scientific efforts increasingly on decision relevance, such a program of measurement, evaluation and analysis would increase the the influence of empirical evidence and empirically supported theory in environmental decisions relative to the influents of politics and ideology”.
As I interpret the meaning of these words, the NAS says that focusing scientific research to support policy objectives, will help achieve the desired politic outcome. It would provide support for a political agenda. It appears that the scientists who wrote this were actually Political Scientists.
This book has been taken to heart by the authors of the IPCC and GCCI reports. It helps explain why the research of skeptical scientists is ignored and/or trivialized. To do otherwise would “de-focus” the relevance of pro-AGW science and make it more difficult for the politicians to sell their agenda to the public.