A couple of weeks ago, the Cato Institute ran a major advertisement in several leading newspapers across the country, intending to counter some seemingly alarming statements about climate change that were coming from the Obama Administration—primarily statements concerning the urgency of action and the certitude of the science behind the perceived crisis.
The ad campaign quickly drew criticism in the blogosphere from folks who share President Obama’s sense of urgency and are also leaders in raising climate alarm. The loudest among these critics was perhaps Dr. Joe Romm, who runs the blog Climate Progress. Romm’s criticism was quite vehement, but it was also quite wrong.…
In one of my first posts for MasterResource, I discussed a (then) just-published paper in Science magazine by David Battisti and Rosamond Naylor that argued that global warming was fast leading us into agricultural failure and a global food crisis.
I pointed out that this was a naïve analysis that gave short-shrift to our ability to adapt to changing climate conditions. Through technological improvement of farming practices and the development of new crop varieties, farmers have not only been able to keep up with a changing climate, but have also managed to produce ever-greater crop yields.…
The National Wildlife Federation released a report last week that began:
Overwhelming scientific evidence supports reducing carbon pollution* that causes global warming as much as possible and as quickly as possible.
Why such a stark verdict? Because…
Global warming is happening faster than predicted even several years ago, with many natural systems already seriously impacted.
This is an odd contention given that we are now in a multi-year period (12 years and counting) period during which time the global warming has been preceding much more slowly than the climate-model mean projections of the expected rate of temperature rise. And, what’s even worse (for the models anyway), is that the rate has now dipped near the lower bound of the 95% confidence range of model projections. If the slowdown continues much longer, it will be a clear indication that something is amiss with the temperature projections—and thus with alarming claims that depend upon them.…