Greenwire (subscription required) reported today that the White House blocked testimony by Dr. Rod Schoonover of the State Department to the House Intelligence Committee on “The National Security Implications of Climate Change.” This by itself might be unsurprising, if nonetheless depressing. What’s truly amazing, however, is that Greenwire contains a link to the draft testimony, together with the NSC comments.
As regular readers of this blog have probably figured out, I at least try to find humor in almost everything.
I found no humor in the NSC comments on this testimony. They were just plain terrifying. Greenwire reported that NSC Senior Director William Happer was among those who provided comments. Greenwire also reported that Mr. Happer is among those who think that carbon emissions are beneficial and that certainly seems to be consistent with the comments, which include the following:
This is not objective testimony at all. It includes lots of climate-alarm propaganda that is not science at all. I am embarrassed to have this go out on behalf of the Executive Branch.
For the past 30 years, funding for climate research … has welcomed research findings that support climate alarm…. So the information mentioned here is heavily biased toward alarm….. A consensus of peer reviewed literature has nothing to do with truth.
Extreme high temperature records are not increasing.
“Tipping points” is a propaganda slogan designed to frighten the scientifically illiterate.
This testimony religiously assumes that any climate change will certainly be bad. But this assumption is not based on science.
And I could go on. It is basically a rehashing of every bit of made-up pseudo-science that climate skeptics have been throwing at the kitchen wall for years. Unfortunately, it has stuck with our current President. If this White House truly believes any of what is in the comments, then we are really all mad here.
It is true though the lots of scientists are getting paid thru grants to research climate change . This can create an subconcious bias to interpret data in a way to preserve future funding. We still dont understand how a system as complex as the earth’s climate will ansorb these extra carbon emissions. So caution should be used when discussing the possible range of outcomes. Instead, they often focus on the worst predicted outcome….the idea that we can predict that to a single decade when the point of no return will occur (2040) is what is laughable.
I believe the vast majority of scientists fund their research through grants, and they are suppose to analyze data scientifically. So far, the predictive models have shown to be on the conservative side, actual impact of climate change is worse than predicted by those models. 19 of the last 20 years have increasingly set record high global temperatures. When a doctor sees a patient symptoms getting worse, we don’t ask if the illness might actually be beneficial to the patient, why do we do this with the planet, or actually, with the future of our civilization?