…but fails to address climate science flaws and failures

Guest essay by Larry Hamlin

The L A Times interviewed California Governor Brown about the states climate campaign with the results presented in an April 15, 2017 article entitled “I’m  not giving up hope” which revealed his frustrations, concerns and views about lack of support among other states regarding California’s climate change program.

The Times presented a series of questions to Governor Brown addressing key topics regarding California’s efforts to address global climate issues at a state level. He readily acknowledged that other states are not buying his climate alarmist hype and moving in California’s direction and expressed frustration about this outcome.

When asked about greater support for his climate change program outside the U.S. he attributed this to Republicans “belief” that global warming is a hoax, irrelevant or not a problem but failed to address the significant and well documented climate science flaws and failures which are clearly undermining the scientific legitimacy of climate alarmist positions and claims.

When asked what could change peoples minds about climate change he said more “science” and recited the usual litany of climate alarmist claims about “heat”, more “storms”, “the sea level rise” and “Arctic melting”.

Governor Brown’s claim that higher temperatures are being caused by man made CO2 emissions is far from certain as addressed by climate scientist Dr. Judith Curry who documented flaws and failures of climate models claiming that man made CO2 emissions are driving global temperatures. Her study found that:

“The climate model simulation results for the 21st century reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) do not include key elements of climate variability, and hence are not useful as projections for how the 21st century will actually evolve.”

She further concludes that current climate models:

“are not fit for the purpose of attributing the causes of 20th century warming or for predicting global or regional climate change timescales of decades to centuries, with any high level of confidence.”

“are not fit for the purpose of justifying political policies to fundamentally alter world social, economic and energy systems.”

Governor Brown’s claim that more storms are being caused by man made CO2 emissions is unsupported by climate data as documented by Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. in testimony provided before the  House Committee on Science on March 29, 2017. In his testimony Dr. Pielke concluded:

Governor Brown’s claims of increasing rates of sea level rise are unsupported by NOAA tide gauge data with measurements through 2015 which show no sea level rise acceleration occurring at coastal locations around the U.S. or elsewhere as documented at NOAA’s website.

Measurements of NOAA tide gauge coastal sea level rise at California locations demonstrates that the rate of coastal rise remains steady and consistent over the last 100 or more years at rates which vary by location between 3 to 8 inches per century.

Governor Brown’s claims that Arctic melting is caused by man made CO2 emissions is exaggerated with measured Arctic temperature data showing cyclical patterns of increasing and decreasing temperatures over the last 100 years and the most recent studies of the behavior of Arctic ice melt concluding that up to 50% of ice melt since 1979 is due to natural climate variation.

It is not a question of “belief” that is significantly undermining support for climate alarmist claims as Governor Brown suggests but instead the results of legitimate scientific inquiry which are exposing the flaws, failures and shortcomings of climate alarmist claims.