From THE DAILY CALLER

Nick Pope
Contributor

House Republicans are pressing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) for answers about a signature dataset frequently cited as evidence that climate change is intensifying.

Members of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology Committee wrote to NOAA Administrator Richard Spinrad on Wednesday demanding information about several aspects of the agency’s “billion dollar disasters” (BDD) dataset, which the Biden administration has cited to justify its pause on natural gas export terminal approvals, among other things. The lawmakers allege that the BDD data may be violating NOAA’s scientific integrity rules, and they also requested clarification on NOAA’s methodology and an explanation as to why the agency does not adjust for variables like GDP.

The metric’s critics have pointed out that economic statistics are an inappropriate proxy for climate change’s intensity or changing meteorological conditions. For example, identical storms in identical locations at two different times would render different damage totals because of increases in the amount of property in harm’s way and not necessarily because climate change has gotten any worse. (EXCLUSIVE: ‘Blatant Violations’: Watchdog Challenges Key Data Used By Biden Admin To Push Sweeping Climate Agenda)

“Since the 1990s, NOAA has published annual reports showing the number of disasters that have cost more than a billion dollars in damages,” the letter states. “Debate around the validity of the reports’ methodologies has resulted in NOAA making incremental but important changes. Since 2011, the reports’ cost estimates of all past disasters in the dataset have been updated annually to account for inflation in today’s dollars.”

“However, despite adjustments for inflation, the reports have not been adjusted for increases in population or wealth in the same capacity,” the letter continues. Due to these increases in population and wealth, even mild storms can sometimes appear to cause greater damage today. The lack of updated, comprehensive data in these models raises considerable concern given that these reports have been cited by both Congress and the President as the justification for different federal government actions concerning climate change.”

BDD data was used in a flagship climate report released by the Biden administration in 2023, and it was also cited as evidence to justify the administration’s pause on approvals for new liquefied natural gas export terminals by Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk in testimony provided to Congress in February.

The letter alleges that NOAA’s adjustments for inflation appear to be inconsistent in some cases. Additionally, the lawmakers wrote that the opaque methodology for deriving BDD data makes the data nearly impossible to independently replicate and verify.

The letter’s authors — Republican Reps. Frank Lucas of Oklahoma, Max Miller of Ohio and Jay Obernolte of California — called on Spinrad to disclose why NOAA connects BDD data and climate change and the scientific basis it has for doing so, as well as for an explanation as to why the agency does not adjust its data for increases in population or wealth.

Roger Pielke Jr., a BDD critic and former environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado, raised several of these issues in his own correction request submitted to NOAA in January. In response to his request, NOAA said that it would be taking some steps to improve the BDD data’s transparency.

NOAA referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to the statement it issued upon releasing their response to Pielke’s correction request when contacted for comment for this story. An agency spokesperson added that the agency will respond to the lawmakers’ letter via official channels.

“NOAA notes that the [request for correction (RFC)] did not identify specific data points that need correcting. In conducting its review of the RFC, NOAA has not identified any data inaccuracies in the Billion Dollar Disaster data set,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement shared with the DCNF regarding Pielke’s correction request. “NOAA has determined the U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters data set meets the threshold for influential scientific information (ISI) under NOAA’s Information Quality Guidelines. As a result, NOAA will review and update its management practices for the data set.”

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

By Emmet Penney at Nuclear Barbarians — 4 September  2024 — 550 words/4–5 minutes [Reposted with the author’s permission]. 

This is the moment I knew I could never step foot into a casino without getting fleeced by my own brain: a psychologist was on the radio explaining the cognitive difference between those likely to become addicted to gambling and normal people.

Say you’re at a slot machine, she told the interviewer, and you pull the lever. The wheels spin and then stop: you see two 7’s and a cherry.

If you’re normal, you say, “Aw man, I lost.”

If you’re predisposed to gambling addiction, you say, “I almost won!”

That’s when I knew. Because I said out loud to myself in the car, “That’s because you did almost win!”

Intellectually, like a normal person, I understood that a loss is a loss, but in some twisted corner of my brain, a small, forceful voice said, “But…two 7s…that’s almost there…”

This is how most pro-renewable energy modelers think.

Let me explain.

Over the last week or so, I saw this graph making the rounds, accompanied by a similar comment: “Wow, wind and solar seasonally balance on the grid. This is great news!”

And don’t they have a point? See how at the monthly level, whenever wind dips, solar rises, and vice versa? Maybe Europe just needs more wind and solar! Maybe if we can build the right models we can figure out how to get there!

But let’s take a closer look at Germany.

Notice where both wind and solar fail. At those moments, you’ll need full back-up, which means you’ll need capacity at least equal to demand in those moments to make it through random moments of renewable failure. Or else, blackouts.

Thus, the dream of seasonal balancing is two 7’s and a cherry—“almost” but actually “not at all.”

So, how do smart people get captured by this perspective? Maybe, like me, they have a slightly broken brain. And while that could be the case, I don’t think that’s a sufficient explanation. Instead, I think some well-meaning, intelligent people fall into this trap for a series of interconnected reasons:

1. They believe not just that they are smart, but that being smart makes them good people.
2. Deploying their smarts on a problem like decarbonization allows them to demonstrate their smartness and goodness simultaneously.
3. Smart people are often attracted to complexity over simplicity because the challenge feels rewarding.
4. Thus, to receive recognition (and we all crave recognition) for their smartness and goodness, they’re going to try and solve this difficult problem in the most complex way possible: with non-dispatchable, intermittent resources like wind and solar.

That’s why they can look at the first graph and say, “Man, if only I could be smart enough about this even harder, we could pull this off!” while disregarding the grim realities of the second graph. From a psychological perspective, theoretically complex and practically unworkable solutions (decarb through renewables) attract them more than theoretically simple and practically demanding solutions (building nuke plants).

If I pull the lever just one more time, I might get that third 7…

# # # # #

Note by Kip Hansen:  I found this piece at Nuclear Barbarians and thought readers here might like it.  Emmet Penny is unfortunately unavailable to respond to your comments.  You’ll have to put up with me – I’ll do my best to answer your questions. 

On a personal note, I discovered when I was 22 years old that I had the same disability as Penny, if I went into a casino to gamble, I would stay until I lost every dollar.  The more I lost the more I became convinced that if I just gambled a little more, I would win it all back and more.  This delusion only survived two gambling adventures before I came to my senses.  Since that time, I have never gambled again. 

# # # # #