President Barack Obama got the facts wrong on global temperatures in his brief discussion of climate change Wednesday afternoon, according to Joe Bastardi, a meteorologist and Chief Forecaster to Weatherbell Analytics.
In his first press conference since March, Obama addressed one question on climate change from Mark Landler of the New York Times, premised on recent claims from climate change activists that Hurricane Sandy was evidence of global warming.
Obama’s answer was also a mere regurgitation of the same incorrect claims from climate change activists, says Bastardi, and did not necessarily represent entirely accurate facts. Below is Landler’s question, followed by an excerpt of the president’s answer.
Q: Thank you, Mr. President. In his endorsement of you a few weeks ago, Mayor Bloomberg said he was motivated by the belief that you would do more to confront the threat of climate change than your opponent. Tomorrow you’re going up to New York City, where you’re going to, I assume, see people who are still suffering the effects of Hurricane Sandy, which many people say is further evidence of how a warming globe is changing our weather. What specifically do you plan to do in a second term to tackle the issue of climate change? And do you think the political will exists in Washington to pass legislation that could include some kind of a tax on carbon?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, as you know, Mark (sp), we can’t attribute any particular weather event to climate change. What we do know is the temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago. We do know that the Arctic ice cap is melting faster than was predicted even five years ago. We do know that there have been extraordinarily — there have been an extraordinarily large number of severe weather events here in North America, but also around the globe.
Earlier Wednesday, Breitbart News published a response from Bastardi to similar claims recently published by the Huffington Post. Upon hearing the president’s statement today on the matter, he provided the following response to Breitbart News.
First, I would like to point out that it is refreshing to see the President discard some of the hysteria surrounding Hurricane Sandy and its link to global warming. Anthropogenic global warming activists will attribute every extreme weather event to global warming, which has now been termed “climate change” since the earth has stopped warming, which leads us to the next issue with the President’s comments.
Not only are temperatures not increasing faster than was predicted ten years ago, temperatures have not increased at all since the late 1990’s.
Click to enlarge.
Furthermore, when you compare the observed temperatures of the past 10 years against all the climate model predictions, the result should do more than raise eyebrows about how much tax-payer money is being wasted on climate science that is proving to be wrong.
Click to enlarge.
Before we make carbon policy that can hurt our already struggling economy, there needs to be an unbiased debate about what is actually driving our climate.
As stated earlier today at Breitbart News, it will be that much more important that hyperbole and political agenda do not drown out facts and historical reality as the process of reconstructing homes and lives in the wake of Sandy takes place.
Read the full transcript of President Obama’s news conference today, including the complete Question and Answer portion.