President Obama has been in Calgary, Canada, warning his audience of the perils of man-made climate change.
Apparently, it is even affecting their national mammal.
The Hill reports:
“All of us are going to have to recognize that there are trade-offs involved with how we live, how our economy is structured, and the world that we’re going to be passing on to our kids and grandkids. Nobody is exempt from that conversation,” Obama said.
He also noted that rising oceans risk coastal populations and environmental changes have boosted the frequency of insect-borne diseases.
“Moose right now [have] to deal with tick-borne diseases that they didn’t have to do 10, 15 years ago. I really like moose. I assume, Canadians, you do too,” Obama said. “These are just facts.”
Just facts. Really?
Anyone who believes the nonsense that the frequency of insect-borne diseases has increased as a result of climate change really needs to read this damning assessment by Prof Paul Reiter.
It dates back to 2005 but little has changed since. Reiter is an expert on vector-borne diseases – especially malaria – and former contributing author of the 1996 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the chapter on the impact of global warming on human health.
Reiter’s basic point is very simple: historically insect diseases have thrived in many places where it is not warm, including England which used to be rife with malaria. So it makes no sense to attribute them to global warming.
Reiter was appalled to find that none of his fellow IPCC ‘contributing authors’ had any expertise in the field. As Christopher Booker describes in his book The Real Global Warming Disaster, one was an expert on the effectiveness of motor cycle helmets; two were full time environmental activists who had written articles on subjects from mercury poisoning to land mines.
But it soon became clear to Reiter that regardless of the facts on vector-borne diseases, the IPCC was determined to finger climate change in a way that was ‘ill-informed, biased, and scientifically unacceptable.’
As Reiter told a Parliamentary Select Committee on Economic Affairs hearing in London:
In the age of information, popular knowledge of scientific issues—particularly issues of health and the environment—is awash in a tide of misinformation, much of it presented in the “big talk” of professional scientists. Alarmist activists operating in well-funded advocacy groups have a lead role in creating this misinformation. In many cases, they manipulate public perceptions with emotive and fiercely judgmental “scientific” pronouncements, adding a tone of danger and urgency to attract media coverage. Their skill in promoting notions of scientific “fact” sidesteps the complexities of the issues involved, and is a potent influence in education, public opinion and the political process. These notions are often re-enforced by attention to peer-reviewed scientific articles that appear to support their pronouncements, regardless of whether these articles are widely endorsed by the relevant scientific community. Scientists who challenge these alarmists are rarely given priority by the media, and are often presented as “skeptics”.
Yet here is Obama reviving the old “frequency of insect-borne diseases” lie, which was untrue in 1996, remained untrue in 2005 and which is still untrue today.
Same goes for his other claim.
The rising oceans one has been frequently debunked, most recently by Judith Curry, former Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Mean global sea level has risen at a slow creep for more than 150 years; since 1900, global mean sea level has risen about 7-8 inches. The implications of the highest values of projected sea-level rise under future climate change scenarios are profound, with far reaching socioeconomic and environmental implications. However, these projections are regarded as deeply uncertain and the highest of these projections strain credulity.
As for his insistence that “nobody is exempt from this conversation”. How come it doesn’t seem to apply to Barack Obama?
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