In analogy to my prior post giving an example of global warming indoctrination at schools, there is an incredible number of unchallenged assertions made every day in local and regional papers about the perils of onrushing climate change. In aggregate, these are helping to create a climate of public opinion that will likely be more-than-otherwise open to radical measures.

Here is an example from The Daily Times in Delmarva, not too far from Washington, DC. The author is not a complete crackpot – he has a ‘social environmental systems’ degree from MIT and has previously built simulation models – but he has made totally unsubstantiated claims that the newspaper accepts with complete credulity.

He says that there are two assumptions critical to his projection that much of the town he lives in will be swamped. One is that sea level rises will be greater than most experts expect and the other is increasing hurricane intensity due to global warming.

According to the article:

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations report released in February, predicts a 2 to 4 degree Celsius rise in temperature and a one-half to 2 foot sea level rise by the century’s end worldwide, based on carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. Picardi says those figures are too conservative based on additional data collected since 2004, when researchers stopped collecting information for the U.N. report.”

That researchers stopped collecting data in 2004 for the IPCC report would be news to the IPCC, which reports temperatures and other data through 2005 in the Working Group I Summary for Policymakers on pages 2,3,4,5 and many pages thereafter.

Further along, we have this:

“He also cites a 50 percent increase in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes — the most intense storms — in the North Atlantic since the 1970s and scientists’ predictions that storms will increase with rising temperatures.”

This would also be news to the UN. The WMO Consensus Statement on this is: “Though there is evidence both for and against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point.”

The article then says:

“Those two factors are crucial to Picardi’s simulation model…All of the figures, charts and predictions were brought home to the two dozen people at Wednesday’s lecture when Picardi showed an aerial projection of the Shore with a yellow line drawn where the 14-foot tide would come. Questions quickly came about where that line stood in relation to individuals’ homes. The ominous yellow line appeared to just about brush up to Picardi’s house on the creek, with most of the Bayside necks and towns including Onancock and Cape Charles completely submerged.”

So, apparently all that money we are paying for NASA and other organizations to build huge supercomputer-based climate forecasting models is not really necessary; it’s a job that a competent professional can do at home. And why is it generally recognized that those models can’t achieve predictive resolution down to the level of major regions of continents, when apparently it’s pretty easy to project what’s going to happen to my house?

I assume that most people who are doing these kinds of things are well-intentioned, but isn’t it the job of a journalist to conduct at least some basic due diligence on claims like this?