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The report summarized the “key findings” of a Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters, to be released next February. For warmists looking for the smoking cigarette butts of climate change, the report was a major setback. Despite a few headlines that mostly exaggerated its findings, the report actually concluded there was little or no evidence of man-made global warming to date as measured in extreme-weather events. As for the future, nothing much can be expected for another 20 or 30 years. The big impacts were projected way off at the end of the 21st century.
The report was so lame as a climate-warning device that Media Matters, the U.S. watchdog group, observed Monday that it was “almost totally ignored” by the TV networks. Not a word on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, ABC or CBS. Media Matters’ concern was that the key headline message — warning of more extreme heat waves, floods, droughts and storms — had failed to reach the people.
That the report’s message was missed is beyond dispute, but the message missed is not the one Media Matters wanted to hear. Take, for example, the report’s treatment of hurricanes. David Suzuki and other green activists have often claimed that hurricanes like Katrina are the product of man-made global warming and human consumption of carbon-emitting fossil fuels produced by evil oil companies. But the new IPCC report said it did not have evidence that there has been an increase in hurricane activity or intensity. In the language of the IPCC, “There is low confidence in any observed long-term (i.e. 40 years or more) increase in tropical cyclone activity (i.e. intensity, frequency, duration), after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities.”
The report was so lame as a climate-warning device that Media Matters, the U.S. watchdog group, observed Monday that it was “almost totally ignored” by the TV networks. Not a word on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, ABC or CBS. Media Matters’ concern was that the key headline message — warning of more extreme heat waves, floods, droughts and storms — had failed to reach the people.
That the report’s message was missed is beyond dispute, but the message missed is not the one Media Matters wanted to hear. Take, for example, the report’s treatment of hurricanes. David Suzuki and other green activists have often claimed that hurricanes like Katrina are the product of man-made global warming and human consumption of carbon-emitting fossil fuels produced by evil oil companies. But the new IPCC report said it did not have evidence that there has been an increase in hurricane activity or intensity. In the language of the IPCC, “There is low confidence in any observed long-term (i.e. 40 years or more) increase in tropical cyclone activity (i.e. intensity, frequency, duration), after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities.”
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