The Tribune-Review Still Doesn't Get It

From today's Thursday Wrap:

This is outrageous!: A White House task force draft report contends that "climate change" has wrought "pervasive, wide ranging" effects on the United States, including "increasingly severe floods, droughts, wildfires and heat waves, along with rising sea levels ... ." This is the same kind of garbage-laced exaggeration that forced an advertising watchdog group in Britain to ban government ads claiming the same thing. Americans should not stand for such pure fiction.

As we pointed out yesterday, that "advertising watchdog group" the Trib is referencing actually presented the IPCC as the "mainstream scientific consensus." Oh, and they misrepresented what the group said. The ads were criticized for not pointing out the "uncertainties" already included in the IPCC report - not for claiming that climate change will be increasing severe floods.

In case my good friends at the Trib wanted to educated themselves over that watchdog group's report, here's one thing they say about an ad they didn't have a problem with:

We considered that the imagery of flooding in the TV ad, together with the claim "There was once a land where the weather was very very strange. There were awful heat waves in some parts and in others terrible storms and floods was presented in a context which visually referenced a UK town and UK countryside.

We referred to the IPCC report (2007) which stated that climate predictions for the future for Europe, based on current trends, suggested that there would be an increased risk of inland flash floods and more frequent coastal flooding, as well as an increased risk of heat waves. We also noted the joint "UK Climate Science Statement" issued by the Meteorological Office (the UK's Weather Centre), the Natural Environment Research Council and the Royal Society (November 2009) based on the IPCC's review of published climate science together with further scientific evidence, available to Government, which had been collected since the last IPCC report. The joint statement said "Year on year the evidence is growing that damaging climate and weather events - potentially intensified by global warming - are already happening and beginning to affect society and ecosystems. This includes: In the UK, heavier daily rainfall leading to local flooding such as in the summer of 2007; increased risk of summer heat waves such as the summers of 2003 across the UK and Europe; around the world, increasing incidence of extreme weather events with unprecedented levels of damage to society and infrastructure ... Sea level rises leading to dangerous exposure for populations ... These emerging signals are consistent with what we expect from our projections, giving us confidence in the science and models that underpin them. In the absence of action to mitigate climate change, we can expect much larger changes in the coming decades than we have seen so far".

Huh? But I thought that advertising watchdog group in Britain debunked all that!

They didn't. They rely on the IPCC as the scientific consensus and the Trib's wrong on climate change. Again. The Trib compounds yesterday's silly with today's even sillier. Don't they do any research into what they write? Any? At all?

There's an adage that goes something like: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

I think they should stop digging.

Here's the White House Task Force Report, in case you were curious (and I strongly suggest to my friends at the Trib to read it. They can contact me if they're having trouble with the big words).