The report (notice that it isn't a study, this is a political report, not a scientific peer reviewed study) has been lampooned by actual physicists and climate scientists:
From physicist Steve Koonin ("Mr. Koonin was undersecretary of energy for science during President Obama’s first term and is director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University."):
True, the U.S. has had more heat waves in recent years—but no more than a century ago.
The world’s response to climate changing under natural and human influences is best founded upon a complete portrayal of the science. The U.S. government’s Climate Science Special Report, to be released Friday, does not provide that foundation. Instead, it reinforces alarm with incomplete information and highlights the need for more-rigorous review of climate assessments.
...
One notable example of alarm-raising is the description of sea-level rise, one of the greatest climate concerns. The report ominously notes that while global sea level rose an average 0.05 inch a year during most of the 20th century, it has risen at about twice that rate since 1993. But it fails to mention that the rate fluctuated by comparable amounts several times during the 20th century. The same research papers the report cites show that recent rates are statistically indistinguishable from peak rates earlier in the 20th century, when human influences on the climate were much smaller. The report thus misleads by omission.
This isn’t the only example of highlighting a recent trend but failing to place it in complete historical context. The report’s executive summary declares that U.S. heat waves have become more common since the mid-1960s, although acknowledging the 1930s Dust Bowl as the peak period for extreme heat. Yet buried deep in the report is a figure showing that heat waves are no more frequent today than in 1900. This artifice also appeared in the government’s 2014 National Climate Assessment, which emphasized a post-1980 increase in hurricane power without discussing the longer-term record. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently stated that it has been unable to detect any human impact on hurricanes.
Such data misrepresentations violate basic scientific norms. In his celebrated 1974 “Cargo Cult” lecture, the late Richard Feynman admonished scientists to discuss objectively all the relevant evidence, even that which does not support the narrative. That’s the difference between science and advocacy.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-decep...ate-1509660882
Dr. Pat Michaels (Climatologist):
Here’s the first bit of missing information:
The chart shows predicted and observed tropical (20⁰N-20⁰S) temperatures in the middle of the earth’s active weather zone—technically the mid-troposphere, roughly from 5,000ft to 30,000ft elevation. The predicted values are from the 102 climate model realizations from 32 different base model groups. These models are from the most recent science compendium of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and is the most comprehensive set available. Data for the chart were recently published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
...
The second bit of missing information is sufficient to invalidate most of the Assessment’s predictions. It’s a bit more complicated than the first one.
The vertical axis is height (as measured by barometric pressure) and the horizontal axis is temperature change, in degrees C per decade. The solid green line is the observed average of our four sets of vertical sounding data from balloons. You can see that the observed warming rate at the surface (given as the “1000 hPa” on the left axis) is a bit above 0.1⁰C/decade, while the predicted value (1979-2016) is smidge below 0.2⁰C. In other words, in this region, which is extremely important to global climate, almost twice as much warming is being predicted compared to what is measured. This is figure S-2 in the recent Bulleting of the American Meteorological Society report on the climate of 2016.
...
So this one, like its predecessors, suffers from a serious and obvious flaws that are simply ignored. As first documented in our 2004 book Meltdown, the first Assessment used models that were worse than a table of random numbers when applied to 20thcentury coterminous U.S. temperatures, and the chief scientist for the report knew it and went ahead anyway!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/...te-assessment/
---------- Post added at 07:30 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:16 AM ----------

Originally Posted by
CowboyX
Just to be clear, there's no dispute on the science, right, that warmer air holds more water and that warmer oceans evaporate more readily?
Nor that that additional water vapor is more likely to form clouds that reflect solar radiation back into space, lowering warming, and is the single largest factor in the IPCC's estimate of climate change, right?
“The size of the observed net cloud forcing is about four times as large as the expected value of radiative forcing from a doubling of CO2. The shortwave and longwave components of cloud forcing are about ten times as large as those for a CO2 doubling.”
Ramanathan et al., 1989
“Of course the range of net infrared forcing caused by changing cloud conditions (~100W/m2) is much greater than that caused by increasing levels of greenhouse gases (e.g. doubling pre-industrial CO2 levels will increase the net forcing by ~4W/m2)”
RealClimate (Michael Mann's Site)
The cloud radiative cooling effect through reflection of short wave radiation dominates over the long wave heating effect, resulting in a net cooling of the climate system of − 21 Wm−2.”
Allan, 2011
The increase in radiative forcing caused by the reduction in total cloud cover over 10 years is therefore more than double the IPCC’s estimated radiative forcing for all greenhouse gases and more than three times greater than the forcing by carbon dioxide alone
McLean, 2014
“Even a small change in the cloud cover modifies the transparency/absorption/reflectance of the atmosphere and affects the amount of absorbed solar radiation, even with no changes in the solar irradiance."
Usoskin and Kovaltsov, 2008
For further reading in case you think this isn't consensus (Non-gated links available upon request):
Wielicki et al., 2002
Kauppinen et al, 2014
Pinker et al., 2005
Wang et al., 2012
Palle´ et al., 2005
Ohmura, 2009
Longman et al., (2014)
Posselt et al. (2014)
Sanchez-Lorenzo et al., 2016
Kambezidis et al., 2016
Calbó et al., 2016
Bookmarks