Luckily, the U.S. Climate Change Assessment Report just released by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP PDF Here) is only a “draft” released for the purpose of gathering public comments. This means that the report’s authors still have time to get things in order before a “final” publication is released. The current contents read as if the CCSP authors set aside their list of sizable scientific credentials, and instead opted to write a fantasy piece on how they wished the state of climate science to be, rather than how it actually is.

As it now stands, the draft CCSP report is a gross perversion of science.

It is made even worse that it is coming from a group researchers, who, at one time at least, were regarded as some of the leaders in their fields.

No fair treatment of science discusses a topic with complete disregard to opposing views that are held and published by other credible, qualified and knowledgeable persons.

And yet this is precisely what is contained, ad nauseum, within the draft of the CCSP synthesis report.

The report reads as a simple rehashing of the “pet opinions” held by its authors and completely ignoring that these opinions have been harshly disputed and criticized in the scientific literature and elsewhere by other equally qualified researchers as being based upon faulty methodology and inappropriate inferences.

It is as if the CCSP authors think that if they just keep repeating the same things over and over again in different fora, they will eventually become true—or at least that the critics will have become so exasperated by their audacity and simply grow tired of responding.

I am at a loss for complimentary adjectives to describe people who are tasked by the U.S. government with assessing climate change and its potential impacts on the United States for the clear (although unstated, wink, wink) purpose of influencing policy and who know of legitimate scientific viewpoints which counter their own but yet act as if such opposition entirely doesn’t exist.

I have never read a more pessimistic report on climate change (other than perhaps coverage of Al Gore’s we-are-going-to-make-the-earth-uninhabitable-for-people proclamations)—and this coming from a supposed august scientific body. There are virtually no positive aspects of climate change presented or even postulated. Any that are briefly touched upon are almost inevitably countered with subsequent text along the lines of “but that effect will only be temporary.”

As I read through the report, I kept flipping back to cover page to double and triple check that this report was actually put out by the U.S. governments’ Climate Change Science Program and not Environmental Defense Fund, National Resources Defense Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists, or some other strong global warming advocacy group.

My level of exasperation is redlined.

What kind of people think that the population of Americans will only suffer if the climate heats up by a few degrees? If you were to track the ‘average temperature’ experienced by the ‘average American’ over time (which we did in an analysis a few years ago), based upon population movements alone, you would find that the experiential temperature is increasing at a rate that is greater than many of the projected scenarios of climate change (Figure 1). In other words, the population movements made by American’s free will—primarily movements to more urban centers and southerly locales—has resulted in the ‘average American’ experiencing a climate that is about 3ºF warmer at the end of the 20th century than at the beginning—and that doesn’t even take into effect the inherent added warmth in urban environments. These changes are independent of actual climate changes. This shows that a warmer climate does not dissuade the average American from pursuing his/her interests (heck, maybe it even entices them). It hasn’t dissuaded them in the past, nor should it reasonably be anticipated to do so in the future. If skiing or snowmobiling should someday be relegated to a thing of yesteryear, I am sure we’ll more than find other ways to amuse ourselves (and industries standing ready to entice us into new avenues of recreation).

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