FIAT Another Green Failure

 

The CEO of Fiat Chrysler said he hopes that people don’t buy his company’s electric car, the Fiat 500e, which he is forced to sell at a loss because of state and federal mandates.

“I hope you don’t buy it because every time I sell one it costs me $14,000,” Sergio Marchionne told the audience at the Brookings Institute during a discussion of the auto bailout.

As head of Fiat in 2009, Marchionne stepped in to help guide Chrysler through the auto-bailout and out of bankruptcy.

“I’m honest enough to tell you that I will make the car, I’ll make it available which is my requirement but I will sell the limit of what I need to sell and not one more,” said Marchionne.

Fiat Chrysler produces two Fiat 500s. The gas-powered Fiat 500 has a base price of $17,300. The electric Fiat 500e runs $32,650, according to Reuters.

In his candid remarks, Marchionne blamed regulations set in place in California and by President Obama.

“Because of California and there’s mandates which keep on moving the impositions back on car makers to produce cars that are zero-emission vehicles,” said Marchionne.

“The other one is because of the initiative that was put in place by Obama back in 2011 with the new emission rules which are effectively binding the industry until 2025.”

Thanks: The Daily Caller

Daughter of Rev Jeremiah "G. D. America" Wright Convicted of Fraud

The daughter of President Barack Obama's former pastor was convicted of laundering thousands of dollars from a state grant for a Chicago-area job-training program, federal prosecutors said. 

A federal jury took less than two hours to find Jeri Wright, 48, the daughter of Jeremiah Wright, guilty on all counts for her part in a fraud scheme led by a former suburban police chief and the chief's husband, according to the U.S. Attorney's office for the Central District of Illinois in Springfield. 

The $1.25 million state grant was for a not-for-profit work and education program called We Are Our Brother's Keeper, owned by Regina Evans, former police chief of Country Club Hills, and her husband, Ronald Evans Jr.

Wright, a close friend of the couple, took as much as $11,000 from checks worth more than $30,000 that were supposed to be for work related to the grant, prosecutors said. About $20,000 was deposited back into accounts controlled by Regina and Ronald Evans. 

The couple has pleaded guilty to the fraud scheme. 

The grant agreement was supposed to provide bricklaying and electrical pre-apprenticeship training and GED preparation at the Regal Theater, another entity owned by the couple. Little, if any, of the training provided in the grant agreement was ever completed, according to prosecutors. 

Jeremiah Wright was the Chicago pastor whose inflammatory church sermons, which often condemned U.S. attitudes on race, poverty and other issues, became a focus during the 2008 presidential campaign. 

Jeri Wright also was convicted of making false statements to law enforcement officers and giving false testimony to a grand jury. The maximum penalty for money laundering is up to 20 years in prison, and five years in prison on the other counts. Sentencing is scheduled for July 7 2014.

Source: NBC News

The Global Warming Idiots Are Playing Dirty

 

The Times of London follows up on its story about climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson, who was hounded into resigning from a climate skeptic think tank.

 

Now it appears that a paper authored by Bengtsson was rejected by a prestigious journal because it may have aided the skeptic's cause.

Lennart Bengtsson, a research fellow at the University of Reading and one of the authors of the study, said he suspected that intolerance of dissenting views on climate science was preventing his paper from being published. “The problem we now have in the climate community is that some scientists are mixing up their scientific role with that of a climate activist,” he added.

Professor Bengtsson’s paper challenged the finding of the UN’s Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the global average temperature would rise by up to 4.5C if greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were allowed to double.

It suggested that the climate might be much less sensitive to greenhouse gases than had been claimed by the IPCC in its report last September, and recommended that more work be carried out “to reduce the underlying uncertainty”.

The five contributing scientists, from America and Sweden, submitted the paper to Environmental Research Letters, one of the most highly regarded journals, at the end of last year but were told in February that it had been rejected.

A scientist asked by the journal to assess the paper under the peer review process wrote that he strongly advised against publishing it because it was “less than helpful”.

The unnamed scientist concluded: “Actually it is harmful as it opens the door for oversimplified claims of ‘errors’ and worse from the climate skeptics media side.”

What's significant is that Bengsston's paper does not deny global warming is happening, but rather the IPCC is wrong about how fast the climate is changing and the sensitivity of the climate to greenhouse gases. And yet, because the paper is "less than helpful," it was rejected.

Climate change hysterics are looking more and more like members of a cult or religion. Apostasy must be punished at all costs - even at the expense of sacred scientific principles of open inquiry and following the evidence wherever it leads. 

No doubt this will add fuel to the fire to the debate here in the US as President Obama readies his pen to sign more executive orders to "fight" climate change.

Thank You: American Thinker

ObamaCare Employees Getting Paid Not To Work

 

Employees at an ObamaCare processing center in Missouri with a contract worth $1.2 billion are reportedly getting paid to do nothing but sit at their computers. 

"Their goals are set to process two applications per month and some people are not even able to do that," a whistleblower told KMOV-TV, referring to employees hired to process paper applications for ObamaCare enrollees.  

The facility in Wentzville is operated by Serco, a company owned by a British firm that was awarded $1.2 billion in part to hire 1,500 workers to handle paper applications for coverage under the law, according to The Washington Post. 

The whistleblower employee told the station that weeks can pass without data entry workers receiving even a single application to process. Employees reportedly spend their days staring at their computers, according to a KMOX-TV report. 

“They’re told to sit at their computers and hit the refresh button every 10 minutes, no more than every 10 minutes,” the employee said. “They’re monitored, to hopefully look for an application.”

The employee accused Serco of attempting to conceal the lack of work as it continues to hire employees for processing centers in Missouri, Kentucky and Oklahoma. The employee said Serco is compensated for each worker it hires.

The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare services told KMOV-TV in a statement that "Serco is committed to making sure federal funds are spent appropriately, and the number of Serco staff is reviewed on a regular basis." 

Read More: Fox News

Fundraising Off Tragedies a Democrat Tradition

 

Democrats and the media have strongly condemned what they describe as a Republican effort to raise money off the tragedy.

Coffins of dead Iraq War soldiers
In July 2006, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) posted a video to its website featuring the coffins of American soldiers coming home from the Iraq War. The video, released ahead of the midterm elections that led to the House Speakership of Nancy Pelosi, featured an image of then-DCCC chairman Rahm Emanuel, who later became President Obama’s chief of staff.

The Boston Marathon bombings
Just one week after the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) plastered the image “B Strong,” with the Boston Red Sox logo representing the “B,” on its website and encouraged visitors to thank the emergency personnel who served at the previous week’s terrorist attack site.
Visitors were asked to provide their email addresses and zip codes on the website and to agree to allow the DNC to use their personal information for political and advertising purposes. If they chose to submit their personal information, visitors were sent an email from DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz encouraging them to share the DNC’s note of gratitude with their friends.

“We want to make sure that these true American heroes receive all the thanks they deserve,” Schultz wrote. “Can you help spread the word?” After receiving Republican backlash, then-DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse later said that the 30,000 emails his group collected would not be used for fundraising.

The Newtown elementary school shooting
In December 2012, just days after the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, Obama chief campaign advisor David Axelrod sent an email to campaign supporters featuring a link to President Obama’s address to the Newtown community. Two “Donate” buttons included in the email requested contributions of up to $1,000 for the recently-victorious Obama campaign.

Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy admitted in 2013 that Democratic lawmakers only told Newtown families why they were on a plane to Washington, D.C. for a political appearance after they were already on the plane.

“They thought they were coming down here to argue for a ban on high-capacity magazines and universal background checks, and we told them that they were coming to argue to avert a filibuster and allow us to debate,” Murphy said. “And that was really heartbreaking and deflating for some of them. But they rose to the occasion, and it was wonderful to see them at the end of the trip feeling like they had made a difference.”

On April 17, 2013, President Obama stood with Newtown families outside the White House after a Republican Senate filibuster blocked Obama’s background-checks gun control bill. Obama said “This was a pretty shameful day for Washington” and repeatedly referred to the Newtown families surrounding him.

Benghazi
The DCCC posted a statement from its chairman Steve Israel Thursday blasting Republican efforts to fundraise off Benghazi. The webpage featured a prominent “Contribute Now” button in the upper right-hand corner.

Read More: The Daily Caller

Smith Electric Vehicles, Yet Another Green Failure

 

Four years have passed since President Obama visited Kansas City's main airport, rolled up his shirt sleeves and admonished the skeptics who said Smith Electric Vehicles was unlikely to make good on its promises to build 510 experimental electric-powered trucks and buses suitable for commercial use.

“Come see what’s going on at Smith Electric," the president said, inspecting a table full of bright green truck batteries in what was once a maintenance hangar for TWA. "I think they’re going to be hard-pressed to tell you that you’re not better off than you would be if we hadn’t made the investments in this plant.”

The skeptics turned out to be right.

Despite $32 million in federal stimulus funds and status as one of Obama's favorite "green" companies, the firm has halted production, having built just 439 of the promised 510 vehicles.
   

It has also left a trail of broken promises and unpaid bills.

Smith created just a quarter of the jobs it initially promised the state of Missouri it would create in return for $1.4 million in tax credits. Meanwhile, it has also stiffed the Missouri University of Science and Technology, the state government, and a local electrical supply company, as well as its landlord, the Kansas City city government, for hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to interviews and reviews of public records by the Washington Examiner.

As of today, the company still owes $36,000 to Missouri S&T for work the university performed as a subcontractor on a U.S. Army project.

“If you’re not going to pay your [subcontractors] for satisfactory work that was performed, then it does wave a red flag whether the company was a responsible company and whether it should even be doing business with the federal government," said Scott Amey, general counsel for the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight.

An American subsidiary of a British firm, Smith Electric stopped production at the end of last year, a fact that was made public only last month. Angela Strand, the firm's chief marketing officer and a company spokeswoman, declined to discuss its financial problems, telling the Washington Examiner in an email, “we do not comment on financial matters.” The company hopes to resume production this summer.

Smith failed to hire at least 100 workers over a two-year period in return for up to $1.4 million in state tax credits. At the end of two years, it had hired only 54 workers, records show.

The firm's original promise was for a minimum of 202 new jobs, but the Missouri Division of Workforce Development halved that goal — a change that division official Alicia Roling described in a 2011 internal email as an “unprecedented modification.”

Read More: The Washington Examine

The Big 5 ObamaCare Lies

 

With enrollment in the Obamacare exchanges now closed, Democrats and their friends in the media are ebullient. Obamacare is an enormous success, they say, and conservatives have been humiliated. On closer inspection, however, things seem decidedly less bullish for President Obama’s signature achievement. 

Among the many exaggerations and inaccuracies the law’s defenders are touting, five stand out.  

• First, they say that premium rates are down. In support of this, liberals cite research from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), but they misinterpret it. In fact, the CBO’s most recent estimate of premiums shows a decline not from what they were in 2013, before the implementation of Obamacare, but rather from what CBO estimated they would be in 2014. Studies from many outlets have shown that rates have gone up since 2013, substantially for many people. 

This is no mystery. Obamacare basically outlawed insurance underwriting, so rates must go up as healthy people pay the price for the sick. Insurers, moreover, have also increased deductibles and co-pays and narrowed doctor networks and drug formularies.

• Second, supporters claim that Obamacare exceeded the enrollment target promulgated by the CBO. This is questionable. The CBO last year projected 7 million enrollees, and the Obama administration now gloats that 8 million people selected a plan in the exchanges. But not everybody who selected a plan will pay for it. The best estimate right now is that about 15 percent of initial enrollees are not paying their first premiums. If that holds, paid enrollment will come in slightly under CBO’s 2013 prediction.

But there is more. CBO downgraded its forecast earlier this year from 7 million to 6 million, and this month declined to update it even after the “surge” of last-minute enrollees began. The reason: The prediction is an annual average. By this metric, Obamacare will struggle to hit 6 million, with enrollment so weak in the first quarter.

• Third, liberals claim that insurers are happy, pointing to recent earnings reports from the biggest companies. But this is a non sequitur. The insurers have become clients of government. Federal subsidies to exchange insurers this year will hit approximately $10 billion, thanks to a program called “reinsurance” that reimburses Obamacare exchange enrollees for excessive claims. As a point of reference, $10 billion just about equals the combined profits of the top five insurers in 2013. Moreover, the total subsidy could go even higher, thanks to another feature of Obamacare known as “risk corridors.” Insurers on the exchanges are enjoying private profits and socialized losses. Who wouldn’t be happy? What will really matter is how insurers feel in 2017, when reinsurance and risk corridors expire and the exchanges must stand on their own.

• Fourth, liberals claim the law is “working.” This omits the dozens of provisions that the president has suspended or delayed because they were not working—for budgetary or political reasons. The suspended or postponed provisions include the mandate that businesses cover full-time employees, the cancellation of noncompliant plans, and cuts to Medicare Advantage.

In fact, what is working is a very narrow segment of the law, the most politically salable part: the distribution of tax credits so people with low incomes can buy heavily subsidized insurance coverage. To say the law is working is like saying you “ate your dinner” when you gulped down your dessert and skipped the veggies. Just as your mother said you could not have one without the other, so the popular provisions of Obamacare are linked to the unpopular ones. Sooner or later, the administration will have to enforce the law—or watch a vast array of unintended side effects disrupt the national health care system.

• Fifth, the left assures us Obamacare cannot be repealed. This is particularly rich, considering all the provisions the administration itself has effectively repealed when it found them inconvenient.

Irony aside, Obamacare’s future is still very much in doubt. Whereas Medicare and Social Security were designed to benefit everybody sooner or later, Obamacare creates vast classes of winners and losers. It is to the losers that many of the suspensions are directed. But the losers will eventually have to suffer the harm that Obamacare is set to deliver. And that creates the political space for repeal.

Imagine Republicans win the presidency and a congressional majority in 2016. Does anybody doubt they will go after Obamacare with every tool available? If they do, parts of the law will surely survive, but the finished product will be so different from what exists now that Democrats will bemoan Obamacare’s “repeal.”

Thank You: Weekly Standard

GOP Establishment: 'But for the Tea Party, You'd Be Nothing'

 

After the Republican establishment gloated about surviving primary challenges against underfunded Tea Party challengers, conservative talk radio host Mark Levin ripped into the Republican leadership for preferring candidates they can coerce to support policies their conservative constituents oppose.

Levin said the question of whether the Tea Party is dead is a stupid one, and he asked why establishment Republicans were spending "millions of dollars laundered through Karl Rove's group and Mitch McConnell's National Republican Senatorial Committee" to fight and trash conservatives:

Levin also noted that establishment candidates often do not want their constituents to know of their more-liberal policy preferences; thus, they do not run television commercials informing their constituents of their enthusiastic support for amnesty legislation. 

"Have you seen their ads for amnesty?" Levin asked. 

He said the same goes for their desire to spend more taxpayer dollars to fund projects for their cronies. 

"Have you seen any ads for more borrowing?" he asked. 

Levin said when it's time to govern, Republican establishment politicians "jettison" their positions and promises made on the campaign trail.  

He also blasted those in the chattering class who were once liberals, hated and did not support Ronald Reagan, and who mock constitutional conservatives, just like the liberal hippies and poets they are, choosing to work with Republican establishment operatives to trash conservatives. 

Levin reminded his audience that in 2006, "George W. Bush and his right-hand political hack Karl Rove lost the House of Representatives and the United States Senate."

He said nothing good was happening within the Republican party until 2010 when the people "rose up through the grassroots" after they had enough of George W. Bush's policies and the direction Obama was taking the nation after the election.

Read More: Breitbart

PROOF Internal Revenue Service targeted Tea Party Donors

 

Despite assurances to the contrary, the IRS didn’t destroy all of the donor lists scooped up in its tea party targeting — and a check of those lists reveals that the tax agency audited 10 percent of those donors, much higher than the audit rate for average Americans, House Republicans revealed Wednesday.

Republicans argue that the Internal Revenue Service still hasn’t come clean about the full extent of its targeting, which swept up dozens of conservative groups.

“The committee uncovered new information indicating that after groups provided the information to the IRS, nearly one in 10 donors were subject to audit,” Rep. Charles W. Boustany Jr., Louisiana Republican and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee’s oversight panel, told IRS Commissioner John Koskinen at a hearing Wednesday.

“The abuse of discretion and audit selection must be identified and stopped,” he said.

Mr. Koskinen didn’t specifically address the accusations during the hearing, and the IRS didn’t respond to a request for comment late Wednesday evening.

The revelation was made on the same day that the House voted on a nonbinding resolution asking the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS targeting.

Investigators last year reported that the IRS singled out tea party and other conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status and gave them special scrutiny, including asking inappropriate questions about their activities and membership. The request for donor lists was among the inappropriate activities.

The IRS initially denied to Congress that it was singling out tea party groups, despite vocal complaints from groups that had their applications delayed for years. But faced with the internal audit, the agency admitted it had been subjecting these groups to special scrutiny.

Read More: The Washington Times

What does Hillary Clinton have to do with the Terrorist Kidnappers in Nigeria?

 

Under Hillary Clinton, the State Department repeatedly declined to fully go after the terror group responsible for kidnapping hundreds of girls. 

 

The State Department under Hillary Clinton fought hard against placing the al Qaeda-linked militant group Boko Haram on its official list of foreign terrorist organizations for two years. And now, lawmakers and former U.S. officials are saying that the decision may have hampered the American government’s ability to confront the Nigerian group that shocked the world by abducting hundreds of innocent girls.

In the past week, Clinton, who made protecting women and girls a key pillar of her tenure at the State Department, has been a vocal advocate for the 200 Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, the loosely organized group of militants terrorizing northern Nigeria. Her May 4 tweet about the girls, using the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, was cited across the media and widely credited for raising awareness of their plight.

Clinton said that the abduction of the girls by Boko Haram was “abominable, it’s criminal, it’s an act of terrorism and it really merits the fullest response possible, first and foremost from the government of Nigeria.” Clinton said that as Secretary of State she had numerous meetings with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and had urged the Nigerian government to do more on counterterrorism.

What Clinton didn’t mention was that her own State Department refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011, after the group bombed the U.N. headquarters in Abuja. The refusal came despite the urging of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and over a dozen senators and congressmen.

“The one thing she could have done, the one tool she had at her disposal, she didn’t use. And nobody can say she wasn’t urged to do it. It’s gross hypocrisy,” said a former senior U.S. official who was involved in the debate. “The FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department really wanted Boko Haram designated, they wanted the authorities that would provide to go after them, and they voiced that repeatedly to elected officials.”

Read More: The Daily Beast

Why is the US Navy wasting our Green on the Green Hoax?

 

The Department of Defense (DOD) paid $150 per gallon for alternative jet fuel made from algae, more than 64 times the current market price for standard carbon-based fuels, according to a report released on Wednesday.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted in its report that a Pentagon official reported paying “about $150 per gallon for 1,500 gallons of alternative jet fuel derived from algal oil.”

GAO’s report examined the financial challenges facing increased purchases and use of alternative jet fuels by federal agencies. “Currently, the price for alternative jet fuels exceeds that of conventional jet fuel,” the report noted.

The price for conventional jet fuel is currently $2.88 per gallon. GAO’s report reveals that federal agencies have paid significantly higher prices in an effort to promote biofuels in commercial and military aviation.

“Of the two alternative jet-fuel production processes approved for use in commercial and military aircraft (Fischer-Tropsch and HEFA), DOD, according to a DOD official, paid from about $3 to $150 per gallon,” GAO reported.

HEFA is an acronym for Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids, and refers to “renewable oil (e.g., vegetable oils, animal fat, waste grease, and algae oil) … processed using hydrogen treatment (hydroprocessing) to yield a fuel in the distillation range of jet fuel and diesel.”

GAO interviewed 23 “academic, federal government, and private industry stakeholders” about challenges facing the increased adoption of alternative jet fuels. Twenty-two of them cited the fuels’ exorbitant costs.

“Five of these stakeholders noted that for fuel produced using the HEFA production process, the cost of some types of feedstock—even before it is transported or converted—currently exceeds that of conventional fuel,” the report says.

Read More: The Washington Free Beacon

What would our economy look like if Reagan were President today?

 

Five years into a recovery, the economy has grown by about 12 percent. That may not sound too bad, but over the first five years of the Reagan recovery, the economy grew 24 percent. Why does this matter? Because if the economy had grown as fast under Obama as it did under Reagan, according to Congress’s bipartisan Joint Economic Committee, the economy would be more than $2 trillion larger today. If that extra $2 trillion were divided evenly among all households, the economy would be about $17,000 bigger per family. Meanwhile, the average family has lost nearly $2,000 in income over this “recovery.”

The Left howls in protest over this comparison. Obama, they claim, inherited a financial crisis that was deeper than anything Reagan ever saw. Obama, by his own admission, saved us from a “second Great Depression,” blah, blah, blah. Of course, the economy really was flat on its back in 2009 when Obama walked into the Oval Office.

But how was that different from 1981? I would say the wreckage that Reagan inherited from Nixon-Ford-Carter might well have been worse: Obama didn’t have to deal with 14 percent inflation, 20 percent mortgage interest rates, an America that was rapidly deindustrializing, and a twelve-year bear market in stocks.

Let’s just accept the proposition that both presidents inherited terrible economic crises. What was different was the policy remedies. Reagan cut tax rates, slashed regulations, trimmed excess money supply (with the help of Fed chairman Paul Volcker), and let the private businesses — the supply side — grow their operations less hindered by government interference.

Obama did, well, pretty much the opposite. At the time of the mighty economic recovery of 2003–09, liberals explained the ferocious burst of growth and employment by saying it was a “classic Keynesian recovery” financed by debt spending. Except if that was the case, why is it that after Obama borrowed twice as much money, this Keynesian recovery has proceeded at half that pace? I’ve never heard an answer to that one. Never.

I’m not saying that the economy would be growing twice as fast and be $2 trillion bigger if Obama had gotten it right. But even if we had had just an average recovery, the economy would be $1.4 trillion larger today. These kinds of counterfactuals are impossible to prove. But it’s a pretty fair bet that things would be a lot better today for middle-class families if we had done Reaganomics, not Obamanomics.

Read More: Heritage

The United Nations IPCC Deliberately Misrepresents Climate Change

 

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is releasing its latest report, the “Working Group II Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report.” Like its past reports, this one predicts apocalyptic consequences if mankind fails to give the UN the power to tax and regulate fossil fuels and subsidize and mandate the use of alternative fuels. But happily, an international group of scientists I have been privileged to work with has conducted an independent review of IPCC’s past and new reports, along with the climate science they deliberately exclude or misrepresent.

Our group, called the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), was founded in 2003 by a distinguished atmospheric physicist, S. Fred Singer, and has produced five hefty reports to date, the latest being released today (March 31).

So how do the IPCC and NIPCC reports differ? The final draft of the IPCC’s Summary for Policymakers identifies eight “reasons for concern” which media reports say will remain the focus of the final report. The NIPCC reports address each point too, also summarizing their authors’ positions in Summaries for Policymakers. This provides a convenient way to compare and contrast the reports’ findings.
Here’s what the reports say:

IPCC: “Risk of death, injury, and disrupted livelihoods in low-lying coastal zones and small island developing states, due to sea-level rise, coastal flooding, and storm surges.”
NIPCC: “Flood frequency and severity in many areas of the world were higher historically during the Little Ice Age and other cool eras than during the twentieth century. Climate change ranks well below other contributors, such as dikes and levee construction, to increased flooding.”

IPCC: “Risk of food insecurity linked to warming, drought, and precipitation variability, particularly for poorer populations.”
NIPCC: “There is little or no risk of increasing food insecurity due to global warming or rising atmospheric CO₂ levels. Farmers and others who depend on rural livelihoods for income are benefitting from rising agricultural productivity throughout the world, including in parts of Asia and Africa where the need for increased food supplies is most critical. Rising temperatures and atmospheric CO₂ levels play a key role in the realization of such benefits.

IPCC: “Risk of severe harm for large urban populations due to inland flooding.”
NIPCC: “No changes in precipitation patterns, snow, monsoons, or river flows that might be considered harmful to human well-being or plants or wildlife have been observed that could be attributed to rising CO₂ levels. What changes have been observed tend to be beneficial.”

IPCC: “Risk of loss of rural livelihoods and income due to insufficient access to drinking and irrigation water and reduced agricultural productivity, particularly for farmers and pastoralists with minimal capital in semi-arid regions.”
NIPCC: “Higher atmospheric CO₂ concentrations benefit plant growth-promoting microorganisms that help land plants overcome drought conditions, a potentially negative aspect of future climate change. Continued atmospheric CO₂ enrichment should prove to be a huge benefit to plants by directly enhancing their growth rates and water use efficiencies.”

IPCC: “Systemic risks due to extreme [weather] events leading to breakdown of infrastructure networks and critical services.”
NIPCC: “There is no support for the model-based projection that precipitation in a warming world becomes more variable and intense. In fact, some observational data suggest just the opposite, and provide support for the proposition that precipitation responds more to cyclical variations in solar activity.”

IPCC: “Risk of loss of marine ecosystems and the services they provide for coastal livelihoods, especially for fishing communities in the tropics and the Arctic.” NIPCC: “Rising temperatures and atmospheric CO₂ levels do not pose a significant threat to aquatic life. Many aquatic species have shown considerable tolerance to temperatures and CO₂ values predicted for the next few centuries, and many have demonstrated a likelihood of positive responses in empirical studies. Any projected adverse impacts of rising temperatures or declining seawater and freshwater pH levels (“acidification”) will be largely mitigated through phenotypic adaptation or evolution during the many decades to centuries it is expected to take for pH levels to fall.”

IPCC: “Risk of loss of terrestrial ecosystems and the services they provide for terrestrial livelihoods.”
NIPCC: “Terrestrial ecosystems have thrived throughout the world as a result of warming temperatures and rising levels of atmospheric CO₂. Empirical data pertaining to numerous animal species, including amphibians, birds, butterflies, other insects, reptiles, and mammals, indicate global warming and its myriad ecological effects tend to foster the expansion and proliferation of animal habitats, ranges, and populations, or otherwise have no observable impacts one way or the other. Multiple lines of evidence indicate animal species are adapting, and in some cases evolving, to cope with climate change of the modern era.”

IPCC: “Risk of mortality, morbidity, and other harms during periods of extreme heat, particularly for vulnerable urban populations.”
NIPCC: “A modest warming of the planet will result in a net reduction of human mortality from temperature-related events. More lives are saved by global warming via the amelioration of cold-related deaths than those lost under excessive heat. Global warming will have a negligible influence on human morbidity and the spread of infectious diseases, a phenomenon observed in virtually all parts of the world.”

How could two teams of scientists come to such obviously contradictory conclusions on seemingly every point that matters in the debate over global warming? There are many reasons why scientists disagree, the subject, by the way, of an excellent book a couple years ago titled Wrong by David H. Freedman. A big reason is IPCC is producing what academics call “post-normal science” while NIPCC is producing old-fashioned “real science.”

Read More: Forbes