They have translated the climate policy equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They have uncovered the smoking gun of smoking guns. They have provided final and convincing proof that the Trump administration — the bête noire of the Paris climate agreement, the facilitators of planetary destruction, the knuckle-dragging deniers of “science,” the heroes of polluters, belching cattle, and guys in pickup trucks wearing MAGA hats — is lying about anthropogenic climate change, believing the opposite of its public rhetoric on the effects and policy implications of increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations.

“They” are Juliet Eilperin, Brady Dennis, and Chris Mooney of the Washington Post, and they have triumphed: With an obvious song in their hearts and knowing sneers on their faces, they have written an article asserting that “the Trump administration [has] made a startling assumption: On its current course, the planet will warm a disastrous 7 degrees by the end of this century.”

Now, that “7 degrees” is Fahrenheit rather than the oft-repeated 4 degrees Celsius, and the authors make that distinction clear in the second paragraph. But the 7 degrees figure is featured prominently in the headline (for which the authors may or may not be responsible); can anyone doubt that many readers will read the headline and nothing more, concluding that the Trump administration — the Trump administration! — believes the outlook for climate trends to be markedly worse than even the alarmists have been telling us?

But never mind. The entire premise of the article is a canard: It is based on a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) prepared by the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration in support of the Trump administration effort to roll back the Obama fuel economy standards for passenger vehicles and light trucks. One purpose of the EIS is to provide analytic support for the predicted environmental impacts of the proposed regulation, including the projected effects on global temperatures by the year 2100.

In other words, the EIS does not make any predictions whatever about overall trends for temperatures or other climate phenomena; it does not claim to do so, and it does not pretend to do so. It offers an analysis only of the predicted climate effects of the proposed regulation:

This section describes how the Proposed Action and alternatives could affect the anticipated pace and extent of future changes in global climate. In this EIS, the discussion of climate change direct and indirect impacts focuses on impacts associated with increases in GHG emissions from the Proposed Action and alternatives as compared to projected GHG emissions under the No Action Alternative, including impacts on atmospheric CO2 concentrations, global mean surface temperature, sea level, precipitation, and ocean pH.

The EIS does that by taking one of the overall trends predicted by other authorities as the baseline temperature assumption independent of the proposed regulation, and then it analyzes the effects of the latter given the former. It does not endorse the former, it does not replicate the former, and it absolutely does not make independent predictions:

This EIS draws primarily on panel-reviewed synthesis and assessment reports from IPCC and the U.S. Global Change Research Program (GCRP), supplemented with past reports from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), the National Research Council, and the Arctic Council.

Either the Washington Post climate reporters do not understand this basic fact about how EIS analyses are constructed, a possibility that alone would demonstrate serious inherent problems with editorial standards at that newspaper, or they do understand it but were willing to engage in blatant dishonesty in order to editorialize in a “news” article.

And about that 7 degrees (or 4 degrees C) that the Trump administration purportedly “knows” will be observed: It is the predicted temperature outcome in 2100 under the most extreme of the four GHG scenarios examined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its latest assessment report (AR5). That scenario is “representative concentration pathway 8.5” (RCP8.5), in which atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) rise between now and 2100 at an annual average rate of 11.9 parts per million (ppm). The average rate since 1959 (the first year reported by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration in the time series just referenced) has been about 1.6 ppm. For 1960–85 it was 1.2 ppm, and 1.9 ppm for 1985–2017. The single largest increases were 3.0 ppm in 1998 and 3.4 ppm in 2016.

So it is clear that the EIS uses this scenario reported by IPCC (and others) as a baseline to show that, a fortiori, the proposed softening of the fuel economy standards would have effects on temperatures effectively equal to zero:

Implementing the lowest emissions alternative (Alternative 7) would increase this projected temperature rise by 0.001°C (0.002°F), while implementing the highest emissions alternative (Alternative 1) would increase projected temperature rise by 0.003°C (0.005°F).

That the Washington Post reporters do not understand the conceptual experiment detailed in the EIS and did not bother to learn it — or that they do understand it and misrepresented it nonetheless — is a typical manifestation of the distortions, dishonesties, and ignorance rampant in modern climate “reporting.” Some other examples from this Washington Post article are:

• “The global average temperature rose more than 0.5 degrees Celsius between 1880, the start of industrialization, and 1986.” No one argues that warming before 1950 — such as the warming from 1910 to 1945 — was anthropogenic. Since the Little Ice Age ended around 1850, it is unsurprising that temperatures were observed to rise after that year, and the eruption of Mount Krakatoa in 1883 yielded a cooling effect in the years immediately following, so that, again, a subsequent warming trend is unsurprising. Are the Washington Post reporters arguing that all observed warming is anthropogenic?
• The reporters continue: “so the analysis assumes a roughly 4 degree Celsius increase from preindustrial levels.” This phrase is incoherent. The RCPs are not extrapolations from 1880; they are model projections of temperature increases derived from theoretical calculations of warming effects (“radiative forcings”) at the earth’s surface (in watts per square meter).
• “World leaders have pledged to keep the world from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial levels, and agreed to try to keep the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.” The new 1.5 degree goal is a tacit admission that the much-publicized 2 degree limit will be achieved without any international climate policies at all. Have these reporters never observed international politicians and bureaucrats attempting to move policy goalposts?
• “Scientists predict a 4 degree Celsius rise by the century’s end if countries take no meaningful actions to curb their carbon output.” That assertion is true only under RCP8.5. (Actually, the IPCC projection under RCP8.5 is 4.9 degrees.) Under the other three RCPs (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP6), the temperature increases projectedby IPCC are 1.5, 2.4, and 3 degrees Celsius, respectively.
• “The [proposed] vehicle rule alone would put 8 billion additional tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere this century, more than a year’s worth of total U.S. emissions, according to the government’s own analysis.” Global GHG emissions are about 50–55 billion metric tons annually. So what would the temperature effect of those 8 billion tons be? The answer, using the EPA climate model: 000015 degrees. Did the reporters not think to ask that question?

The article then goes into a lengthy series of assertions about climate phenomena (e.g., “devastating wildfires, record-breaking heat, and a catastrophic hurricane”). Virtually none of those claims are consistent with the evidence. There is little trend in the number of “hot” days for the period 1895–2017; 11 of the 12 hottest years occurred before 1960. Global mean sea level has been increasing for thousands of years; it may or may not be accelerating. The Northern and Southern Hemisphere sea ice changes tell very different stories. US tornado activity shows either no trend or a downward trend since 1954. Tropical storms, hurricanes, and accumulated cyclone energy show little trend since satellite measurements began in the early 1970s. The number of US wildfires shows no trend since 1985. The Palmer Drought Severity index shows no trend since 1895. US flooding over the past century is uncorrelated with increasing GHG concentrations.

The IPCC in the AR5 is deeply dubious (Table 12.4) about the various severe effects often hypothesized or asserted as future impacts of increasing GHG concentrations. The one exception is the disappearance of the summer Arctic sea ice, which IPCC views as “likely,” with “medium confidence,” but only under RCP8.5.

And so on. Is it too much to ask the climate reporters to learn something about the topic about which they are writing? To get the basic facts straight? The answers to those questions are obvious, as is the reality that as they fooled themselves into believing that they had discovered a central example of anti-Trump gotcha, they have succeeded only at exposing their own ignorance. One would think that a sense of professional pride, if nothing else, would have led them to do some actual thinking, reading, and learning. One would think that their time in the Beltway would have taught them that the climate industry is an interest group, and therefore that arguments critical of it are not to be dismissed out of hand. One would think that they might have surmised that the purveyors of conventional climate thinking are protesting too much when they treat those in disagreement with contempt. And in all of those dimensions: One would be wrong.