The Empiricist

The White House has released a document on global warming.
“Harmful effects from global warming are already here and worsening, warns the first climate report from Barack Obama’s presidency.” In case anyone got the mistaken idea that Obama himself has been out collecting ice core samples, we are assured that

“The White House document — a climate status report required periodically by Congress — contains no new research.”

I’d be surprised if it did. The White House probably has other priorities besides writing taking temperature measurements. But…

“it focuses and organizes what’s been covered in numerous scientific journals and piecemeal federal studies to paint a more cohesive, bigger and darker picture of global warming in the United States.”

The picture is darker after the White House gets its hands on it. That’s shocking, I thought they’d find that the outlook was more rosy than previously thought. But this isn’t their job anyway. Synthesising scientific results into a single document – known as a review – is usually done by scientists. There are specialised journals just for that kind of article (the names of such journals usually end in the word “review”). Oh I’m sure scientists were paid to work on the report, but that’s not the same as an independent researcher writing an independent article.

The report emphasized that water, either too much or too little, will continue to be a major problem in every region of the country.
“Water permeates this document,” Burkett said.

Water tends to do that.