In the run-up to the annually grand UN climate change summit, this time in Katowice, Poland, we can expect the usual deluge of scary climate stuff. Not surprisingly, the biggest climate clowns by far are the UN IPCC and the US GCRP, plus a horde of smaller fry. How they all got into that little green car no one knows.

The IPCC gets pride of place with last month’s “1.5 degrees” report, telling us that if the entire world does not end fossil fuel use immediately (which is not possible) then we are all doomed (which is false).

Now the US GCRP (pronounced G-crap), has released the fourth National Climate Assessment, or as I like to call it, the National Scare. The Obama Administration managed to gin up three of these hummers, this being the third. Clinton managed one. The Trumpers let this one slide to completion, probably because they did not want to be seen as anti-science (or pro-truth, apparently).

There is a bit of confusion here, because this National Scare is labeled Volume II. Volume I was a scary science report issued last year. The just released Volume II is the actual National Climate Assessment, successor to the three prior scares.

As always, the National Scare is focused on America. It breathlessly tells us of the many terrible things that climate change has done to us so far, and predicts the even worse things to come. If it is possible to cherry-pick junk, this is the way to do it.

Keep in mind that the US GCRP is made up of the 13 federal agencies that collectively fund billions of dollars worth of supposed climate change research. GCRP stands for Global Change Research Program. Assuming that the National Scare summarizes their work, the waste is stupendous.

Mind you the UN IPCC and US GCRP are very familiar giant clowns, so not all that entertaining. But this time we have a little one that is really funny. Call it the 467 scares study.

Anyone who follows the climate change circus knows there is no end of studies finding or projecting some nasty impact of climate change. This study tried to find and catalog as many of these scares as they could. They found a whopping 467!

Here is how Cosmos Magazine describes it:

It reveals 467 ways in which human health, food, water, economy, infrastructure and security already have been affected by multiple climatic changes, including warming, drought, heatwaves, wildfires, precipitation, floods, storms, sea level rise and changes in land cover and ocean chemistry.

Published in the journal Nature Climate Change, it is the work of 23 scientists, led by Camilo Mora from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, US, who systematically reviewed thousands of scientific papers. Providing input was a team of other climate scientists, including several lead authors on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.

If each of these individual scare studies cost just a few million dollars, which is cheap for this stuff, then this catalog gives us well over a billion dollars worth of scares. Many are funded by the US GCRP agencies.

Besides the usual droughts and floods, hurricanes and heat waves, we get truly imaginative stuff like plagues of voles, bed wetting and mental illness. I am not making this up.

Unlike these imaginative scares, the plague of scary stories is very real. It is all timed for the UN Climate Change Summit coming soon in Katowice, Poland. The Paris Agreement is tottering a bit so it needs a lot of pseudo-scientific support. These clowns hope to hold it up. Let’s hope they fail.

Fear not.