-Caveat Lector- Administration's climate report marks watershed in debate
Copyright © 2002 United Press International By DAN WHIPPLE, UPI Environment News (June 8, 2002 12:40 a.m. EDT) - The Bush administration's release of its Climate Action Report 2002 marks a watershed in the global warming debate. All but a few diehards concede global warming is real and caused by humans. The issue now is: Who pays? This administration report should lay to rest most of the wrangling over the scientific validity of the main global warming conclusions. Early on, the report states, "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing global mean surface temperature and subsurface ocean temperature to rise." Scientific certainty being an elusive goal, the report carries caveats about natural climate variability influencing interpretation of the data. In general, however, it is the strongest statement yet by a U.S. administration that we face pervasive, human-caused global climate change. Not everyone is convinced, of course. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, of Washington, D.C., immediately filed a petition with the administration "to prevent the distribution of a fatally flawed report on global warming." Christopher C. Horner, senior fellow at CEI, said in a statement: "The guidelines of the Federal Data Quality Act require that scientific information being disseminated by the government be presented in an accurate, complete and unbiased manner. The administration's current report clearly violates these requirements." This is a rear-guard action. Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section at National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, said CEI's response "says we don't like the message, so we'll shoot the messenger." Trenberth told United Press International the science presented in the report was "very well vetted," even conservative in its conclusions, but the link between warming and human activity is clear. "In terms of the increases in carbon dioxide, there's been about 31 percent increase in carbon dioxide -- nearly a third increase -- in the last 200 years, since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Most of that has occurred after World War II," he said. "That's clearly the result of human activities," Trenberth continued, "the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, and I don't think there's any wiggle room there at all. That's clearly a human activity." The question, then, is how does it relate to the worldwide changes in temperature and rainfall? There are numerous uncertainties here, but that is a different level of debate. Climate models are still being refined. Trenberth noted, however, that in the warming atmosphere, one thing you would expect is there would be increasing dryness, with less frequent rainfall. When it did rain, it would rain harder. Although it cannot categorically be attributed to global warming, this is exactly the pattern the U.S. has been seeing over the last few years, with drought in Rockies and West and flooding in the Midwest and Southeast. So the people paying the cost of global warming are the ski area owners and patrons and farmers of the West, and the flooded residents of other parts of the country, while the coal, electric power and auto industries pay less. The administration "says they won't do anything to hurt the economy," Trenberth said. "But the economy is going to be hurt. The costs are borne around the world - it just comes out of different pots." Some of those "pots," he explained, are "the Federal Emergency Management Administration, or the farmers in Colorado who have lost their winter wheat crops ... It's a transfer of funds from one group to another in a quite arbitrary way." It is beginning to become clear the domestic costs associated with global warming will be enormous - the term "incalculable" enters into the conversation a lot here. Even if the United States decides to act now to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dampen the long-term warming trend, the costs will be large. In a 1998 study, the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration estimated complying with the Kyoto greenhouse gas limits would increase gasoline prices by 52 percent, electricity prices by 86 percent, decrease gross domestic product by 4.2 percent and reduce personal income 2.5 percent. Another EIA study projected it would take $3.6 billion to reduce greenhouse gases over five years. The administration's climate report said essentially that the country should take only voluntary steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and adapt to the changes global warming presents. But there are costs of doing nothing. Dan Lashof, of the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, told UPI although some heroic economists may be trying to put this into a cost-benefit analysis, "I don't think anybody would claim that you can do it with any degree of confidence ... The point really is that this is a problem we know how to solve. We can get ahead of the curve. The strategy of throwing up your hands and saying, 'Get used to it' doesn't make any sense." One striking thing is the consistency between the Bush administration's policies toward the fossil fuel and auto industries regarding global warming and its energy policy. Even a cursory look at the data presented in Climate Action Report 2002 shows although the vast majority of the CO2 emitted in the U.S. - 94 percent - comes from the burning of fossil fuels, more than half of it can be traced to three sources. In 1999, coal burning produced nearly one-third of the net CO2 emissions. Another 20 percent came from passenger cars and from light trucks. The climate report gives credit to auto fleet mileage improvements for past reductions in greenhouse gases, but the administration has refused to support building on those improvements, or on further fuel conservation measures. Instead, the Bush-Cheney energy plan relies on increases in oil and gas development and coal use to fuel the country for the next generation. However, as NCAR's Trenberth said of this next emerging phase of the global- warming debate, "Mother Nature will do what she will do, regardless of what the Bush administration does." "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." -GW Bush during a photo-op with Congressional leaders on 12/18/2000. As broadcast on CNN and available in transcript on their website http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0012/18/nd.01.html Steve Wingate, Webmaster ANOMALOUS IMAGES AND UFO FILES http://www.anomalous-images.com <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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