-Caveat Lector-
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From: "Stormy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date sent: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 08:14:26 -0400
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Subject: [InTheShadows] The Press Gets It Wrong
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GLOBAL WARMING
The Press Gets It Wrong
Our report doesn't support the Kyoto treaty.
BY Richard S. Lindzen
Monday, June 11, 2001 12:01 a.m.
Last week the National Academy of Sciences released a report on
climate
change, prepared in response to a request from the White House, that
was
depicted in the press as an implicit endorsement of the Kyoto Protocol.
CNN's Michelle Mitchell was typical of the coverage when she declared
that
the report represented "a unanimous decision that global warming is
real,
is getting worse, and is due to man. There is no wiggle room." As one of
11
scientists who prepared the report, I can state that this is simply untrue.
For starters, the NAS never asks that all participants agree to all
elements of a report, but rather that the report represent the span of
views. This the full report did, making clear that there is no consensus,
unanimous or otherwise, about long-term climate trends and what
causes
them.
As usual, far too much public attention was paid to the hastily prepared
summary rather than to the body of the report. The summary began with
a
zinger--that greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere
as a
result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and
subsurface
ocean temperatures to rise, etc., before following with the necessary
qualifications. For example, the full text noted that 20 years was too
short a period for estimating long-term trends, but the summary forgot to
mention this.
Our primary conclusion was that despite some knowledge and
agreement, the
science is by no means settled. We are quite confident (1) that global
mean
temperature is about 0.5 degrees Celsius higher than it was a century
ago;
(2) that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have risen over the past two
centuries; and (3) that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whose
increase
is likely to warm the earth (one of many, the most important being water
vapor and clouds).
But--and I cannot stress this enough--we are not in a position to
confidently attribute past climate change to carbon dioxide or to forecast
what the climate will be in the future. That is to say, contrary to media
impressions, agreement with the three basic statements tells us almost
nothing relevant to policy discussions.
One reason for this uncertainty is that, as the report states, the climate
is always changing; change is the norm. Two centuries ago, much of the
Northern Hemisphere was emerging from a little ice age. A millennium
ago,
during the Middle Ages, the same region was in a warm period. Thirty
years
ago, we were concerned with global cooling. Distinguishing the small
recent
changes in global mean temperature from the natural variability, which is
unknown, is not a trivial task. All attempts so far make the assumption
that existing computer climate models simulate natural variability, but I
doubt that anyone really believes this assumption.
We simply do not know what relation, if any, exists between global
climate
changes and water vapor, clouds, storms, hurricanes, and other factors,
including regional climate changes, which are generally much larger than
global changes and not correlated with them. Nor do we know how to
predict
changes in greenhouse gases. This is because we cannot forecast
economic
and technological change over the next century, and also because there
are
many man-made substances whose properties and levels are not well
known,
but which could be comparable in importance to carbon dioxide.
What we do is know that a doubling of carbon dioxide by itself would
produce only a modest temperature increase of one degree Celsius.
Larger
projected increases depend on "amplification" of the carbon dioxide by
more
important, but poorly modeled, greenhouse gases, clouds and water
vapor.
The press has frequently tied the existence of climate change to a need
for
Kyoto. The NAS panel did not address this question. My own view,
consistent
with the panel's work, is that the Kyoto Protocol would not result in a
substantial reduction in global warming. Given the difficulties in
significantly limiting levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a more
effective policy might well focus on other greenhouse substances whose
potential for reducing global warming in a short time may be greater. The
panel was finally asked to evaluate the work of the United Nations'
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, focusing on the Summary
for
Policymakers, the only part ever read or quoted. The Summary for
Policymakers, which is seen as endorsing Kyoto, is commonly
presented as
the consensus of thousands of the world's foremost climate scientists.
Within the confines of professional courtesy, the NAS panel essentially
concluded that the IPCC's Summary for Policymakers does not provide
suitable guidance for the U.S. government.
The full IPCC report is an admirable description of research activities in
climate science, but it is not specifically directed at policy. The
Summary
for Policymakers is, but it is also a very different document. It
represents a consensus of government representatives (many of whom
are also
their nations' Kyoto representatives), rather than of scientists. The
resulting document has a strong tendency to disguise uncertainty, and
conjures up some scary scenarios for which there is no evidence.
Science, in the public arena, is commonly used as a source of authority
with which to bludgeon political opponents and propagandize uninformed
citizens. This is what has been done with both the reports of the IPCC
and
the NAS. It is a reprehensible practice that corrodes our ability to make
rational decisions. A fairer view of the science will show that there is
still a vast amount of uncertainty--far more than advocates of Kyoto
would
like to acknowledge--and that the NAS report has hardly ended the
debate.
Nor was it meant to. Mr. Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at MIT,
was a
member of the National Academy of Sciences panel on climate change.
Copyright � 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=95000606
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Best Wishes
Presenting pollution as a form of sacrilege is good for
environmentalists, if not for the environment. Ecological concerns
are made more urgent and important by wrapping them in sacramental
vestments. If it's just a dead whale, then all it does is stink up
the beach. But if it's a martyred icon...Well, for starters, it
outweighs Jesus by twenty thousand pounds. -P.J. O'Rourke
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