April 1999

Greening Earth Society to EPA: Put Your Great Lakes Study On Ice

by William Yeatman on April 26, 1999

in Science

(Arlington, VA April 27, 1999) In a special report to Greening Earth Society, science advisor Robert C. Balling, Jr., reviews data concerning ice coverage on the Great Lakes. Balling, who is director of the Arizona State University Office of Climatology, finds that, over the course of 31 years, the number of days with “some ice coverage” has increased at a statistically significant rate. This finding is contrary to predictions from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-sponsored research summarized by EPAs Joel Smith in 1991 and which found a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide would “reduce ice cover by 1 to 2 months.”

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operates nineteen ice-observation stations on the Great Lakes shoreline within the United States. Three are on the south shore of Lake Superior, four on the western shore of Lake Michigan, five on the western shore of Lake Huron, five on the southern shore of Lake Erie, and two are on the southern shore of Lake Ontario. Although some of the stations were operational in the 1950s, virtually all of have been in operation since 1967. During the Great Lakes ice season spanning November to April, observers record the number of days ice is visible on the water and the number of days solid ice covers the entire field of view.

Assembling the data into monthly summaries, Balling computed the number of days in the ice season when any ice is visible and the percentage with total ice coverage. The seasonal data were averaged for all 19 stations and show an average of 41 percent of the days with some visible ice and 24 percent with ice covering the entire view. While there is no trend in the percentage of days with total ice coverage, the number of days with some ice coverage has increased from 35 percent in the 1960s to a mean value of over 45 percent within the last decade.

“Once again we find that the predictions from the numerical models of climate are not supported by the empirical data,” Balling writes. “Scientists predict a decrease in Great Lakes ice and the historical record shows an increase. Many may choose to believe the theoretical predictions of the models, but in this case (and in many other cases) the facts get in the way. The captain of the Titanic had a little problem with ice, and his ship sunk. Could the same happen to the global warming juggernaut?”

Click Here to review the study.

Green Activists Criticize Gore’s Environmental Record; EU Should Wage “Public Awareness Campaign”; Greens Target Stanford Endowm

by William Yeatman on April 21, 1999

in Politics

Green Activists Criticize Gore’s Environmental Record

If Al Gore wants to become the next president of the United States he must have the support of the Greens. A recent letter signed by the heads of the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, Izaak Walton League, National Environmental Trust, Natural Resources Defense Council, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Union of Concerned Scientists, U.S. Public Interest Research Group and World Wildlife Fund indicates that support may not be forthcoming.

These groups accused Gore and President Clinton of failing to keep their promise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which they call “global warming pollution.” The letter expressed “deep disappointment with the lack of an administration proposal to require significant reductions in global warming pollution. We are particularly frustrated,” continues the letter, “that the administration has not sought meaningful emission reductions from either power plants or passenger vehicles.”

The administration calls these accusations unfair. Todd Stern, White House climate change coordinator, said, “Despite strong resistance in Congress, this administration is moving aggressively on both the domestic and international fronts to meet the challenge of global warming. We believe our common-sense strategy will achieve the necessary emissions reductions while maintaining strong economic growth.” The Greens are not persuaded, however, accusing Gore of repeatedly breaking promises, failing to even take steps to meet the goals of the 1992 Rio Climate Treaty which would stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels (Washington Post, April 14, 1999).

EU Should Wage “Public Awareness Campaign”

The European Union has generally been seen as eager to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But a report from the European Consultative Forum on the Environment and Sustainable Development, an advisory body to the EU, claims that there is little public support for such measures. “Very little has been done to inform and convince,” said the Forum. “Unless this is remedied by a large-scale public awareness campaign, planned with intelligence and sensitivity, efforts to combat climate change will not succeed.”

The Forum also argued that the poorer countries in the EU must be “convinced that the climate change problem exists, and that it is not a fabrication of unknown power centers for equally unknown purposes.” Consumers must be targeted since one-third of total emissions that they claim contribute to global warming comes from end consumption and another third from transport. Without public support the EU will fail to reach its greenhouse gas reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol, says the report.

Greens Target Stanford Endowment to Fight Global Warming

The activist group Ozone Action has launched a campaign to shame Stanford University into using its investment clout a $4.7 billion endowment to pressure large corporations to alter their environmental practices. According to SF Weekly (April 7, 1999), Ozone Action is recruiting Stanford students and faculty to its cause of forcing Stanford to use “their shareholder clout by prodding corporations particularly oil companies into improving their environmental performance.”

Ozone Action particularly wants Stanford to target companies who belong to the Global Climate Coalition, an industry lobbying group that opposes the Kyoto Protocol. It claims that GCC is waging a multimillion-dollar “misinformation campaign” to discredit the scientific consensus about global warming. If Stanford cannot convince these corporations to change their ways, then, says Ozone Action, they should divest stock in these companies.

Possible Mechanism for the Solar/Warming Link; El Nio Reduces Global Warming; What do Scientists Think About Global Warming?

by William Yeatman on April 21, 1999

in Science

Possible Mechanism for the Solar/Warming Link

Many scientists believe that the solar cycle plays an important role in climate change. Their beliefs are bolstered by data that show a strong correlation between solar activity and changes in the earths climate. Unfortunately, it has been difficult to discover the mechanism that is responsible for this correlation. Several mechanisms have been suggested. “Cosmic ray influence on clouds has been proposed; others have suggested that the variability reflects other influences such as volcanoes or internal climate oscillations. Another proposed mechanism is amplification of solar variability via stratospheric or thermospheric changes,” according to a new study in Science (April 9, 1999).

The new study, however, suggests that changes in ozone concentrations that are affected by changes in solar cycle irradiance may be the mechanism scientists are looking for. The researchers used a global circulation model in which they added interactive stratospheric chemistry. They found that increases in solar radiation cause greater ozone production that enhances the greenhouse effect, further heating the stratosphere. Atmospheric circulation moves the heat into the lower layer known as the troposphere, warming the earths climate.

El Nio Reduces Global Warming

According to a study in Nature (April 8, 1999), the Pacific Ocean releases less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere during El Nio events that may help slow down global warming. Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that during the period from 1991 to 1994, when El Nio was present, 30 to 80 percent less carbon dioxide escaped the Pacific Ocean than normal.

What do Scientists Think About Global Warming? 

There has been lots of talk about scientific consensus surrounding the issue of global warming, and debate about whether a consensus exists or not. There have been several petitions and surveys conducted to try to understand the state of scientific opinion about global warming. A new study published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (March 1999) surveyed 412 scientists from Germany, Canada and the United States who are connected in some way to climate science.

The scientists were asked to rate how well ocean circulation computer models and atmospheric models handled various “physical elements of the climate system.” All of the scientists agreed that there are limitations to computer modeling, and they were very skeptical about the ability of atmospheric models to deal with clouds and precipitation. Overall, the scientists leaned towards optimism about the ability of models to adequately deal with the different processes in the climate system.

The scientists were also asked about the predictive ability of climate models for 1, 10 and 100-year forecasts. According to the study, “the mean of the entire sample…for the ability to make reasonable predictions of interannual variability tends to indicate that scientists feel that reasonable prediction is not yet a possibility.” It is interesting that the German scientists were more confident in the ability of climate models to handle climatic phenomena as well as predict future climate change.

Regardless of the general pessimism of the ability of model to forecast future climate change “there is some agreement that global warming is a process already underway but that there is a greater tendency to agree that it is a prospect for the future.” The authors, Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch of the Institute of Hydrophysics, GKSS Research Center, Geesthacht, Germany, conclude the “this incompatibility between the state of knowledge and the calls for action suggests that, to some degree at least, scientific advice is a product of both scientific knowledge and normative judgement, suggesting a socioscientific construction of the climate change issue.”

Chimera of Global Warming

by William Yeatman on April 12, 1999

in Science

(This article originally appeared in the Washington Times.)

Ten years ago the Alps endured a virtually snowless winter. Environmentalists blamed global warming. A Swiss lobbying group, Alp Action, wrote in 1991 that global warming would put an end to winter sports in the Alps by 2025.

This year the Alps have had their greatest snowfall in 40 years, according to very preliminary data. Greenpeace has blamed global warming.

How in the world can that be? Is it possible to blame global warming for every weather anomaly, even if two consecutive events are of opposite sign?

Can such a claim have “scientific” justification?

If one regards the United Nations as an authority on such things, the answer, unfortunately, is yes. Global warmers, thanks to the good offices of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, can blame any weather event on pernicious economic prosperity and resultant greenhouse gas emissions.

The most recent IPCC summary on climate change was published three years ago. IPCC purports to be the “consensus of scientists” but in fact is a group of individuals hand-picked by their respective governments. Does anyone really expect Al Gore to send me to represent the United States at one of those meetings? (Thank you, no, I have been to one and that was enough.)

Absent my sage advice, here’s what the United Nations wrote in 1995: “Warmer temperatures will lead to . . . prospects for more severe droughts and/or floods in some places and less severe droughts and/or floods in others.”

As a punishment for not cleaning out the cat box, you might ask your kid to diagram this sentence. Rather than strain the graphics of this word processor, we’ll simply parse it. What the IPCC is saying is that global warming will cause in “some places” and/or “others”:

– More intense wet periods.
– More intense dry periods.
– More intense wet and dry periods.
– Less intense wet periods.
– Less intense dry periods.
– And less intense wet and dry periods.

So, according to the “consensus of scientists,” it’s OK to blame a flood, or, if you’re in the mountains, a flood of snow, on global warming. It’s also OK to blame a drought or a snowless Alp on global warming.

It’s even OK to blame weather that is more normal than normal (“less intense wet and dry periods”) on global warming.

The IPCC statement, which cannot be proved wrong, is a cynical attempt to allow anyone to blame anything on global warming. As Julius Wroblewski of Vancouver, Canada, wrote to me, this logic “represents a descent into the swamp of the non-falsifiable hypothesis. This is not a term of praise. Falsifiability is the internal logic in a theory that allows a logical test to see if it is right or wrong.”

A non-falsifiable theory is one for which no test can be devised, and the U.N. statement fits the bill perfectly. There is simply no observable weather or climate that does not meet its criteria, except one: absolutely no change in the climate, meaning no change in the average weather or the variability around that average.

Every climatologist on the planet knows that is impossible. Climate has to change because the sun is an inconstant star and the Earth is a nonuniform medium whose primary surface constituent, water, is very near its freezing point. Freezing (or unfreezing) water makes the planet whiter (or darker), which affects the degree to which it reflects the sun’s warming rays. A flicker of the sun, therefore, ensures climate change.

A hot young climatologist named Robert Mann, writing in Geophysical Research Letters, recently provided a powerful demonstration of this phenomenon. Using long-term records from tree rings and ice cores, he concluded that the planet was on a 900-year cooling streak between 1000 and 1900. Then we warmed up almost twice as much as we had cooled, but at least half of that warming was caused by our inconsistent sun. Two NASA scientists recently demonstrated that the sun has been warming throughout the last 400 years. As a result, if the last decade weren’t among the warmest in the last millennium, something would have been wrong with the basic theory of climate: The sun warms the Earth.

That doesn’t mean we haven’t supplied a bit of greenhouse warming, too. But greenhouse warming behaves differently than pure solar warming: It occurs largely in the coldest air masses of winter.

That’s a far cry from the United Nation’s nonsense about “some places” and “others” experiencing more unusual, less unusual or unusually usual weather. And it has nothing to do with avalanches or snowless winters, either.

Patrick J. Michaels is a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and science adviser to the Greening Earth Society in Arlington.

Russia May Have More Credits than Anticipated; An Alternative to Kyoto

by William Yeatman on April 7, 1999

in Blog

Russia May Have More Credits than Anticipated

The Clinton Administration has claimed that international emission trading system would greatly lower the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions because countries such as the former Soviet Union will be have large amounts of credits available for purchase. The Energy Information Administration now says, in a newly completed International Energy Outlook 1999, that due to last years economic collapse the former Soviet Union will have more credits available for sale than previously expected.

In 1998, the EIA estimated that the former Soviet Union would have 199 million metric tons of carbon credits for sale. That estimate has now increased to 324 million metric tons. Eastern European countries would have about 50 million metric tons to contribute. This could account for as much as 45 percent of needed emission cuts for “successful implementation of the Kyoto Protocol,” according to the EIA. Purchasing countries will be able to increase emissions by 7 percent over 1990 levels and still meet Kyoto commitments, the report said (www.iea.doe.gov).

This assumes that the former Soviet Union would be willing to sell its surplus permits. According to Robert Reinstein, president of Reinstein & Associates International, Inc., the Russians do not plan to sell their permits in the near future. They have announced a three-phase plan for meeting their targets. First, they want to use joint implementation to attract investments in the form of money and technology for emission reduction projects, as well as learn how to implement these projects on their own.

In the second phase the Russians will use their newly acquired knowledge to reduce emissions and create more allowances. Some of these allowances may be sold under certain conditions. Only in Phase III would Russia engage in Article 17 trading which would take place in 2013.

An Alternative to Kyoto

Proponents of global warming policies are beginning to realize that the Kyoto Protocol has little chance of being ratified. Paul Portney, president of Resources for the Future, told the Energy Information Administration that it is unlikely that the Kyoto Protocol will pass in its current form. He has proposed a new approach that would cap carbon emissions 1996 levels by 2008. The plan would include emission trading and would be applied to “upstream” producers of coal, oil and natural gas.

As a safety valve the plan would also allow the government to sell emission permits whenever the price exceeds $25 per ton. Seventy-five percent of the revenue raised would be returned to households in the form of rebates and 25 percent would be distributed to states “based on the vulnerability of low-income households and industries” (www.weathervane.rff.org).

Senators Hagel and Murkowski to Introduce Global Warming Bill; Senate Hearings on Early Action Bill; Public Perceptions of Globa

by William Yeatman on April 7, 1999

in Politics

Senators Hagel and Murkowski to Introduce Global Warming Bill

Senators Frank Murkowski (R-AK), Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Chuck Hagel (R-NE) are planning to introduce a bill to provide $2 billion for the research and development of new technologies to prevent global warming. The bill says that given the possibility that manmade greenhouse gas emissions “may ultimately contribute to global climate change,” a long-term, global effort must be undertaken to stabilize them. It also argues that “all nations must share in an effective international response to potential climate change.”

The bill would establish an Office of Global Climate Change within the Department of Energy that would “promote and cooperate in the research, development, demonstration, and diffusion of environmentally sound, cost-effective and commercially practicable technologies, practices and processes that avoid, sequester, control, or reduce anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol for all relevant economic sectors.” It would also transfer “environmentally sound” technologies that are developed with federal funds “to interested persons in the United States and to developing country Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.”

The bill would lavish taxpayer funds on companies that successfully acquire government contracts to develop emission reducing technologies. The guidelines for acceptance of a proposal are stringent meaning that only large businesses with the technical expertise, sufficiently large staff, and the necessary discretionary capital would be eligible for funds.

The bill also provides for “public recognition” of voluntary efforts to reduce greenhouse gases. Under this provision the Energy Information Administration will keep a national inventory of greenhouse gas emissions and will collect the reports of emission reducing activities. “At a minimum,” says the bill, “such recognition shall annually be published in the Federal Register.”

The bill makes no mention of several “no regrets” policies that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as elimination of energy subsidies, deregulation of energy markets, and elimination of environmental regulations that discourage innovation.

Senate Hearings on Early Action Bill

Hearings on the credit-for-early-action bill introduced by Senators John Chafee (R-RI), Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and Connie Mack (R-FL) took place on March 24 before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Testimony was heard from business groups on both sides of the issue as well as Green groups. Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) asked why an early action bill was necessary since the U.S. has not capped greenhouse gas emissions. Dale Lundgren, assistant vice president of business planning for Wisconsin Electric Power Co., responded that emission caps “are inevitable.” Eileen Clausen, executive director of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a group of big businesses that favor emissions reductions, said, “we do expect that at some point in the future, the United States will ratify a climate change treaty that includes a binding commitment to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.”

Raymond Keating, chief economist for the Small Business Survival Committee told the Senators that the credit-for-early-action bill would make caps on greenhouse gas emissions more likely in the U.S. “Credits would only have meaning and value under the Kyoto Protocol or some similar regulatory regime which would implement an emissions cap-and-trade system,” said Keating. The bill “would be pointless” otherwise. Keating also argued that “credits potentially worth untold millions of dollars would act as powerful incentives to push and lobby for treaty ratification or some type of regulatory structure that would give value to such credits.”

Baucus said that the bill must encourage small businesses to participate in early emissions reductions. Keating, however, said that small businesses would view the program as being “the domain of big business or be construed as some complex and vague program that offers no or little quantifiable benefit in running their day-to-day operations.” Moreover, small businesses “would not be able play the credits game,” said Keating, given their small profit margins (BNA Daily Environment Report, March 25, 1999).

Public Perceptions of Global Warming

An important part of the global warming debate is how the public perceives the threat of global warming. Many polls have attempted to assess public perceptions. In an article in the journal Climate Research (December 17, 1999), researchers review and interpret the available polling data as well as their own polling data.

They found that many people have an awareness of global warming and assign a fairly high level of threat to the phenomenon, albeit much lower than other environmental threats. They also found widespread confusion regarding global warming. Many Americans linked aerosols and insecticides with global warming as well as confused it with ozone depletion. Surprisingly, the authors polling data found that 31 percent of respondents said that heating and cooling their homes was not a cause of global warming and 54 percent said it was minor or secondary cause. “Perhaps,” say the authors, “the source of temperature control in homes is not understood by many Americans.”

Few poll respondents considered global warming to be a serious threat. Fifty-one percent did not believe that global warming would have a negative effect on standards of living. “In fact,” say the authors, “24 to 39 percent think that positive outcomes are likely.” This is also reflected in peoples willingness to pay to prevent global warming. One poll asked whether the U.S. should spend less, the same amount or more on global warming, 50 percent said less while only 33 percent said more.

When asked about lifestyle changes 60 percent of respondents said that Americans would be willing to install more insulation and weatherize and 41 percent said they would replace older appliances. Forty-five percent said that Americans are not likely to buy more fuel-efficient cars while 30 percent said they would. Forty-nine percent said they are unlikely to carpool and drive less and 59 percent said that it was unlikely that they would use less air conditioning and heat. Only 21 percent and 15 percent respectively, said that Americans were likely to engage in the latter activities.

The authors conclude “that global warming is not a salient problem for most Americans.” They do not “support initiatives that threaten car use or home heating and cooling options.”

Media Coverage of Extreme Weather

Green activists have made concerted effort to link global warming with extreme weather. Droughts, floods, hurricanes, and forest fires have all been attributed to global warming. Some claim that extreme weather events prove the global warming is already here. Coupled with the publics belief that the weather has become more extreme and you have the making of a real scare story.

A study in the journal Climatic Change (February 1999) by Sheldon Unger, asks if the weather is becoming more extreme or whether the publics perception is being influenced by other factors? Unger searched media stories about extreme weather events that aired on television network news (ABC, CBS, and NBC) from 1968 and 1996, and found that there has been a five-fold increase in network coverage of extreme weather events. Most of the increase has occurred since 1988 when global warming became a major issue.

Several scientific studies, however, have failed to find upward trends in extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, and hurricanes. In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in its 1996 report that “Overall, there is no evidence that extreme weather events, or climate variability, has increased, in a global sense, through the 20th century, although data and analyses are poor and not comprehensive.”

Glaciers Dont Show Global Warming; CO2 Is Good For the Planet; Global Warming Guru Urges Caution

by William Yeatman on April 7, 1999

in Science

Glaciers Dont Show Global Warming

One of the most powerful images used by the global warming activists to frighten the public is that of melting glaciers and precipitous sea level rise. The Greens also claim that glaciers are one of the most important leading indicators of manmade global warming. A recent survey of the science, however, shows that “glaciers are poor barometers of global climate change,” and “Far from providing scientific proof of global warming, the behavior of glaciers represents yet another powerful indictment of the already controversial global warming theory.”

According to John Carlisle of the National Center for Public Policy Research, glaciers are subject to many influences which scientists dont fully grasp. Mountain glaciers are especially tricky due to the “complex topography of mountain areas.” Carlisle quotes Alaska Geophysical Insitute glaciologist Keith Echelmeyer as saying, “to make a case that glaciers are retreating, and that the problem is global warming, is very hard to do . . . The physics are very complex. There is much more involved than just the climate response.”

Many Alaskan glaciers, for example, are advancing in the same areas that others are retreating. Switzerland has experienced mild winters, warmer summers, and less precipitation over the last decade, yet many of its glaciers have advanced during this time.

An important determinant of how glaciers react to temperature change is size. A polar ice sheets response time to temperature change ranges from 10,000 to 100,000 years, for example. Large mountain glaciers respond on time scales ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 years and small mountain glaciers take 100 to 1,000 years to respond. “One explanation for some glaciers retreating today,” says Carlisle, “is that they are responding to natural warming that occurred either during the Medieval Warm Period in the 11th century or to an even warmer period that occurred 6,000 years ago.”

Mountain glaciers only account for about 6 percent of the earths total ice mass. The real danger of precipitous sea level rise would come from the melting of the polar ice sheets. Again Carlisle finds little evidence to support these claims. If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet which is deemed to be the most vulnerable to global warming, were to melt the earths seas would rise by 17 feet. It has been estimated, however, that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would take about 50,000 years to respond to any warming that may occur now, due to its great size. A recent study of the ice sheet found that it has been stable for the last 100 years.

The Greenland ice sheets have also failed to recede. In fact, Greenland is in the midst of cooling period, contrary to global warming predictions. One study has found that the West Greenland Ice Sheet has thickened up to seven feet since 1980.

CO2 Is Good For the Planet

The Cooler Heads Coalition hosted a science briefing for congressional staff and media that featured Dr. Keith Idso. Dr. Idso argued that even though it is a trace gas, carbon dioxide, a necessary component of plant photosythesis, supports all life on earth. Idso explained to the audience that CO2 is not a pollutant, but is an odorless and invisible gas that is not toxic to animals, even at very high levels.

Thousands of scientific experiments have confirmed that a CO2 rich environment is more healthy, one in which plants thrive. One of the most important scientific discoveries about CO2 is that under a variety of stressful situations plants do better when there is more CO2 in the air. In fact plants that are stressed due to lack of water, high soil salinity, low light conditions or the presence of pollutants in the air, have a relatively higher response rate to CO2 than do plants in optimal environmental conditions.

Plants are now starving for CO2, according to Idso. About 95 percent of earths plant life evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 3,000 to 4,000 parts per million. Now with CO2 making up only about 360 parts per million, plants are struggling to survive. Any increase in CO2 can only benefit plants and the animals that depend on them.

Global Warming Guru Urges Caution

Recently several scientists who traditionally supported the apocalyptic global warming theory have made statements that downplay the certainty of the science behind the global warming scare. Most recently Stephen Schneider, a Stanford University biologist and one of the stalwarts of the global warming scene, told an audience at a March 23 conference in St. Louis University, that there is no reliable way to determine the impact of global warming on the earth, and that scientists dont really know what should be done about it.

He also argued that there is a “large degree of uncertainty among the experts over what might happen,” according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (March 24, 1999). Schneider also made the case that “so many variables exist that estimates on the timing vary from the years 2030 to 2100, and the estimates on temperature rise vary from a manageable 1 degree Fahrenheit or less to as much as 4 degrees,” the Post-Dispatch reported. “Its not so much a scientific question as it is a question of human values,” said Sncheider.

Another scientist who is favorable to the global warming theory, Jerry Mahlman, director of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University, said that it will be at least 10 years or more before scientists can separate the human effects on climate from natural variation. “The uncertainties concerning the responses of clouds, water vapor, ice, ocean currents and specific regions to increased greenhouse gases remain formidable,” he said.

Announcements

  • The Cooler Heads Coalition is sponsoring two briefings for congressional staff and media in April. On April 9 Ben Leiberman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute will discuss the Montreal Protocol: A Success Story or Cautionary Tale. On April 16 Jeremy Rabkin will discuss the sovereignty implications of the Kyoto Protocol. Both briefings will be held at the Rayburn HOB room 2200 at 12:00 noon. Lunch will be provided.

  • The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced the release of the draft inventory for U.S. emissions for the years 1990 to 1997 as required by the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Comments from the public will be accepted until April 9, 1999. Comments received after that date will be considered for the next edition of the report. The draft is available at www.epa.gov/globalwarming/inventory.

  • The transcripts from the Cooler Heads science briefings for congressional staff and media and CEIs Costs of Kyoto lectures are available on CEIs website at www.cei.org. Transcripts currently available include, Climate Change: Insights from Oceanography, by Dr. Roger Pocklington; Global Warming: Evidence from the Satellite Record, by Dr. John R. Christy and Dr. Roy Spencer; Global Warming and Vector-Borne Disease: Is Warmer Sicker? by Dr. Paul Reiter; Kyoto & Our Collective Economic Future: Economic & Energy Underpinnings, by Mark P. Mills; Emissions Credits: The Supply and Demand Gap, by Robert Reinstein; and Hot Times or Hot Air: The Sun in the Science of Global Warming, by Sallie Baliunas.