Countdown to COP-6
The Kyoto Protocols loose ends were supposed to be wrapped up at the sixth Conference of Parties to the U. N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which will meet in the Hague, Netherlands, November 13-24. It isnt looking that way now, and senior negotiators have started to play the lowering expectations game.
Whatever the outcome, several members of the Cooler Heads Coalition will be at COP-6 and will be sending back reports. Updates will be posted on the www.globalwarming.org and www.cei.org web sites.
IPCC Summary Leaked
The Third Assessment Report (TAR) of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is not due to be released until early 2001. But two weeks prior to the U. S. presidential election, a draft of the Summary for Policymakers was leaked to the press.
Major news outlets seized on the dramatic claims. The New York Times (October 28, 2000) reported that the IPCC “has now concluded that mankinds contribution to the problem is greater than originally believed,” and that, “Its worst-case scenario calls for a truly unnerving rise of 11 degrees F over 1990 levels.”
Vice President Al Gore immediately touted the leaked draft in his campaign speeches. “Unless we act, the average temperature is going to go up 10 or 11 degrees. The storms will get stronger. The weather patterns will change. But it does not have to happen, and it wont happen if we put our minds to solving the problem, and that is one of the reasons I am running for president,” said Gore (CNN Morning News, October 27, 2000).
The lack of media attention to the blatantly political motives in leaking the report was revealing, but so too was the uncritical acceptance of the Summary as a straightforward scientific document. Apparently, in their eagerness to support Gore, the TV networks and major newspapers conveniently forgot that the Summary for Policymakers that accompanied the Second Assessment Report was widely discredited as a political document that didnt reflect the scientific report itself.
It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that the TAR Summary is essentially a political document designed to scare waverers back to the true Kyoto faith. In a briefing paper, Kenneth Green, director of the Reason Public Policy Institutes environment program and a TAR technical reviewer, writes that, “Predictions of future changes rest upon speculative changes that were not reviewed by technical reviewers of the main report.”
Greens paper, Mopping up After the Leak, which is available on the RPPIs web site (www.rppi.org), continues: “The leaked Summary for Policymakers is not peer-reviewed, the author is anonymous, the document is created independently of the actual Assessment Report, and the Summary is so short that issues are overly simplified.”
Vincent Gray, a climate scientist in New Zealand, makes similar criticisms in e-mail comments. He also notes the following statement in the final draft version of the TAR: “The fact that the global mean temperature has increased since the late nineteenth century and that other trends have been observed does not mean that an anthropogenic effect on the climate system has been identified (chapter 1, page 15).” It is doubtful whether that statement will be reported by Dan Rather or appear in Al Gores campaign speeches.
European Union Blasts U. S. Congress
The European Unions parliamentary environment committee on October 16 adopted a resolution providing guidance to the EU Commission on the upcoming COP-6 negotiations in the Hague. In addition to calling on all parties to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and for an agreement to set a “legally binding global emissions ceiling” on greenhouse gases, the EU environment committee aimed harsh language at the U. S. Congress.
The resolution states, “The committee appeals to members of the US Senate and House of Representatives to drop their resistance to the principles agreed in Kyoto and to do justice to their responsibility to combat the greenhouse effect.” (The full text may be found at www2.europarl.eu.int/omk/OM.) No comments from members of Congress have been reported.
Australia Turning Against Kyoto
On October 25, Ray Evans of Melbourne, Australia spoke to a Cooler Heads Coalition meeting about the Australian political climate regarding the Kyoto Protocol. In 1997 at Kyoto, Australia agreed to a greenhouse gas target of 8 percent above 1990 levels. Business-as-usual scenarios estimate that by 2010 Australias emissions of greenhouse gases would be 45 percent above 1990 levels.
The federal government took the position that, “The Kyoto regime is inevitable, and that Australia should be amongst the very first countries to introduce a comprehensive carbon withdrawal regime, characterized by the sale of government permits at auction at regular intervals, and subsequent trading of those permits through the Sydney Futures Exchange,” according to Evans.
Although energy intensive industries grew concerned over the governments position, there was little overall dissent and the government proceeded to devise a carbon withdrawal system. However, recent events have raised the real possibility that no Australian government is likely to recommend ratification of Kyoto and that no future parliament is likely to ratify it.
Industry Minister Nick Minchin convinced the Howard government over Environment Minister Robert Hills objections to grant exemptions from Australias greenhouse gas obligations to multi-billion-dollar investments to expand natural gas production on the Northwest Shelf. (See page 4 article in the Age, September 23, 2000.)
According to Evans, “Thus for the first time the Government had to decide between carbon withdrawal on the one hand, and jobs and investment on the other. It decided for jobs. This precedent is of very great importance.”
Parliament is beginning to have grave doubts about the wisdom of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCOT) is conducting “a wide-ranging review of Kyoto, including the scientific basis for global warming and carbon withdrawal, and for the first time back-bench parliamentarians are beginning to appreciate the extent of the economic damage which will hit Australia if legislation is passed introducing a carbon tax regime of the kind envisaged by the Australian Greenhouse Office.”
Labor Party parliamentarians who represent workers in energy intensive industries are beginning to balk at the idea of carbon withdrawal. “Once a key group within the opposition Labor Party becomes deeply concerned at the consequences of Kyoto, the prospect of any Australian Government ratifying Kyoto simply vanishes,” said Evans. “Questions now dominating the minds of the ALP [Australian Labor Party] members of JSCOT are about the mechanisms and consequences of withdrawal, in particular the possibility of trade sanctions being imposed on Australian exports.”
Coal Vote Split on Bush, Gore
The coal industry appears split over whom to support as the next president of the United States. Coal mining companies favor George W. Bush, while the coal miners union favors Al Gore. Ben Greene, chief lobbyist for the West Virginia Mining and Reclamation Association, doesnt believe there is anything Gore could say to convince the industry to support him. “He may come in and say, Im with Senator Byrd on money for clean coal technology, and weve got to protect our miners,” Greene said. “But if you look at Kyoto and you look at the book [Earth in the Balance] and you look at the Environmental Protection Agency in the last eight years, I dont take much comfort in any of that.”
The union has a different take, however. “Someone has suggested that George Bush is for coal miners,” said United Mine Workers of America President Cecil Roberts. “There is a distinction to be made here. I do believe George Bush may be for coal companies, but he isnt for coal miners,” said Roberts. “Most important though to UMWA members, Mr. Gore has said that if he is elected president he will keep the promise to our retirees of health care benefits for life” (Charleston Gazette, October 27, 2000). Sounds like the real distinction is between working and retired coal miners.
Two recent polls, one by Ohio State University and the other by Rasmussen Research, now have Bush ahead of Gore in West Virginia (www.atinews.com). This suggests that Mr. Robertss view doesnt reflect that of many of his unions members.
McCain Introduces Bill
Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) has introduced a bill to create an “International Climate Change Science Commission.” The bill would authorize the president of the United States “to negotiate an international agreement to establish an international commission comprised of scientists whose qualifications and experience qualifies them to conduct scientific, unbiased, politically and economically neutral assessments of global climate change, the factors involved in such change, the consequences of such change, and the potential effect of measures undertaken for the purpose of affecting global climate change.”
What McCain hopes to accomplish by this is unclear. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. Global Change Research Program were both created to accomplish this very goal. The problem is that both have been so thoroughly politicized that they have become harmful to the publics understanding of the scientific debate.