CEI Drops Junk Science Lawsuit after White House Acknowledgement
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has acknowledged that the National Assessment on Climate Change was not “subjected to OSTP’s Information Quality Act guidelines.” This statement now appears prominently on the document posted on the U. S. Global Change Research Program’s web site (http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/nacc/).
As a result of this admission, the Competitive Enterprise Institute withdrew its complaint in federal court that the National Assessment did not meet the minimal scientific standards required by the Federal Data Quality Act.
“The record shows that the Clinton White House pressured bureaucrats to rush out an incomplete and inaccurate report despite protests from government scientists,” said Christopher C. Horner, legal counsel and senior fellow at CEI. “The government also subsequently confirmed that the two climate models selected for the National Assessment are ‘outliers’ chosen to guarantee extreme results and are incapable of replicating even past climate trends.”
CEI argued in its complaint that the National Assessment violates legal requirements of objectivity and utility by employing computer models proven unreliable and by incorrectly revising climate history to portray the climate of the 20th century as unusual.
Members of the National Assessment Synthesis Team reacted strongly to the admission, with 30 people involved in its creation signing a letter to James Mahoney of the Office of Climate Change Science Program protesting the admission. The letter asserted, “We would suggest that the additional statement in bold is misleading and incorrect in at least two very important ways. First, OSTP’s guidelines did not exist or apply at the time that the National Assessment report was prepared.
“Second, and more important, the statement implies that the National Assessment Report was not properly reviewed and would not meet the OSTP guidelines; this is misleading at best and most likely false in the view of any independent review of the situation. We request that you eliminate the new phrase.”
The letter does not address the issue of how the two models that passed through the four layers of review outlined in the letter failed to predict the climate any better than tables of random numbers.
Chinese Emissions Skyrocket
Contrary to an earlier claim by the New York Times that China was reducing its coal production and consumption, the newspaper reported on October 22 that, “China’s rapid economic growth is producing a surge in emissions of greenhouse gases that threatens international efforts to curb global warming, as Chinese power plants burn ever more coal while car sales soar.”
The previous assumption had been based on Chinese official statistics. These have now been revised to confirm “what energy industry executives had suspected: that coal use has actually been climbing faster in China than practically anywhere else in the world.”
The paper quoted the International Energy Agency in Paris as estimating that, “The increase in greenhouse gas emissions from 2000 to 2030 in China alone will nearly equal the increase in the entire industrialized world.”
The article points out that China has begun to import coal from Australia and has also become the world’s fastest growing importer of oil. The nation has also become “the world’s largest market for television sets and one of the largest for many other electrical appliances.” The story points out that China is the world’s fastest-growing market for cars, with sales increasing by 73 percent this year alone.
China, as a developing nation, is exempt from the Kyoto protocol. Chinese officials have made it clear that, while they would like to see the protocol adopted, they will accept no restrictions on Chinese emissions now or in 50 years’ time.
India Rejects Emissions Restrictions
Indian Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani told a climate change conference in New Delhi that India would accept no restrictions on its emissions of greenhouse gases.
The Times of India reported (Nov. 11), “India on Monday categorically said no to the introduction of fresh commitments for developing nations under the UN convention on climate change. It demanded early operationalisation of special climate change fund and fund for least developed countries.” Mr. Advani stated, “The existing equilibrium of commitments and differentiation between developed and developing nations has to be maintained.”
The New York Times article mentioned in the story above points out that, while China will account for 18 percent of the growth in new car sales by 2012, India will account for 9 percent, just 2 percent less than the United States. India’s demand for energy use is expected to grow by 8-10 percent annually over the next decade.