William Yeatman

Here We Go Again – Satellite Measurements Fail to Show an Increase in Global Average Temperatures

by William Yeatman on August 19, 1998

in Science

A rather trivial bit of scientific research has gotten blown up into an end of the world scenario. A Washington Post headline blared, “Global Warming Assertions Enhanced; Study Cites Flaw in Data Collection That Undermines Position of Skeptics” and an AAP Newsfeed headline proclaimed, “New Evidence to Silence Global Warming Doubters.”

The articles refer to a new study that appeared in the August 13th issue of Nature that claims to have found an error in the global temperature data measured from satellites. The satellite measurements, taken since 1979, fail to show an increase in global average temperatures contrary to global warming predictions. This has been a thorn in the side of those who wrongly declare that the science is settled.

Drs. Frank Wentz and Matthias Schabel, from the company Remote Systems Sensing in Santa Rosa, California, claim to have found an error in the satellite data that is caused by orbital decay. When the error is taken into account the data show a slight warming trend instead of a cooling trend.

Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and Dr. Roy Spencer of NASA, who compile and publish the satellite data, agree with the study in principle. They argue, however, that there are other countervailing effects that create a false warming which cancels the effect discovered by Wentz and Schabel.

Drs. Wentz and Schabel also erred in modifying the adjusted data (which has already taken into account many confounding variables). According to John Christy, applying the orbital decay finding to the raw data fails to produce a warming trend.

It is a shame that the press insists on inflating a perfectly good piece of research to support their preconceived notions.

Measuring the Temperature of the Earth From Space

by William Yeatman on August 19, 1998

in Science, Students

The paper published by Frank Wentz and Matthias Schabel in Nature this week (August 14, 1998) is bound to generate controversy about the satellite measurements of global tropospheric temperatures. These measurements, for the period since 1979, have been made with the TIROS-N satellite Microwave Sounding Units (MSUs) by myself and Dr. John Christy (The University of Alabama in Huntsville). We are grateful to Wentz and Schabel for discovering the first convincing evidence for needed corrections to our satellite-based global temperatures.

However, we believe that there are a few important points that should be considered when reporting on this paper.

1) The spurious cooling in the satellite record due to the orbital decay (“downward drift”) effect was only estimated by Wentz and Schabel as an average adjustment to our processed satellite data. The effect, which will have different values for the eight different satellites in the record, should instead be removed one satellite at a time before the satellites in the record are intercalibrated. We (John Christy and Roy Spencer) have performed this adjustment, with the results given below.

2) The effect reported by Mr. Wentz had been partly offset by an east-west drift in the satellites’ orbits. The valuable discovery of the downward drift effect by Wentz and Schabel allowed us to separately quantify two consequences of the east-west drift (MSU instrument temperature change, and observation time-of-day change). We have now performed these adjustments as well (below).

3) The global decadal temperature trends, for the period 1979-1997, from the various satellite, weather balloon, and surface temperature measurements are as follows, in order of increasing temperature trend: 

DEEP LAYER MEASUREMENTS





Weather balloon trend (Angell/NOAA)



-0.07 deg. C/decade
Unadjusted satellite trend:



-0.04 deg. C/decade




Weather balloon trend (Parker, UK Met Office):



-0.02 deg. C/decade




Our Adjusted Satellite Trend:



-0.01 deg.  C/decade




Wentz-estimated adjusted satellite trend:



+0.08 deg. C/decade





SURFACE MEASUREMENTS





Sea surface and land surface temperatures (U.K. Met Office):



+0.15 deg. C/decade
It can be seen that the adjustment by Wentz and Schabel does not agree with our (more complete) adjustments, or to the weather balloon data. Instead, their adjustment comes closer to the surface thermometer measurements, and herein lies a temptation to jump to conclusions.

4) The adjusted satellite trends are still not near the expected value of global warming predicted by computer climate models. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 1995 estimate of average global warming at the surface until the year 2100 is +0.18 deg. C/decade.

Climate models suggest that the deep layer measured by the satellite and weather balloons should be warming about 30% faster than the surface (+0.23 deg. C/decade). None of the satellite or weather balloon estimates are near this value.

5) 1998 UPDATE: The last six months of our adjusted satellite record (February through July 1998) were the warmest in the 20 year record. The updated trend is now +0.04 deg. C/decade (which is still only 1/6th of the IPCC-expected warming rate). The current demise of El Nino, and the possibility of a La Nina forming, will likely cause significant cooling in the coming months.

One Reporter Punctures Global-Warming Hysteria; Others at Networks Prove His Point

by William Yeatman on August 12, 1998

in Blog

 ABC News’ Michael Guillen: Beware of Climate Hype

Washington, D.C. — Something unprecedented happened on ABC’s Good Morning America on Tuesday: A correspondent questioned global-warming hysteria. Unfortunately, such basic skepticism was missing in every other report on climate change this week, as other network reporters continued to parrot Al Gore’s warnings that the Earth is catastrophically warming.

The sole dissenter from the party line was ABC News Science Editor Michael Guillen. “The earth does things in cycles,” Guillen noted. “Everything from the 24-hour day-night cycle, to a woman’s 28-day menstrual cycle, to the yearly seasonal cycle, what goes up must come down and what goes down must come up. And from a geological point of view, we were in an ice age not so long ago, and what we’ve been doing for the last 10,000 years, if you take a really big picture, is warming up since then, rebounding from that ice age. So this might be just part of that.”

According to Guillen, “Even diseases are cyclic” and can’t necessarily be blamed on global warming. He further pointed out the absurdity of “scary headlines” about the hottest weather in 120 years of record-keeping. “It would be like this,” Guillen said, “If I watched you for 70 seconds, monitored your body for 70 seconds, and used that information to determine what your body’s going to do for the rest of your life, that’s pretty much what we’re doing right now with [temperature] records.”

For other reporters, it was business as usual. Of the evening news broadcasts on ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC, only the NBC Nightly News didn’t trumpet Al Gore’s August 10 press event on global warming.

Dan Rather, on that night’s CBS Evening News, also showed traces of the symptoms Guillen diagnoses as hysteria. “Worldwide, July was the hottest month ever on record,” Rather claimed in a brief story. “Once more, it was the seventh month in a row that global temperatures hit an all-time high.”

Other reporters went further. Jim Moret, anchor of CNN’s The World Today, told August 10 viewers that July “was the hottest month ever recorded on earth.” Reporter Sharon Collins then claimed that “this year’s extreme weather adds to the body of evidence that climate change is not only real, it’s already here.”

She did note that there are skeptics of global-warming theories, and even ran a quote from Fred Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, but then proceeded to taint the credibility of skeptics: “The oil and coal industries bankrolled a multi-million dollar campaign to throw cold water on predictions of a warming earth.” Collins then falsely claimed that “most climate scientists agree with Al Gore’s general assessment.”

Guillen’s ABC colleagues at World News Tonight were equally alarmist. “Some scientists, like Harvard’s Paul Epstein, take the issue further,” correspondent Ned Potter warned on August 10. “There’s plenty of argument over this, but they say we’re getting a taste of global warming, the changes in world weather caused by industrial pollution trapping heat in the atmosphere. That could bring more heat waves, droughts in some places, more floods in others, with more infectious rodents or insects as a result.”

Despite Potter’s admission that there is “plenty of argument” about global warming’s impact on human health, he didn’t find time to present the arguments of the other side.

“Unfortunately, there’s a lot of political hype” surrounding global warming, ABC’s Guillen noted in closing his segment. Yes, and much of it comes from his fellow journalists.

Satellite Data Verified; IPCC Findings Disputed; Support Grows for Sun-Climate Link

by William Yeatman on August 9, 1998

in Science

Satellite Data Verified

In a new study to be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research, Roger Pielke, along with four other scientists, uses barometer data from weather balloons to construct a temperature record. Temperatures can be determined by measuring barometric pressure (weight of the air above) as weather balloons ascend through the atmosphere. At the ground average barometric pressure is 29.92 inches and halfway through the atmosphere is 14.96 inches. When the air is colder the balloon doesnt have to go as high to reach the midpoint. For every 195 feet farther that the balloon has to rise to reach the atmospheric halfway point, the mean temperature will go up 4.95 degrees Fahrenheit.

Using global barometer data taken from weather balloons Pielke, et al, compiled a temperature record and found no global warming trend since 1979, in agreement with the satellite data. The barometer data goes back to 1973, however. The 1973-1996 data show a statistically significant warming though it is six times lower than predicted by the NASA climate model. An article summarizing the research can be found at www.nhes.com/currnet_issue/feature.html.

IPCC Findings Disputed

The actual impact of carbon dioxide on the atmosphere is 15 percent less than estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to a study in Geophysical Research Letters (July 15, 1998). The UN panel also underestimated the effects of other greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide.

Jerry Mahlman, director of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, commented that the studys findings may reduce the range of uncertainty from 1.5 degrees and 4.5 degrees warming to 1.35 and 4.3 degrees. Gunnar Myhre of the University of Oslo, Norway, who participated in the study said that “Our results will only change the IPCC estimate of radiative forcing, not the IPCC estimate of temperature change” (AP Online, July 10, 1998).

Support Grows for Sun-Climate Link

A striking correlation has been found between changes in the suns brightness and changes in global temperatures. One of the problems with any explanation that attributes climate changes to changes in the suns energy output is that the output is not large enough by itself to account for change on earth. Several theories have been advanced to explain how changes in the sun can translate into large climate changes on earth.

The New Scientist (July 11, 1998) discusses the recent work of Eigil Friis-Christensen and Knud Lassen of the Danish Meteorological Institute. Their theory says energetic particles from space known as cosmic rays assist in cloud formation. The more clouds, the cooler the earth becomes. Solar winds, according to Friis-Christensen and Lassen, block cosmic rays leading to less cloud cover and a warmer planet.

The article advances two other theories about the correlation between solar activity and climate change. Joaana Haigh, a physicist at Imperial College, London, believes that fluctuations of ultraviolet radiation are the culprit. UV radiation fluctuates three times as much as total radiation throughout a solar cycle. At the point during the solar cycle where UV radiation peaks there is a 2 percent jump in stratospheric ozone levels, raising stratospheric temperatures by 0.5 degrees C. This causes the stratosphere to sink, pushing the hot tropical weather toward the middle latitudes, causing global warming.

Niel Arnold and Terry Robinson, physicists at the University of Leicester, believe that the thermosphere, the earths outer atmosphere becomes heated by absorbing both ultraviolet and X-rays from the sun. Fluctuations in the suns output could double the temperature of the thermosphere. This warming effect can be carried to lower altitudes speeding up the jet stream by up to 20 percent, changing stratospheric temperatures by several degrees, say the researchers. So far these theories have only been tested using computer models. Empirical tests for some of these theories are being considered.

Etc.

  • David Letterman, of CBS Late Show, devoted a July 15 monologue to Vice President Al Gores recent musings over the causes of the warm weather. “You know,” said Letterman, “Vice President Al Gore held a press conference yesterday, and I thought this was interesting, Al Gore said the reason hes blaming now, global warming he says, global warming is the reason were presently having a heat wave, he says. The heat wave right now; global warming. And Im thinking, Yeeeaaah it could be global warming or,” Letterman shouts, “maybe it has something to do with the fact that its the middle of July, its supposed to be hot.” The crowd erupted with cheers and laughter.

  • The Green lobby has stepped up the political war raging around global warming. The National Resources Defense Council is running ads in Florida accusing Republican U.S. Representatives Bill Young and Dan Miller of “fiddling while Florida burns” by voting to prevent the Clinton Administration from illegally implementing the Kyoto Protocol (The Tampa Tribune, July 15, 1998).

  • The Executive Council of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics has given a name to the brand of science that seems to prevail in the environmental debate.

In their Policy Options (May 1998) they write: “Post-normal science recognizes that scientific facts pertaining to the environment (including climate change) are often uncertain. These need to be supplemented by anecdotal evidence such as traditional and popular knowledge provided by an extended peer community of knowledgeable non-experts. Moreover, the selection of policies is complicated by major conflicts among society’s values … Finally, post-normal science requires an ethic of responsibility from scientists i.e., scientists cannot afford to simply wait for the facts to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to recommend policy action. Rather, the weight of evidence (with a margin of error much larger than the one tolerated for scientific knowledge) should be sufficient ground to recommend policy action. If error there is, the precautionary principle requires scientists to err on the safe side, as would do an engineer building a bridge: safety first because the stakes are high.”

Kyotos Regulatory Burden II; Joint Implementation to Offset CO2

by William Yeatman on August 9, 1998

in Small business

Kyotos Regulatory Burden II

In our last issue, we discussed a new study by Mark P. Mills of Mills-McCarthy Associates. It demonstrates that if the Environmental Protection Agency classifies carbon dioxide as a pollutant, over a million small businesses would become regulated stationary sources. This would include 28 percent of all schools and 25 percent of all health-care buildings.

Mills has now looked at the actual monetary costs of compliance. To comply, small businesses would have to hire staff “who will install, identify, evaluate, and operate emissions monitoring equipment; some other people to undertake record-keeping and documentation control; yet another team to become expert in and monitor regulatory compliance; still others to consider and implement engineering solutions to the problem of complying with emissions reduction.” Finally, legal staff will also be needed to “consider the entire trajectory of legal exposure and compliance under current rules as well as the interpretations of the regulations as they evolve through inevitable legal battles.”

Mills estimates that these compliance activities will require one person-year of effort. He assumes for the sake of his calculations that a small firm can meet its compliance needs by contracting one-half of a person-year of effort. This, Mills conservatively estimates, will cost about $30,000. Since the threshold for coming under the regulatory purview of the EPA is $8,000 in fossil fuel purchases this means that the cost of fossil fuel for small businesses will jump from $8,000 per year to $38,000 per year.

For firms that purchase $100,000 of fossil fuel their cost will rise by 30 percent. Assuming that a firm would need to use one person-year to comply (a far more realistic assumption) would raise costs by 60 percent. Mills calculates that the total collective cost to American businesses could reach $100 billion. The article is at www.nhes.com/current_issue/fueling.html.

Joint Implementation to Offset CO2

A new report by the Government Accounting Office states that the 32 joint implementation (JI) projects that were approved under a U.S. pilot program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will offset 200 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and 1.3 million tons of methane over the next 60 years if fully implemented. JI allows developed countries to earn emission credits by funding projects in developing countries that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The reliability of the estimates are not known, according to the GAO. “Standard methods for estimating projects emissions reduction benefits specific to the U.S. initiative have not been developed,” the report said.

Seventeen of the approved projects would reduce emissions directly by, for example, reducing methane leakage in the natural gas distribution system in Russia. The other 15 would reduce emissions by planting trees or protecting forests from logging in developing countries (BNA Daily Environment Report, July 21, 1998).

Settled Science? Global Warming Research is All Over the Board

by William Yeatman on August 8, 1998

in Science

Scientific research is all over the board on the global warming issue. Duke University botanists claim the American prairie will expand if the climate warms. But numerous other studies already claim CO2 is causing forests to encroach on the Prairie. Indeed, in the last year two state EPAs have burned off forested areas in an attempt, they said, to “recreate” prairie (1000 acres were torched in Michigan, 40 acres were slated to be torched in Maryland three months ago).

In the July 31, 1998 issue of the journal Science, climatologists at Florida State University say satellite studies of the Sahara indicate desertification– i.e., expansion of the desert–has nothing to do with human activities, global warming or otherwise. As the title explains: “The Sahara is Not Marching Southward: From a satellite perch, the supposed steady encroachment of desert into Africa’s Sahel appears instead to stem from climate variation.” The report, found on page 633, says “the scenario of the Sahara sands marching southward at the hands of humans is wrong” and “that “natural climate variation has shifted the desert’s edge, with no net effect on the amount of vegetation.”

This is “settled” science?

FYI, The Ecological Society of America, mentioned here, is the group administering, with the aid of Oregon State University, the $1.5 million Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellows program to train scientists to work the press on the global warming issue.

Global Warming May Expand Plains

Associated Press
By Joseph B. Verrengia — Tuesday, August 4, 1998

Global warming could yield drier conditions on the northern Great Plains, triggering drastic ecological changes during the next century, a new study shows.

Botanists at Duke University who conducted the study declined to specify exactly what might be in store for one of the nation’s productive grain and cattle regions, which also is a magnet for wildlife, especially migrating birds.

But they said warmer, drier conditions probably would result in grasslands spreading east into areas that now are woodlands, with a corresponding increase in wildfires.

“What’s important is that the sensitivity is there to global warming,” Duke botanist James Clark said. “This system is really responsive, with the grasslands expanding eastward into forests and an increase in burning of this prairie.”

Clark presented his findings Tuesday to the Ecological Society of America meeting in Baltimore. The convention runs through Thursday.

Other grasslands researchers said they generally agree with Clark’s scenario but questioned whether ecological changes would occur in the order he described.

Forests that were established during moist periods can endure for centuries even when the climate turns drier.

“The next fire that comes along to take out the forests is what will allow the grasslands to expand,” University of Colorado ecologist Tim Seastedt said.

The Duke study — which examined peat sediments, fossil pollen, and charcoal deposits from ancient wildfires — encompassed an area that includes eastern Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The region has flip-flopped between grasslands and forests during the past 8,000 years, depending on climatic changes.

Clark said the past 2,000 years have been relatively cool and wet, conditions favorable to woodlands.

That is, until the 20th century — the warmest in recent history, with the past several years being among the hottest on record.

Many researchers believe the rising temperatures are being driven to some extent by heat-trapping air pollution and other byproducts of human activities. Subtle atmospheric circulation shifts caused by global warming and other factors could favor drier weather, Clark said.

If the trend continues, today’s woodlands on the fringes of the Plains could recede to a point where sufficient moisture is available — perhaps hundreds of miles to the east.

“We’ve seen this region getting cooler and moister until this century,” Clark said. “We have seen a trajectory of cooler climate for over 4,000 years and there is good reason to believe it won’t continue.”

Other ecologists said the human-driven changes to the region’s ecology already may be occurring. The Plains have become an intensively managed environment which is now dominated by nonnative plants, including hybrid crops and yard landscaping.

Human activity is adding more carbon dioxide, nitrogen and other gases to the atmosphere, and the environment is considerably different than it was during previous centuries in more ways than just temperature, they said.

Harvard-Smithsonian Physicist Calls Sun’s Variability the Greatest Factor in Global Climate Change

by William Yeatman on August 6, 1998

in Science

WASHINGTON, D.C., AUGUST 7, 1998 — Compared to natural climate changes spurred by the sun, any global warming resulting from increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would be slow and insignificant, according to astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Speaking today at a briefing for Congressional staff, Dr. Baliunas said the scientific evidence for the link between solar variability and shifts in climate only began to emerge in the last decade or so. The most recent studies have strengthened that view, creating a growing interest among scientists.

The sun-climate link casts new doubts on the reliability of computer models that base their climate change scenarios on changes in greenhouse gas concentrations. It has long been noted that actual observations of global temperatures have been inconsistent with model forecasts. Nearly all of the 1 degree F warming over the last century occurred before 1940; nearly all of the increases in greenhouse gas concentrations occurred after 1940. Dr. Baliunas pointed out that global temperatures over the last 19 years, according to satellite and balloon-based measurements, have been flat.

Dr. Baliunas scoffed at statements that temperatures have been the warmest in 600 years, saying that most scientists feel the climate has simply been recovering from the “Little Ice Age,” a 450-year period of much colder temperatures that destroyed settlements in Greenland and led to crop failures and famine over much of Europe.

“It’s true that it’s warmer today than in the year 1400, but so what,” she said. “That was the beginning of the Little Ice Age.” She displayed graphs showing that temperatures were warmer than today 1000, 3000, and 6500 years ago. The Earth, she said, has already experienced warmer temperatures and more rapid climate changes than those forecast by models.

She also pointed out that during those warm periods, carbon dioxide levels remained flat, and therefore could not have been the cause. Interestingly, she said, research indicates that during the last warm period, El Nino events were not stronger and more frequent, they disappeared.

Hasty, poorly thought-through policies are uncalled for, said Dr. Baliunas. Even under the most extreme, computer-generated scenario, a delay of 30 years would produce a negligible difference in temperature. It would make a very significant difference, however, in achieving a better understanding of climate change, man-made or natural, and would mean more affordable mitigation and adaptation due to technological advances.

Dr. Baliunas’ briefing for Congressional staff was hosted by the National Consumer Coalition’s Climate Change Working Group — the “Cooler Heads.” Asked if she had experienced any retaliation because of her research, she replied, “I am a very strong person. I would not stand for that.” She added, however, that she was “dismayed” by the incivility of the climate change debate. “This is straightforward science. The computer models forecast a warming [due to increased greenhouse gases]; the observations do not agree.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION, a copy of Dr. Baliunas’ prepared speech, or to arrange an interview, call Emily McGee at (202) 331-1010.

# # #

The National Consumer Coalition’s Climate Change Working Group–the “Cooler Heads”–consists of consumer, scientific, and free-market economic organizations, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, American Policy Center, Americans for Tax Reform, Association of Concerned Taxpayers, Center for Security Policy, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Consumer Alert, Frontiers of Freedom, Heritage Foundation, Independent Institute, National Center for Policy Analysis, National Center for Public Policy Research, Pacific Research Institute, Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, Reason Public Policy Institute, Seniors Coalition, 60-Plus, Small Business Survival Committee, and the George C. Marshall Institute. Mr. Marlo Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise Institute is “Cooler Heads” chairman.

Silencing Science In The Climate Debate

by William Yeatman on August 6, 1998

in Politics, Science

The Clinton White House will brook no dissent in its efforts to get the Kyoto climate treaty ratified. Just ask Frederick Seitz.

Seitz was the first president of the National Academy of Sciences and is a winner of the National Science Medal. Now he’s a prime target of a government smear campaign. He’s been slammed in government journals and the mainstream press for his departure from the party line on global warming.

Seitz’s sin? He signed a cover letter for the Petition Project, an effort by scientists skeptical of the global-warming mania. The petition urges the U.S. to reject the climate treaty drafted in Japan in December.

As the petition states, “there is no convincing evidence” that carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases are causing “a catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” To date, more than 17,000 scientists have signed on.

But such scientific free speech is too much for Kyoto’s backers. George Lucier, editor of a government “science” journal called Environmental Health Perspectives, has led the assault on Seitz.

“Seitz’s petition reminds us of the approach used by the tobacco industry over the decades when asked if tobacco is addictive and harmful,” Lucier wrote last spring.

Seitz is as bad as the tobacco industry? Let’s get real.

Seitz is a distinguished physicist. He worked on the Manhattan Project and was a consultant to the secretary of war during World War II. He was the science adviser to NATO in the late ’40s and, in ’64, he became the first president of the NAS. He has received 15 national and international prizes in addition to the National Science Medal, and holds more than 30 honorary doctorates.

And who is George Lucier? He’s a senior bureaucrat who has spent 28 years as a ward of the taxpayers at the National Institute for environmental Health Sciences. His only awards are from the federal agency that employs him. He is a toxicologist, and there is no reason to think he knows as much about the science of global warming as Seitz.

Lucier’s attack on Seitz fits into a broader effort to squelch scientific debate on global warming. Last year, Vice President Al Gore and his minions claimed that a consensus of 2,500 scientists supported the theory that man-made emissions of greenhouse gases were disrupting Earth’s climate.

But those 2,500 scientists hardly represented a consensus. First, they only helped assemble the ’95 U.N. report on global warming; they didn’t pass judgment on it. And few of those 2,500 scientists actually worked on the one part of the report that linked human activity to global warming -the executive summary. In fact, many of those same scientists are skeptics.

That hasn’t stopped the White House, U.N. bureaucrats and green activists from using this “consensus” mantra as part of their effort to discredit dissenters. But now, with Seitz’s help, 17,000 scientists have blown away the myth of any scientific consensus on global warming.

Since the petition was made public in April, the climate treaty’s backers have been in damage-control mode. The lawyer-filled Union of Concerned Scientists branded the petition as “a deliberate attempt to deceive the scientific community with misinformation.” The New York Times and St. Louis Post-Dispatch have published stories and editorials attacking Seitz and other petition signers.

As for the NAS, it has distanced itself from its former president and touted its own ’91 report that gave credence to global-warming hysteria. Ironically, the NAS will release a report in spring ’99 about what additional research might reduce the scientific uncertainty about global warming.

Lucier calls Seitz’s petition “disingenuous.” Yet in the same piece, Lucier wrote, “Both sides of the global-warming question must be examined and discussed openly.” What could be more disingenuous than that?

It’s wrong for a tax-paid scientist writing in a tax-supported publication to smear another scientist. Seeing such tactics used against a scientist of Seitz’s caliber is clearly a warning to others who would consider opposing officially sanctioned science. Genuine science will suffer from this attempt to suppress dissent.

Steven J. Milloy publishes the Junk Science Home Page (http://www. junkscience.com). Michael Gough is director of science and risk studies at the Cato Institute.

Kyotos Regulatory Burden; Canada Will Be Hard Hit by Kyoto

by William Yeatman on July 11, 1998

in Blog

Kyotos Regulatory Burden

There has been a lot of economic analysis done on the costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. So far these analyses have concentrated on the costs to households and businesses of higher fossil fuel prices. In a new study, Mark P. Mills of Mills-McCarthy Associates Inc., looks at the costs of regulatory compliance, including staff time, consulting support, and legal services. For many businesses, according to Mills, these costs will exceed the costs of higher fuel prices. Other costs include the bureaucratic and administrative costs that will be financed by taxpayers.

The reason these costs will be so high is that under the Clean Air Act, once a substance is classified as a pollutant, any business that emits over 100 tons per year of the pollutant becomes a stationary source and subject to EPA regulation. Thus, according to Mills, such a classification for CO2 would bring one million businesses under the authority of the EPA.

Nearly all manufacturing businesses would become regulated, according to the study. The only businesses to escape would be average to small sized print shops and textile shops. The rest, totaling some 300,000 firms would be regulated. About 400,000 mid-sized to large commercial buildings would fall under EPA regulation, including 28 percent of all educational buildings and 25 percent of all medical/health care facilities. Over 150,000 farming businesses and over 100,000 commercial trucking businesses would also be regulated.

Mills also discusses the potential for reducing CO2 emissions or substituting alternative energy sources for fossil fuels. He points out that “Unlike emissions of certain substances that can be harmful, carbon dioxide emissions are not an unwanted by-product, or pollutant, arising from contaminants present in the basic fuel sources. Carbon dioxide emissions are the intended outcome of oxidizing the carbon in the fuel to obtain energy. There is thus no avoiding, or cleaning up, carbon from the fuel source. Carbon is the fuel source.” This sets the regulation of CO2 apart from the regulation of substances such as sulfur dioxide (SO2) which environmentalists claim is a good model for regulating CO2.

As to the use of alternative energy sources, Mills argues that such solutions “are not conceivable.” Achieving the same amount of growth in energy supply in the next two decades as was supplied by nuclear power over the last 20 years would require that “the entire portfolio of renewable energy sources would have to be increased by 3,000 percent.” Such a feat is impossible, according to Mills. In any case the growth in nuclear power over the last 20 years only accounted for 30 percent of the total increase in national energy supply, the rest was supplied by fossil fuels.

The study can be downloaded from www.greeningearthsociety.com

Canada Will Be Hard Hit by Kyoto

A new study by Standard and Poors DRI, a Toronto-based think tank, says the compliance with the Kyoto Protocol could cost the Canadian economy between $5,000 and $7,000 per person in lost production. The study also says that it could take ten years for the Canadian economy to recover. It goes on to say that Alberta and Saskatchewan, which will be particularly hard hit, may never recover. Albertas Premier Ralph Klein says that “Certainly the position as it now stands to reduce by six percent 1990 levels by the year 2010 is unacceptable and we think would have dire economic consequences for the province of Alberta” (Calgary Herald, July 5, 1998).

Little Progress Made in Bonn; House Committee Keeps Tough Language; NAFTA Countries Agree to Implement the Kyoto Protocol

by William Yeatman on July 11, 1998

in Politics

Little Progress Made in Bonn

The Clinton Administrations prospects of meeting the conditions set under the Byrd/Hagel resolution diminished significantly at the meeting of the subsidiary bodies of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn, Germany on June 2-12. The Byrd/Hagel resolution, adopted by the Senate last year, states that the U.S. Senate will not ratify any climate change treaty that does not include emissions reductions targets and timetables for developing countries, or that will be harmful the U.S. economy.

The Bonn meeting was held to iron out the procedural and methodological details regarding implementation of the Kyoto Protocol and to prepare an agenda for the November meeting in Buenos Aires. Key items on the agenda included the application of the three cooperative mechanisms the Clean Development Mechanism, emissions trading, and joint implementation developing country commitments, forestry and land use issues, among others.

No agreement could be reached regarding the cooperative mechanisms. Of the three mechanisms, emissions trading proved to be the most controversial. The U.S., supported by several developed countries, presented a proposal that would allow unlimited emission trading, while the European Union proposed caps on emission trading. In the end the delegates could only agree to a “compilation document” that included all of the proposals. The delegates agreed to clarify language regarding forestry and land use (Failsafe, July 1998).

The Group of 77 and China, a bloc of more than 100 developing countries, refused to accept an agenda item for Buenos Aires to discuss developing country commitments. A Saudi delegate said that the issue of developing country participation was settled in Kyoto and would not be revisited (BNA Daily Environment Report, June 8, 1998).

House Committee Keeps Tough Language

The House Appropriations Committee approved on June 26th a $7.4 billion spending plan for the Environmental Protection Agency. The bill also includes a provision stating that none of the money can be used “for the purpose of implementation, or in contemplation of implementation” of the protocol. The committee successfully fended off attempts to soften this language.

The Clinton Administration is complaining that the provision will prevent them from “setting energy-efficiency standards, pushing industry to adopt such measures, or looking for ways to give credit to companies that lower their emissions before the treaty is implemented.” The bill may face a veto, says the Administration, unless the anti-protocol language is removed (Greenwire, June 26, 1998).

Also, Congress cut $200 million from appropriations bills requested by the Administration for energy efficiency and development of renewable technologies, and essentially ignored President Clintons $6.3 billion, five-year climate initiative (AP Online, July 7, 1998).

NAFTA Countries Agree to Implement the Kyoto Protocol

Environmental ministers from the United States, Canada, and Mexico agreed on June 26th to work together to develop greenhouse gas emission offset projects under the Kyoto Protocol. The council for the Commission on Environmental Cooperation (CEC), formed under a side pact to the North American Free Trade Agreement, released a statement which reads in part, “Within the framework of the protocol, the CEC will work with the three nations and the private sector to develop North American opportunities for the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).”

The CDM is a mechanism whereby developed countries can earn emission offsets by transferring “environmentally friendly energy technologies” to developing countries. Under the agreement Canada and the United States will transfer technology to Mexico. European Union officials, however, want to include Mexico among the industrialized nations under the Kyoto Protocol because it is a member of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (BNA Daily Environment Report, July 2, 1998).

Kyoto Protocol Reassessed

An article appearing in Foreign Affairs (July/August 1998) takes a look at the long-term prospects for the Kyoto Protocol. The goal of the climate treaty is to stabilize emissions at levels that are not dangerous to the economy or ecosystems. While it is not certain what this means, the authors use the European Union recommendation of stabilizing emissions at twice pre-industrial levels. To reach this goal without developing county participation would require the participating countries to become net carbon sinks. And even this, according to the authors, would only slow global warming. If the industrial countries are serious about stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions, they must pay the developing countries to reduce their emissions, say the authors.

The authors point out that “it will be nearly impossible to slow warming appreciably without condemning much of the world to poverty,” unless large sums of money are spent on R&D to reduce reliance on CO2 emitting energy sources.

The Clinton Administrations plan does spend money on R&D, but, say the authors, the plan is faulty. The first stage of the plan calls for spending money on tax incentives and R&D expenditures “to encourage energy efficiency and the use of cleaner energy sources.” Then, according to the Administrations plan, “after a decade of experience, a decade of data, a decade of technological innovation,” whichever administration is in office in 2007 will cap emissions and implement a domestic trading system. However, at the end of the aforementioned decade U.S. emissions will be 20 to 25 percent higher than 1990 levels.

“It is simply laughable,” say the authors, “to forecast that Washington would then impose a cap on emissions stringent enough to turn the energy economy around in three to five years.”

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