News » May 19, 2003

The “K” Word

U.S. turns its back on Kyoto and global warming

By Karen Charman

As evidence of global warming mounts, the Bush administration and right-wing, industry-funded “researchers” who have long denied the phenomenon are trying a new tactic: muzzle the science.

In February, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a pro-market think tank, asked the Bush administration to “cease dissemination” of a government report on grounds that it violates a new regulation, the Data Quality Act. The report, the National Assessment of Climate Change, modeled the likely impact of global warming on the United States. The unprecedented research effort took several years and involved government agencies, scientists and academics.

The Data Quality Act requires federal agencies to ensure the information they disseminate is accurate, and to enable interested parties—that is, industry—to challenge the information if they disagree. According to one high-ranking government official, who requested anonymity, the law—which was slipped into a 2001 appropriations bill without hearings—“could be used to undermine any legitimate scientific effort” that threatens corporate interests.

Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide, the main culprit in planetary warming, into the atmosphere. The journal Science reports that energy consumption over the last 100 years has increased 16-fold, bumping atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide to their highest level in 420,000 years.

Acknowledging the existence of global warming threatens the fossil fuel industry, because mitigating or reversing it means shunning fossil fuels like coal and oil. Rather than deal with the problem, the powerful and hugely profitable fossil fuel industry has engaged in an aggressive disinformation campaign to discredit the science and disrupt any effort to solve it.

As higher levels of greenhouse gases trap heat in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, rising global temperatures are destabilizing climate patterns—thawing the permafrost in Alaska, melting glaciers, and causing enormous ice shelves to break apart in both the Arctic and Antarctica. The melting ice is expected to raise sea levels four to 40 inches by 2100, scientists say, submerging islands and coastal regions throughout the world. According to Robert Gagosian, director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the influx of fresh water into the northern Atlantic Ocean could disrupt global ocean currents and potentially lead to a “mini ice age” in the northeastern United States and Europe, even as the rest of the planet warms.

Escalating weather-related disasters, which confirm computer-modeled predictions, are further discrediting the naysayers. And even the Bush administration now reluctantly admits global climate change is occurring as a result of burning fossil fuels.

That doesn’t mean they’re doing much about it. President Bush’s climate change plan, announced last year, has called for 10 more years of study and voluntary reductions of 18 percent in greenhouse gas intensity by 2012. The Kyoto Protocol, which Bush rejected, calls for 5 percent reductions from 1990 levels for industrialized nations by 2012. The United States, with 4 percent of the world’s population, is the largest contributor to global warming, releasing about 25 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases into the environment each year.

The environmental community dismisses the plan for voluntary reductions in greenhouse gas intensity as business as usual. Because the measures suggest decreases in the rate of growth of greenhouse gas emissions—rather than actual reductions—the policy on its own will actually increase greenhouse emissions 14 percent by 2012, says Dan Lashof, a climate scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Jerry Mahlman, a climate scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, says scientists cannot predict exactly how much carbon in the atmosphere will tip off a catastrophic cascade of climate change, or what exactly the effects will be in any given region. But, he says, the future is here: Since carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for at least 100 years, past emissions have already committed the world to significant future climate change.

And censoring the science won’t make it go away.

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• Reader Comments

  A good read.  Am currently studying earth sciences at University.  Hope you don’t mind if I use a few quotes in my essay that I’m writing on Global Warming.

  Posted by Mark Newton on May 21, 2003 at 4:58 AM

  I agree with your points, but we never signed the Kyto protocol. You correctly state that Bush didn’t accept it, but neither did Clinton, so you weren’t reporting the whole truth. I believe the Kyoto Protocol is about to become international law anyway, so we’re gonna have to follow it.

  Posted by Brad on May 21, 2003 at 11:16 PM

  The US follows international law?  I wasn’t aware of that.  yikes!
  Clinton did sign the Kyoto protocol, but only with the knowledge that it would be soundly defeated by the Senate.  In fact, he never bothered to submit it to the Senate.  Republican, Democrat, neither has any particular inclination to disobey their corporate sponsors and act in a way that places importance on long term global benefits for the majority, rather than short term domestic gain for the few.  There will be no change in America’s global role until the people force it. 

  Posted by mike on May 22, 2003 at 8:10 PM

  Mike, you are 100% right about how there will be no change until the people force it, but it’s a shame that the people don’t care. It has nothing to do with misinformation or bad reporting of news, everyone knows that SUV’s have bad CO2 emmission, but don’t care.

  Karen Charman (the author) said that censoring science won’t make it go away. She’s right, but she forgot about something, there is a belief that many scientists hold that the Earth warms and cools in cycles. I can’t quite remember how, it has to do with phytoplankton and things they release. Personally I don’t believe it, but I’m no scientist.
  

  Posted by Brad on May 23, 2003 at 7:31 PM

  Im sorry if I offend anyone with this BUT: Why do we not take into account the impact of mass immigration when it considering energy consumptiondemand and the reduce greenhouse gasses? I have read that we added 37-52 million illegal and legal immigrants in a decade, with 1-2 million coming each year. Common sense dictates that if you add this 20-25% to your population, energy demand and consumption ( and emissions) will increase accordingly! I agree that SUV and lack of energy efficiency is a major issue in this country BUT if we continue to allow population increases such as this to continue there will be ZERO chances at reducing emissions or complying with the Kyoto accords. It is ludicrous for our government to initiate and enact stringent emsiion requirements and programs on this nations existing populace when these expensive and miniscule gains are offset by mass immigrations population growth. Environmentalists where are you? Why do you not address this?

  Posted by Chet Polwin on Jun 2, 2003 at 12:48 AM

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