Go Slower on Global Warming
Bush’s policy proposals contradict his scientific statements.

By Paul Georgia, an environmental policy analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute & managing editor of the Cooler Heads newsletter
June 12, 2001 1:00 p.m.

resident Bush is casting about for a global-warming policy that will placate his critics and reassure his supporters. The result, as revealed yesterday at a White House press conference, is more funding to study global warming and subsidies to develop carbon-dioxide-reducing technology. The only people who will be placated, however, are those who will be the recipients of federal largesse.

When Bush dumped the Kyoto Protocol, which would have put undue burden on the world economy with little environmental benefit, he did so abruptly without consulting his domestic and foreign allies or communicating the basis for his decision. As a result, he has suffered a constant barrage of criticism from home and abroad, pushing him to take politically expedient actions that aren't scientifically justified.

Bush's policy proposals contradict his scientific statements. He stated, consistent with the findings of a recent National Academy of Sciences report, that there are still major uncertainties behind global-warming claims. We still don't know, for example, how much natural variation has contributed to the warming we've seen. If we don't know that then we don't know how much man has contributed, if at all.

He also pointed out that nobody knows what constitutes a dangerous amount of warming. Contrary to popular treatment of this issue, not all warming is bad. Every winter retirees flock to warmer climates by the thousands, for instance. We have evidence that humankind flourished during the Medieval Optimum, a period when global temperatures were higher than they are now. Without knowing how much man has contributed or how much warming is safe, there is no way to formulate reasonable policies.

Moreover, the best available empirical evidence suggests that there will be very little warming over the next 100 years and that the amount of warming likely to occur may on the whole be beneficial.

Under these circumstances Bush's proposed "Climate Change Research Initiative," to further study global warming, and "Climate Change Technology Initiative," to develop "clean" technology, which at first glance seem reasonable, are really nothing of the sort. They seem more like political paeans to his critics and an abandonment of his conservative political base.

Global-warming research is already funded to the tune of $2 billion per year. The main result of this largesse hasn't been good science, but rather the creation of a huge political constituency of scientists who fight to maintain or increase federal funding levels.

What this means is that we are steadily bombarded by "scientific" reports, such as the one released by the National Academy of Sciences last week, stating that global warming is a potential, but poorly understood problem that (surprise, surprise) requires more federal funding.

The media, environmentalists, and their political allies then "interpret" these reports to support extremist political agendas, which often have far more to do with fighting the free enterprise system than protecting the environment.

As noted in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, in an editorial by Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at MIT and a member of the National Academy of Sciences panel that prepared the report, "Science in the public arena, is commonly used as a source of authority with which to bludgeon political opponents and propagandize uninformed citizens." Which is exactly how the report is being used. But, according to Lindzen, "Our primary conclusion was that despite some knowledge and agreement, the science is by no means settled." Moreover, the areas of agreement, "tells us nothing relevant to policy discussions," he said.

The Bush administration must understand that further funding of science is not the answer. The first reason is that the massive amounts of funding already dedicated to this issue has not turned up a causal link between man's carbon dioxide emissions and catastrophic global warming. As noted by Dr. Lindzen at a March 1 congressional briefing, sponsored by the Cooler Heads Coalition, "the longer you look for something without finding it the less probable it is."

Since 1988, the federal government has poured billions of dollars into global warming research looking for this link. Normally, after so much time and expenditure it could be safely determined that the link doesn't exist. But when $2 billion are at stake scientists are much more likely to keep the issue alive, and ask for even more money to find it.

The second reason Bush should avoid more science funding is that federally funded scientific studies that contradict environmental dogma are often ignored or maligned by political interests. So even if good science were produced, there's little reason to believe it would make the expected impact. This has happened before.

During the 1970s it was widely believed that acid rain was the cause of dying forests, the acidification of the Adirondack lakes and other environmental problems in the Northeastern United States. Congress commissioned a 10-year, $600 million study of the problem. The National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP) concluded, "There is no evidence of widespread forest damage from current ambient levels of acid rain in the United States." It also concluded that acid rain does not contribute significantly to the acidity of lakes and streams. In fact, the Adirondack lakes are no more acidic than they were before the Industrial Revolution.

The study was widely hailed by the scientific community. Scientists at the 1988 International Conference on Acid Precipitation accepted NAPAP's findings wholeheartedly. Yet, such scientific endorsement mattered little. The EPA and environmental groups relentlessly attacked the report and shamelessly impugned the good reputations of the project's scientists. Congress simply ignored the report even though it had mandated that it guide priorities for the Clean Air Act.

On the global-warming front, the media and politicians have also largely ignored several important global warming studies that strongly contradict catastrophic global warming scenarios.

Sound science rarely influences political decisions, especially if it contradicts a powerful political agenda. Bad science, on the other hand, that supports a political agenda somehow becomes conventional wisdom. In the world of policy-making, science is a servant to political interests, and when it doesn't serve those interests it is easily cast aside. In the case of the acid rain study, political interests were willing to undermine good science to advance their agenda, an act that has needlessly cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

At his press conference Bush eloquently explained to the American people the absence of any scientific justification for global warming policies. Unfortunately, he then proceeded to propose some. The American people aren't stupid. An effort to communicate the facts to the American people would go much further in raising approval ratings than making unjustified political concessions to leftwing radicals.