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6/12/00 10:25 a.m.
Not So Hot News
The Clinton administration's latest overheated report on global warming.

By Jonathan H. Adler, editor of Ecology, Liberty & Property

ust in time for the dog days of summer, the Clinton administration will release its National Assessment on “The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change” today. The report is the Administration's official prognosis for what climate change (“global warming” to you and me) could mean for the United States. Based on computer models, the report presents “reasonable scenarios” of what continued emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases might do to the planet. Such model predictions are notoriously unreliable, and have trouble forecasting the present. No matter. They are tremendously useful at generating scare stories of a greenhouse apocalypse, to which the Vice President can appeal when he calls for environmental protection to become civilization's “central organizing principle.”

Early drafts of the report came under fierce criticism for selectively emphasizing worst-case scenarios; even analysts at the Environmental Protection Agency thought that it was too alarmist. Changes were made, yet the report still accentuates the negative. For instance, the report concedes that a modest warming would be a boon for America's forests. Yet the report stresses that increased timber growth could reduce industry profits by producing a glut of trees!

What the report fails to acknowledge, despite its revisions, is that the more we learn about potential human impacts on the global climate system, the less we have to fear. As computer models improve, their predictions become less dire. Any human contribution to global warming will be modest. Moreover, any warming that occurs will be concentrated in higher latitudes, in winter and at night. A growing body of research suggests that such a pattern of warming would generate fewer harms than benefits, ranging from lengthened growing seasons to fewer temperature-related deaths.

Environmental groups, and the Vice President, would like to use the National Assessment as Exhibit A in their campaign for U.S. ratification of a United Nations global-warming treaty. Before the report was even issued, activists were calling it an "alarm bell" and urging policymakers to take heed. That the full study includes numerous caveats is irrelevant; headlines trumpet disaster, not hedged forecasts or uncertainty. Some greens hope that the report will help make global warming an issue in November. A massive Turner-funded ad campaign is reportedly in the works, and the Vice President is expected to make the environment an issue. Even with gas prices at astronomical highs, expect the warming debate to heat up as the year progresses.

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