Unfavorable news about global warming just keeps raining down on the Clinton administration. No one from Vice President Al Gore's team pushing the issue will let on that they might be all wet. So we will.
Last month, the National Research Council released a report raising questions about the accuracy of data supporting global warming claims. The prestigious scientific body didn't put it in those words, to be sure, but that was the upshot of the study's main finding.
NRC noted the federal government's lack of progress ''toward developing and maintaining a credible integrated climate observing system, consequently limiting the ability to document adequately climate change.''
Didn't the U.S. sign on to a treaty based on sound science? Well, that subject now may be open to debate. And the report, titled ''Adequacy of Climate Observing Systems,'' hardly disposes of the problem.
Among the tools employed, the report says that scientists have relied on ''low-tech, human-intensive observing methods'' as an explanation for trends marked to date. But in addressing such methods elsewhere, the report noted, ''Deficiencies in the accuracy, quality and continuity of the records, however, still place serious limitations on the confidence that can be placed in the research results.''
One table, in fact, shows that the ''application of nine of the 10 principles of climate monitoring needs improvement.''
Maybe no one was supposed to notice. But the news got picked up in this paper and others. For some time now, this page has pointed to troubling inconsistencies and suspect data plaguing climate change science.
But the administration is bent on meeting the Kyoto Protocol's tough air pollution standards, no matter the cost. And costly it will be.
A study from the American Farm Bureau Federation projected that ranchers' and farmers' incomes would get cut as much as 50% if the global warming deal the Clinton administration caved in to in December 1997 goes into effect. The study also showed that agriculture production costs will rise nearly 9%.
The administration, though, hasn't been too interested in discussing, much less disclosing, competing analyses. The Farm Bureau said the industry has published three studies on the treaty's effect while the Clinton folks have yet to release their own.
We know why.
Even before Gore gave away the store in Kyoto, the treaty was a dead letter in the Senate. Now the administration is quietly trying to achieve treaty goals through the regulatory process.
A renewed emphasis on improving climate science would be a better path to take. The administration also might consider withdrawing altogether from the climate change convention inked in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and then ratified by the Senate in 1994 - at least until there is better information. Article 26 of that accord allows countries to withdraw, provided they give a one-year notice.
Now just might be the time to return a measure of sanity, and yes, real science.
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