Last week, just days after Fenton Communication's El Nino/global warming press
demo, Vice President Al Gore staged a press briefing of his own to gin up
support for the Clinton Administration's $6.3 billion package of energy
subsidies, propaganda campaigns, and research set-asides (climate modeling,
studies claiming negative impacts from warmer temperatures, etc.). Said Mr.
Gore: "We know that as a result of global warming, there is more heat in the
climate system, and it is heat that drives El Nino....Unless we act, we can
expect more extreme weather in the years ahead."
Fortunately, not all reporters bought this claim. Some even looked past the
eco-activist A-list and consulted a few scientists. Wrote William Cook in the
weekly magazine U.S. News & World Report: "The vice president says global
warming is making weather more severe. Is it?...Historical evidence from
earlier centuries...may call into doubt claims of a global warming-El Nino
link." Cook cites a report by Australian National University Professor
Richard Grove in May 28 issue of the journal Nature showing that in the last 500
years--and long before anyone dreamed of global warming--there were 10 El
Ninos every bit as severe as the one just ended.
Up on Capitol Hill, Congressmen are beginning to grumble about that $6.3
billion; "Dear Colleague" letters are flying fast and furious. The Vice
President and his minions are prepared, however. Gore is already setting the
stage for press briefings on the cool weather phase, the La Nina. Any
blizzards this winter--you can bank on this--will be blamed on global warming.
The National Wilderness Institute (based in Alexandria, Virginia) and EPA
Watch just put U.S. EPA Administrator Carol Browner on the hot seat with a report
documenting fraud, abuse, and mismanagement at the highest levels of the EPA.
Backed by internal EPA memos and other supporting documents, The People vs.
Carol Browner: EPA on Trial accuses the Agency of, among other things,
creating and submitting backdated documents in a federal court case; requesting that
career EPA scientists lobby members of Congress, in violation of federal
statutes; establishing unwritten and unpublicized regulations, in violation of
the Congressional Review Act; and stonewalling Congressional efforts to obtain
an EPA memo outlining the Agency's strategy for implementing restrictions on
greenhouse gas emissions without prior Senate ratification of the Kyoto
Protocol.
Interestingly, some of the most damning testimony comes from EPA scientists
themselves. EPA microbiologist David Lewis, the target of an EPA smear
campaign after he publicly criticized the Agency two years ago on the pages of
the journal Nature, said EPA Administrator Carol Browner has buried scientists
in bureaucratic red tape and allowed the Agency's science section to languish
without a permanent head for much of her 6-year administration. Under
Browner, said Lewis, the Agency has developed an "irrational approach" to protecting
the environment, giving a higher priority to promulgating regulations than to
developing the underlying science.
Shortly after the NWI/EPA Watch report hit the newspapers, 13 EPA scientists
and staff penned a letter to the Washington Times confirming the content of
the
report, "protesting fraud or waste...involving hundreds of millions of
dollars, and alerting the public that EPA regulations and enforcement actions based on
poor science stand to harm rather than protect public health and the
environment." The full text of this letter is posted on The Science &
Environmental Policy Project web site at www.sepp.org; the full NWI/EPA Watch
report is on-line at www.nwi.org.
Also last week, White House officials finally released to members of Congress
documents they say will support the Administration's cost analysis of the
Kyoto Protocol. The House Committee that requested the documents--three months
ago--is now going over the numbers.
The Associated Press reported May 31st that Sister Patricia Daly and "other
holy activists" from the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility are
using an estimated $90 billion in investments from 275 religious orders
nationwide to pressure U.S. corporations on environmental issues, especially
global warming. Despite the cult overtones, many U.S. churches appear to have
found Mother Earth a much safer topic in recent years than hassling
congregants about the ten commandments. In this case, corporate officers should brace
themselves; Sister Daly has signed on for the long haul. "When the religious
community is involved," she says, "it's not a one- or two-year plan."
In Britain, government officials announced that a $16 million grant from the
European Union and additional subsidies from the British government will help
underwrite construction of a $46 million woodburning power plant in South
Yorkshire. The plant, to be fueled by scrub willows grown on marginal
land, is expected to provide electricity for 18,000 people--providing a profit is much
less certain.
Meanwhile the less politically correct Taiwanese have uttered the
unspeakable. Taipower, the Taiwanese electric utility, concluded in a report released last
month that shifting that country increasingly to nuclear energy would be the
most cost-effective method of reducing carbon dioxide emissions without
sacrificing economic development. Despite Taiwan's history of often violent
anti-nuclear demonstrations, Taipower proposed adding six new nuclear reactors
to its existing capacity. The utility also reported that Japan and Korea have
come to a similar conclusion and will boost their reliance on nuclear to 40
percent by the year 2010.
Finally--since we're speaking of things nuclear--an update on an item we first
reported in the November 16, 1997 edition of "The Week That Was" about an
eco-activist demonstration against the launch of the plutonium-powered Cassini
space probe. Our source was an article in the weekly policy magazine The New
Republic by staff writer Stephen Glass, who quoted organizers saying that
perhaps 100,000 demonstrators had shown their support "by staying home."
As it turns out, the inventive, twenty-something Mr. Glass very likely
fabricated that story. In fact, editors at The New Republic found that Mr.
Glass fabricated at least two-thirds of the 41 articles he wrote for their
publication, which is why they took the rather intolerant step of firing him
last month. Mr. Glass is now garnering sympathy from his fellow
journalists by claiming that being fired has made him suicidal--a good strategy in a
Washington culture where lying and cheating isn't considered nearly as
wrong as calling someone on it. In any case, scratch the Cassini anti-nuke
demonstration.
Many similar events are genuine, unfortunately.
Until next week...
TW2 is compiled by SEPP Research Associate Candace Crandall. Be sure to check
The Science & Environmental Policy Project web site (www.sepp.org) for new articles and information.
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