The White House was finally shamed into putting up Dr. Robert
Watson to
state the government's case at the House Small Business Committee
hearing,
which after one postponement finally took place yesterday
(Wednesday, July
29). Watson is known in scientific circles for having helped stage
NASA's
phony "ozone hole over Kennebunkport" press briefing in February
1992,
enabling then-Senator Al Gore to goad the Bush administration into
advancing
the CFC production ban by five years. Now with the World Bank
Environment
Program and newly installed as chairman of the IPCC, Watson's role
is to do
for global warming what he did for ozone depletion.
But Watson didn't fare well in his only other House debate with
dissenting
scientists, and there were strong indications that he would have
preferred
to pass on this one. Unfortunately, the White House last week was
making
righteous noises about Congress stifling public discussion of the
global
warming issue, so it was embarrassing when their "experts" backed
out of the
hearing one after the other. Watson finally got the assignment and
Dan
Lashoff of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) had to
stick by his
earlier commitment to appear.
It wasn't pretty. Watson and Lashoff, while acknowledging little
scientific evidence for "what is," went into lengthy recitations of
the
largely discredited "what ifs" and made the usual claim that
without
government action the future was too horrible to contemplate.
Watson was
forced to admit that the climate models that served as the basis
for the
Framework Convention on Climate Change were wrong and cannot
account for any
current weather patterns. He countered that while those models were
no
good, current climate models are right on the money. But satellite
data
expert Dr. John Christy demolished that argument, pointing out that
current
models predict more warming in the troposphere than at the surface,
the
opposite of what has been observed.
Christy also demonstrated that conclusions about human-induced
climate
change based on selective extremes in weather patterns is faulty
and
misleading, which effectively dismissed Dan Lashoff's presentation.
While
reporters have focused their attention on heat and drought in Texas
and
Florida, they have overlooked the fact that the West has been cool.
In
fact, for the nation as a whole, he said, temperatures for June
1998 were
below average.
The presentations by Dr. Christy, University of Virginia
climatologist Dr.
Patrick Michaels, atmospheric physicist Dr. S. Fred Singer, and,
presenting
an economic perspective, Marlo Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise
Institute, covered much ground that was familiar to those following
the
global warming debate. Flood and drought patterns over the last
century
show no increasing trend. Surface data are not global and are
affected by
urban growth. Temperature fluctuations are well within the range of
natural variations. Scientific understanding of climate is still
insufficient to predict changes over time, natural or man-made.
It was a difficult week for proponents of global warming, and
the debate
only made it more so. Despite an orchestrated effort by Clinton and
Gore to
portray Congressional attacks on global warming science as
anti-environmental, efforts by activists to move their agenda
forward has
not been the cake-walk they had hoped. Last Thursday, House members
put a
stop to the Administration's efforts to implement the Global
Climate Treaty
without Senate ratification. As reported by the Washington Times,
House
sentiment against the Treaty was so strong—and suspicion of the
Environmental Protection Agency so high—that the Administration's
supporters
admitted they didn't have the votes.
That was clear during the floor debate Thursday night. Few
members,
Republican or Democrat, expressed support for the Treaty or for
attempts by
the Administration to start carrying it out. Many noted that the
Treaty has
no chance of passing the Senate. Proponents did win narrow approval
of an
amendment allowing the EPA to continue conducting "informational
seminars"
on the global warming hypothesis, but the amendment's author,
Wisconsin
Democrat David Obey, warned the Agency that if it crosses the line
from
education to advocacy, "it does so at its peril."
The stakes are high on this issue. Quite apart from the fact
that
developing countries want no part of any mandatory worldwide
greenhouse gas
abatement scheme, energy reality is making Kyoto's emission
reduction
targets more fanciful by the day. In the United States, the motor
vehicle
fleet continues to tilt toward light trucks and sport utility
vehicles,
gasoline prices have cratered, and the auto industry is in the
middle of a
price war. Perhaps it wasn't so surprising then that a front-page
story in
the July 27 Washington Times, which outlined the controversy over
global
warming science, was written not by the science/environment
reporter but by
the Times' White House correspondent Paul Bedard, a reporter who
has been
hammering the Clinton Administration on a whole range of issues.
Trends like these, of course, make the alternative energy
industry
increasingly anxious over the fate of its subsidies and tax
credits.
Currently, utilities offering solar, wind, and biomass renewables
can write
off as much as a third of the cost of generating electricity from
such
sources; capital costs can be depreciated in five years instead of
the
standard twenty. Add in a generous helping of subsidies from the
Department
of Energy, and the cost of renewables can be lowered to the point
where some
eco-conscious buyers can sign-up. Toss out the tax breaks and
subsidies—and there are rumblings of that—and you can toss out
"green"
electricity as well. This is why alternative energy lobbyists are
pushing
Congress to enact a "renewables portfolio standard," which, no
matter how
you slice it, is a quota.
After yesterday's hearing, which was chaired by Rep. James
Talent of
Missouri, activists now have to be looking askance at their allies
in
Congress. Several Republican members of the House Small Business
Committee, in response to the testimony, expressed strong
opposition to
funding the Clinton Administration's $6.3 billion global warming
request
package. Minority party members had so little confidence in the
government's case that they largely boycotted the testimony rather
than risk
having it appear that attacking the Administration's scientific
credibility
was a bipartisan effort.
It's all for naught. The Congress, by setting the terms for any
future
"seminars" and public discussions conducted by the Clinton
Administration,
has paved the way for many such hearings, and the Democrats can't
boycott
them all. What is more, in just the past month a major television
outlet
and a mainstream news magazine with national (and international)
circulation
have expressed strong interest in taking a critical look at both
the EPA and
the politics surrounding the global warming issue. Don't look now,
but
those promoting sound science may actually be getting a foot in the
door.
TW2 is compiled by SEPP Research Associate Candace Crandall. The
Science & Environmental Policy Project web site
(www.sepp.org) for
additional issues and commentary.
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