President George W. Bush announced his opposition to an international global warming treaty citing the harm it could do the US economy and the costs it would impose upon its workers. Needless to say, the decision not to pursue approval of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change generated a firestorm of criticism around the world.
Given the outcry from so many quarters, it would seem that there are few arguments to support the American position. However, this would be an incorrect conclusion.
The Kyoto Protocol would require 38 developed nations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants by 5 percent between 1990 and 2010.
Achieving this goal would require increased government interventions to control greenhouse-gas emissions and suppress the use of carbon-based fuels, including the imposition of new transnational interventions.
President Bush's comment suggesting that there is "incomplete state of scientific knowledge of the causes of, and solutions to, global climate change" is neither an understatement nor a reflection of ignorance.
For example, there are discrepancies in the temperature trends between the surface of the earth and the atmosphere. And even if there is a current spell of warming, the question remains whether real climate variation over the long term is within the pattern of natural variability.
In making the claim that the twentieth century has been the warmest in the past 1,000 years, the IPCC summary combines data sets that are like apples and oranges. Data derived from tree rings that indicate a stable climate from 1000 to 1900 are added to surface-based thermometer data collected for the 20th century.
Such data massaging as conclusive evidence of dramatic warming over the current century would be rejected in a high-school statistics class. Using tree rings to garner information about past temperature variations ignores other conditions that might affect growing seasons. Rainfall and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations affect tree growth as well as temperature does. And the sample is biased since most of the data comes from Northern Hemisphere countries and from urban "heat islands" or airports.
These continued controversies have kept the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from ratifying and releasing a final report. As it is, most of the documents released to date have many caveats to the cataclysmic global-warming scenario that have escaped many of those who seem to rely upon executive summaries or selective reading.
The IPCC released a Second Assessment Report in 1995 that offered a prediction that warming would range from 1 to 3.5 degrees centigrade by the year 2100. It included a "best estimate" that warming would raise temperatures by 2 degrees centigrade by 2100.
Without citing new evidence to justify such a dramatic change, the Third Assessment Report offered an increase in warming estimates that range from 1.4 to 5.8 degrees centigrade. It reflects a tweaking of the computer-generated climate models by changing assumptions about population growth and economic growth as well as fossil fuels usage. But it ignores the rapid pace at which technologies to aid in emission curbs are advancing.
Even if there is some uncertainty about climate change and human contributions, some policymakers demand that "precautionary" measures be taken that would reduce further risk of global warming.
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