Posted: 08/27/2004
Knee-Jerk Reaction to White House Global Warming News
NCPA Cites Research Showing Earth Not Warming
August 27, 2004 – Experts from the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) criticized today’s editorial in the New York Times for jumping to conclusions the White House did not draw. The editorial takes the White House to task for reporting that any recent global warming may be caused by human activity, but at the same time refuses to do anything about it. The NCPA further stressed the White House report in question relies on computer models proven to be unreliable.
“While folks in the Commerce Department brought this on themselves by clouding the administration’s position on global warming, the New York Times has effectively put words in their mouth,” said NCPA Adjunct Scholar S. Fred Singer. “Just yesterday the paper quoted Dr. James Mahoney saying this report ‘was not supposed to be a conclusive state of the science summary of the administration’s thinking.’”
At issue is a report by Dr. Mahoney, the assistant secretary of commerce and director of government climate research, delivered to Congress Wednesday that asserted federal research shows emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are the only likely explanation for any warming over the last three decades.
Singer noted that there are still disputes about whether the reported surface warming is real or due to contaminated data, but there is little dispute about the absence of such warming in the atmosphere. Both satellite and balloon data agree on this.
The only deviation from this conclusion is a collection of computer climate models, which were the basis for the administration’s report. However, the NCPA noted scientists from the Universities of Rochester and Virginia found that the computer climate models used to assert that the introduction of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide (CO2), into the atmosphere is causing the Earth to warm are in stark contrast to reality. The models suggest that CO2 causes the Earth to warm and that the effect increases with altitude becoming twice as strong at about three miles up. But when the scientists compared the results from the three commonly cited climate models with four independent observational data sets, they found that the actual observations showed the opposite.
“It has become increasingly clear that the science behind the human-induced global warming theory is uncertain at best,” said Dr. Singer. “Rather than being criticized for not endorsing an energy rationing scheme, the administration should be complimented for having established a research program to resolve scientific uncertainties.”
In addition, NCPA Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett points out that the Bush administration has not ignored climate change, as its critics claim. “They simply didn’t buy into costly energy rationing schemes, like Kyoto, that would do nothing to prevent global warming but would hamstring the economy.” Burnett noted that the Administration has long promoted energy efficiency, reducing energy use and resultant emissions as a percentage of GDP or economic growth.