Posted: 10/30/2003
NCPA's Experts Available to Discuss Climate Change Science As Senate Debates How to Curb it
NCPA’s Experts Available to Discuss Climate Change Science As Senate Debates How to Curb it
October 30, 2003 – The Senate is expected to vote later today on a proposal sponsored by Senators McCain (R-AZ) and Lieberman (D-CT) to unilaterally impose energy restrictions similar to those called for under the Kyoto Protocol. Experts from the National Center for Policy Analysis’ (NCPA) E-Team warned that the proposal would be bad economic policy based on bad science.
“Facts do not support the assertion that science backs the Climate Stewardship Act,” said NCPA Adjunct Scholar S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service. “The UN-IPCC science panel, which is most often sited by supporters of this proposal, based its conclusions on three major claims. And although widely publicized, none of them pass muster. They have been or are being disproved by actual data.” For example:
- The IPCC claims the 20th century was the warmest in the past 1,000 years. This is based entirely on a manhandling of the available data. Two Canadian scientists have just published a detailed audit that exposes a shocking set of errors; it permits anyone to independently verify their counter-claim.
- The IPCC claims the climate is currently warming. This is based solely on surface thermometer data. It is contradicted not only by superior observations from weather satellites, but also by independent data from radiosondes carried on weather balloons. In addition, proxy data from tree rings, ice cores, etc. confirm that there is no current significant warming.
- The IPCC claims climate models, which incorporate the observed increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases, can accurately reproduce the temperature record of the past 100 years. That assertion is inaccurate. True, the models employ enough adjustable parameters to mimic the global average temperature, but once the record is deconstructed according to latitude and altitude, any agreement with model results disappears.
“This backdoor attempt to enact the Kyoto Protocol on global warming will do nothing to actually reduce its threat,” said NCPA Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett. “It will, however, hurt the economy at a time when we are just beginning to recover.”
Added Sandy Liddy Bourne, NCPA Adjunct Scholar and American Legislative Exchange Council Scholar: “Even if the worst-case scenarios regarding global warming are true, McCain-Lieberman would do nothing to stop it. It would, however, amount to a new energy tax that targets those who can least afford it – people on fixed incomes such as the poor and the elderly.”