OPINION/COMMENTARY

G8 Statement Affirms Bush on Global Warming

The Bush Administration’s position on global warming received a strong endorsement in the concluding communiqué to the G8 Summit of industrialized nations this week. The joint statement affirmed concern over the possibility of future climate change and echoed many past statements of U.S. policy that any governmental response to global warming be gradual, be based on technological transformation, and proceed only “as the science justifies.” "The G8 communiqué on climate change is a victory by President Bush on behalf of all the people of the world, especially the poor in developing countries,” said Myron Ebell, Director of Global Warming & International Environmental Policy. “The Kyoto Protocol’s dead-end approach of mandatory reductions in energy consumption was hardly mentioned. Instead, the leaders at the G8 summit have recognized that global warming must be put in the context of other, more serious challenges.” While some observers had hoped that Summit host Tony Blair would leverage his relationship with the President to pull the U.S. closer to the European position, the final agreement makes it clear that the opposite is the case. Particularly now that the majority of the nations pledged to cut emissions under the Kyoto Protocol are realizing that they will fail to reach their reduction targets, the consensus among industrialized nations has shifted definitively against the agenda of energy poverty....

A Change in Climate

One of the key issues discussed at last week's G8 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland, was global warming. Although the conclusions were largely overshadowed by the London terrorist attacks, they demonstrate a huge shift in the way world leaders are addressing climate change. Before the meeting began, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair put US President George Bush under pressure. The US is the biggest emitter in the developed world, said Blair, so it should be responsible and join the European Union in its efforts to decrease and eventually eliminate greenhouse gases emissions. Indeed, the US was and still is the only member of the G8 that has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol. From the very beginning Bush had made it clear that he had no intention to ratify, because the economic impact of the climate treaty is too high if compared with the dubious environmental benefits that compliance with its targets would bring about. So the expectation was that the meeting would produce a joint "agreement to disagree" on climate policies. In other words, the G8 was expected to result in no significant political change. Instead the group issued a joint statement on climate: the leaders of the eight most industrialized countries agreed (although they didn't put it this way) that seven of them were wrong and just one was right. The one was President Bush. The extent to which the American position on Kyoto has been endorsed by the others doesn't lie just in the fact that the Kyoto Protocol is not even mentioned in the document -- as the White House negotiators had asked long before the meeting. The point is that Kyoto supporters -- especially European leaders -- rejected the very logic behind Kyoto....

Survey shows climatologists are split on global warming

A recent survey of climatologists from more than 20 nations has revealed that scientists are evenly split on whether humans are responsible for changes in global climate; these findings refute a 2004 study that claimed that there is a scientific consensus that global warming is real and primarily caused by humans.

In December 2004, Naomi Oreskes published an article in the Washington Post that summarized her examination of 928 scientific papers on global warming. She claims that:

* A review of scientific literature showed that scientists were in unanimous agreement that global warming is occurring and is being caused primarily by humans.
* Since human activities are part of the reason the Earth's climate is heating up, we need to stop repeating nonsense about the uncertainty of global warming and start talking seriously about the right approach to address it, she adds.

Since then, two separate studies published in the London Telegraph dispute Oreskes' findings, claiming instead that climatologists are evenly split on the issue:

* Benny Peiser conducted his own analysis on the same set of documents as Oreskes and concluded that only one-third backed the consensus view; only one percent did so explicitly.
* Dennis Bray surveyed hundreds of climatologists and asked them the question: To what extent do you agree or disagree that climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes?
* He received 530 responses from 27 different countries and reported that more climatologists "strongly disagreed" than "strongly agreed" that climate change is mostly attributable to humans.

The results of these surveys suggest that the consensus is not all that strong and indicate that Oreskes’ conclusion is not as obvious as once stated.

Source: James M. Taylor, "Survey Shows Climatologists Are Split on Global Warming," Heartland Institute, June 1, 2005; Naomi Oreskes, "Undeniable Global Warming," Washington Post, December 26, 2004; and Robert Matthews, "Leading scientific journals are censoring debate on global warming," London Telegraph, May 1, 2005.

For text:

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=17181

For Oreskes text (subscription required):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26065-2004Dec25.html

For London Telegraph text (subscription required):

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/01/wglob01.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/05/01/ixworld.html


No Blood for Oil

So after London, what next? Al Qaeda may seek to target our energy supply. Last February a message was posted to the al Qaeda-affiliated al Qalah (the Fortress) website entitled "Map of Future al Qaeda Operations." It stated among other things that the terrorists would make it a priority to attack oil facilities in the Middle East. According to the posting, attacking the U.S. energy base in the Gulf would have three effects: Damaging the American economy; embarrassing the United States and emboldening other countries seeking to secure their own energy supplies; and forcing the U.S. to deploy further troops to the region to stabilize the situation. "The U.S. will reach a stage of madness after the targeting of its oil interests," the terrorists reason, "which will facilitate the creation of a new front and the drowning of the U.S. in a new quagmire that will be worse than the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan." The terrorists understand that they can influence oil markets through directed violence, and thus exploit a U.S. critical vulnerability. Furthermore, the more money the United States sends to the region purchasing energy, the more is available to underwrite the terrorists and their beliefs by their state sponsors and other supporters in the region. This is an enduring pattern; since the oil shocks of the 1970s, the United States has sent uncounted billions of dollars into a region that has converted them into weapons of mass destruction programs, globally networked terrorist groups, and a hostile, internationally promoted anti-Western ideology....

Fish and Wildlife Service Agrees to Perform Status Reviews for 27 Species in Response to PLF Lawsuit

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that it will review the status of 31 listed species in California and Nevada in response to a lawsuit brought by Pacific Legal Foundation earlier this year. PLF charged the federal government with failing to conduct the mandatory status reviews that are required by the Endangered Species Act for 193 California species. Twenty-seven of the 31 species the agency will review were included in PLF’s suit. “We’re pleased the Fish and Wildlife Service has decided to comply with the law and perform the required status reviews,” said Pacific Legal Foundation Principal Attorney Rob Rivett. “The agency’s decision is a step in the right direction towards making sure the endangered species list is current and Californians are not being unnecessarily burdened by regulations to protect species that may no longer need special protection.” “We will still be going forward with the lawsuit, however, to ensure that the seriously overdue status reviews of the remaining 166 species also are performed,” Rivett said. Under Section 4(c)(2) of the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. Section 1533(c)(2), the government must perform status reviews of listed species every five years to determine whether, based on current best available science, each listed species should have its status changed (i.e., either lowered from endangered to threatened or raised from threatened to endangered), or have its status as a listed species removed because protection is no longer justified....

Who's Ignoring Science?

For years, Democrats and their environmentalist allies have been accusing the Bush administration of "ignoring the science" they claim shows humanity is warming the planet. It's a debatable accusation that we'll return to in a moment. What's not debatable is the utter hypocrisy of the Democrats, who ever since the Clinton administration have successfully forced pesticide regulators at the Environmental Protection Agency to ignore the science when establishing pesticide regulations. They nearly derailed the appointment of the new EPA Administrator this spring over this issue and now they're advising the Bush administration to defy a 2003 Federal Appeals Court order requiring that the EPA consider human toxicity data if available. Without reliable exposure and human toxicity data, EPA regulators must rely on worst case assumptions and are required to apply additional 10-fold "uncertainty factors" to their risk calculations. All too often this means elimination of specific uses of pesticides, hurting farmers and consumers by making it harder and more expensive to protect our food supply and homes from pests....

The Robber Baron

How much should drivers be forced to pony up at the pump to pay off trial lawyers? A penny a gallon? Two cents? How about $66 million? Most motorists would vote for nothing, and by a pretty wide margin. But unfortunately, motorists aren't organized politically to influence election campaigns. Toxic tort law firms are, and do. And if Fred Baron, ringleader of the infamous Baron & Budd law firm, can keep Republicans and truly consumer-minded Democrats in Congress at bay on the Energy Bill now before Congress, motorists can expect to be stuck paying him and his fellow attorneys a penny or two every time they gas up for decades to come. Now, Baron "all but" hopes his Senate muscle will keep open his pipeline to what he believes is another financial windfall -- municipal lawsuits over MTBE water contamination. The House has passed an Energy Bill that would exempt MTBE makers from liability in suits claiming their product is defective. The Senate has no such provision. Baron wants to keep it out and prevent any compromise such as one now proposed to create a trust fund to deal with contamination from the bill. Why? Not public health, nor municipalities' interests. It's money for him and his firm; they are involved in more than half the 90 outstanding MTBE suits. In opposing the provision to limit defective product claims against oil companies, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., intoned: "It is bad public policy to put special interests above public health concerns. Companies need to be held accountable when their product or their misconduct causes the public harm." Will Boxer, who received $909,033 from lawyers and law firms for her 2000 election run, including $5,500 from Baron & Budd, now apply that standard to Baron & Budd and support a compromise creating a trust fund to clean up the water that would serve everyone but the lawyers? Will other senators?....

Arctic Pollution Linked to Bird Droppings

A major source of chemical contamination in the Arctic turns out to be bird droppings. Wind currents and human activities long have been blamed for fouling the pristine Arctic. But a study by a group of Canadian researchers found that the chemical pollution in areas frequented by seabirds can be many times higher than in nearby regions. Researchers led by Jules Blais of the University of Ottawa studied several ponds below the cliffs at Cape Vera on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic. Scientists report in Friday's issue of the journal Science that the ponds, which receive falling guano from a colony of northern fulmars that nest on the cliffs, have highly elevated amounts of chemicals. "If long-range transport was the only thing bringing these chemicals north, we would expect to see a very even distribution," Blais said in a telephone interview. But the chemicals are concentrated in some places, he said, "and we have found a reason ... they can follow biological connections." Blais calls it the boomerang effect....

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