Well, you may have boiled it down a bit too much<VBG>....here is a more recent overview from the Detroit News:
Hot Air on 'Global Warming'
Pesident Bill Clinton recently declared: "The science is clear and compelling: We humans are changing the global climate." If America fails to move swiftly to reduce greenhouse emissions, he added, "9,000 square miles of Florida, Louisiana and other coastal areas will be flooded." What's more: The world would see 50,000 more cases of malaria every year, along with all kinds of other horrible diseases.
Based on these dire predictions, the Clinton administration wants to commit this nation to binding restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions at a December summit in Kyoto, Japan. Such a move would impose $1,600 in higher fuel costs on every American. It might also require a huge leap forward in government controls over economic activity to enforce the emission regulations. The automobile industry is likely to be the first to be taxed and controlled - out of existence, if Vice-President Al Gore has his way.
All of this is based on the contention that there is a scientific "consensus" that global warming is a proven fact. But that has never been the case. Most climate scientists, if pushed, will admit that the evidence falls well short of conclusive. The real argument has been whether preventive measures should be taken in the absence of solid proof.
Moreover, recent articles in Science and the New Scientist magazines report that new climate data are raising severe doubts about the whole premise of global warming. Advocates have long held that greenhouse emissions would produce environmental apocalypse because of something called positive water-vapor feedbacks. As humans burn more fossil fuels, the carbon dioxide levels on earth would increase, they contend.
The rise in temperature from carbon emissions increases evaporation from the oceans, pushing more water vapor into the earth's atmosphere, the theory goes. The water vapor - itself a greenhouse gas - prevents the earth's heat from being radiated out. Over time, this would intensify the initial warming from carbon dioxide emissions, ushering in the scenarios projected by President Clinton.
But the facts don't seem to confirm the theory. Satellite temperature readings during the past two decades show that even though ground temperatures have risen somewhat, they have not heated the troposphere (the bottom layer of the earth's atmosphere.)
Indeed, Simon Tett, one of the top global warming modelers and a leading author of a recent report by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - the main source of information for the administration - admitted to the New Scientist that the panel may have overestimated the extent of positive feedbacks in its studies. "I believe that the upper troposphere is probably drier than the models suggest," he said.
And while satellite readings show no increases in tropospheric temperatures, throwing into doubt the positive feedback hypothesis, the May issue of Science reported that more sophisticated computer models developed at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., suggest that the half-a-degree or so increase in ground temperature detected during the past 150 years may be explained by natural variation.
In sum, the president's apocalyptic predictions are just so much political hot air. Far more study is warranted before launching America and the world on a fantastically expensive course to combat a problem that may not even exist. Every member of Michigan's congressional delegation should have a high interest in insisting that scare tactics don't overwhelm good science on this issue.
Copyright 1997, The Detroit News |
