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February 18, 2004
Scientists Condemn White House
The Union of Concerned Scientists spoke out today with a clear condemnation of the White House's blatant attempt to manipulate science to fit their political agenda to do nothing about global warming. Getting the Administration to take meaningful action on global warming may be very important to our forest's future.
The Bush administration has deliberately and systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry at home and abroad, a group of about 60 influential scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, said in a statement issued today.The sweeping charges were later discussed in a conference call with some of the scientists that was organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent organization that focuses on technical issues and has often taken stands at odds with administration policy. The organization also issued a 37-page report today that it said detailed the accusations.
Together, the two documents accuse the administration of repeatedly censoring and suppressing reports by its own scientists, stacking advisory committees with unqualified political appointees, disbanding government panels that provide unwanted advice, and refusing to seek any independent scientific expertise in some cases.
Posted by jkleissler at February 18, 2004 07:20 PM
Comments
This report only states what we knew all along. Why did the HFI pass the Saenate 80-14? With both remaining Democratic candidates (both Senators) abstaining from the vote.
rj
Posted by: RJ at February 20, 2004 09:12 PM
Good question. I have a breakdown on how the Senate voted on the various Amendments and such for HFI. I should maybe do a post on that.
Posted by: jim k at February 21, 2004 09:10 AM
I can't comment on whether or not the Bush administration has distorted scientific fact regarding global warming. I can only tell you what I and many, many other scientists see in the data. 1)Global Warming may be occuring or may not be occuring. Satellite data of the entire troposphere shows either a cooling trend to very slight warming (much less than the models indicate) depending on which decades of the industrial age one chooses to look at. Land temperature records indicate warming, but these records are skewed to be high because of urban temperature sinks. The satellite data is not hampered by this. 2) While CO2 levels have increased in our atmosphere in the last 75 years, the earth has sustained much higher C02 levels in the geologic past. The rock record and ice core record convincingly demonstrate that repeated climate change is the norm for the earth not the exception. 3) The Earth has just come out of a glacial cold (ice age)period and is approaching the end of the interglacial period, when temperatures should reach their maximum naturally. There are oscillations in this cycle as noted in the historical Little Ice Age of medieval times. But given the abundant evidence for glacial cyclicity in the last one million years, we have more to fear from an ice age in the next several thousand years than from global warming. 4) Even assuming the world is warming, though the computer models the UN climate committee uses for this are recognized by many climatologists to be severly flawed, it is not clear that the warming is anthropogenic. The solar constant is now recognized not to be so constant and increases in solar activity and energy reaching the earth have been measured for the last several decades. It is my understanding the current pro-global warming climate models do not take this into effect.
There are more arguments than I can enumerate here, supported by data and objective scientists that do not support the existence of human-induced global warming. Given this, we are wise to be hesitant as a country in joining the Kyoto Treaty, which will do little to alter temperature trends one way or the other, but will force both the developed and developing countries of the world toward poverty and social chaos. If you ruin the economies of the developed countries of the world through carbon taxation as Kyoto envisions, you will condemn the economies of the developing world to decline as well. I favor a large increase in government spending for climate research so we can build accurate and predictive climate models over the next decade or two. The current models are severly flawed and cannot duplicate conditions of the recent past. Yet these models are used by biologists to posit dire circumstances for forests and entire ecosystems. The science supporting global warming is just not convincing at this point given all the counter-data.
Posted by: Sea at February 24, 2004 12:42 PM
Well, mostly I'm into big trees and natural forests, especially in the ANF, and;
I'm not overly concerned about global warming, but;
The CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is the highest in 150,000 years, it is increasing by unprecedented rates, and ten of the hottest years recorded were all since 1987 (granted we haven't been recording more than 125 years).
The hottest years data includes correction factors for urban 'sinks'.
And 20 of the concerned scientists were Nobel laureates.
I believe that my recollections of deep snows every year when I was a child are a result of my being so short at the time.
No, I'm not running around worrying about global warming, but I'm sure not denying the fact that it is happening.
rj
Posted by: RJ at February 27, 2004 05:35 PM
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