September 1997 Vol. XIV, No. 5

The campaign to convince Americans that the Planet is feverish (or inevitably becoming so) is developing a feverish intensity.

According to an Associated Press release, ``The administration has until December to rally the public and Congress behind a US commitment to tough new emissions limits, which Vice President Al Gore hopes to bring to international treaty talks in Kyoto, Japan. An early October White House meeting is planned to cajole business leaders into speaking out for the emissions limits.''

It's rather like the Clinton Health Care Reform campaign: conferences are mushrooming around the country to change the climate of opinion. Even the cast of characters is being recycled. John Garamendi, former insurance commissioner of California and author of a ``managed competition'' plan, is now second to Bruce Babbitt at the Department of the Interior. Once a consultant for a plan to reinvent (and control) a mere one-seventh of the US economy, he is now teamed up with those who want to oversee the industry of the entire world─for the benefit of our children and grandchildren, of course: Managed competition for all.

On September 3, about 350 persons, most of them probably dependent on federal dollars for their livelihood, gathered in Tucson to hear Clinton spokesmen and local and national experts discuss the impact of Global Climate Change on the Southwestern region. This meeting was held under the auspices of the Udall Center of the University of Arizona, and was supported by your tax dollars through the US Department of the Interior and the US Global Change Research Program. Similar meetings have occurred in other areas, including Chicago and Seattle. Each focused attention on specific concerns of the region, but the underlying assumption was the same: Global climate change is inevitable unless we act now.

Since dramatic climate changes have occurred periodically throughout the history of the Earth, there is every reason to expect similar events in the future. Latter-day experts purport to know when the next change will happen (very soon), what kind of change it will be (catastrophic), and what we can and must do to prevent it (urgently, so we can take credit for forestalling whatever doesn't happen in the next few years).

At the beginning of the program, skeptics in the audience asked Clinton Administration spokesmen about satellite data that show no warming trend.

``We must be careful not to look at just one source of data, especially from satellites,'' replied J. Michael Hall of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

``Will you show data that do demonstrate a long-term warming trend?'' was the follow-up question.

``I'll eat my hat if the conference does not show convincing data for a temperature increase,'' promised Hall, who was not wearing a hat.

Later, Dr. Robert Quayle of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, NC, briefly flashed a viewgraph with unreadable numbers.

``Well, are you convinced now?'' asked State Representative Andy Nichols, MD, with a broad smile as he exited the room.

Dr. Quayle promised that copies of the viewgraph would be available. However, conference staff said they would have to be obtained later. Three weeks later, neither the Udall Center nor the NCDC could supply a copy. Finally, the latter gave us an Internet address: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov. This does contain a graph showing that global mean air surface temperature has increased about 0.3 to 0.6 degrees Celsius since the late 19th century, with most of the increase occurring before the rise in CO₂ levels that began around 1940. Other graphs show a sea level rise of less than 5 inches since 1880. The US greenhouse climate index showed the ``percent of the US area (contiguous 48 states) experiencing conditions consistent with model projections of an enhanced greenhouse effect'': a mean of around 12% since 1980, with 10% expected by chance variation alone. In other words, data from 88% of the US land area were inconsistent with model predictions.

Garamendi asserted that global warming is a fact, caused by ``carbon pollution'' of the atmosphere, with the US as the main perpetrator. ``We do not have the luxury of waiting,'' he said. He himself has already been tromping through the Sierra Nevadas to bid goodbye to the last of the glaciers.

Not everyone seemed so sure. Dr. Robert Dickinson, Regents Professor of Atmospheric Physics, University of Arizona, estimated the probability of global warming to be 50:50. ``We cannot be much more confident than that.'' He also observed that changes made by the US, no matter how severe, will have very little effect on the climate. But maybe they will demonstrate ``leadership.''

The Clinton Administration is not waiting to obtain temperature charts or to convince the 85% of scientists who, according to a Gallup poll, do not believe that ``greenhouse emissions'' will cause catastrophic climate change. He is not waiting for treaty ratification by the US Senate (or even for the Kyoto conference), but is already planning for the implementation of the treaty. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had already prepared 39 "More Tonnes One-Pagers" by May 31, 1994. The proposed regulatory regime includes redefining carbon dioxide, the basic building block for all food, to be a ``hazardous pollutant'' under the Clean Air Act. Other strokes of inspiration: replacing city streetlights with models that turn themselves off (effect on emissions low; costs not calculated but to be borne by local government); national reporting requirements for nonhazardous industrial garbage (effect unknown, costs borne by industry); a national surcharge of $2/ton on waste incinerated or placed in landfills (effect unknown, costs borne by consumers). The main risk (according to the EPA): backlash against environmental regulation. The complete report can be downloaded from http://www.cse.org.

The science of global climate will be the subject of the first symposium sponsored by the Society for Environmental Truth (SET). The meeting will be held in Tucson at Hotel Park on Tuesday, November 11, from 7:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Featured speakers include Dr. Sallie Baliunas, Senior Staff Physicist at the Harvard/Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Dr. Robert Balling, Director of the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University; Dr. John Christy, Associate Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a specialist in satellite temperature measurements; Dr. Roger Davies, Associate Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Arizona; Dr. John M. Wallace, Co-Director of the University of Washington Program on the Environment; and Mrs. JoAnn Stukey Dietrich, who will give an inside view of the proceedings at the September 15 Montreal meeting of the signatories to the International Agreement on Climate Change.

The prominent advocates of global warming, including James Hanson, Stephen Schneider, Tom Wigley, and Kevin Trenberth, were invited to speak but declined to attend. Trenberth said he didn't want to be ``ambushed.'' After first agreeing to come, Ben Santer, editor of the disputed International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, cancelled when he learned that Sallie Baliunas had shown his graph of the purported global warming trend, together with the data points he had excluded (which refuted his conclusions), at the last DDP meeting. (See Access to Energy, July, 1997, and the CD-ROM of the past six annual meetings of DDP.) Criticism from colleagues has affected his personal life, Dr. Santer said, and he only wants to do research in his laboratory.

The registration fee is $50 for members and $80 for nonmembers. Tape recordings will be available.

Call SET at (520)519-0430 to register. Call Hotel Park at (800)257-7275 to reserve a room at the conference rate of $89 (deadline October 31).