About six months ago (WCR, Vol. 7, No. 7) we detailed the "Findings," or statements of factoids that serve as the basis for legislation, accompanying S. 1717, the "Global Climate Change Act of 2001," sponsored by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA). As expected, many were half true, some partially true, and most were misleading in light of the whole truth.

S. 1717 is long gone, now having morphed into HR 4, the "Energy Policy Act of 2002." This is the version of energy legislation recently passed by the Senate and now sent to the House of Representatives for its consideration. HR 4 is considerably different from the energy legislation passed by the House last August, so there will necessarily be a large number of changes. We suggest they start with the following, taking care to note what's missing before re-crafting to fit the facts:

Finding 1: "Evidence continues to build that increases in atmospheric concentrations of man-made greenhouse gases are contributing to global climate change."

Missing: A statement of the nature and amount of the changes. The surface temperature of the earth has gone up about 0.7°C in the last 100 years, but one-half of that occurred before human influence could have contributed much, and about one-tenth of the more recent warming was also contributed by solar changes, as noted by federal scientists Judith Lean and David Rind in the Journal of Climate. That leaves a grand total of about 0.3°C from humans. Further, the majority of the warming in recent decades is in the winter, and in the winter, in the coldest air. There is some evidence for an increase in beneficial summer rains in the United States, the world's largest source of food.

New and Improved Finding 1: Evidence continues to build that increases in atmospheric concentrations of man-made greenhouse gases are contributing approximately 0.3°C to a global warming of 0.7°C in the last century. The warming ascribable to man is largely taking place in the coldest air of winter. Concurrent with that warming has been a slight increase in summer rainfall in the United States.

Finding 2: "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that...the earth's average temperature can be expected to rise between 2.5 and 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit this century."

Missing: The U.N. made 245 separate climate forecasts for this century. The warmest one was inserted into its latest compendium after the normal scientific review process. It could not have been included otherwise because it was based upon a totally outlandish assumption about the amount of energy used per capita, an assumption that has not been true since we first started measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide, and one that shows no evidence of becoming true. As Steven Schneider has shown, the majority of the U.N.'s forecasts are in the lower portion of the range. Finally, as shown by Myles Allen, by WCR Editor Patrick Michaels and Contributing Editor Robert Balling, and by NASA's James Hansen, the likely warming for the next half-century is only about three-quarters of a degree Celsius.

New and Improved Finding 2: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has generated hundreds of different forecasts for warming in this century. Most are in the lower half of their range of 2.5 to 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit. The greatest warmings would require unprecedentedly large changes in per-capita energy use, while the lowest forecasts are more supported by observed climate changes.

Finding 4: "The IPCC has stated that in the last 40 years, the global average sea level has risen, ocean heat content has increased, [and] snow cover and ice extent have decreased, which threatens to inundate low-lying nations and coastal regions throughout the world."

Missing: The IPCC also notes that there has been no acceleration in the rate of sea level rise in the last century. Joughin and Tulaczyk recently demonstrated that the large glaciers in Antarctica are growing, not shrinking. Cabanes and colleagues cited satellite data showing that the U.N. estimates of sea-level rise are generally too high, and that the rise from warming in the last 100 years is likely to be a mere 2.5 inches, compared with the commonly cited 6 inches. This means that estimates of 21st-century rise, which have a median value of 18 inches, should have that median cut to about 7.5 inches. Krabill and colleagues found no net change in Greenland land ice, the second-largest ice field in the world (next to Antarctica). The change in oceanic heat content largely occurred in a temperature jump in 1976 known as the "great pacific climate shift," a phenomenon with no know scientific link to greenhouse gas changes. Melting of sea-ice has no effect on water levels.

New and Improved Finding 4: New research indicates sea level has risen about 2.5 inches because of global warming. Modifying the IPCC's most recent estimates with this fact yields a median rise of about 8 inches in this century—similar to the value observed locally along much of the U.S. Atlantic coast, with few net negative effects. Observed changes in oceanic heat content are difficult to explain under current theories. Given economic expansion, low-lying nations of the world should be able to adapt to projected sea levels.

Finding 5: "In October 2000, a United States Government report found that global climate change may harm the United States by altering crop yields, accelerating sea-level rise, and increasing the spread of tropical infectious diseases."

Missing: Perhaps this should be called the "chicken-bleep" finding for its refusal to name names. In fact the "United States Government report" is none other than the infamous U.S. National Assessment of global warming, a document that was based upon climate models that did a worse job of simulating the U.S. temperature of recent decades than a table of random numbers would—a performance so unscientific as to merit a request for redaction under new federal regulations, known colloquially as the Federal Data Quality Act, that require, among other things, that the normal rules of science apply to any data or calculation used as the basis for law. That is precisely what is happening here—the deeply flawed U.S. National Assessment, sans its name, is serving as a foundation for HR 4.

Further, "altering crop yields" generally meant increasing them. And, speaking of tropical diseases, malaria was endemic to the United States in the 19th century, when temperatures were a bit lower than today, and sanitation clearly trumps dengue fever, another feared tropical export. In 1995, a large dengue outbreak resulted in 2,000 cases in Reynosa, Mexico, a Rio Grande border town. Yet, in the entire state of Texas, there were only seven cases. The climate did not change suddenly at the Rio Grande, but sanitation does. (See our comments on sea level under Finding 4.)

New and Improved Finding 5: Countless scientific studies demonstrate that an increased greenhouse effect would greatly increase crop yields worldwide. Sanitation improvements, possible with economic development, are far more effective at quelling the spread of tropical diseases than attempting to control local climate.

There are a bunch of other findings relating to the United Nations climate change treaty and the Kyoto Protocol that are equally galling, but more factual in that they describe accurately the inanities of both. Of course, in the eyes of HR 4, those are all good things.

We'll see what happens when the Senate and the House get their heads together to re-draft HR 4, and we'll be checking our site for web hits.

References:

Allen, M., et al., 2000. Quantifying the uncertainty in forecasts of anthropogenic climate change. Nature, 407, 617–620.

Cabanes, C., A. Cazenave, and C. Le Provost, 2001. Sea-level rise during the past 40 years determined from satellite and in situ observations. Science, 294, 840–842.

Hansen, J.E., and M. Sato, 2001. Trends of measured climate forcing agents. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98, 14,778–14,783

Joughin, I. and S.l. Tulaczyk, 2002. Positive mass balance of the Ross Ice Streams, West Antarctica. Science, 295, 476–480.

Krabill, W., et al., 2000. Greenland Ice Sheet: High Elevation Balance and Peripheral Thinning, Science, 289, 428–430.

Lean, J., and D. Rind, 1998. Climate forcing by changing solar radiation. Journal of Climate, 11, 3069-3094.

Michaels, P.J., and R.C. Balling, Jr., 2000. The Satanic Gases: Clearing the air about global warming. Cato Institute, Washington D.C., 234 pp.

Schneider, S.H., 2001. What is "dangerous" climate change? Nature, 411, 17–19.