Has Bush trashed the Environment?

[bfp]

Larry Elder

On the eve of "Earth Day," the Bush administration stands accused of trashing the nation's environment. The New York Times similarly indicted the administration in its recent Sunday magazine cover story: "Changing the Rules -- How the Bush Administration Quietly -- and Radically -- Transformed the Nation's Clean-Air Policy."

I asked Dr. S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist, to take a look at the article. He has served as the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, chief scientist of the U.S. Department of Transportation; deputy assistant administrator for policy in the Environmental Protection Agency; and deputy assistant secretary of the Department of the Interior. His many books include "Global Climate Change," "The Greenhouse Debate Continued," and "Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming's Unfinished Debate."

Larry Elder: John Kerry said that Bush has the worst environmental record in recent history, or in modern history. What's your reaction to that?

S. Fred Singer: That's just political hogwash. We have data that the environment is getting better. I mean, I don't really think it's because of Bush, but the Environmental Protection Agency has been continually enforcing standards, both on air and water pollution, and as a result, air and water are getting cleaner every year.

Elder: Has Bush quietly and radically transformed the nation's clean-air policy? And, if so, is that a bad thing?

Singer: I don't think there has been any such transformation. In fact, since Bush came to the White House, he's announced a policy to control mercury emissions from power plants, which is something that had not been done previously, and I think he is going to enforce that. So I don't see why the New York Times complains, but I suppose this is an election year and complaints of this sort are in order.

Elder: Bush has been criticized for, as the Los Angeles Times put it, "turn(ing) his back on (the) global warming treaty." Remember the global warming treaty? Congress unanimously passed a resolution saying that if Al Gore goes over to Japan and negotiates a global warming treaty that excludes Third World countries, it is going to be dead on arrival. John Kerry is one of those who voted for that resolution, saying that we're not going to ratify it if it excludes Third World countries. It does exclude Third World countries.

Singer: That'll be a unanimous vote in the U.S. Senate.

Elder: Tell me about global warming. Is there a consensus? Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Is it clearly damaging the environment?

Singer: I think the simplest way to talk about it is to look at it, ask questions: Is the climate actually warming? And then you have to look at the data. And the data that I'm most familiar with, and I think the best data that we have, come from weather satellites because they make observations of the whole globe every day and they're good instruments. They tell us the climate is not warming significantly. So this is not a problem. To attack a non-problem with a measure that would really damage our economy, I think would just be completely irresponsible.

Elder: The article talks about Bush's final energy policy, which was announced May 16, 2001, "The policy's defining notion was simple: environmental regulations have constrained America's domestic energy supply. In broad strokes, the N.E.P. laid out the next three years of the Bush administration's energy and environmental agenda: roll back wilderness and wildlife protections to open up more public land to oil and gas development; establish fast-track hydropower permits; expand offshore oil and gas drilling; and replace tough Clean Air Act rules, including new-source review, with an industry-friendly market-based pollution trading system."

Singer: The energy bill that's before the Congress is immensely complicated, and includes many, many items I would not agree with. For example, substituting ethanol for gasoline as a fuel is wasteful, both economically wasteful, and also environmentally. It is an extremely expensive solution to the problem, and it doesn't even save any energy. It's a terrible idea. Also, the idea of sequestration of carbon dioxide; this is another terrible idea. (There are) a number of things in the energy bill that I, personally, would not care for. But, on the whole, I think it is not a bad piece of legislation. I think what's going to happen though is that they will probably pass it in small steps.

Elder: This is a political question, and you may not want to answer it. Why do you suppose the Republicans have such a black eye about the environment?

Singer: I think it has to do with the fact that the green organizations tend to be oriented toward the Democratic Party. It's as simple as that. It's been this way now for many, many years. They have been strong supporters of Al Gore, and they simply haven't forgiven George Bush for beating Al Gore.

[xryptic]

The whole global warming scare is bullshit anyway. Our planet's temperature fluctuates normally and most of the "projections" for future warming are drawn up by staticians and derided by scientists who study the subject. Similarly, the assertations that we're actually overdue for another ice age are equally unscientific claims, ignoring the fact that the Eccentricity cycle(which governs the fluctuations in the distance from Sun to Earth, one of the key factors in our planet's temperature) peaks at 400,000 years.

[xryptic]

Originally posted by xryptic
The whole global warming scare is bullshit anyway. Our planet's temperature fluctuates normally and most of the "projections" for future warming are drawn up by staticians and derided by scientists who study the subject. Similarly, the assertations that we're actually overdue for another ice age are equally unscientific claims, ignoring the fact that the Eccentricity cycle(which governs the fluctuations in the distance from Sun to Earth, one of the key factors in our planet's temperature) peaks at 400,000 years.

I suppose I should clarify, I don't think global warming itself is a myth, just that:

a)Many climatologists believe that the potential temperature rise is at the low end of the rate spectrum(over the past 100 years, the surface temperature has risen less than 1 degree Fahrenheit).
b)Our current mean temperatures being seen as abnormally high are only so in comparison with the last 10,000 years. Which may seem like a long time to the uneducated, but over those 10k years we've simply been warming up from an ice age, and it's already been established that most of the climate deciding factors move in cycles in the 100k+ region.
c)The carbon dioxide rise, while true, is thought by many to be a natural side effect of the temperature changes, not a cause. The majority of atmospheric changes(gas levels, ozone, etc) in the past century have occured after 1960, whereas most of the temperature increase actually occured prior to 1940(incidentally, this pattern of changes is consistent with that observed when studying ice core samples from Antarctica dating to the end of the last ice age, the carbon dioxide increase then came approximately 600 years after the temperature increase).
d)The Kyoto Protocol, a plan to lower the planet's mean temperature, requests a reduction in energy use of 35% within 10 years. A UN Science Advisory Group report shows that were it to go into effect, if it were followed by all the nations which had to observe it, by 2050 the calculated temperature increase would be reduced by .05 degrees Centigrade(an unmeasurable amount). If that doesn't show the futility of trying to grind the warming to a halt I don't know what does.

There's even debate over whether the warming will cause the sea levels to rise or fall; during the temperature hike prior to 1940 sea levels were actually observed to lower. While you can theorize that they'd rise due to additional melting, more water would also evaporate due to the higher temperatures. Some of that would come down on the Antarctic icecap and simply refreeze. You can't accurately theorize whether the accumulation of more ice to the center of the icecap or the factors which are causing the ocean levels to rise will be more important. The only way to be sure is to measure as it happens.



Basically what I'm getting at is that we should be looking at ways to react intelligently to the increase rather than pointing fingers at humanity as the cause of it. The Earth will warm, and eventually it will peak and begin to cool again. Whether we as a species make it through will be determined more by our adaptability than anything else.