04 Jun 2002 Bush Repudiates “Bureaucratic” Report on Global Warming, by Gretchen Randall

BACKGROUND: President Bush has reportedly called the recent EPA report that says human activities cause global warming “nothing more than a product of government bureaucracy.” According to a Reuters News Service report by Tom Doggett, the President has no plans to change his stance on the Kyoto Treaty, which he does not endorse because it calls for a large U.S. reduction in emissions that would harm the U.S. economy.

TEN SECOND RESPONSE: Thankfully, President Bush listens to the scientists who point out that mankind hasn’t been shown to be the cause of global climate change rather than listening to the bureaucrats who wrote this report.

THIRTY SECOND RESPONSE: Bureaucrats may try to influence policy decisions internally but, thankfully, we have a President who isn’t afraid to defend his beliefs against naysayers. Scientific evidence shows that surface warming of the earth is due mostly to natural causes and there is no proof that mankind is causing any global climate change. Enforcing the Kyoto Treaty would only result in thousands of lost jobs for Americans.

DISCUSSION: News accounts of the “U.S. Climate Action Report 2002” refer to one sentence in the report that says “greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing global mean surface air temperature and subsurface ocean temperature to rise.” But the news reports do not include the next sentence, which says, “While the changes observed over the last several decades are likely due mostly to human activities, we cannot rule out that some significant part is also a reflection of natural variability.”

In fact, the report defines its “projections” as “potential outcomes that would be expected if some scenarios of future conditions were to come about (e.g. concerning greenhouse gas emissions).”

To access the full report: http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/publications/car.

For more on global warming, see “Questions and Answers on Global Warming” at https://nationalcenter.org/KyotoQuestionsAnswers.html or “Global Warming: Charges and Responses” at https://nationalcenter.org/Bonn2001.html.