New York Times Sounds False Climate Alarm Once Again: Bush, Not Times, Has It Right On Global Warming, by Tom Randall

BACKGROUND: The New York Times, a leader in false reporting about climate change, has struck again. The paper’s August 18 article by Amy Cortese, which reads like an advertisement for insurance companies wishing to sell climate change policies, flatly and falsely states: “A scientific consensus has formed that greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping emissions released by automobiles and power plants and industrial factories — are causing the average temperature to increase, setting off environmental reactions ranging from rising water levels to droughts.”

TEN SECOND RESPONSE: There is absolutely no consensus that such gases are even capable of causing warming. Furthermore, NASA measurements have shown no warming in the last 30 years.

THIRTY SECOND RESPONSE: The New York Times continues to get it wrong on climate change, although accurate information is abundantly available. Dr. Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology worked on the U.N.’s climate change studies. He has stated repeatedly that there was no consensus among scientists, even on the issue of whether climate changes could be forecast at all. NASA measurements have shown no warming in over 30 years. The Timesshould report, not editorialize, on its news pages.

DISCUSSION: Climate change, though not officially on the agenda for the August 25-September 4 U.N. Sustainable Growth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, is sure to be a prime topic of discussion. So far, President Bush has correctly resisted pressure to attend even though he is being roundly criticized for “killing the Kyoto Protocol.” The Kyoto Treaty, however, had scant likelihood of ever being ratified by the U.S. Senate, which voted 95-0 in 1997 to never ratify a treaty with Kyoto’s provisions. Furthermore, President Clinton himself signed appropriations bills in 1999, 2000 and 2001 prohibiting the Environmental Protection Agency from using any funds to “issue rules, regulations, decrees of orders for the purpose of implementation, or in preparation for implementation, of the Kyoto Protocol” unless it is ratified by the Senate. The Senate has been right to be cautious about Kyoto: Proponents of the treaty have admitted that the treaty’s provisions would not have the beneficial environmental impacts advertised, and that the costs of implementation would be very high.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: A summary of the technical work on climate change, National Policy Analysis #420: A Global Warming Primer by physicist Gerald Marsh can be found on the National Center For Public Policy Research website at: https://nationalcenter.org/NPA420.pdf.

Over 100 brief papers on virtually every aspect of the climate change debate can be found on The National Center’s Global Warming Information Center webpage at: https://nationalcenter.org/Kyoto.html.



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