Bush-Bashing over Kyoto
S Fred Singer
Letter to Financial Times; submitted/12/10/2004

My, my. All sorts of big guns are being trained on George Bush to get him to adopt the Kyoto Protocol -- and even to agree to a non-existent scientific consensus on the cause of alleged global warming.

We can understand our friend and ally Tony Blair's political predicament and his desire to show some accomplishments from his G-8 leadership. We can tolerate with some disdain The Economist's endorsement (Dec 9) of the self-appointed "National" Commission on [US] Energy Policy; its report panders to global warming alarmists but lacks the courage to propose any real steps for energy conservation, like a stiff federal tax on motor fuels.

But we are frankly surprised by your editorial support ("Blair's Bushcraft" Dec 10) of the NCEP - a nominally bipartisan group, but a highly politicized one, judging from its report. This becomes quite evident also from the anti-Administration remarks by its "director of strategy," as quoted by your Environment Correspondent (Dec 10).

But the worst is surely the inflammatory article (FT Dec 10) by Andrew Simms, who not only mangles facts but also threatens economic retaliation against the US -- unless we ratify Kyoto.

Well, I have bad news for Mr Simms. Thanks to the Nov 2 elections, the US Senate is now "Kyoto-proof." Mr Bush can accommodate his friend Blair and submit the Protocol to the Senate in the firm expectation that it will be voted down. [We should recall that in 1997 the Senate voted unanimously against any kind of Kyoto-like treaty - including Senators Kerry, Lieberman, and McCain. The 95:0 vote was a rare instance of bipartisan agreement during the Clinton-Gore administration.]

And if Mr Simms and others of his ilk feel that trade sanctions are appropriate against the US (for not agreeing that global warming is a threat), then please include also China, India, Brazil, and other emerging economies that are not even interested in voluntary measures to cut emissions. Perhaps one should point also to a certain amount of hypocrisy among nations that have ratified Kyoto, while knowing full well that it will have no measurable effect on the atmosphere or on climate - even if emission cuts are carried out punctiliously and without cheating. Of course, cheating on a large scale is permitted, thanks to the "cop-out" provision that allows countries failing to meet the Kyoto target to purchase unused emission rights from Russia. By ratifying Kyoto - even after Mr Putin correctly labeled it as "scientifically flawed" -- Russia gained eligibility to sell their stash of unused rights to the highest bidders (read: European consumers and taxpayers).

As a scientist, I would be remiss by not correcting the many distortions in Mr Simms article. First, the 2001 report of the US National Academy of Sconces (actually by a panel of 11, with only a few experts): As usual, far too much public attention was paid to the hastily prepared summary rather than to the body of the report. As MIT Prof Richard Lindzen wrote in the Wall Street Journal of June 11, 2001: "the full report did [make it] clear that there is no consensus, unanimous or otherwise, about long-term climate trends and what causes them."
Yes, there are many uncertainties in climate science - which is why we are still spending some $2 billion annually on relevant research. One puzzle is the unexplained drop in the trend of the greenhouse gas methane - rather contrary to what Mr Simms claims. He also confuses severe weather events (that bear no obvious relation to greenhouse warming) with rising damages and insurance claims; the latter are bound to rise as investments in beachfront properties increase.

Finally, a word about the economies of poor nations. They will be hurt -- not by global warming (models tell us it occurs mainly in high latitudes and polar regions) but by the limits to economic growth imposed by Kyoto and similar schemes. Mr Simms argues that the suffering poor are entitled to compensation and "equity in terms of emission entitlements." This seems to be a poorly disguised formula for an income transfer, long advocated by the New International Economic Order. The NIEO has often been characterized as a scheme to transfer money from the poor in rich countries to the rich in poor ones. Perhaps this is one of the goals of the New Economics Foundation of which Mr Simms is policy director.