The Honorable Timothy Wirth
Under Secretary for Global Affairs
U.S. Department of State
Washington, DC 20520
Dear Mr. Wirth:
When we met at Rockefeller University on March 3, 1995, you assured those present that the U.S. Government would not adopt a policy of legally-binding targets and timetables for the control of greenhouse gas emissions in place of the voluntary Climate Action Plan instituted by the White House in October 1994. We were surprised to learn from a direct quote by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Rafe Pomerancecited in Nature (July 25) that "the administration has been working on this policy for more than a year."
We are naturally dismayed to find that you have changed your position in spite of your previous assurances--and without giving a considered hearing to opposing views from scientists or from consumer and industry groups likely to be affected by such policies. We hope that the Congress will provide such a forum before far-reaching and economically disastrous policies, like energy taxes or rationing, are imposed on the American public.
We are frankly puzzled that you would cite climate science as the reason for this policy shift. In July 1996, at the COP-2 meeting in Geneva, you declared: "The science calls on us to take urgent action." If anything, scientific support for mandatory targets is weaker now than it was four years ago when the Climate Treaty was signed. Yet the State Department briefing paper asserts: "The first and foremost reason for launching this new direction is the science." DOE assistant secretary, Dirk Forrister, refers to the science as "convincing and compelling." It is neither; the scientific evidence certainly does not support such statements.
We wish to remind you that at least two-thirds of the warming in this century occurred before 1940, i.e., before most of the increase in greenhouse gases. The period, 1940-1975, showed a cooling. More important perhaps, the highly accurate global temperature data from weather satellites show no warming whatsoever in the last 18 years, while the climate models predict a warming of 0.4 to 0.6 C. Clearly, the theoretical models have not been validated by actual observations. Why then should we trust them to predict a future warming?
The shift in your position comes at a time when it was discovered that substantial, possibly unauthorized changes were made in the IPCC report that forms the scientific basis for decisions regarding the UN Climate Convention. The revisions were made quietly after the acceptance of the report and before its printing. As confirmed in the scientific journal Nature (June 13), the changes altered the sense of the (scientific) report and were done in order to "conform" it to the IPCC's (political) Summary for Policymakers. The same Nature article reveals that "...some phrases that might have been (mis)interpreted as undermining these [IPCC] conclusions ... have disappeared."
We have now learned of the existence of a State Department letter, dated November 15, 1995, and addressed to Sir John Houghton, co-chairman of IPCC (Working Group I). It states, inter alia, that "it is essential that chapters not be finalized prior to the completion of discussions at the IPCC WG-I plenary in Madrid, and that chapter authors be prevailed upon to modify their text in an appropriate manner following discussion in Madrid."
The "modification" of the IPCC report has resulted in the deletion of the following three clauses (among others):
We call attention to the fact that these three clauses were in the final draft of Chapter 8 and had been agreed to by all four lead authors, 31 contributors, and an unspecified number of reviewers. In other words, the deleted clauses represented their considered scientific opinion. We believe that the removal of these clauses is unwarranted, seriously impairs the credibility of the IPCC, and raises the additional question: By what authority did the State Department prevail upon an internationally constituted scientific body to make such changes?
In our opinion, the three deleted clauses not only belong in the IPCC report, but should have been placed into the Summary as indicating our best current scientific judgment about enhanced greenhouse warming. There is nothing in the Summary to support or validate the climate models that predict a substantial future warming. On the contrary, the estimates of IPCC 1995 are substantially less than they were in 1992 or in 1990. The Summary for Policymakers makes no mention of even the existence of the weather satellite data (that show absolutely no warming over the last 18 years). Instead, reliance is placed on an ambiguous phrase: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate."
As an attorney, you will surely recognize that this contrived phrase conveys different meanings to different audiences; scientists read in quite another way than policymakers:
Scientists will accept this phrase and just shrug their shoulders. We have known for years now that human activities can affect not only local, but also regional and even global climate. For example, during the past five decades, there has been a downward trend in the frequency of intense hurricanes, -0.32 intense hurricanes/year per decade, significant at the 2% level. (reference: Landsea et al., Geophysical Research Letters, 23, pp. 1697-1700, 15 June 1996).
We could mention other well-known examples, but please note: The existence of such presumed human influences does not by itself validate the climate models. In particular, it cannot be used to claim a substantial temperature rise in the next century--nor does the IPCC Summary make such a claim. The likely reason: IPCC scientists would never have agreed to this. What the Summary does is to report the outcome of climate model calculations (that have never been validated). It then implies that the "human influences" somehow validate these models. They do not!
Thus while the IPCC phrase does not in any way confirm a future warming, it does convey such an impression to policymakers; and indeed, since we do not find any specific disclaimer in the Summary, this may have been the purpose. Judging from your statements in Geneva and those of other government officials, this purpose has been accomplished. The Ministerial Declaration of 18 July 1996, under paragraph 2, specifically--and improperly--links the IPCC phrase about "human influence" to a temperature increase of 2 C by 2100. Obviously, acting in good faith, you must yourself believe that all of the climate disasters linked to a major global warming are likely to come true. Please be assured that this is not the case.
Article 2 of the Climate Convention ties any action to "dangerous" levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases. No one has as yet defined this term, nor does the IPCC report shed any light on where it might be. As a consequence, we do not know whether the present level of carbon dioxide is dangerous or not. Yet the policy statements assume that the present level, or even twice the present level, is a desirable goal. There is no scientific support for such a policy goal.
As a matter of fact, it may turn out that only by restoring atmospheric CO2 levels to those of a century ago can its effects on climate be avoided. This would require negative emissions, which is obviously a daunting task. But even stabilizing emissions at the 1990 level would be a difficult task, especially considering economic growth taking place throughout the world. As the IPCC report demonstrates, even cutting emission levels globally by as much as 50 percent would do no more than to stretch out the time for reaching a doubling of the atmospheric level of CO2.
We believe, therefore, that the action of the U.S. Government in pressing for mandatory emissions targets is precipitous and not based on adequate science. Our views are in accord with those of a number of Republican as well as Democratic senators. A July 10 letter to the President from Senator Frank Murkowski and seven other senators expresses doubt that "human-induced climate change was a significant problem that required immediate action" and quotes language from the IPCC report that confirms these doubts. A July 17 letter to President Clinton, signed by Senator J. Bennett Johnston and five fellow senators, complains about the lack of an "adequate basis of analysis and assessment." They believe that it is "premature for the United States to agree to any particular numerical target or date for carbon dioxide emission reductions." The senators "urge the suspension of substantive negotiations [on amending the Climate Treaty] until this controversy over the representation of scientific views can be resolved."
All of the undersigned support a public statement to that effect, based on a conference held in the city of Leipzig, Germany, in November 1995. Some 100 meteorologists and climate scientists have joined us in signing the Leipzig Declaration, including even some who are listed as IPCC contributors.
In view of this vote of no-confidence in the IPCC Summary, we urge you not to claim the existence of a "scientific consensus" on global warming, nor to claim that the IPCC report, or climate science, justifies the mandatory policy actions you now champion.
Henry R. Linden, Ph.D.
(Max McGraw Professor, Illinois Institute of Technology;
founding
president and now exec. advisor, Gas Research Institute)
William A. Nierenberg, Ph.D.
(director emeritus, Scripps Institute of Oceanography;
member,
National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering)
Frederick Seitz, Ph.D.
(president emeritus, Rockefeller University; former president:
U.S.
National Academy of Sciences; holder of the National Medal of Science)
S. Fred Singer, Ph.D.
(professor emeritus of environmental sciences, University of Virginia;
first director, US weather satellite service; former chief scientist, DOT)
Chauncey Starr, Ph.D.
(founding president, Electrical Power Research Institute;
National
Medal of Technology; member, National Academy of Engineering)
CC: Senators Frank H. Murkowski, Larry E. Craig, Lauch Faircloth, Spencer Abraham, Larry Pressler, Conrad Burns, Jesse Helms, Don Nickles. Senators J. Bennett Johnston, Wendell H. Ford, John B. Breaux, Robert C. Byrd, Howell Heflin, Byron L. Dorgan.