Administration’s Plan to Advance Climate Science
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<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Richard Morrison, 202.331.2273
Washington, D.C., July 24, 2003—The Competitive Enterprise Institute praises the approach to the science of climate change announced today by the Bush administration in a report released jointly by the Departments of Commerce and Energy. The report lists the scientific goals of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, including a better understanding of natural climate variability, resolving conflicts between predicted and observed climate patterns, and the role technological resilience should play in responding to any future climatic trends.
“We support President Bush’s emphasis on scientific research, and the broad goals of this plan look like they’ll set government research in the right direction,” said Myron Ebell, Director of Global Warming and International Environmental Policy at CEI. “While the outline of the plan is encouraging, we hope the full text of the report doesn’t give away too much to the alarmist camp, as previous Bush documents have done. A research plan is no place to try to placate political opponents.”
For far too long, federally-funded global warming research has been a tool of alarmist ideologues bent on convincing policy makers that human-induced climate change requires drastic government intervention, whatever the status of the science itself. Through misleading summaries of technical studies and omission of conflicting evidence, previous studies have been intentionally crafted to support the alarmist position.
“We hope that the Administration’s commitment to sound science will penetrate a bureaucracy too often dedicated to alarmism,” said Christopher C. Horner, Senior Fellow at CEI. “The problems with previous studies weren’t with leaders at the highest levels, who do after all share identical formal–if not rhetorical–positions on the Kyoto Protocol. The Plan's summary does offer hints, however, that these individuals need continued oversight. Staff must be put on notice that policy follows the science–not the other way around.”
CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government. For more information about CEI, please visit our website at www.cei.org.