US Issues Climate Assessment Forced By Court Order
US: May 30, 2008
NEW YORK - The Bush administration released a climate change assessment on
Thursday -- four years late and pushed forward by a court order -- that said
human-induced global warming will likely lead to problems like droughts in
the US West and stronger hurricanes.
President George W. Bush's stance on the issue has evolved from denying
climate science to acknowledging that global warming is happening. In March,
watchdog groups said Bush's decision to intervene in setting air pollution
standards was part of a pattern of meddling in environmental science.
The "Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Change on the United
States" released on Thursday synthesized previous reports, including those
by the government's climate change science program and last year's work by
the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
It is intended to give US government agencies and lawmakers in Congress a
single document to refer to when forming climate policy.
The assessment was praised by environmental groups at the forefront of the
lawsuit that led to the court order forcing the administration to issue the
report by the end of May.
"Hats off to the federal scientists who were allowed to do their work,"
Kassie Siegel, climate program director of the Centre for Biological
Diversity, said by telephone.
But she criticized the administration for waiting until the last months of
the Bush presidency to release the assessment.
A 1990 law, the Global Change Research Act, requires the government to do an
assessment on global warming every four years. The last one had been issued
in 2000 during President Bill Clinton's administration.
The Bush administration has worked to get large-emitting countries to agree
to non-binding goals on reducing output of carbon dioxide and other gases
blamed for trapping heat in the Earth's atmosphere and altering the climate.
But Bush has opposed regulating greenhouse gases and withdrew the United
States from the Kyoto Protocol, saying it would hurt the economy.
The Kyoto Protocol binds some 37 industrialized nations to limits on their
greenhouse gas emissions between 2008 and 2012, but allows countries which
undercut their caps to sell that unused quota to other states busting
theirs.
By most counts, the United States is the world's top emitter of carbon
dioxide but is expected to be overtaken soon by China.
In 2006, the Bush government was accused of censoring its scientists on
global warming, such as NASA expert James Hansen, which led to the firing of
an official at the space agency.
Sharon Hays, the White House associate science director, said Thursday's
document offered "a greater focus on what scientists know about climate
change impacts in the United States" than the 2007 reports by the UN panel.
Siegel, echoing the sentiment of many environmental groups, said now that
the government had an assessment, it should launch a cap-and-trade program
on greenhouse gases and federal limits on emissions to slow climate change.
"Now it's time to actually do something about climate change," she said.
The Senate is expected to take up the leading climate bill next week,
although few analysts expect it to pass before the next administration comes
to power.
(Editing by John O'Callaghan)
Story by Timothy Gardner
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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