Gee, Wait

Strange things are afoot in climate policy these days, likely due to current activity in the U.S. Congress as well as the recent G8 (aka "Gee, Wait" or "Gee, Late") meeting. On the latter, it was rather apparent that the G8's stance on climate change was essentially the U.S. stance on climate change. Take for example the following summary statement which emerged:

"While uncertainties remain in our understanding of climate science, we know enough to act now to put ourselves on a path to slow and, as the science justifies, stop and then reverse the growth of greenhouse gases."

This sounded rather familiar to me, so I went back and looked at the language from Bush's climate change strategy released 2.5 years ago (February, 2002):

"While scientific uncertainties remain, we can begin now to address the factors that contribute to climate change." This new approach focuses on reducing the growth of GHG emissions, while sustaining the economic growth needed to finance investment in new, clean energy technologies. It sets America on a path to slow the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, and – as the science justifies – to stop and then reverse that growth."

So much for breaking new ground. . . Meanwhile, Bush's brilliant (from a PR perspective) greenhouse gas intensity target continues to generate confusion around the world (kind of scary that years later, journalists still can't get this right). A recent editorial in the Scotsman stated: "President Bush has pledged to reduce US greenhouse gas intensities by 18% within 10 years - a tougher target than Kyoto-signing Britain, which has set a target of 12%." This statement is wrong on two fronts. First, Bush's intensity target is just that - emissions reductions relative to GDP. Intensity has been declining for decades. Meanwhile, U.S. emissions increased by 1.7% between 2003 and 2004, and will continue at that pace well past 2010 at which point they will be well above 1990 levels. Second, although the UK has signed up for Kyoto, its national target is 60% below 1990 by 2050. Rather ambitious.

In other news, Joe Barton (R-TX) of the U.S. House of Representatives has made the press with a political move of unprecedented stupidity.
[http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/Letters/06232005_1570.htm]
He's sent letters to the heads of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Science Foundation, and three other scientists, making all manner of demands regarding their activities, research, funding, etc. Most of these requests are highly redundant as they're matters of public record and have been aired out in the open or in the literature over the past few years. This is just the latest attempt to discredit the IPCC prior to the 2007 report and the latest attack on Michael Mann, who has become the poor abused child of the IPCC process. It’s also the latest demonstration that anti-mitigation conservatives really have no idea what’s going on in the scientific community. It's a sad state of affairs when scientists who do pioneering work to understand the history of the planet get smeared just so some politician can help out the special interests that control the purse strings. Most disturbingly, Barton's "investigation" seems to stem largely from the WSJ editorial from a few weeks back, which was rife with errors to begin with. There's nothing that makes my skin crawl more than individuals who are clearly ignorant of (and uninterested in) science questioning the work of scientists.