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CLIMATE SCIENTISTS WARN THAT ACTION BASED ON UNVERIFIED MODELS IS PREMATURE

KYOTO, DECEMBER 4, 1997---With delegations from more than 150 countries gathering in Kyoto this week to discuss international controls on carbon dioxide emissions to mitigate a putative future global warming, climate scientists from Europe and North America warned that there was still no scientific consensus on global warming and that action based solely on unverified computer calculations was premature.

In a document called the "Leipzig Declaration," more than 140 climate scientists stated that "most scientists now accept the fact that actual observations from earth satellites show no climate warming whatsoever," and noted that this result was strongly at odds with results from climate models.

Why the rush to judgment? they asked. Climate model forecasts of global warming have been steadily reduced since 1990, as the models themselves have improved. Should climate models improve to the point of adequately accounting for clouds, water vapor, solar effects, and other factors that strongly affect climate, the warming forecasts will likely diminish even further, and may become insignificant. More time and research is needed before governments can proceed with any confidence.

The Leipzig Declaration characterizes restrictions called for in the Global Climate Treaty as economically unrealistic and politically suicidal. It points out that, under the Treaty, "stabilization" would mean cutting worldwide energy use by 60 to 80 percent, bringing economic activity to a halt.

"Energy is essential for all economic growth," the scientists said. "In a world in which poverty is the greatest social pollutant, any restriction on energy use that inhibits economic growth should be viewed with caution. For this reason, we consider carbon taxes and other drastic control policies--lacking credible support from the underlying science--to be ill-advised."

The Leipzig Declaration emerged from a conference, "The Greenhouse Controversy," cosponsored by The Science & Environmental Policy Project and the European Academy for Environmental Affairs in Leipzig, Germany, in November 1995. The statement was revised in 1997 and currently has more than 140 endorsements from climate scientists, with more coming in.

According to physicist S. Fred Singer, president of The Science & Environmental Policy Project and former Director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, the claims of scientific consensus have been laid to rest in the last few months in articles in the journal Science, in newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, the Toronto (Canada) Globe & Mail, and the Washington Times, in the Austrian newsweekly Profil, and in broadcast documentaries, such as one that recently aired on Australian public television. "There is no scientific consensus," said Singer, "which means the responsibility for ill-founded policies will rest with the politicians alone."

Go to the Leipzig Declaration.