Center Asks: Are White House Climate Change Extravaganzas Meant To Facilitate Informed Debate — Or Just The Party Line?

(Washington, D.C.): Tomorrow, the
Clinton Administration will hold the
first of a series of events at or
involving the White House to dramatize
its case for a treaty imposing mandatory
reductions on greenhouse gas emissions.
This event will involve some 100
‘meteorologists’ from around the country
and will feature presentations on the
“science” of global warming
from officials of the National
Oceanographic and Science Administration
(NOAA). This will be followed by what
White House Press Spokesman Michael
McCurry called “a sales pitch”
from the President and Vice President for
the Global Climate Change Treaty.
Participants will then be given an
opportunity to broadcast from the White
House lawn.

Unfortunately, McCurry appears
thoroughly disingenuous in suggesting
that the sales pitching of the
meteorologists will start after
the NOAA briefing — where he declares
they will get nothing but “good,
hard factual information.” In fact, no
effort has been made to expose these
weather reporters to the considerable
body of scientific opinion that does
not agree with the so-called
“consensus” view that the
Clinton Administration cites to justify
its support for agreements that will
require radical cuts in fossil fuel
consumption in the United States.

What ‘Consensus’?

For example, two of the Nation’s most
prominent and media-experienced
meteorologists — Norman J.
Macdonald, a Certified
Consulting Meteorologist and former
Senior Meteorologist at Accu-Weather,
Inc., and Dr. Joseph
Sobel, currently Accu-Weather’s
Senior Vice President — are neither on
the agenda nor invited to be among the
participants in tomorrow’s events. This
is all the more extraordinary since they
co-authored for Accu-Weather one of the
most informative and user-friendly
analyses of the subject of global warming
entitled Changing Weather? Facts and
Fallacies About Climate Change and
Weather Extremes.

Concerned that the White House
extravaganza might mislead some of his
former colleagues in the media
meteorology industry, Mr. Macdonald sent
them copies of his study with a cover
letter dated 23 September 1997 that said,
in part:

You will note, if you take the time to
read this short report, that statistics
on hurricanes, tornadoes, and
temperatures are not quite up to date.
But there is no evidence of any
significant change in any of the trends
in the data presented in the report over
the past 2 to 3 years. In fact, the
satellite lower troposphere temperature
observations continue to show absolutely
no evidence of any increase in global
temperatures over the period from January
of 1979 through the Spring of this year.

The conjecture that the atmosphere
will not only warm up dramatically over
the next one hundred years and the
warming will be accompanied by
substantial changes in the climate is
based only on climate, numerical models.
As meteorologists, we know that in order
to change the climate there must be a
change in the time and spatial
distribution of the weather elements that
enter into the climatological statistics.
As meteorologists we also know that those
changes can only be produced by changing
the tracts, intensity and frequency of
cyclones and anticyclones.

Therefore, in order for the models to
predict climate change the models must be
able to forecast the changes in the
tracks, intensity and frequency of
cyclones and anticyclones over long
periods of time. When you consider the
skill in the extended range models used
today (whether it be the European model,
or the MRF), in predicting the basic
weather pattern, especially cyclogenesis,
beyond two or three days, why can anyone
give any serious consideration to
accurate forecasting beyond that point?

Additional Evidence of
Widespread Non-Consensus

Further evidence of the lack of
consensus among scientists about the
reality and implications of global
warming was provided to congressional
staff, members of the press and others in
a briefing on “The Other Side of the
Story” held yesterday in the Senate
Dirksen Office Building under the
sponsorship of the National
Center for Policy Analysis and
the Competitive Enterprise
Institute. Following
introductory comments by one of the
Senate’s most knowledgeable members on
this subject, Sen. Chuck Hagel
(R-NE), two of the Nation’s leading
experts — Dr. Sallie Baliunas
and Dr. Roy Spencer, the
latter a senior U.S. government scientist
employed by NASA — convincingly
challenged the assumptions and
conclusions of the global warming
theorists. Among the other briefers to
address the packed hearing room was the
Center for Security Policy’s director, Frank
J. Gaffney, Jr. who discussed
the myriad and potentially serious
repercussions the Global Climate Change
Treaty (and/or executive orders requiring
significant reductions in greenhouse gas
consumption) could have for the U.S.
military and national security. (See Mr.
Gaffney’s prepared
remarks.)

Will the Meteorologists
Find the White House Fair Weather
Friends?

Given the actual lack of consensus, it
is puzzling why Michael McCurry would try
to mislead his audience by suggesting
that “There’s not, among
serious scientists and experts, not a lot
of disagreement.” In fact,
in an implicit confirmation that there
would be no attempt made at balance in
the NOAA and White House presentations,
he claimed, “We hope [the media
meteorologists] do [go to the Heritage
Foundation afterward for another point of
view]….They should. Good journalists
should test their information in their
search for truth, and in doing so,
they’ll find out what a consensus
there is on climate change.”

One possible explanation can be
inferred from McCurry’s repartee with
members of the White House press corps —
who were clearly chagrined over the
attention (and air-time) their colleagues
would be getting as a result of the
Administration’s global warming
“dog-and-pony show” tomorrow. The
press made no effort to conceal their
contempt for their meteorologist
colleagues and McCurry appeared to pander
to that sentiment. If such an
attitude is shared widely within the
Administration, fears that the weather
reporters are simply being exploited
would appear well founded.

The Bottom Line

There will be another of these
extravaganzas next week. It is being
billed as a White House Conference on
Global Climate Change featuring Messrs.
Clinton and Gore and several hundred
participants, including many who will be
connected via satellite downlinks to
locations around the country.

It currently appears that the Clinton
team has no more interest in making that
event a vehicle for informed debate and true
public education than it does in giving
the media meteorologists just “good,
hard factual information.” In the
absence of respected scientists like Mr.
Macdonald and Dr. Sobel, physicians,
economists and national security experts
who challenge the “science” of
global warming and have well-founded
concerns about a treaty that is based
upon it, such a meeting will amount to a
propaganda event unworthy of government
sponsorship and taxpayer underwriting.

In the hope that at the eleventh hour
such an outcome could be avoided, Fred L.
Smith, Jr., President of the Competitive
Enterprise Institute wrote the president
on 26 September urging that the White
House Conference be made a balanced and
constructive dialogue about global
climate change. (See href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_146at2″>the attached
letter.) He included the names of
some 90 prominent, respected individuals
with expertise in a wide variety of
relevant areas who are on the record as
skeptics about the Administration’s
analyses and policy responses in this
field.

The Center for Security Policy urges
the President to serve the public
interest by having a real
dialogue on global warming, not a
dialogue of the deaf or the one-way
non-dialogue of a master propagandist.
After all, as Michael McCurry himself
said today:

“[I]f you do this the wrong way,
the economic consequences could be
devastating. The cost that Americans
would pay in increases for fuel would be
extraordinary if you don’t get the
science right and you don’t figure out
what are the most efficient ways to get
the reductions in gas emissions that you
want.”