Under Court Order, White House Issues Climate Change Report

[John Manning]

IN THE POCKET$ OF BIG OIL

Under Court Order, White House Issues Climate Change Report [after 3
year delay]

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
New York Times, May 30, 2008
http://tinyurl.com/655ln8

The Bush administration, bowing to a court order, has released a fresh
summary of federal and independent research pointing to large, and
mainly harmful, impact of human-caused global warming in the United States.

The report, released Thursday, is online at http://climatescience.gov/ ,
along with a new report updating the administration’s priorities for
climate research.

Most of the findings, like the spread of warmth-loving pests and the
inevitable loss of low-lying lands to rising seas, are not new. But the
report included new projections of how the poor, elderly and communities
with lagging public-health and public-works systems will face outsize
health risks from warming.

Among the report’s new conclusions on health: “An increased frequency
and severity of heat waves is expected, leading to more illness and
death, particularly among the young, elderly, frail and poor.” It added
that deaths from cold would decline, but said uncertainties on both
projections made it impossible to characterize the overall risk.

It gave high odds (essentially a two out of three chance) that Lyme
disease and West Nile virus would have expanded ranges because of
warming. The report gave the same odds that some food- and water-borne
diseases would also increase among susceptible populations, but said
“major human epidemics” were unlikely as long as public-health systems
remained effective.

Under a 1990 law, presidents must submit a report to Congress every four
years summarizing what is known about impacts of climate change and
other global environmental problems on the United States.

The last such assessment, undertaken in the Clinton administration and
published in 2000 in the early days of the Bush presidency, was attacked
by groups and industries opposing restrictions on greenhouse gases.
References to it were deleted from some government reports by political
appointees in the White House.

Environmental groups sued to force the completion of a new study. In
court, the White House contended that a series of more than 20 studies
requested by President Bush in 2003 satisfied the 1990 law, but Judge
Saundra Brown Armstrong of Federal District Court for the Northern
District of California rejected that assertion last August and ordered a
comprehensive assessment to be published by the end of May.

“This assessment is an example of what federal scientists can and should
be doing when they are freed from political interference and allowed to
actually do their jobs,” said Kassie Siegel, climate program director
for the Center for Biological Diversity, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit.

Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who was the lead author
of the 1990 law, strongly criticized the White House.

“The three-year delay of this report is sadly fitting for an
administration that has wasted seven years denying the real threat of
global climate change,” Mr. Kerry said in a statement. “In these lost
years, we could have slowed global warming and advanced clean energy
solutions, but instead America’s climate change strategy has been at
best rhetorical, not real.”