Dirty climate: the Clinton Administration is determined to save the environment whether it needs saving or not.

WHEN the 1992 UN Climate Treaty was signed in Rio de Janeiro, the U.S. Government refused to endorse a policy of mandating activities that would lead to reduced emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the major anthropogenic greenhouse gas. Partly, this was because the goals of such activities were unclear: while the Treaty mentions stabilization of the quantity of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at "non-dangerous levels" as a goal, what constitutes safe and dangerous levels is left unspecified. More importantly, there is a distinct lack of scientific consensus that global warming is in fact occurring.

However, at the July 1996 negotiations in Geneva, the State Department dramatically altered its position and called for legally binding targets and time-frames for reducing emissions of CO2. A Department of Energy official, Dirk Forrister, insisted the Administration's policy switch does not call for any of the things rejected in 1992: new taxes, command-and-control regulations, fuel-economy targets for automobiles. The Senate Energy Committee held hearings this fall to learn just how, in that case, the Administration did plan to control energy consumption. It was unable to discover what schemes are afoot. But logically, since CO2 comes mostly from the burning of fossil fuels, emission limits would have to restrict energy consumption -- cutting the use of electric power, transportation, and heating, either by rationing or by taxes.

In the midst of the confusion over the Administration's policy switch, a surreptitious set of alterations of a key scientific document came to light. The changes and deletions gained wide attention with a June 12 essay in the Wall Street Journal by Dr. Frederick Seitz, former president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, president emeritus of the Rockefeller University, and recipient of the National Medal of Science. His claim that a "major corruption of the peer-review process" has taken place raised an international furor. Scientists on both sides of the controversy are spouting words like "scientific cleansing," "scurrilous," and "libelous."

Seitz's article revealed what had been known to only a few, namely that Chapter 8 of the scientific report on climate change issued by the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had been altered between its approval by government delegations in December 1995 and its printing in May 1996. Chapter 8 is crucial to the IPCC's major conclusion that "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate."

Most scientists could probably swallow hard and accept this enigmatic phrase without compromising their reputations. Politicians, however, have understood this artful phrase to mean that a climate catastrophe is on its way: droughts and severe storms, continental flooding from rising sea levels, a spread of tropical diseases, and a tidal wave of environmental refugees from affected nations. Quite a frightening picture -- and a perfect excuse for political action.

No one denies that alterations to Chapter 8 were made; its lead author, Dr. Benjamin Santer of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, claims full responsibility. However, in a June 13 editorial, Nature disclosed the results of its own investigation; it contradicted Santer's story and reported that the responsibility for the disputed changes lies with "IPCC officials."

In addition, we have now learned of the existence of a State Department letter, dated November 15, 1995, and addressed to Sir John Houghton, co-chairman of the IPCC. It says, inter alia, "it is essential that . . . chapter authors be prevailed upon to modify their text in an appropriate manner."

The IPCC indignantly denies that "scientific cleansing" changed the sense of the report. But Nature concludes that "there is some evidence that the revision process did result in a subtle shift . . . [that] tended to favor arguments that aligned with the report's broad conclusions." The Nature editorial further concedes that "phrases that might have been [mis]interpreted as undermining these conclusions . . . have disappeared."

PARTICULARLY alarming to Dr. Seitz was the dropping of three passages from the report:

"None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to . . . increases in greenhouse gases."

"No study to date has positively attributed all or part [of the climate change observed to date] to anthropogenic [manmade] causes."

"Any claims of positive detection of significant climate changes are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced."

Clearly, these statements cast serious doubt on the IPCC conclusion, which might explain why they were eliminated. But Dr. Santer has a more benign explanation, quoted by the journal Science (July 25): He made the changes because they "fine-tuned the wording to bring the report into line with the scientific consensus" (emphasis added) and because "reviewers requested them." Dr. Santer declines to specify who the reviewers were, which review comments were accepted, and which rejected -- and on what basis.

IPCC officials quoted by Nature have an even more interesting story; they claim that the reason for the revisions to the report was "to ensure that it conformed to a policymakers' summary," a short document drafted by the IPCC leadership and hammered out as a political consensus of government delegations. This IPCC claim raises the obvious question: Shouldn't the Summary conform to the underlying scientific report rather than vice versa?

The real reason for the text changes may have been to back up the Summary's rather feeble conclusion about a possible human influence on climate. There is precious little in the Summary that would lead one to believe that global warming is happening now or that predictions of future warming can be trusted.

At that, the Summary is quite selective in the facts it presents. For example, it does not even mention the existence of 18 years of weather-satellite data that show a current global-cooling trend and contradict all theoretical models of climate warming. The IPCC blithely presents its conclusions as a "scientific consensus" of hundreds, if not thousands, of scientists. Those who disagree are marginalized as a "dwindling band of skeptics" or as a "tiny minority of dissidents" who view global warming (in Vice President Gore's words) as the "empirical equivalent of the Easter Bunny."

THE tendency of promoters of the global-warming hypothesis to equate any criticism of the IPCC officials and of the report with an attack on science itself is beginning to create serious splits within the scientific community. In 1992 more than four thousand scientists signed the strongly worded Heidelberg Appeal to urge statesmen to go slow on climate-change policies that lack a proper scientific basis. More recently, nearly a hundred climate scientists have refuted the IPCC conclusions in the Leipzig Declaration, which grew out of a conference held in November 1995. The Declaration strongly challenges the notion that a "scientific consensus" predicts climate catastrophes, and condemns the 1992 Treaty as unrealistic and fraught with economic danger.

It is probably no coincidence that the signers include many well-established senior scientists who do not depend exclusively on federal funding. With billions of dollars of federal research money being spent on climate change, many scientists have developed a financial stake in adopting an alarmist attitude about global warming.

In spite of contrary evidence, the IPCC report's co-editor Sir John Houghton claims "serious impacts on human habitats and society" from a potential global warming and urges policymakers to set fixed targets to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Not mentioned is the fact that stabilization at the present level of atmospheric carbon dioxide would require a reduction of emissions by 60 to 80 per cent, according to the IPCC's own studies. This translates into crippling reductions of energy use that could hardly be achieved simply through "aggressive efficiency measures," as Houghton claims.

Houghton's boss, British environmental minister John Gummer, goes even further, saying that "action by the international community is now urgent." He wants developed countries to reduce emissions by over 50 per cent, with 5 to 10 per cent reductions by the year 2010 "as a first step in the process." But even Gummer's unrealistic targets were not radical enough to satisfy some environmental activists. Friends of the Earth termed his attitude as "complacent in the extreme."

The global-warming zealots are leaving no stone unturned -- they are even courting corporations. They are working hard on the insurance industry, arguing that rates need to be raised in view of impending disasters. (Ironically, one of the findings of the IPCC report is that the frequency of hurricanes has been decreasing over the past fifty years.) Of course, if insurance companies thought they could raise rates with impunity, they would presumably have done so long ago -- with or without global warming.

But international organizations need to frighten the public in order to raise funds. The same holds true for UN bureaucrats who have built up sizable fiefdoms and are engaged in a continuous round of meetings, workshops, and other negotiations in resort locations around the world. The foreign-affairs departments of the approximately 150 nations adhering to the Treaty often see benefits from such negotiations, particularly if they lead to further treaties that establish international laws or controls, enhancing budgets and prestige.

It is not surprising, therefore, that as old predictions of catastrophe fail to materialize, these organizations keep coming up with new ones. Early on, it was rising sea levels, a scare the public largely ignored. Then it was announced that 1995 was the hottest year since temperature records were established (December and its blizzards were conveniently omitted from the temperature calculations). The current scare is about the spread of tropical diseases: global warming is supposed to increase the range of malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

The Clinton Administration's surprising about-face in Geneva is sure to raise hackles because it is likely to require the imposition of large energy taxes. The American public has already registered its opposition to energy taxes, whether a BTU tax or a carbon tax. Even a modest increase in the gasoline tax met with strong resistance from voters. An internationally mandated tax would fuel even greater resentment.

On July 10, a stern letter to President Clinton, signed by Frank Murkowski (Alaska) and seven other Senate Republicans, expressed dismay about the Climate Treaty negotiations. The senators urged Clinton to resist efforts to set "binding targets and time-frames" on energy use. They pointed out that the existing level of scientific certainty is not high enough to justify hasty actions that would damage the nation's economy. Independently, Bennett Johnston (La.) and five other Senate Democrats, in a July 17 letter to the White House, slammed proposals for mandatory emission reductions and warned Clinton that treaty amendments might not receive the consent of the Senate.

The senators are in tune with the growing number of scientists who view the IPCC findings with skepticism and the alteration of scientific documents with alarm. The Senate, however, can do much more; it can exercise the option under Treaty Article 25 and withdraw from the UN Climate Convention. In the absence of scientific evidence for a global-warming catastrophe, there is no reason to maintain a treaty which, if implemented rigorously, would lead to a world economic disaster.