Hot air: global warming is not a threat to health or the economy. Plans to address it are.

Mr. Adler is director of environmental studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (on leave) and a research fellow at the Political Economy Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. He is the editor of The Costs of Kyoto: Climate-Change Policy and Its Implications (CEI, 1997).

Whether it's floods in North Dakota or hurricanes off the Florida coast, Vice President Al Gore never misses an opportunity to blame a disaster on global warming. In Florida on June 29 to announce stepped-up federal assistance to fight the wildfires, Gore attributed the fires to the greenhouse effect. ''These fires offer a glimpse of what global warming may mean to families across America,'' he proclaimed, adding, ''And that is why it is so critical that we get on with the job of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. Working together, we can spare other communities like those we have seen here today.''

Three weeks earlier, Gore had noted that five states set record temperatures in the first five months of 1998, proving beyond a doubt that global warming had arrived. Never mind that, according to climatologist John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, there are 37 states whose records were set before 1940 -- i.e., before modern industry started emitting substantial amounts of greenhouse gases.

There is a method to the Vice President's madness: repeatedly charge that the earth faces a crisis and, over time, the public will become more receptive to the United Nations global-warming treaty drafted last year in Kyoto. The Kyoto Protocol imposes legally binding caps on emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases. Under the treaty, the U.S. would be required to cut emissions by approximately one-third over the next 15 years.

The Kyoto Protocol is but the first step in a global campaign against the use of fossil fuels. Today's justification is global warming, but the policy prescription was the same when the threat was global cooling or resource depletion. Whatever the ostensible purpose, an international climate-change agreement would usher in governmental controls on all manner of energy use. In its willingness to turn ordinary people's lives upside down to suit intellectual fashions, it is the environmental equivalent of the Clinton health-care plan. Call it ClimateCare.

The case for an international treaty is built upon four assumptions: 1) global warming poses a serious threat to human health and prosperity; 2) failure to act soon would increase the risks of warming; 3) existing policy options would substantially mitigate the threat at an acceptable cost; and 4) a global-warming agreement is enforceable on a global scale. Not one of these assumptions is valid. Americans, and indeed nearly everyone in the world save United Nations bureaucrats, have nothing to gain and a lot to lose by embracing Clinton's ClimateCare.

Do we even know that global warming is occurring? ''The overwhelming balance of evidence and scientific opinion is that it is no longer a theory but now a fact that global warming is for real,'' announced President Clinton. The Vice President derides greenhouse skeptics as practitioners of ''tobacco science.'' Questioning greenhouse pronouncements is ''immoral'' and ''un-American,'' says Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

Environmental activists and Administration officials cite the recent report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which purportedly represents the ''consensus'' of 2,500 scientists from around the globe. In reality, the bulk of the report was drafted by a handful of scientists, several with strong preferences for environmental regulation, and merely submitted to various committees for approval.

Moreover, the report merely concludes that ''the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate.'' Hardly a global call to arms. And yet even this equivocal statement was controversial. The report's editors inserted it at the last minute, after the text had already been approved, so that the report would conform with the much less cautious ''policymaker's summary.''

Surveys of climatologists suggest substantial disagreement about humanity's impact on the climate. In a 1997 poll, most state-government climatologists disputed the claim that ''human activities are already disrupting the global climate.'' True, the environmental group Ozone Action got 2,600 scientists, including several Nobel Laureates, to sign a petition making that claim. But a counter-petition, circulated with a letter from Frederick Seitz, past president of the National Academy of Sciences, has garnered over 18,000 signatures, including many from physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and environmental scientists. Scientific truth is not determined by majority vote, but there is clearly no ''consensus'' that human-induced warming is here.

Predictions of global warming in the future are largely based on computer models that can't even predict current temperatures accurately. And as the models improve, they consistently predict less warming. Last May, America's most prestigious scientific journal, Science, reported that ''most [computer] modelers now agree that the climate models will not be able to link greenhouse warming unambiguously to human actions for a decade or more.'' One month later, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society published a paper suggesting that computer models exaggerate the climate's sensitivity to industrial emissions.

Highly accurate satellite measurements taken since 1979 find no warming trend. And independent measurements from weather balloons corroborate these readings. Environmentalists point to land-based records that show a warming of approximately 1o F. since the 1880s. But most of this warming preceded the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Also, land-based records cover only a small portion of the globe. Most are near cities, where temperatures are higher whatever the global climate.

Even if there were a significant amount of warming, there is no evidence for the doomsday scenarios of killer heatwaves, devastating hurricanes, and epidemic disease. What temperature increases have been observed have been in winter and at night; to the extent that they have an effect, it would be to prolong growing seasons and increase agricultural productivity, not produce heatwaves. Hurricanes? Higher temperatures don't correlate with them. And economic growth and technological advance have a much greater effect on the incidence of disease than climate change. Even the old standby -- catastrophic flooding due to melting polar ice caps -- is not likely, according to a recent study published in Nature. So much for the greenhouse apocalypse.

SET aside the ambiguous scientific case. Even on the apocalyptics' own models, postponing significant reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions by twenty years or so would scarcely affect the global climate at the end of the next century. And such a delay would substantially reduce the costs of emission reduction. Thomas Schelling, former president of the American Economic Association, points out that it is costly to replace or retrofit existing capital goods before the end of their useful life, and that emission-reducing technologies are likely to improve over time. Precipitate action, on the other hand, would entail substantial costs. Controlling emissions of greenhouse gases requires controls on energy use: energy taxes, supply controls, or other regulatory mandates. The Administration's own thumbnail analysis concluded that complying with the Kyoto Protocol would cost $7 to $12 billion annually. When challenged by Rep. James Talent (R., Mo.) to provide an estimate of Kyoto's cost ''without the sweeteners,'' Janet Yellen, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, acknowledged that the Administration had ''not attempted to derive a good solid estimate.''

Studies by Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates, Charles River Associates, and other groups place the price tag of the Kyoto Protocol in excess of $2,000 per household. Gasoline prices would rise by an estimated 50 cents per gallon or more, and home heating costs would rise as much as 70 per cent.

Restrictions on energy use ''will affect people in every aspect of their lives,'' says Frances Smith, executive director of Consumer Alert, a pro-market consumer group. Mrs. Smith notes that Americans use energy from the moment they shut off their bedside alarms in the morning until they turn out the lights to go to bed. Increasing the cost of energy means increasing the cost of heating a home, cooking a meal, driving to work, lighting an office, and powering a factory. These costs would fall particularly hard on the poor. No wonder some economists, such as Gary Yohe of Wesleyan University, say that the Kyoto Protocol would be comparable to the 1970s energy crisis in its likely impact.

Some of the costs are less obvious. The Sierra Club claims that increasing federal fuel-economy standards from 27.5 miles per gallon to 40 or more is the single most important step against global warming. That would raise the price of new cars and also make them smaller and lighter, thus less safe. A Harvard - Brookings study estimates that existing standards already cause up to four thousand highway fatalities a year. Raising the standards could increase this death toll by as much as 50 per cent.

Finally, it is well established that wealthier is healthier and poorer is sicker. Insofar as climate-change policy reduces economic growth, it will hurt human health. The potential costs of global warming, in short, are surpassed by the costs of global-warming policy.

And these costs would not necessarily yield any environmental benefit. On the apocalyptics' own computer models, preventing the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would require reduction of emissions by approximately 70 per cent -- a reduction several times greater than that called for by the Kyoto treaty.

Environmentalists are stepping up the pace of global conferences, each designed to tighten the screws a little more on industrial emissions. The next such conference is scheduled for November in Buenos Aires, at which point President Clinton hopes to announce that several developing countries have agreed to limit emissions.

If warming is a real threat, getting developing countries to sign on is essential. China will soon overtake the United States as the leading emitter of greenhouse gases. India and Brazil are close behind. Even if the U.S. and Western Europe were to disappear from the earth, global emissions would climb throughout the twenty-first century thanks to the industrialization of the developing world.

If the Third World does not agree to significant and enforceable emission limits, the Kyoto Protocol could actually increase emissions by encouraging industry to flee from America. A Department of Energy study concluded that if the United States faces tighter controls than developing nations, energy-intensive industries such as aluminum and paper manufacturing will migrate.

But there are substantial doubts about whether the treaty can be enforced. If the UN cannot control the proliferation of nuclear or biological weapons, how is it supposed to control the most common industrial emissions?

Environmentalists point to the success of the Montreal Protocol, which banned chlorofluorocarbons and other substances believed to affect the ozone layer. But the Montreal Protocol banned only a handful of chemicals. Carbon dioxide is a ubiquitous by-product of industrial activity.

Where the treaty might have real bite is in the U.S., where Senate ratification makes treaties the law of the land. Other countries are less scrupulous. Moreover, the United States is one of only a handful of countries where current emission estimates are remotely reliable. Thus, approving the Kyoto treaty could impose obligations on the U.S. that would be ignored in the rest of the world.

Governments are not allowed to include reservations when ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. Thus the Senate could not condition approval of the treaty upon the excision of particular clauses. This is important because once the treaty is in effect, binding amendments can be passed by a three-fourths vote of the parties -- and more than three-fourths of the world's countries are classified as developing countries, which are not required to reduce their emissions under the treaty. Thus U.S. obligations under the treaty could escalate without the Senate's, or even the President's, consent. ''For the first time, the United States would give control of our economy to an international bureaucracy within the United Nations,'' warns Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

The Administration is in no rush to send the Kyoto Protocol to the Senate, where there is strong bi-partisan opposition. Just before the Kyoto conference, the Senate passed, by 95 to, the Byrd - Hagel resolution opposing any treaty that does not impose restrictions upon developing countries or that would harm the U.S. economy. But if treaty opponents rest on their laurels, momentum will shift against them. Clinton officials are aiming for a vote just before the 2000 presidential election. In the meantime, they will work, as Vice President Gore has been doing, to build support for the treaty.

The Clinton budget contains $6.3 billion in research subsidies and tax credits designed to co-opt industry opposition with taxpayer dollars. The EPA has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past few years to environmental groups and trade associations that support the treaty. Already some corporations, such as Enron and the members of the Business Council for a Sustainable Energy Future, are pushing for treaty implementation.

Similarly, the Administration is maneuvering to feign compliance with the Byrd - Hagel conditions. While the resolution explicitly rejects any treaty that does not require developing countries to make ''specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse-gas emissions,'' the Administration has already redefined this condition as ''significant'' developing-country participation -- a much lower standard. Toward this end, Administration officials are promising foreign aid and investment in developing countries that agree to ''participate'' in the treaty.

Several Republicans, notably Reps. David McIntosh (Ind.) and Joe Knollenberg (Mich.) and Sens. Hagel and John Ashcroft (Mo.), have spoken out forcefully against the treaty. There have been more than a dozen committee hearings since December, and the House of Representatives has voted to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from spending any money preparing to implement the Kyoto treaty. But news coverage of these efforts has been limited and has echoed the Administration line.

ClintonCare was defeated not by proposing a watered-down alternative or placing conditions on the Clinton plan, but by the courageous efforts of Sen. Phil Gramm and others in fighting the very idea of a federal takeover of America's health care. Fighting ClimateCare requires similar resolve. Americans have no desire to pay higher fuel prices or subject domestic industrial decisions to international control. If the case is made against the treaty on economic, scientific, and moral grounds, it can be defeated. It's time for opponents to turn up the heat.