BROOKLIN, Canada -- The Bush administration announced a new 10-year plan Thursday to study the ”uncertainty” around global climate change--instead of taking action to fix it, scientists and environmentalists say.

WRONG DIRECTION US carbon dioxide emissions, which are considered a culprit in global warming , increased 1.3 percent in 2002. (AFP/File/Frederic J. Brown

”The Bush administration is using the scientific uncertainty around climate change to delay taking concrete actions in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions,” Steven Guilbeault, a political advisor to Greenpeace International, told IPS.

”It's clear to everyone that this is a delaying action,” he said.

Eight years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), involving more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries, agreed that human-produced emissions of greenhouse gases, primarily from burning oil, coal and natural gas, were changing the planet's climate.

Given the enormous ramifications, most countries, including the United States under Pres. Bill Clinton, signed on to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which commits countries in the North to small reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions.

However, not long after taking power, Bush withdrew from Kyoto and backed away from campaign promises to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. Bush argued that reducing emissions of fossil fuels would cost too much, and that the science around the causes and impacts of climate change were too uncertain.

This selective use of the fact that few things in science are ever 100 percent certain irks Michael MacCracken, an atmospheric scientist who headed U.S. efforts to determine the impacts of global warming from 1993 to 2001.

”This administration appears to have no uncertainty about the safety of genetically modified foods, another new and complex scientific endeavor,” MacCracken told IPS.

”We can't wait until we have perfect knowledge on climate change,” he said.

An outline of the goals and objectives of the 10-year plan is contained in the 330-page ”U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan” released today. It is intended to bring together expertise from 13 federal agencies that are spending $4.5 billion per year on programs that touch on climate change.

GLACIERS MELTING FAST A view of the world's highest ski slope, located on the flanks of Chacaltaya in the Bolivian Andes at nearly 5,400 meters above sea level, just 15 kilometers from La Paz, July 12, 2003. According to scientists studying the receding glaciers in the Andean Cordillera, the ice cap that attracts hundreds of tourists each year from all over the world to ski on will disappear in less than five years, probably due to global warming. REUTERS/David Mercado

Under ”CCSP Priorities” the plan lists ”three broad sets of scientific uncertainties: atmospheric distributions and effects of aerosols; climate feedbacks and sensitivity, initially focusing on polar feedbacks; and carbon sources and sinks, focusing particularly on North America.”

The plan does not mention mandatory emissions reductions or other active steps. Rather, it promises that U.S. researchers will produce 20 new reports on various aspects of climate change over the next four years.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Don Evans also announced a $103 million, two-year federal initiative to accelerate the deployment of new global observation technologies.

But many scientists note that a vast amount of research on this topic has already been completed. MacCracken was involved with the IPCC, an intense and laborious process that sorts through the enormous amount of scientific data on climate. More remarkably, the scientists and government representatives from more than 150 countries have managed to reach a consensus.

”Scientists around the world recognize the threat of climate change and the need to act now, not a decade from now as Bush suggests in his new plan,” said Guilbeault.

MacCracken agrees that the Bush administration is ignoring the international scientific community. While allowing the need for additional research ”the new plan looks like it could be a stall,” he said.

Greenpeace and other environmental groups are convinced it is a deliberate attempt to stall action by insisting on more research. U.S. citizens are worried about climate change and this is a way for Bush to defend his administration from accusations they are doing nothing, says Guilbeault.

But people in the United States have moved ahead of Bush on the issue, says MacCracken, who spent years meeting with the public. They are already asking what they can do in their lives to moderate and prepare for the impacts of climate change, he says.

The state of Maine has formally committed to reduce its emissions by 70 to 80 percent and dozens of regions and cities in the United States are moving in the same direction, Guilbeault observes. The city of San Francisco will soon be the leading producer of solar energy in the world.

”Solutions are there, it's just that Bush and his backers at Exxon don't like them: More solar, wind, energy efficiency and conservation,” Guilbeault said.

Only two days before the release of Bush's Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan, NASA released satellite photos on its website that clearly show the rapid retreat of the massive Greenland ice sheet.

Copyright 2003 Inter Press Service

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