George Bush gave a slap in the face to the world's
efforts to combat climate change yesterday when he abandoned a campaign promise
to regulate power station emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2),
the "greenhouse gas" believed to cause global warming.
His decision, which gravely threatens the already weak US commitment to the
Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 climate change treaty, was lambasted by
environmentalists in the US and across the world, who accused Mr Bush of
betrayal and selling out to the energy industry.
The US is the biggest emitter of CO2, with just four
per cent of the world's population producing nearly a quarter of the global
total, and the President's move, while not directly linked to the protocol, will
seriously affect the ability of the United States to meet the emissions
reduction targets it promised under the treaty.
Mr Bush's move came as scientists found the first direct evidence that the
greenhouse effect has become significantly stronger over the past 30 years,
causing the global warming detected by climatologists. Greenhouse gases, such as
CO2, now play a far greater role in trapping solar
radiation – which would otherwise be reflected by the Earth back into space
– than a generation ago, the study found.
US reluctance to meet its Kyoto commitments led to the collapse of talks on
the protocol in The Hague in November. Negotiations are set to resume in July in
Bonn, Germany, but the latest move will not inspire confidence that the USA will
ever deliver on its promises.
"President Bush's decision sends a negative signal to the rest of the
world about US willingness to curb pollution," said Tony Juniper, of
Friends of the Earth International. "If the world is to avoid a catastrophe
it is essential for the US to take a lead in tackling the profligate use of
fossil fuels."
Mr Bush's abandonment of a campaign promise to regulate power station's CO2
emissions was the first major U-turn of his presidency. The President said that
new evidence indicated that the proposed controls would do more harm than good.
A former oil man who received generous campaign donations from the energy
sector, Mr Bush argued during the election that many of the curbs imposed by the
Clinton Administration were too onerous.
Furious environmental campaigners concluded that Mr Bush had been nobbled by
the energy industry and its many well-funded Republican supporters in Congress.
"We're extremely distressed to read this. It sounds like Bush is bowing
to heavy lobbying pressure from business interests and making a complete U-turn
on a campaign promise he made," said Allen Mattison, of the Sierra Club
environmental pressure group. While angering environmentalists, the President's
about-face on greenhouse gases is guaranteed a friendlier reception from most
American consumers, who are sensitive to any change that could raise energy
prices and deeply skeptical about the evidence on global warming.
The research, published yesterday in the journal Nature, compares data
gathered in 1970 by an orbiting US satellite with data collected in 1997 by a
Japanese satellite. Both measured solar radiation reflected by the Earth's
surface and atmosphere – a measure of the greenhouse effect.
Critics of the global warming theory argue that much research relies on
theoretical assumptions built into computer models. But the latest findings
provide hard evidence that the global climate is changing due to higher levels
of CO2 and other man-made pollutants.
The scientists, led by Professor John Harries of Imperial College, London,
found that over the past 30 years the ability of greenhouse gases, notably CO2,
to trap the Sun's heat has increased measurably, possibly because greenhouse
gases have increased over that time.
Although the scientists are confident that they have measured the worsening
greenhouse effect, they admit that the data fall short of definitive proof that
it is the result of increases in man-made pollutants.
"But it does make [the proposition] stronger," said Helen Brindley,
one of the researchers. "We're not saying we've found human influences on
global warming but we think we can see human effects on radiative emissions into
space from Earth.".
"We have shown that greenhouse gases themselves have directly
contributed to the decrease in radiative emissions into space. You'd expect to
see a temperature response in some way – the heat is remaining in the Earth's
atmosphere," Dr Brindley said.
The research was only made possible by the recent rediscovery of the 1970
data – stored on ancient computer tapes in a cupboard at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in California, part of Nasa, operators of the Nimbus climate
satellite launched in 1970. Instruments measuring the spectra of light radiating
from the Earth provided a unique signature of the role played by greenhouse
gases now and 30 years ago, according to Professor Harries.
"These unique satellite spectrometer data collected 27 years apart show
for the first time that real spectra differences have been observed and that
they can be attributed to changes in greenhouse gases over a long time," he
said.
The scientists eliminated the possibility of instrument defects causing
differences in the two sets of data, or the influence of cloud cover at the time
measurements were taken.
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