THE Bush administration鈥檚 plan to tackle climate change is badly defined, underfunded and scientifically ill-informed. That鈥檚 the view of one of the country鈥檚 leading scientific organisations, which has reviewed the government鈥檚 latest proposals.
The US began its climate change research programme more than a decade ago, under George Bush鈥檚 father鈥檚 administration. The current administration has now abandoned the Kyoto treaty, claiming more research is needed into global warming, and has merged the programme it inherited into a new Climate Change Science Program.
The administration has asked for comments on a draft of the plan before finalising it at the end of April. And a 17-member panel of the National Research Council that examined the draft did not hold back. 鈥淭he draft plan lacks most of the basic elements of a strategic plan,鈥� it reported last week. The proposals 鈥渙verlooked a lot of existing science as a way of claiming more uncertainty than there really is鈥�, says panel member William Schlesinger, dean of environment and earth sciences at Duke University in North Carolina.
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For instance, the draft fails to consider that consumers may affect climate change by actions such as energy and water conservation and the use of mass transport. It ignores the impact of property rights and markets on the supply and demand of resources. And it overlooks research into the impact of environmental measures by local and state governments and corporate institutions.
The proposals also fail to acknowledge research into how the burning, logging and clearing of forests releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And they contain just a single sentence on the prospect that global warming might spread insect-borne diseases such as malaria over wider areas.
The draft focuses too heavily on what we don鈥檛 yet know about global warming, and that鈥檚 a mistake, Schlesinger says. We should stop dwelling on the uncertainty, and move on to how severe global warming is going to be, and what we should do about it, he says. 鈥淭he basic tenets of global warming are solid.鈥�
James Mahoney, head of the Climate Change Research Program says he welcomes the panel鈥檚 鈥渃lear call for honing research priorities鈥�. But it remains to be seen how much heed will be taken of the panel鈥檚 criticisms.