Clinton, Gore warm up to temperature of globe; But some
call assertions half-baked
By Paul Bedard
Copyright 1998 Washington Times
July 27, 1998
ASPEN, Colo. - President Clinton and Vice
President Gore are using this
summer's dog days to bolster fearsome warnings that the globe is
warming up,
but experts say the duo are overheating Americans with fudged data.
With greater intensity as the summer days get hotter, the
president has been
declaring that the climate is its hottest
in 500 years while the vice president has said evidence of
global warming is
"piling up" week after week.
But in each case, they are leaving out key facts,
according to climate experts:
* While Mr. Clinton is using newly reviewed
2,000-year-old
Chinese weather and crop data to make his case for
global warming, he is only looking back 500 years, a time of the
sharply cooler
"mini-Ice Age," and ignoring the data showing that the
world was warmer than now.
* Mr. Gore's charge last week that
"the evidence of global warming keeps piling up, month after
month, week after
week," was made without the obvious context that the calendar
is moving into the dog
days of summer.
* The government office in charge of temperature readings
claims accurate data
only goes back 100 years.
"It's getting silly," said Thomas Gale Moore, a former
member of President Reagan's Council of
Economic Advisors.
"Next they'll be saying it's significantly warmer today than
six months ago [in
January]." he added.
"This is what they usually do, play with the
data. Depending on where you start and stop, you can make the data
say what
you want," said S. Fred Singer, president of the Science and
Environment Policy Project.
"The public are still not wise to it," he added.
The administration has been using the heat wave to build
its case for a global
warming
treaty that would sharply reduce industrial pollutants and provide
money to
study the issue and educate the public on global warming.
Mr. Clinton and the vice president have referenced global
warming at each
campaign stop. They have suggested global warming is to blame for
the fires in
Florida and a recent
heat wave despite climate experts claiming it is an aftereffect of
El Nino and
its summer cousin La Nina.
Mr. Gore, for example, held a recent press conference to
blame the daily
summer temperature increases on global warming - not the arrival of
late
July and August, commonly the hottest time of the year.
"Usually the climate does warm in the middle of July. That's
normal," said Mr. Moore.
The president increased his focus on global warming after
returning from
China, where he claimed to have received data dating back to the
15th century
showing temperature increases
on the globe.
Speaking at a July 9 Miami Democratic fund-raiser at the
home of film star
Sylvester Stallone, Mr. Clinton said,
"When I was in China, I was reminded that one of the reasons
we have weather
records going back hundreds of years is that the Chinese weather
people - what we now call meteorologists - have literally been
keeping detailed
records since the 15th century. And we now know that the five
hottest years
recorded since the 1400s all have occurred in the 1990s - every one
of them."
A week later, he told a gathering of Girls Nation,
"There is ample evidence
now that what my wonderful vice president has been saying for years
and years
and years is true: that the climate of the globe is warming at a
rate which is
unsustainable, which will lead us to more extreme weather
conditions. We now
have records going back over 500 years which we can use to measure
what the
temperature was on this planet."
Here to host a weekend retreat of major Democratic donors,
he said early
yesterday:
"This is not a game. We cannot afford to go into denial about
this."
Elliot Diringer, spokesman for the Council on
Environmental Quality, said the
president was referring to soil samples and tree-ring data.
"That type of evidence does suggest climate change effect in
that region," he said.
What Mr. Clinton didn't say, however, is that the Chinese
have kept crop and
weather data for over 2,000 years.
According to that information, the weather was warmer
2,000 years ago than it
is today.
Mr. Moore,
in his new book
"Climate of Fear," said Europe and China were unusually
warm from about 800 to 1300. After that,
a
"mini-Ice Age" occurred in the 15th century, dropping
temperatures some two to four degrees
below those of the 20th Century.
"If you start then, there's no doubt that the world has
warmed since," he said.
"They just conveniently pick their starting point at the
coldest period," Mr. Moore said.
"You can't do that in science."
Mr. Singer said the Chinese data doesn't give
temperatures because the
thermometer wasn't invented until 1632. He said the data instead
shows what
crops were
grown and at what altitudes.
Tom Ross of the National Climate Data Center said accurate
temperature data
collected by the federal government goes back only 100 years.
"The reliable records began about 1880," he said.
Scientists generally agree that the climate has warmed a
degree
over the past several hundred years due to greenhouse gases being
released in
the atmosphere.
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