According to a five year report prepared by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations organization, there is now complete consensus of agreement among scientist that global warming is not only fact, but that we humans are causing it.

Such reports do not have trivial consequences.

The December 1997 Conference of the Parties for the Framework Convention on Climate Change held in Kyoto Japan, has used the report as justification to commit the US to a 7 percent reduction in CO₂ reduction from 1990 levels within the next decade! This translates into about a whopping 40 percent reduction in US energy use from projected levels in 2010.

Many Americans might agree that such a staggering policy is necessary if the IPCC report is correct. But there's the rub. The IPCC report is not the one originally written by the scientists. Incredibly, after the staff of the IPCC received the report from the scientists, sections were drastically altered-in absolute violation of IPCC rules. All statements indicating the uncertainty about the type and cause of global climate change were removed.

These alterations are not small cosmetic changes--they radically change the conclusions of the report. Deletions include hard statements made by the scientists that, "None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [of the climate change observed to date] to anthropogenic [man-made] cause."

Such deletions are designed to create a blatant deception, Dr. Frederick Seitz, president emeritus of Rockefeller University and past president of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society blasted the IPCC staff, "Whatever the intent was of those who made these significant changes, their effect is to deceive policy makers and the public into believing that the scientific evidence shows human activities are causing global warming"

When the "consensus" conclusion was challenged by reporters at the COP meeting, IPCC staff replied, "Consensus does not always mean unanimity of agreement, consensus is up to the chairman." The staff claimed they had to change the scientist's report to "make it agree with the chairman's executive summary!

While the surface temperatures have gone up by about 0.4o F, the far more accurate satellite measurements show no significant increase in global temperature. The peak in 1998 can be attributed to el nino and a series of solar storms that struck earth during that time.

While there is little disagreement over the fact that our climate is changing, what it means is still hotly contested among scientists. For instance, satellite data contradicts the global warming theory. It is telling us something most of us have intuitively known for along time. Some months and years are warmer than normal, while others are cooler. But over the long haul, earth maintains about the same temperature.

Although satellite data show large variations in the earth's, the average for the nearly 18-year period since the measurements were started has actually shown a 0.021⁰C decline in global temperature!

Ironically, these temperature measuring satellites were put into orbit in 1979 because of fear we were entering the next ice age, not global warming! It was the sharp rise in temperature during the last half of the 1980's that provoked the global warming scares.

At the time most scientists tried to tell us that we must not make long range predictions based on short term trends. Many tried to tell us that most of the significant warming in the past 100 years occurred prior to the 1950's and before the atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases began to rapidly increase. Greenhouse gases therefore could not be the controlling factor in determining global temperature. So clear is the evidence that 100 of the 150 + climatologists in the world stated in what is known as the Leipzig Proclamation, "it has become increasingly clear that - contrary to conventional wisdom - there does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from rising levels of carbon dioxide. On the contrary, most scientists now accept the fact that actual observations from earth satellites show no climate warming whatsoever."

But these scientists were ignored. Their call to reason has been drowned by the flood of horror stories of what mankind was supposedly doing to earth. Many economists doubt our standard of living can be maintained with the enormous CO₂ reductions agreed to by President Clinton. The treaty would cause the loss of 2 million American jobs, reduce the gross domestic product by 3 percent, and increase gasoline, electricity and home heating costs by 50 percent or more, and increase food prices by over 20 percent!

Ironically, Europe would experience very few of these penalties. First, much of Europe's electricity is produced by nuclear power which is not affected by the treaty. Most electricity in the U.S. is produced from coal and oil.  Second, the European Community has negotiated a "bubble" coverage for all European nations. Therefore, even though the European Community has agreed to an 8 percent reduction below 1990 levels (compared to 7 percent for the U.S.), the comparatively low-cost modernization of the old East Block factories and production facilities will automatically result in huge reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and therefore meet the 8 percent reduction target for all of Europe without any further sacrifice! This is not possible in the U.S. because  U.S. industry is already modernized. While the U.S. suffers, Europe will thrive.

Although the UN and Clinton administration are demanding that the  Kyoto Protocol be implemented to stop global warming, because the developing nations are exempt from the treaty, manufacturing jobs will merely flee from developed nations (especially the U.S.) to these developing nations, which will not result in any net reduction of CO2 emissions.

But that is not the worst of it. While the U.S. economy is being decimated due to forced reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the 136 developing nations are totally exempt from the treaty. The developing nations can and will continue to increase their greenhouse gas emissions--not only negating the reductions made by the 38 developed nations, but making those reductions meaningless! The increased emissions by these developing nations is projected to dwarf any savings gained by the dehabilitating reductions made by the developed nations.

In spite of the absurdities and inequities of this treaty, it is full speed ahead for policy makers seeking to slam on the breaks on CO₂ emission. They cite the Global Climate Model as evidence that the actual measurements are anomalies caused by the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo and other perturbations like La Ni?. Once these anomalies are behind us, they claim, the temperature will rise to 1988 levels and continue its relentless increase.

No one disagrees that the stratospheric dust spewed out by volcanic eruptions and the La Ni? effect can cause cooling. However, a plunge in global temperature occurred in December 1995 of 0.1^o C--the greatest single month decline in history. There was no discernable "cause" for this plummet in temperature. Likewise, Dr. Robert Balling, Director of the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University notes, "The satellite-based measurement of planetary temperature showed 1/97 to be the coldest January in the 18-year record. What makes this amazing is the lack of any La Nina or volcanic eruption that can be "blamed" for [any of] the observed cooling trend of the past year."  In fact, there is strong evidence that the earth's temperature is strongly controlled by solar energy output and other solar activities, rather than greenhouse gases. (See next article)

The Global Climate Model fails to account for these complexities thereby yielding a dangerously false picture of global warming. It is time to take global warming out of politics and put it back into the scientific arena where it should have been all along. There is very low risk in waiting for science to define what is really happening before making policy. But the risk of allowing the falsification of scientific reports and continuing the increasingly draconian policy advocated by  eco-doomsayers, may be a strangled U.S. economy teetering on bankruptcy.