CO2 is not a pollutant?
A report in the Independant says that the Bush Administration has declared CO2 not to be a pollutant.
The Bush administration has decreed that carbon dioxide from industrial emissions - the main cause of global warming - is not a pollutant.
The decision by the Environmental Protection Agency - announced with minimal fanfare on the eve of the Labor Day weekend - reverses the stance taken under President Clinton and allows industry to increase emissions with impunity.
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The Bush administration appears to be guided by a leaked memo by the political consultant Frank Luntz, which advised: “Should the public believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.”
The Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change clearly feels that the lack of certainty is overstated. (Summary for Policy Makers, Technical Summary, Full Report). I’d recommend this commentary for those who are interested in the scientific consensus:
As Dr. Robert Watson, then Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said in 2001,
The overwhelming majority of scientific experts, whilst recognizing that scientific uncertainties exist, nonetheless believe that human-induced climate change is already occurring and that future change is inevitable.
Science does not ever offer certainty. The strongest statement it can make is to say that consensus has emerged amongst the scientific community. Nor does consensus mean unanimity - you will always find a dissenting voice for any scientific theory - and this is also a good thing.
But there is consensus on global warming.
The core, then, of scientific consensus among IPCC scientists is that they agree that the report is of the highest scientific integrity and reflects the state of knowledge fairly and adequately.
(Credit: a post by Lula on a Kos Comment Thread)