National Center for Public Policy Research Calls for Tough Questions at Commerce Committee Hearing on McCain-Lieberman Global Warming Bill

1/8/2003

From: David Almasi of the National Center for Public Policy Research, 202-371-1400, dalmasi@nationalcenter.org

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 -- The National Center for Public Policy Research is calling upon members of the Senate Commerce Committee to ask some tough questions at today's hearing on Senator John McCain's and Senator Joe Lieberman's new anti-global warming bill. The bill would to force all major sectors of the U.S. economy to cut their greenhouse gas emissions to year 2000 levels by 2010 and 1990 levels by 2016.

"The Senators have bypassed what would most likely be a more even-handed hearing in the Environment and Public Works Committee, which normally would have jurisdiction, in favor of hearings in McCain's Commerce Committee," said Amy Ridenour, president of The National Center for Public Policy Research. "The witness list is tremendously biased in the bills' favor. This legislation, if approved, would harm the economy and kill jobs. This fact should not be ignored at this hearing."

According to a tentative witness list released by the Committee January 7, expected witnesses included: Lieberman; Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA); Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT); James Mahoney, assistant secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and director, U.S. Climate Change; Eileen Claussen, president, Pew Center on Global Change; Jack Cogen, president, Natsource; Fred Krupp, president, Environmental Defense Fund and Randy Overbey, president, ALCOA Power Generating.

Inlsee and Shays are members of the House Climate Change Caucus, a left-of-center caucus that promotes the view that mankind may be causing the planet to warm as much as 10.4 degrees over the next 100 years, and which promotes legislation according to this view. The Pew Center and the Environmental Defense Fund are left-of-center environmental organizations.

Both ALCOA and Natsource are for-profit entitles with a business interest in a governmental adoption of cap and trade schemes.

Ridenour added: "Despite making room for profit-making entities, three elected officials on the liberal side of the global warming debate and two representatives of the environmental left, the McCain's Committee apparently has scheduled no representatives of organizations skeptical of the scientific reliability of the global warming theory nor any elected officials holding similar views."

"It is doubtful that significant man-made global warming is taking place. The computer models used in U.N. studies say the first area to heat under the "greenhouse gas effect" should be the lower atmosphere. Highly accurate satellite data have shown no such warming. There has been surface warming of about half a degree Celsius, but this is far within the customary natural swings in surface temperatures.

"The vast majority of American scientists who specialize in climate studies believe the dire scenarios described by global warming fear-mongers are wrong. The U.N. Panel on Climate Change, often cited by environmentalists, bases its projections on worst-case scenarios from two flawed computer models, each of which significantly contradicts the other.

"The way to approach allegations that mankind is causing climate change is through research, such as that at Stanford University's new Global Climate and Energy Project. The project is a 10-year collaboration between academia and the private sector.

"Stanford has been supported by $225 million in grants from ExxonMobil, General Electric and Schlumberger and E.On, the European energy distributor. The selection of Franklin M. Orr, Jr., dean of Stanford's respected School of Earth Sciences, to head the new project apparently has guaranteed its independence to the satisfaction of most mainstream environmental groups.

"In the meantime, all eyes are on McCain and Lieberman - which just might be the way they want it," concluded Ridenour.

The National Center for Public Policy Research is a conservative think-tank established in 1982. For more information visit its website at http://www.nationalcenter.org or contact David Almasi at 202-371-1400.