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Analysis of the Kyoto Global Climate Conference December 12, 1997 |
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A report from a correspondent in Japan. What reductions does the Kyoto agreement call for? Why has "global warming" become a big issue? Why were developing nations excluded from the agreement? Is there consensus amongst global leaders that global warming is for real? How should competing scientific claims about global warming be judged? Can the Kyoto Protocol be ratified by the Senate? Viewer comments.
NewsHour Coverage
December 11, 1997:
Two U.S. Senators discuss whether the Kyoto agreement will be ratified by the Senate.
December 10, 1997:
A member of the Clinton Administration reports on the negotiations in Kyoto.
December 9, 1997:
India's Ambassador to the U.S. explains why the developing nations should not be mandated to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
December 8, 1997:
The European Union's delegate to the U.S. talks about the rift between the EU and the U.S. at the Kyoto conference.
December 5, 1997:
A business leader questions the science behind global warming.
December 4, 1997:
A look at the the science and politics of global warming.
November 10, 1997:
An Online NewsHour forum on the U.S. plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
October 22, 1997:
A discussion of President Clinton's plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
June 25, 1997:
President Clinton is backing the EPA's push for tougher air quality standards, but critics say they're too costly.
February 18, 1997:
The federal Environmental Protection Agency has proposed new clean air standardsthat have been criticized by some industry, state and local officials.
March 6, 1997:
The fastest rise in temperature for perhaps ten thousand years is having a dramatic effect on the brittle ecosystem of Antarctica.
January 4, 1996
British meteorologists report that the Earth's surface temperature was higher than the average in 1995.
Browse the NewsHour's coverage of science and the environment.
OUTSIDE LINKS:
Kyoto Conference
EPA on global warming
Global Climate Information Project
Environmental Defense Fund
The Sierra Club's page on global warming
Global Change, a database of articles on climate change.
John Daniell of Shelton, CT, asks: Why has so-called "global warming" become an issue? I submit that our politicians, having nothing better on which to spend their time, have chosen to go against proper scientific opinion. Worse still it is a smoke screen behind which the Administration is camouflaging its inability to formulate and carry out policy on many much, much more important issues to this country. Unfortunately, widespread scientific ignorance among the public, and I might say, among environmentalists, makes the public easy marks for this kind of behavior.
Prof. David Downie of Columbia University replies:
I would say that far more consensus exists among scientists regarding climate change than among "our politicians." Global warming is not a new issue. The central insight behind the concern for human-induced climate change -- that adding carbon-dioxide, CO2, to the atmosphere could raise the average global temperature -- dates to the 19th century. What has changed recently is that most of the scientific community now accepts that climate change, if not a certainty, is quite likely in the future because of human activities. This is based not only on unassailable evidence of large increases in atmospheric levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, but also vastly improved understanding of the global climate system.
This is not to say that there are no important uncertainties. There are. However, the general theory is now broadly accepted. For example, the 1995 IPCC report, which was reviewed by hundreds of the leading experts in the world, concluded that humans probably already have begun to substantially affect the world's climate. Dr. James Baker, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, stated recently that "There's a better scientific consensus on this [forecasts of global warming] than on any issue I know -- except maybe Newton's second laws of dynamics."
Thus, global warming is not a new issue created by politicians but an old scientific debate which is slowly being resolved. What must now be determined, is what we want our politicians to do with this information. Kyoto was just one important stage in this process, one which I believe will continue for some time.
Prof. Charles Weiss of Georgetown University replies:
Global warming is a real issue and a serious threat to future generations. This is the consensus opinion of the great majority of scientists who have examined the evidence, and was the official finding of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international technology assessment panel involving over 2000 respected scientists worldwide. The proof is not 100 percent certain, and there is a fairly small but articulate minority of respected scientists who disagree. But the great majority think that the chances of serious long-term damage to the world's climate are so large that we owe it to our descendants to take steps now to reduce the world's output of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Scientists do still disagree over whether man-made global warming can already be detected, or whether it will become a serious problem only decades hence. Here the evidence is still controversial. The problem is that the human contribution to global warming to date, if there is one, is about the same size as the natural variation in temperature from year to year and from place to place. The IPCC concluded that recent changes climate records show the fingerprints of human activity. In other words, recent changes in the variation of temperature with latitude and altitude, and in the differences between day and night temperatures and between Northern and Southern Hemispheres, do not resemble natural patterns of variation and are typical of what we should expect from the effects of human activities.
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