by Richard Morrison
August 21, 2008

Washington, D.C., August 21, 2008—A government climate change panel agreed, after an onslaught of critical public comments, to reconsider their latest report. This move, though likely only temporary, is a victory for sound science and public integrity and a setback to the forces of global warming alarmism.

The Climate Change Research Program issued a “Unified Synthesis Report” in July for public comment, claiming to synthesize 21 studies to present an alarming series of regional climate change projections. Unfortunately, not only can climate models not credibly do that but only 8 of the 21 studies had actually been completed and released. For these and other reasons the report violates the federal Information Quality Act and also the U.S. Global Change Research Act, and cannot be permissibly disseminated.

“The authors go to great lengths to obscure their inability to credibly articulate human influence on the climate,” said Christopher C. Horner, Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “They do so through selectivity in research, alarmist language, failure to provide relevance or context to many of their claims, and generally throughout with transparent advocacy in tone and content.”

Despite a small window of less than thirty days to submit substantive comments on the 208-page report, a number of scientists and policy experts, including CEI Senior Fellows Horner and Marlo Lewis, managed to detail the alarmist bias, selective use of sources, and inappropriate policy advocacy. and

“The report claims it doesn’t provide official recommendations for government action,” said CEI Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis. “Yet the document continually commingles science and advocacy for regulatory controls on carbon dioxide. In fact, the cheerleading begins on the cover page with an intentionally exaggerated graph of global temperatures.”

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