WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration yesterday opened a multiagency effort to define the current scientific understanding of climate change -- a process that critics say will only delay action to counter the effects of global warming.
The U.S. Climate Change Science Program, a consortium of 13 federal agencies, opened a three-day conference on such issues as the way climate events are monitored and recorded, the models scientists use to study the phenomenon, natural variability in the climate and human contributions to change.
Citing uncertainties about these and other issues, President Bush in March 2001 rejected the Kyoto Protocol, a climate change treaty that former President Clinton signed but never submitted to the Senate for ratification.
In its place, Bush called for an essentially voluntary program of greenhouse gas reduction and energy efficiency for the next 10 years -- and further study.
Critics have said that calling for further study before making a decision is a decision in itself.
Current levels of greenhouse gas emissions, many environmentalists say, are already likely to produce undesirable effects ranging from dwindling water supplies to possible polar melting that could inundate coastal cities.
The three-day conference appears to be dominated by the departments of Commerce and Energy, but also includes environmentalists and other outsiders.
Delegates were presented a 177-page draft statement to be reviewed during the week and finalized tomorrow.
Bush's science adviser, John Marburger III, defended Bush's approach to climate change, saying it "is not, as some commenters have cynically remarked, to delay action, but to act in a rational and responsible way."
In an address to the conference's opening session and later in a news conference, Marburger warned of what he depicted as a dangerous inclination to commit the country to policies without sufficient consideration of their economic impact.
"What we are arguing is that we need more information to have a clearly articulated policy that is practical," said Marburger, former president of the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Marburger warned repeatedly that some advocates of steps to reduce global warming -- especially the Kyoto treaty -- have not been sufficiently thought through.
Dan Lashoff, climate change science director at NRDC, said the conference seemed to him an effort "to turn the clock back 10 years by asking a whole bunch of vague questions that don't lead toward clear decisions." He noted that scientific findings reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations initiative that led to the Kyoto Protocol, were omitted from the draft scientific statement.