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A coalition of American industrialists is applying behind-the-scenes
pressure to discredit new and worrying projections about the possible impact
of the greenhouse effect on climate.

The projections are being prepared by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) in the run-up to final negotiations for a world
convention to halt global warming. One scenario suggests that by the year
2025, if the world economy carries on with ‘business as usual’, emissions
of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels will be more than 25 per cent
greater than previously estimated.

The projections, which extend to the year 2100, are based on current
estimates of worldwide economic growth, energy use and technological change.
The scientists involved insist that the projections are ‘scenarios, not
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Nonetheless, campaigners for the US energy industry, under the banner
of a Washington lobbying organisation called the Climate Council, have written
a letter of rebuke to John Houghton, the British chairman of the IPCC working
group that is preparing the projections.

The letter, signed by Don Pearlman, a former adviser to President Reagan
who now works for the US National Coal Association and the Climate Council,
warns that using the scenario in IPCC reports, where it might be construed
by journalists and politicians as a forecast, could ‘jeopardise the credibility
of IPCC’.

Houghton’s colleague on the working group, Bruce Callandar of the Meteorological
Office in Britain, says: ‘We regard this warning as a threat. The working
group does not see this argument as very important. But we are aware that
in Washington, where many of the political decisions are being taken about
a future convention, it could be important.’

Pearlman’s letter was sent in August, but could become a bone of contention
at a meeting of the IPCC in Geneva this week. The letter says: ‘We have
a great concern about both the substance and manner of presentation of information
on emissions scenarios . . . The choice by the working group of greenhouse
gas emissions scenarios will greatly influence its climate change predictions.’

Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs on the IPCC will discuss the new scenario between now and
the end of November, ready for inclusion in a revised report on climate
change to be published before June, when nations are scheduled to agree
terms for a climate convention in time for signing at the UN’s Earth Summit
in Rio de Janeiro.

The new scenario, with its increased emphasis on fossil fuels as a cause
of the greenhouse effect, will switch attention back to the importance of
reducing coal and oil consumption in any package of measures to combat global
warming. This comes at a time when the energy industry has succeeded in
persuading many Western governments to lay greater stress on ending deforestation
and planting new forests in the tropics.

Intensive lobbying has had an impact before on political thinking in
Washington about the greenhouse effect. Two years ago, the George C. Marshall
Institute, a right-wing science policy think-tank which had previously concentrated
on military issues, successfully countered the early findings of the IPCC’s
scientists. It published a report predicting that without the influence
of greenhouse gases the world would become colder in the next century.

The report was met with scorn by most climatologists, but found a ready
ear in the White House. Stephen Schneider, one of the US’s leading climate
modellers, accused President Bush’s chief of staff of ‘brandishing the report
as if he were holding a crucifix to repel a vampire’.

Jeremy Leggett, science director of Greenpeace International, said this
week: ‘Of course the scenarios should not be taken as forecasts of what
will happen. Nobody does. But they give us an idea of what could happen.
The irony is that the activities of people like Pearlman make the gloomy
scenarios more likely to come about.’