PARIS(AP)
It was a U.S. government scientist who helped push through the
strong language in the upcoming international report on global
warming.
But that doesn't signal a change in President Bush's
policy about greenhouse gas emissions.
The climate change report coming out Friday _ an agreement by
officials from 113 governments, including the United States _ is
very different from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that Bush has long
opposed.
"I think it's hard to take the U.S. action on this as a
signal of them changing policy," said John Reilly, associate
director of research at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and
Policy of Global Change.
The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sums
up what scientists say is happening and what that means for the
future. The document recommends no actions to slow global
warming.
The head of the U.S. delegation welcomed the strong
language.
"It's a significant report. It will be valuable to
policy makers," Sharon Hays, associate director of the Office
of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, said in an
interview in Paris.
The wording was largely the result of the leadership of U.S.
government scientist Susan Solomon, who heads the panel's
working group, several delegates said Thursday.
But Reilly notes that "saying that climate change is almost
certainly occurring and it's almost certainly due to human
activity is different than saying the impact of climate change is
so bad that we need to do something right away."
Reilly, who represented the U.S. Department of Agriculture at
IPCC negotiations in 1990 and 1995, said scientists such as Solomon
are rarely told what to do by governments, including this
administration. It's different for government officials.
However, other nations' delegates noticed a slight change in
the official U.S. government delegation to the climate panel
between 2001 and now. One non-U.S. delegate, who asked not to be
named so as to not cause a diplomatic stir, said this time
"the U.S. is very much more constructive."
John Marburger, President Bush's science adviser (whose
deputy heads the U.S. delegation in the Paris talks), said the
president and his administration have long recognized that global
warming is man-made and real.
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Associated Press Writer Angela Charlton contributed to this
report.
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