GLOBAL climate models are to face the scrutiny of the US courts. A lobby group is taking legal action against the US government for publishing results from one of the world’s top climate models that predict sea levels and temperatures in the US will rise.
The spat began with the publication of Climate Action Report 2002 by the Environmental Protection Agency last year. The report warns that climate change is a clear and present threat to the US, relying on predictions from a model run by the respected Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in the UK.
But this has sparked the ire of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a right-wing lobby group based in Washington DC. It has accused the EPA of publishing “knowingly fictional” science, and is suing the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy for failing to block the report.
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The CEI says national climate predictions “may not credibly be asserted on the basis of computer models” and the Hadley model “frequently provides outcomes so divergent as to often be at polar opposite” to those of other models. “For example, North Dakota would turn into either a swamp or a desert, depending on which model one accepts,” it notes in its complaint. The institute, which received $400,000 from oil company ExxonMobil last year, released details of its action late last month.
President George W. Bush disowned the EPA report after its publication. But the CEI claims he should have banned it for breaching the Federal Data Quality Act, which requires scientific data published by the government to be “objective”.
The Hadley Centre was not available for comment. But its website concedes that “where smaller-scale features strongly affect local climate, the global models fail to capture the regional detail necessary for assessment at the national level”.
While the case is being brought against the White House, several state governments that support moves to tackle global warming claim the Bush administration is sympathetic towards the legal action, which they say is a “sweetheart suit” that undermines scientific claims about global warming. The CEI denies the charge.