Representatives Question Science Behind CFC Phaseout
One item on the agenda of the congressional majority is reducing federal regulations, including some related to environmental protection. House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX), and fellow Representative John Doolittle (R-CA), have recently introduced bills that would attempt to slow down or eliminate the planned phaseout of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) set for the end of this year, as dictated by the Copenhagen amendment to the Montreal Protocol. The two bills were discussed at a September 20 hearing of the House Science Subcommittee on Energy and Environment. The hearing was chaired by Dana Rohrabacher (R-FL), who has called the theory of global warming “at worst...liberal clap trap.” It was the first in a series of oversight hearings to examine how scientific research is used to formulate federal policies and regulations.
Supporting Rohrabacher’s intention to “hear from both sides equally,” the hearing featured both proponents and opponents of the 1995 CFC ban, and included representatives of atmospheric and environmental sciences, astrophysics, immunology, and biophysics, as well as industry and government agencies. Witnesses reviewed the scientific evidence for causal relationships between anthropogenic increases of CFCs, stratospheric ozone depletion, increased ultraviolet-B radiation reaching the Earth’s surface, and adverse health effects.
Rohrabacher focused mainly on the scientific justification for the U.S.'s 1992 decision to speed up the date of the phaseout from January 1, 2000, as dictated by the original Montreal Protocol, to the end of 1995. The international community followed the U.S. by agreeing in November of 1992 to move up the phaseout date. Rohrabacher charged, as did DeLay and Doolittle, that the impetus for the U.S.'s accelerated deadline was a February 1992 NASA press release that predicted a possible ozone hole over the Northern Hemisphere. They claimed the warning was faulty and based on environmentalist scare tactics. They also considered the evidence for the ban questionable, discounted the scientific consensus behind the policy, and expressed concerns that opposing views were being suppressed. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) noted, though, that policy-makers had to “go with the best available science at the time,” and John Olver (D-MA) added that if Congress waited until the evidence was certain, “we may be left with something irreversible.”
Witness Fred Singer of the Science and Environmental Policy Project asserted that “there is no scientific consensus on ozone depletion” and charged that the international scientific community ignored “contrary evidence and dissenting views.” He argued that the accelerated phaseout was based “on nothing more than a highly questionable and widely criticized NASA press conference,” and called it deplorable that “policy is being made by press release.”
Robert Watson, OSTP Associate Director of Environment and a co-chair of the International Ozone Assessment Science Panel, defended the science underlying the policy: “Hundreds of scientists, from developed and developing countries, some of whom were at one time skeptics, have been involved in the preparation and peer-review of each of a series of international scientific assessments conducted under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization [WMO] and the United Nations Environment Programme.” Watson refuted claims that the phaseout was accelerated primarily because of media hype surrounding the NASA press release. He pointed out that the release was not in error, and added that the international scientific community was unlikely to be swayed by such a media event.
Watson also countered the charge that contradictory data was ignored. He reported that many participants, including industry representatives and the then-Soviet Union, were originally skeptical of the issue, but evolved into “key players” after their scientists became involved in the assessments. Watson’s contention was supported by Kevin Fay of the 250-member industry Alliance for Responsible Atmospheric Policy. Fay admitted that “in 1980 we believed that rigorous scientific analysis would eventually disprove” the theory, but on the basis of participation in the 1986 WMO assessment, “industry representatives came to the conclusion that the potential existed for serious and unacceptable future environmental risks, if CFC growth continued...” However, Sallie Baliunas of the George C. Marshall Institute testified that she had personally been discouraged from working in areas that might contradict the accepted theory. Rohrabacher called that the “most serious thing” to come out of the hearing, and promised further investigation of the issue.
