The science supporting the why of action on climate change recalled the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). "Climate change is occurring, Earth is warming," said environmental scientist Pamela Matson of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, chair of the NRC panel on advancing the science of climate change, one of three separate panels that produced the trio of reports. "These climate changes are largely caused by human activities."
But this was no rehashing of the IPCC report, which has taken considerable flak of late. The new NRC reports draw on the past 5 years of peer-reviewed literature, which was published too late for inclusion in the IPCC analysis, Matson emphasized. They also reflect findings from more than a score of reports from the U.S. Global Change Research Program and earlier efforts from NAS. The membership of the three NRC panels also had little overlap with that of the IPCC's working groups, says economist Gary Yohe of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, an IPCC veteran who was on the NRC panel on adapting to climate change. Yohe says he was surprised to find at the panel's inaugural meeting that three-quarters of his fellow members were unfamiliar to him.
Although NRC tasked the panel on limiting the magnitude of future climate change with providing "policy-relevant (but not policy-prescriptive) input," the panel did recommend that "the United States set a future greenhouse gas emissions target in the form of an emissions budget," said panel chair Robert Fri of Resources for the Future in Washington, D.C. And the NAS press release said a "reasonable goal" would be emissions of 170 to 200 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2012 through 2050.
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In recommending a carbon budget and a target range, the panels "did go farther than IPCC could," says climate scientist Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, who was not involved in the NRC reports. "There were more words like ‘should’ than you normally have with IPCC." And the press release takes the emission budget goal a step further, noting that it is "a goal that is roughly in line with the range of emission reduction targets proposed recently by the Obama Administration and members of Congress."
But can the report help bolster the proposals' chances of becoming law? "That's the $64,000 question," says ecologist Peter Frumhoff of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The House of Representatives passed a bill that would probably keep the United States under the emissions budget, but action has been slow in the Senate.
There, senators John Kerry (D–MA) and Joe Lieberman (ID–CT) have introduced a package with the same goals as the House version's but more flexibility and with subsidies for nuclear and fossil fuel industries. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–NV) recently announced a go-slow approach, which might see votes as late as July. But elections loom in the fall, and climate lobbyists worry that the closer elections get, the more hyperpartisan the atmosphere will be.
It's unclear whether science can change that. Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., rattles off a number of Democrats in the House who supported last year's bill but have either publicly repudiated their vote or retired. "Cap-and-trade is dead," he says. Said a Senate staffer: "I'm hoping this will help push the issue, but I don't think we are at a place where scientific reports can find that influence."