Bush's UCI 'warming' advisers upset with 'adapting' approach.

Two of the school's scientists helped convince the president the problem is real.

June 4, 2002

By Gary Robbins

Two UCI scientists who helped convince the White House that global warming is real and largely manmade expressed surprise Monday that the Bush administration is calling for people to adapt to the potentially severe consequences to Earth rather than deal with the causes of the problem.

The administration issued a 250-plus page report in which it declared for the first time that gases humans release into the atmosphere are chiefly responsible for global warming. Potential problems could include more droughts, floods, wildfires and erosion. But the report did not call for specific reductions in the gases generated by fossil fuels.

"The White House is apparently saying we can live with these problems, that we can work around them. I don't like that approach," said Ralph Cicerone, chancellor of the University of California, Irvine.

"We have to drive down the forces of greenhouse gases."

Last year, Cicerone chaired a panel of researchers that reviewed the latest climate science at the behest of the White House. It concluded that there is clear evidence that humans contribute heavily to global warming. The panelists included F. Sherwood Rowland, the UCI atmospheric chemist who shared the Nobel Prize for revealing the effects of chlorofluorocarbons on Earth's ozone layer.

Rowland was surprised that the Bush administration did not push for a reduction in greenhouse gases.

"We'll certainly have to adapt in some ways. But when you look at maps of rising sea levels, a lot of Florida disappears. Where are those people going to go, Georgia?"

University of Alabama climatologist John Christy was more supportive of the Bush administration, saying, "Any report that has lots of climate models should be viewed with skepticism...Adaptation sounds pretty reasonable."