Such political posturing reinforces the skepticism expressed by climate expert Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about the summary. Lindzen who is helping write one of the chapters of the IPCC assessment, continues to doubt that human activity has much to do with climate change. For the time being, that is where the issue belongs on the back burner, especially regarding government action. The world needs much clearer scientific evidence, not only about what is happening with global warming but what intelligently ought to be done about it. The sulfur and other particulates they used to send up into the atmosphere bounced back the sun's rays into outer space, helping to cool the surface of the Earth.
Less pollution means less bounce and, to the modelers, more warmth.
On that score, the Clean Air Act of 1990 promotes global warming. And you can bet that Gore and other environmentalists don't want to go there. Voters can also hope he really doesn't want to go on to meet Kyoto's arbitrary CO2 targets. The pain simply isn't worth the gain. The American Council on Capital Formation estimates the cost of cutting energy usage to meet the Kyoto protocol would translate into a 1 percent to 4 percent loss of gross domestic product annually.