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Claude Allegre, one of France's leading socialists and among her most celebrated scientists, was among the first to sound the alarm about the dangers of global warming.

"By burning fossil fuels, man increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which, for example, has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century," Dr. Allegre, a renowned geochemist, wrote 20 years ago in Cles pour la geologie.." Fifteen years ago, Dr. Allegre was among the 1500 prominent scientists who signed "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity," a highly publicized letter stressing that global warming's "potential risks are very great" and demanding a new caring ethic that recognizes the globe's fragility in order to stave off "spirals of environmental decline, poverty, and unrest, leading to social, economic and environmental collapse."

In the 1980s and early 1990s, when concern about global warming was in its infancy, little was known about the mechanics of how it could occur, or the consequences that could befall us. Since then, governments throughout the western world and bodies such as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have commissioned billions of dollars worth of research by thousands of scientists. With a wealth of data now in, Dr. Allegre has recanted his views. To his surprise, the many climate models and studies failed dismally in establishing a man-made cause of catastrophic global warming. Meanwhile, increasing evidence indicates that most of the warming comes of natural phenomena. Dr. Allegre now sees global warming as over-hyped and an environmental concern of second rank.

His break with what he now sees as environmental cant on climate change came in September, in an article entitled "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" in l' Express, the French weekly. His article cited evidence that Antarctica is gaining ice and that Kilimanjaro's retreating snow caps, among other global-warming concerns, come from natural causes. "The cause of this climate change is unknown," he states matter of factly. There is no basis for saying, as most do, that the "science is settled."

Dr. Allegre's skepticism is noteworthy in several respects. For one, he is an exalted member of France's political establishment, a friend of former Socialist president Lionel Jospin, and, from 1997 to 2000, his minister of education, research and technology, charged with improving the quality of government research through closer co-operation with France's educational institutions. For another, Dr. Allegre has the highest environmental credentials. The author of early environmental books, he fought successful battles to protect the ozone layer from CFCs and public health from lead pollution. His break with scientific dogma over global warming came at a personal cost: Colleagues in both the governmental and environmental spheres were aghast that he could publicly question the science behind climate change.

But Dr. Allegre had allegiances to more than his socialist and environmental colleagues. He is, above all, a scientist of the first order, the architect of isotope geodynamics, which showed that the atmosphere was primarily formed early in the history of the Earth, and the geochemical modeller of the early solar system. Because of his path-breaking cosmochemical research, NASA asked Dr. Allegre to participate in the Apollo lunar program, where he helped determine the age of the Moon. Matching his scientific accomplishments in the cosmos are his accomplishments at home: Dr. Allegre is perhaps best known for his research on the structural and geochemical evolution of the Earth's crust and the creation of its mountains, explaining both the title of his article in l' Express and his revulsion at the nihilistic nature of the climate research debate.

Calling the arguments of those who see catastrophe in climate change "simplistic and obscuring the true dangers," Dr. Allegre especially despairs at "the greenhouse-gas fanatics whose proclamations consist in denouncing man's role on the climate without doing anything about it except organizing conferences and preparing protocols that become dead letters." The world would be better off, Dr. Allegre believes, if these "denouncers" became less political and more practical, by proposing practical solutions to head off the dangers they see, such as developing technologies to sequester C02. His dream, he says, is to see "ecology become the engine of economic development and not an artificial obstacle that creates fear."

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Claude Allegre received a Ph D in physics in 1962 from the University of Paris. He became the director of the geochemistry and cosmochemistry program at the French National Scientific Research Centre in 1967 and in 1971, he was appointed director of the University of Paris's Department of Earth Sciences. In 1976, he became director of the Paris Institut de Physique du Globe. He is an author of more than 100 scientific articles, many of them seminal studies on the evolution of the Earth using isotopic evidence, and 11 books. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Science.

© National Post 2007

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is being accused by Senate Democrats of cutting the flow of information and limiting access to information in its agency run libraries. The EPA’s library modernization program is being portrayed as restricting the public’s right to know about environmental issues and EPA administrative actions.

At a February 6, 2007 EPW hearing, Administrator Steve Johnson was asked to respond to emails he had not had the opportunity to review from EPA employees critical of EPA’s library plan. One email alleged that the EPA Region 4 Library in Atlanta had closed. Another email alleged that the EPA library at Ft. Meade, Maryland had closed.

FACT: The truth is the EPA Region 4 library in Atlanta remains fully open to the public and EPA employees with regular operating hours each day. The EPA facility at Ft. Meade is not part of the EPA library network. The facility at Ft. Meade is an EPA laboratory which contained a 10ft. by 20ft. reference room. Although this information is now available online, all reference information physically remains available through the EPA Region 3 Library located in Philadelphia.

EPA library modernization makes information MORE Accessible, not less. The EPA’s new library modernization process will make information available to the public, with an emphasis for online availability.

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PG&E Corporation claims it joined the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) to support global warming cap-and-trade legislation out of concern for the Earth’s climate.

Fact: PG&E Corporation’s claims of environmental altruism have been questioned. According to the Wall Street Journal on January 26, 2007, PG&E is one of four "utilities that have made big bets on wind, hydroelectric and nuclear power. So a Kyoto program would reward them for simply enacting their business plan, and simultaneously sock it to their competitors." The Wall Street Journal called cap-and-trade seeking corporations a "pack of climate profiteers."

CEI president Fred Smith explained that PG&E stands to benefit under cap-and-trade proposals. "…if Congress enacts carbon caps on power plant emissions, PG&E will gain an instant competitive advantage over power producers that rely more on coal and less on nuclear, hydro, natural gas, or wind. PG&E’s national market share will grow not because it lowers its prices, but because Congress raised its competitors’ prices," Smith said during a Senate Environment & Public Works Committee (EPW) hearing on February 13, 2007.

Senator Kit Bond noted the similarities between corporations clamoring for a cap-and-trade system and the failed energy giant Enron.

"This is not the first time that industry has worked alongside environmentalists. Indeed, this is not even the first time that some in industry have thrown their support toward carbon caps. Indeed, we need only think back to Clinton administration meetings with Enron’s Ken Lay over Kyoto treaty negotiations," Senator Bond said during the February 13, 2007 hearing.

"This Washington Post article ‘Enron Also Courted Democrats: Chairman Pushed Firm’s Agenda With Clinton White House’ chronicled how, ‘[i]n a White House meeting in 1997...Lay urged President Clinton and Vice President Gore to back a market-based approach to the problem of global warming - a strategy that a later Enron memo makes clear would be "good for Enron stock,"’" Senator Bond explained.

"This text bubble details why Enron officials later expressed elation at the binding carbon caps in the Kyoto protocol. According to the Washington Post: ‘an internal [Enron] memo said the Kyoto agreement, if implemented, would "do more to promote Enron’s business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States,"’" Senator Bond added.

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