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New book tutors future presidents and public on science behind the headlines
Date:8/15/2008

dividuals, put spin on their description that is not in the report."

This includes co-prizewinner Al Gore, who exaggerates many of the panel's findings and implies in his book and movie that his opinions are actually the IPCC consensus, said Muller, who has credentials of his own as author of a respected technical book on climate change in Earth's history. Many climate scientists have remained silent about these misleading statements, hoping that the exaggerations stimulate public interest. Muller acknowledges this benefit, but feels that there is a core of intelligent readers that deserve to know the whole truth. That includes anyone running for office.

Widespread acceptance of the exaggerations has led, for example, to the belief that the United States is the main culprit in global warming. In fact, said Muller, the IPCC climate models attribute only one-fifth of a degree Fahrenheit of global warming to the United States - a quarter of the total 0.8F warming estimated to have occurred over the past 50 years. While the U.S. contribution is far more than that of any other country and disproportionate with the rest of the world, if the nation continues at its current rate of emissions, it will be responsible for another 0.2 degrees of warming in the next few decades, whereas the emerging economies of China, India and Russia combined could contribute 4 to 5 degrees of warming, he said. Thus, whatever the United States does to limit carbon emissions could quickly be negated by actions in the developing world. China, in particular, might choose not to slow economic growth - and carbon emissions - until its people reach the same level of wealth as people in the United States.

"In the end, the issues go beyond physics, but we need to recognize that many measures we institute in the United States to deal with global warming can be classified as feel-good measures or setting-the-example measures," he said. "We have to ask ourselves which example t
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Contact: Robert Sanders
rsanders@berkeley.edu
510-643-6998
University of California - Berkeley
Source:Eurekalert

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