News Release

October 29, 2003

Media Contact: (202) 789-5200

Cato Specialist: Global Warming Bill Has 'No Basis in Science'
McCain-Lieberman measure is 'Kyoto Lite'

WASHINGTON--The Senate on Thursday is expected to vote on legislation designed to curb the emission of greenhouse gases through energy use regulation. Patrick Michaels, Cato Institute senior fellow in environmental studies and author of Satanic Gases, asserts that the measure would have no measurable effect on the Earth's temperature.

Michaels calls the bill--the handiwork of Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.)--'Kyoto Lite,' a kind of "backdoor implementation of the infamous Kyoto Protocol on global warming."

"The original Kyoto Protocol, if enacted by all of its signatories, would reduce global temperature by only seven-hundreths of a degree Celsius in 50 years, as indicated in policy analyses overseen by Vice President Gore in 1997," he says. And the McCain-Lieberman bill would do even less.

Michaels' scientific backing for his views is detailed in "Posturing and reality on warming," published in The Washington Times.