The Bush administration’s proposal for addressing climate change was subjected to withering criticism by 17 experts in a report released yesterday. The experts, who were convened by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences at the request of the administration, said that the proposal lacked “a guiding vision, executable goals, [and] clear timetables” and that its goal — to determine the seriousness of global warming in order to make sound decisions about how to address it — could never be achieved at the current funding level sought by the White House. The panel also criticized parts of the proposal for seeking to fund research on questions about which there is already a scientific consensus: One expert said, “It’s as if these people were not cognizant of the existing science. Stuff that would have been cutting edge in 1980 is listed as a priority for the future.” The Bush administration said it welcomed the recommendations and pledged that some of them would be reflected in the final proposal, slated to be released in April.
