Friday, 12 October 1990 Washington, DC
1. GORE ACCUSES WHITE HOUSE OF SABOTAGING CLIMATE NEGOTIATION!
In a hearing on coral bleaching yesterday, Sen. Albert Gore (D-
TN) grilled John Knauss of NOAA, who will represent the US at the
upcoming Second World Climate Conference
(WN 5 Oct 90). Gore
charged the US delegation with attempting to "weaken and dilute
every proposal to actually do something." Knauss argued that
it's too soon to get into details of CO2 stabilization. Gore
complained that "Mr. Sununu is handling the climate negotiations
the same way he handled the budget negotiations." He wondered
why Knauss, a deputy administrator at NOAA, and not EPA head
William Reilly, will be representing the US. A top EPA official
commented privately that no one at EPA was eager to have Reilly
undergo such a grilling. Like most scientists working on the
problem, he said, Reilly's personal views differ from White House
policy. Officials from the World Meteorological Organization feel
the US government is not taking global warming seriously. A NOAA
lawyer caused an uproar in Geneva when he answered the concerns
of the minister of environment from low-lying Bangladesh about a
rise in sea level: "Before you had cows, now you'll have fish."
2. SEMI-TOUGH COMMITTEE SANCTIONED SALE OF SEMI-GAS SYSTEMS.
The
Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), is
charged with reviewing proposed foreign takeovers for the Presi-
dent, who has authority to block such sales on national security
grounds. CFIUS does not seem unduly alarmed; of 460 takeovers
reviewed so far, only one was ever blocked. But in a hearing on
Wednesday, Sen. Gore (he had a busy week) questioned approval of
the acquisition of Semi-Gas Systems by Nippon Sanso. Semi-Gas
has been an active participant in Sematech, a research consortium
funded by US tax-payers and the semiconductor industry to compete
with Japan; since 1988 the selling price of Semi-Gas rose from
$5M to $23M. Sematech claims a confidentiality agreement, which
was not in place prior to the sale, does not adequately protect
their technology. Sematech was not consulted about the agreement,
and first heard about it from the Wall Street Journal. "You've
been taken to the cleaners," Gore declared to CFIUS officials.
3. AN OFFICE OF TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT REPORT ON SPACE DEBRIS,
released yesterday, dampened jubilation at NASA over its first
shuttle flight in over five months. Discovery sent the Ulysses
spacecraft on a mission to investigate the polar regions of the
Sun. According to OTA, the low-Earth orbits reached by the
shuttle may be too cluttered with space junk to use in another
decade. It's more bad news for Freedom, NASA's proposed orbiting
pork barrel. A GAO report last April
(WN 27 Apr 90) warned that
the space debris model NASA used to design Freedom underestimated
the hazard. Spy satellites also populate low-Earth orbits, and
SDI envisions putting up 4,600 Brilliant Pebbles, exacerbating
the problem of debris from space-weapons tests. The OTA report
calls for international agreements to curb additional littering.
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