Reputable scientists say it will be many years before they know if human activities are contributing to global warming. They decry the current rush to put limits on industrial use of fossil fuels -- arguing that vital policy decisions are being made without scientific backup.

Here are a few of their arguments:

• Most predictions of global warming are based on "general circulation models" -- although no one yet understands all the physics and chemistry these models require.
• Because climate modeling is probably the single most demanding test of computer power, an article in the journal Science last year suggested that it may be a decade before the models can link global warming to human activities.
• No serious scientist would link isolated weather events to global warming, as some politicians do repeatedly.
• Climate models only consider the amount of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere -- not how they got there.

Experts caution that restrictions on energy consumption being considered this week at the United Nations climate summit in Buenos Aires would, in effect, replicate the reductions that have occurred in economic downturns. Yet history suggests that such reductions would have no effect on global temperatures.

Source: Bruce D. Berkowitz, "Global Warming Studies Are a Model of Confusion," Wall Street Journal, November 4, 1998.

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