This is a dark hour. The Kyoto Protocol will end in 2012. With every failed summit, the likelihood grows that there will be no new treaty to replace it. Kyoto was far from perfect. The nations covered by the protocol’s targets account for less than a quarter of global emissions. And it did not cover shipping or aviation. But Kyoto did represent a global recognition of the need to tackle climate change. And if the treaty lapses without a replacement the small successes it has delivered, such as finance for developing nations that protect their rainforests, could unravel.
Optimists point out that Spain and India have made constructive moves over the past fortnight. But Japan, Canada and Russia have grown more recalcitrant. And the election of a host of new climate sceptic Republican members to Congress in last month’s mid-term US elections has tied President Barack Obama’s hands. China, meanwhile, remains the roadblock that it was in Copenhagen.
It is tempting to argue that the search for a binding global deal should now be abandoned and to recommend that governments focus on national emission reductions, bilateral deals where possible or even adaptation to a hotter planet. Yet if nations go their own way, we will likely descend into a beggar-thy-neighbour world, in which countries with laxer emissions controls poach manufacturing capacity from states that take a lead. It is hard to see even the most modest national emission reduction efforts surviving under such circumstances.
I keep wondering if some kind of displacement thinking is going on with all this climate concern. We are not even sure that the earth is warming (in 1970, the big concern was cooling), and even if it is, we do not know all the factors involved and to what degree human actions are responsible. If the planet is warming, and if human actions are responsible for the vast majority of that warming, then I can see taking strong action to decrease whatever factors are behind the warming.
But if the planet is warming, human actions are probably only a small portion of the factors involved. Human beings neither created the ice age that ended 10,000 years ago, nor did they end it.
We seem to have an inflated opinion of ourselves.
I am more concerned with chemical pollution than with global warming. That is something that has deadly effects and it is something that we can do something about. Using hybrid cars and fluorescent lighting, however, will mean greater chemical pollution because of the exotic metals used, while reducing only a little in the way of “greenhouse gases.”
There are other problems we should be dealing with, such as the threat of Islamic domination of the world or the threat of economic collapse because we have built a house of cards. But those issues, and others, require dealing with some things that are painful and even dangerous. Far better to deal with something “scientific,” even if not quite proven.
All I can respond to this headline is with raucous laughter… “Global Climate Control” is the very best self-definition of hubris/chutzpah I have EVER read.
There has been no statistically significant global warming in the last 15 years, despite the significant CO2 emissions from the 2nd and 3rd world nations ramping up to industrial states (like China). The icecaps on Mars melted without CO2 from industry during that time period. Polar bears are alive and well. The glaciers haven’t melted away. Chicken little runs the science fair though, so everyone pay up or the sky will fall.
Dr. Roy Spencer, the principal research scientist of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville:
“Despite decades of persistent uncertainty over how sensitive the climate system is to increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, we now have new satellite evidence which strongly suggests that the climate system is much less sensitive than is claimed by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The warming we have experienced in the last 100 years is mostly natural.”
German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer: “one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.â€
Engineers with whom I work call this the most laughable hoax science ever proposed.
Cap and Tax. And tax, and tax, and tax, and tax, and tax. More taxes, anyone?
Sounds good to the likes of John Kerry, Nancy, Harry, Steny, Barney, Henry, Chuck, and Barry.