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Europe Slips on Kyoto Greenhouse Targets
covertlaw writes "Emissions of greenhouse gases from the European Union increased in 2001 for the second year running. According to the unratified Kyoto Treaty, the EU as a whole is committed to reducing emissions by 8% on their 1990 levels by between 2008 and 2012."
Meanwhile, in another triumph of European bureaucracy over humanity, the Lascaux cave paintings are being damaged by fungus as a result of mismangement by its curators.
2001? This news is a bit late, isn't it?
under the kyoto agreement what happens is that we'll pay financially for failing to reduce our emissions. so it's fine if we don't hit our targets - it's just expensive.
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I haven't seen any major new discoveries regarding factory effiecentcy for industy, or any new pollution control technologies. At the same time, Europe is almost certainly producing more and more, and hence more and more pollution.
Anyone else wonder why it took so long to collect data? I'm always surprised that the FBI releases statistics for 2 years in the past. Perhaps the EU doesn't want a mass hysteria caused by reports of massive pollution.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
Who would you pay the fine too ?
I mean you break a city law, you pay a fine to the city government, you break a state law, you pay a fine to the state government...
What is the group that you would pay for breaking a "global law". Or do we just have a country go and invade you to shutdown your polluting industry
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
The other question is who is responsible for measuring the gas output of various things like everybodies lawnmower, fireplace, car, etc.
Kinda glad the US didn't get into this mess, who knows how to enforce it, or even measure compliance
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
There are now doubts about the willingness of Russia to do so, because some of its prominent scientists apparently believe climate change could be beneficial to the country.
:-P
I love it. A little more arid land IN SOVIET RUSSIA!
Oh God, I feel dirty, I said "in soviet russia" in all caps. I think I need a shower. Atleast I didn't say something along the lines of ISR does you...
The EEA says the main reasons for the 2001 increase in all six gases were a colder winter in most EU countries, which meant householders burnt more heating fuel.
I love how its now called global climate change now, instead of global warming. If it were truly global warming they couldn't have used that statement.
Don't worry though, my karma burning will cause global warming now.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
"The European Environment Agency (EEA) estimates they were 1% greater than in 2000"
But how much would they have increased if they had not signed the Kyoto treaty?
Its interesting to compare US trends from the EPA which claims for 2001 "Emissions declined for the first time since the base year 1990".
I really hate to say this as a left-thinking, American-bashing European bigot.
But if the choice is between declining to join Kyoto, and joining it and then totally ignoring it - it seems the US did the right thing.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
According to the unratified Kyoto Treaty
Is this the same treaty that has been ratified by more than 100 countries?
Why would a government want to strangle itself economically just so environmentalists/extortionists with bad science can be appeased? The scientists in support of the theory that blames humans for the climate changes are in the minority, after all.
(I'm sure I'll get modded down just because people are too lazy to answer a reasonable question.)
who is responsible for measuring the gas output of various things like everybodies lawnmower, fireplace, car, etc
Don't be so petty.
Lawnmowers are pretty insignificant. So are fireplaces; in the UK at least, most cities have by-laws banning the burning of wood or coal; as result, houses are generally heated by electricity or gas.
As for cars, governments have a pretty good idea of how many cars there are on the road at any one time and they can make fair estimates of emissions from those figures.
The remaining carbon emission producers are orders of magnitude fewer than private households; government inspectorates can enforce and measure compliance for them.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
The point is the gassess and emissions in question remain in the atmosphere for some time. No one needs to "meter" your vehicles or lawnmower because they are able to detect these emissions in aggregate.
Local metering may or may not be conducted by individual agencies to help identify local sources of pollution, but this is no different than the process several US states undergo to detect vehicles with unusually high emissions today.
So the answer is, the meterologists know how to enfoce it, and measure compliance, and that the US is already "in this mess" via the road and factory emissions compliance they already have in place.
The only difference is, those who signed Kyoto now have a deterrent to increase pollution. The US is free to continue to pollute itself as it wishes.
--ya know, I think people would take projects/agreements like the kyoto treaty a little more seriously once we see UN fatcats and various national and corporate "leaders" jets gathering cobwebs someplace and black limosines being scrapped and turned into mopeds, and see these fatcat goons driving them, and we see more "scientists" and enviro org "leaders" living in tents full time and not travelling all over the world for *very important conferences*. It's this stance of "ooooh, you are a bad human! You are using energy and causing pollution, whereas WE of the global political and intellectual elite, who are your betters, well, our lifestyle is very pure and clean and produces zero pollution" and etc.
The hypocrisy and idiocy is just so annoying.
These are the same bozos more or less who kept freaking out over global cooling and the new ice age coming. I just SO remember that,I used to BE in some enviro groups then,and was more of an activist on those matters, then I started smelling a rat with the junk science and political agendas once I started getting exposed to the group think as you went up the leadership foodchain. Well, I done seen de light on what's going down with them..political control agendas are tops, it has little to do with "pollution" except to extract cash and to create more "laws" and for sound bytes in the media. It's at least 1/2 con job racket. Well, that's my O anyway on it.
Now I am all for doing what we can to eliminate pollution. I think we can do a lot with waste and whatnot that we aren't, and I'm a proponent - and user - of "alternative energy", I grow a ton of my own organic food, only drive the shortest I can get away with once a week, yada yada, but these guys pushing this stuff are just out to lunch nuts. Example, western US, disallow any logging most places last several years, make "off limits" huge vast areas, save the owl and the dead trees, etc. Nuts, everyone with a normal rural clue kept telling them it was gonna catch fire and burn up. Result,it caught fire and all burnt up! Massive humongous wildfires, enough pollution from the fires to bork up any savings we might have gotten, and any number of toasted spotted owls and flying three eyed newts and thousands of people forced out of a living. Huh? This is supposed to be a compromise, to be logical? Let alone shafting a lot of people completely into bankruptcy, not huge rich corporations, I mean joe bubba small time logger and rancher and farmer, not fatcats, just regular ole people. Hundreds of square miles all burnt down, columns of smoke to the stratosphere practically, who knows how many zillions of tons of pollution, lives lost, not one single solitary therm of usable energy extracted from any of it, not a single board to build a home or stick of furniture, millions of wild animals burnt up? Huh? Water pollution now, huge top soil runoffs to the streams? I thought the idea was to have that stuff not happen, plus let humans live and be happy? Gee, maybe junk science with a weird political agenda ain't a good idea?
Triple phooie. Needs to be scrapped, start over with a basic premise, and this has got to be BEATEN into their pointy little heads, that A-humans have a right to exist, B-humans have a right to pursue employment that is necessary, like farming and logging and mining (uh, that's where all this stuff we want comes from, dumb stuff like food, shelter, something to sit on, manufactured goods, ya know, dumb stuff like that), and C-a better compromise must be the goal, to balance it better between the two retarded extremes of rape the planet or return to some pre industrial state. And no, some global bureaucratic boondoggle of "pollution credits" is NOT any sort of rational answer, it's no better than the international corporate chuck-it attitude, both extremes are just...wrong.
What to replace it, not sure, but if they want to jet me here and there and ride me around in a black limo and give me a lot of shapely "scientific research assistants" and a nice fat UN salary I'll be glad to "study it" for a few years and report back with my "findings".....
I don't know how things are over in Europe, but most homes/apts here in the US have a fireplace of somekinds, most being gas, but the higher end houses having wood burning fireplaces, this would be very hard to track, and frankly I wouldn't be willing to give up my fireplace (loose gas/electricity in the winter, I want to stay warm SOMEHOW, plus it is fun sitting by the fire on a cold winter day)
The government might know how many cars are on the road, but how many are Hummer2's and how many are Toyota Priuses. Big difference in emmisions.
I still claim the US government wouldn't be able to track a large chunk of emmissions, so would have to "guess" at how much CO2 is being put into the atmosphere (hell they are trying to get credits for planting trees... now you KNOW it is going too far) so might as well say, Yes we are 8% below where we were 20 years ago... but who the hell knows (do we even have an order of magnitude number for the REAL 1990 levels ?)
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
The same protocol that says Country A can sell it's excess credits to country B who is in need of credits.
Kyoto isn't about cleaning the air, it's about creating a trading market.
Well, for the first thing, you don't have the forest fire story right. There were two effects running in parallel: first, the government policy of stopping forest fires ASAP, and second, the logging companies' habit of only cutting down the largest trees (most profitable). That is what resulted in the large amount of kindling.
Also, the pollution from a forest fire is a lot less toxic than many of the industrial pollutions. You don't hear about ground water being poisoned by a forest fire, do you? Or about tree smoke concentrating in the bodies of whales? There is a big problem with perchlorate poisoning ground water in California. Concentrations of around 10PPB (billion) are a major problem. It doens't take very much of that chemical to produce a problem for thousands of people.
Your premise B needs revising. Obviously, everyone needs food, and logging and mining are necessary. BUT, the approach must be a sustainable method. One hundred years ago, a standard method to mine gold involved using huge amounts of mercury. If I have to explain why that is bad to you then you need a huge amount of education.
As for the comment on saving owls and so on, well, how do you want to protect endangered species? If it doesn't taste good, let it die off?
You need to think your approach thru a bit more. You give too much credit to the compromise process. You know why the compromise is flawed? For the same reason that democracy in the US is flawed: the people with the influence to solve the problem have incentives to ignore the problem.
If I could, I would make the executives of companies that dump toxic waste have to live with their families in the areas that were poisoned. I'm sure that would quickly straighten out a lot of the problems.
Basically, a dog is smarter than collective humanity - a dog won't shit on its food or bed.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
Now we get into local monitoring. Many things that emit greenhouse gasses aren't monitored at all, "cow emmissions" was often laughed at, and I laughed too, remembering driving by pastures with a few cows in them in my youth. I recently drove by a cattle "farm" west of LA that had probably 8-10 square miles of cattle, you could only see their backs they were packed in so tightly. I could smell the methane for miles...
Then there are individual consumer behaviours... Driving cars, mowing lawns, heating homes non-traditionally (ok maybe a fireplace should be considered traditional ). I don't see how these gasses can be computed at all, at best guessed at
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
Well, I am not sure about which fire you are referring to, but as long as too many people didn't die or too much private property wasn't lost, I'm not going to get too worked up about it. The forest probably will be healthier in a few years/decades due to the fire.
I won't always attribute junk science to letting the fires burn. I think that there is a realization that the original approach of surpressing fires as much as possible wasn't consistent with environmental realities.
As for not letting burnt timber be harvested, well, I don't know about that. If the trees fell over, they are probably too burnt to be useful in industry. If they are standing, then they may be able to heal enough to survive. Either way, I can't see how harvesting the burnt timber will help the forest regrow.
If cheap lumber was an economic necessity, then we would stop putting tariffs on Canadian lumber.
But, I am no expert on logging or forest fires. And I don't know anything about the particulars of any incidents you refer to.
The definition of junk science always seems to depend on the political leanings of the person. I generally lean against more industry, even at the expense of jobs. If the entire region is a polluted wasteland 20 years from now, are any jobs really worth it? While I am not advocating a return to the stone ages, we need to be more efficient with what we already have.
As for the pendulum swinging too far into the envirionmental preservation direction, I think that is ok. All too often we implement some project without really being aware of the consequences. Any development needs to be carefully evaluated. I think that this article is relevent to this discussion.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
This highlights the cultural and lifestyle differences between the US and Europe.
My specific experience is with the UK rather than Europe, but I'd wager the differences are not great.
Lawnmowers (I presume we're talking domestic) tend to be electric nowadays. Our lawns are generally smaller than yours so we don't have a problem plugging in a lawnmower with a long electric cable.
As I said, cities (and even small towns) here don't allow the use of coal or wood fires to heat homes; that's been the case for years. It's different in the countryside but that's a tiny proportion of the population. Twenty years ago I remember the coalman delivering "smokeless fuel" to my parents house when I lived with them, and that provided our central heating and hot water. I haven't seen a coalman in 20 years!
Our cars have smaller engines than yours! Average size is 1.2 litres. Our fuel is more expensive (it's taxed heavily) so there is great incentive for people not to buy gas-guzzlers; a minority still do, but it's a minority.
Given that the government knows how big each car's engine is (this is required for vehicle registration) then it's safe to say they can calculate an average emission from then number of cars on the road.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Future generations. Governments invest such fines in Certificates of Deposit due to mature over a term greater than any constituent lifespans.
read that one before, some interesting premises. I like the easter island story. I think part of why they did it was because they were stuck on a relatively small island. Pretty easy for some nut job "leader" to take over with his bully boys and insist on his particular views on life, which following the patterns of most "leaders" are centered around megalomania, meaning all the other decisions had no default basis in rationality. and all of them always seem to fixate on "I have the vision! And everyone else is the infidel!" Usually some variation on that anyway. Another disaster then, happened too many times in human history to not take note of it.
A good rule of thumb (IMO of course) is to treat any "leaders" who actively seek out leadership and power as being nutjobs in waiting. In effect, guilty until proven otherwise. Sad but true in most cases. They need to be watched constantly. Any nation, religion, corporation, organization-you name it, no exceptions. Apply the "grain of salt" to their statements and "visions".
Back to the trees. Billions of them over the last 3-4 years out west were burnt to the point of "not being alive" but still harvestable. There's a two year (+ or -) window where good lumber may be taken, after that they get so bug infested and rotten that their value and usefullness drops. And there's some rationale for using them in more efficient and cleaner burning multi fuel electric generating plants as well. I just dislike waste, sems a better idea to salvage and recycle what you can. Composting theory on steroids. Taking the already dead trees and leaving enough of the branches, etc, to add carbon back to the soil for adequate humus generation seems the most rational. I'm aware that western forests needed periodic fires for development of certain species. So the rational view would be-granted my opinion-neither "no fires ever, constant heroic efforts" or "let it burn constantly forever". Something in the middle seems the best idea for healthy forest + human use for necessary products. I see no reason to destroy living trees at this time when so many already burnt trees may be harvested, canada, US, amazon, wherever. Another good point is that by allowing the harvesting of that particular burnt timber, many more smaller independent loggers and mills remain productive, as it stands now, like with food and farming, the industry is falling into just the complete dominance of a handful of large international concerns (read the source of bribery to pols), never a good idea on that monopoly angle. I like a return to more decentralization,more providers, more competition, less dominance in various industries. I don't want to see THE global food company and THE global computer company and THE global forest products company and THE global energy company. That's just nuts. Using the "commons" FOR the commons seems a better idea, BUT, we won't have that with international controls and mandates. Those sorts of schemes in the past have lead to corruption and entrenched bureaucracy and massive bribery, etc. All you have to do is look at any political system, the farther away you get from the individual person the less 'human" the system becomes, the larger the governmental body the larger the schisms that develop. There needs 'balance" more, instead of utter top to down dictates and edicts. The altrusitic goals never seem to reflect reality down on the ground. Allowing some freedom, property rights, civil and human rights, less intrusive government and less stifling bureaucracy always seems to work out the best. Granted it isn't perfect, but it's the best arrangements humans have come up with. It's a case by case and industry by industry deal, of course, and should be debated. Debate is good! Not having any majority trample on any minority is good! As in the easter island example, "might" a lot of times does not equate "right", or "correct". And it doesn't matter which over whelming force is applied in the name of "right and might", because if it gets TOO powerful, the default human psychology tak
I'd assummed that the estimates of greenhouse gas output were simply based on raw fuel consumption figures for the country - doesn't burning a litre of petrol produce pretty much the same amount of CO2 at the end of the day whether it is used in a 2 stroke petrol lawn mower or the most modern of 'clean' cars? (I don't know the answer to this, in an inefficient/badly tuned engine what sort of percentage of the carbon ends up as soot or something else rather than CO2?)
Really large fuel consumers may take steps to reduce emmissions, but it is not unreasonable to measure these up individually (e.g. lime scrubbers in some power stations), but small scale consumers tend not to do anything like this (or the effect could just be averaged out if they do)
- In chemical reactions, chemical elements are conserved. This means that the carbon added to the atmosphere is the same carbon that was in the fuel consumed.
- Due to records of production, shipment and sales, we know how much fuel was consumed.
So there you have it. And here's a whetstone, you can put an edge on that dull intellect with a bit of work.Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Well, they can tell by following weather patterns. This isn't new technology - this kind of monitoring has been going on since before the US/Canada acid rain proposals.
Local, individual testing is done by individual governments, and obviously done only where something can be done to correct an issue - it doesn't make sense to measure methane output of cattle unless you actually can *do* something about it, for example.
A buch of people far smarter than you or I sat down and came up with excellent ways to guage, address, and monitor these emissions. The US didn't join for one reason, which was plainly stated - they weren't prepared to deal with the potential economic impact. It's their perogative to do so, but at no time was it suggested this process would be too difficult to "track".
There are a lot of good arguments against the USA using so much oil, and producing such a large fraction of humanity's excess CO2. However, the "over-consuming society" argument is logical junk. If the USA consumed 50% of the world's human-handled energy but produced it all from solar and wind, the "mass consumption" claim would still be true! That just goes to show how little sense it makes. Find another argument.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
A two stroke engine pollutes far more. The main reason being that it is a terribly inefficient engine. Lots of unburned fuel enters the atmosphere in a two stroke motor.
my pet machine
But ratifying Kyoto might at least have shown the USA's intention to do something about its mass consumption. It might have shown they feel responsible for burning over 25% of worldwide resources...
Yes! It would have let us say one thing, and do another!
Why do I have 'A Little Bit Country, a Little Bit Rock&Roll' going through my head right now?
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True, but we're talking about greenhouse gas emissions here. Soot is not a greenhouse gas, but rather a smog agent. Being a particulate, its pretty bad for the lungs, too. But in terms of global warming, it has no effect, and therefore is not an issue with respect to Kyoto.
There are several different types of gaseous polutants, and these tend to get confused. The big ones that get talked about are CFCs, particulates, unburned hydrocarbons, and greenhouse gasses. CFCs are the culprits behind the ozone hole (CFCs are not an evil of the internal combustion engine, but rather from ACs, refrigerators, fire supresssion systems, and aerosol sprays). Particulates are bad for your lungs. Unburned hydrocarbons contribute to ozone polution (ozone is good high in the atmosphere, but bad to breath). And greenhouse gasses tend to absorb thermal IR, preventing the Earth from radiating heat back into space at night, thus causing the global warming. CO2 is the main greenhouse gas. This means that a car which has no particulate emissions, and no unburned hydrocarbons, is considered to be clean, but anything which burns hydrocarbons converts them to CO2 and water, and CO2 is a greenhouse gas. This happens regardless of how 'clean' the burning process is. Fuel cell cars will emmit as much C02 per gallon as a two stroke.
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It should come as no surprise that Europe is following this trend. Because fuel prices are up to 4 times of what they are in the U.S., European drivers are more or less forced to drive diesel-powered vehicles. Even the "cleanest" diesel engines spew out a great deal more of particulate emissions than their gasoline counterparts. Not only that, but NOX and other greenhouse gas emissions are also much higher from diesel engines, thanks to the fact that the exhaust is not hot enough to properly activate any catalysts in a tyical catalytic converter.
Add to that the fact that many eastern European countries (not part of the EU but affectig Europe nonetheless) are not very strict with their emissions policies and a large percentage of the population is driving pre-1985 vehicles, many of which do not even have catalytic converters. This trend has also been seen in Mexico (esp. Mexico City), where greenhouse gas levels are insanely high.
s/you/me/gix;
The big problem here is that Kyoto is ALREADY a compromise between your two extremes. A cut of like 10% in emissions is hardly returning to a pre-industrial state; you've been spending too much time watching FoxNews.
I notice that the "diplomatically deft" will say, "sure, I'll do it!", but then flake over time. You tend to get less lumps if you slowly flounder than if you say, "Sorry, I don't like the terms and won't do it". The US acted like a nerd-out-of-college by bailing out up front. We should have signed it, and then flaked at the same rate as everybody else. Then we would not be "unalateralists". We would be flaking in tandem.
Table-ized A.I.
This one will never get old; No, you go and liberate them!