Slashdot Mirror
Kyoto Protocol Renewal Efforts Struggling
Hugh Pickens writes "Economics trumps the environment. The emission targets set by the Kyoto Protocol will expire next year, and negotiators are fighting to keep UN climate talks on track while efforts to save the Euro push the struggle to save the planet down the priority list. In the United States, seen as the biggest single obstacle to a new global climate deal, academic opinion says an 'iron law' means economics trumps the environment in times of crisis. Meanwhile, some leading voices on climate science have suggested the Kyoto Protocol be put to pasture, since clinging to hopes of a renewal of that agreement does more harm than good in achieving meaningful dialogue on how to fight climate change. When the agreement was negotiated in the 1990s, the world was more clearly divided into 'rich and poor' countries. However, China and India have seen unexpectedly strong economic growth since then, and currently make up 58 per cent of global emissions. 'Against this backdrop, it is no surprise that countries such as Japan, Canada and Russia adamantly refuse to assume new binding targets unless the other major economies at present outside Kyoto's reach — most notably, the United States and China — do so as well,' writes Elliot Diringer, executive vice-president of the U.S.-based Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. 'And for now, the odds of that happening are nil.'"
In all honesty, the European Union (as the first true step towards one world government) needs saving more than the environment.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
And here I would have thought that the biggest obstacle would be one or the other of the two nations that have already stated that they will NOT accept restrictions on CO2 emissions - China and India.
The USA isn't really likely to do so, but at least it's admitted of the possibility, unlike China and India.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
This isn't just about the econmy trumping the environment, it's about the economy now trumping the economy in the near future. Global warming will have enormous associated costs... but not yet, so it somehow doesn't count?
Here's the problem in a nutshell: You have a global common resource, in this case the ability to put CO2 into the atmosphere before it heats things up so much that we all die (regardless of whether you think the current warming trend is anthropogenic, there's very little argument that there is some point at which too much CO2 is a problem). But the short-term incentives for each actor using that common resource are to use up as much of the common resource as quickly as possible, because if they don't then somebody else will, and we'll all be dead anyways.
Now, in most cases, commons problems are solved by government action. For instance, when the population of lobsters off the North Carolina coast dropped precipitously due to over-harvesting, the government put severe restrictions on how many lobsters everyone could get, and it sucked for the lobstermen, but saved the commons and allowed the industry to survive. But in the case of a global commons like the atmosphere, there's nobody who has the ability to enforce that kind of rule, so each country has no choice but to use up the common resource as quickly as possible, collectively racing to disaster.
And it doesn't help that both of the worst offenders in this department, the US and China, are firmly committed to the path of destruction.
I am officially gone from
So the USA is the biggest problem in not getting a new Kyoto passed but China and India will not sign and produce more pollution also other countries have said they will not sign without limits placed on China and India?
Looks like some is upset that the USA realized the current Kyoto was a farce when refusing that sign that one.
They start erecting sandbags and levees around New York City and Washington DC. They the US won't just participate, but will be pushing the agenda with the threat of economic sanctions and possibly war to those who continue to pump out the greenhouse gasses.
And of course the response to anyone who says, 'Back in 2011 we told you so!' will be a not so diplomatic 'Shut up!'
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's a shell-game and always has been. Rich countries were supposed to pay for poor countries to pollute more heavily (because it was cheap) while they created less polluting technology that would trickle down.
It's no wonder it failed so spectacularly.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
The Kyoto Protocol's emissions targets were woefully inadequate to avert the worst of greenhouse gas (GHG) related climate change. However, the Kyoto Protocol was the ONLY international framework for negotiating multilaterally on curbing emissions of greenhouse gasses. The Bush/Obama administration in the US and China sure did a good job destroying that framework putting multilateral efforts to ameliorate climate change on an even more glacially slow path. To quote Stephen Colbert "Enjoy that metaphor, by the way, because your grandchildren will have no idea what a glacier is."
In all honesty, the European Union (as the first true step towards one world government)
Why on earth would you want a one-world government? The more you remove power from the people, the less popular sovereignty they have, the less representative the government becomes. Bureaucrats in Washington are bad enough at ignoring the people. You want international Bureaucrats running the world? Why?
This is the real world, not Star Trek. Newsflash: People in the world disagree with each other, and frankly, I'd be scared of a Star Trek-like world where everyone on earth agreed on things. I'm almost certain I'd disagree with them.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
you already have a hereditary monarchy in the USA. Look at what happened when someone who isn't from an old family got into the top spot.
Did you mean Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
We're supposed to be smarter, but really, not much difference when it comes down to it. Consume all the resources, over breed, destroy the habitat in which we live, die en masse.
Check your premises.
Seriously, It is a joke. It is actually encouraging manufacturing jobs to leave CLEAN AREAS, and move to places where there is LITTLE TO NO POLLUTION CONTROL.Notice the fact that China and India have 58% of emissions. That is not because of their large economies, but lack of controls.
It is time for nations to put taxes on ALL GOODS based on the CO2 emissions (and ideally, later add in other pollution) from the nations where items come from. This means that they put the tax on their OWN goods as well. By doing this, it will force all nations to participate, esp. those with large economies or quickly growing by cheating. Measurements should be by the soon to be, OCO2 sat, rather than ppl playing games with GUESSING how much emissions is happening. In addition, it should NOT be tied to population, as that is not just error prone, but designed to encourage more growth (last thing we need). Instead, it should be tied to land (a fixed value), economic output (responsible for bulk of the emissions; this is esp. true when good times come, nations cheat even more), or some combination of these two.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yes, America is NOT part of the Kyoto, and THANK GOD FOR THAT. However, America's output keeps dropping while other nation's continue to climb.
We hit 20 tonnes and have dropped to 17.5 by 2008. Considering that Electricity Generation accounts for more than 41% of all of US emissions and our coal % is dropping, then it is a CERTAINTY that we will continue to drop. I know that just in Colorado, we are killing a number of our coal plants and replacing them with Natural Gas, wind and solar PV.
Hell, it terms of amount that has dropped, we are one of the best out there and better than many other western nations.
Germany went from 12 to 9.6 which makes them LESS than us.
Canada has gone from 17.5 to 16.4 (1.1)
UK went from 10.3 to 8.5, which is less than 2 tonnes per person savings.
Ireland went from 11.3 to 9.8 (yeah, like that is major cut).
France went from a high of 7.1 to 6.5(yeah, with all the nukes there, they are REALLY making major changes).
Japan has stayed right around 9.5-10 (no growth, but no cuts either)
And yes, there is still plenty of growth out there.
South Korea is at 10.6 and continuing to grow (why? To make it possible to dump on the market economically).
Australia has gone from 16.9 to 18.9 (i.e. they beat America)
Norway is at their second highest at 10.5, AND GROWING.
South Africa from a low of 6.6 to 8.8 and growing.
China? They have gone from 2.2 to 5.3 and have said that they have ZERO intentions of slowing. Worse, they are mostly on coal and will continue that. Yes, there is more hydro to come on-line, but not that much. But the REAL issue is that once OCO2 goes up there, we will see that emissions are 3x what we thought they were. The groups that have done 'measuring' announced it when they went over and emissions controls were turned on for it. When one group was allowed to QUIETLY monitor but not allowed to publish, they found out RADICALLY different results. And when it comes out, ppl are going to scream that OCO2 must be wrong, or that the AGW scientists were fool (and neither was true).
Note that nearly every single nation is on a growth curve and only a few are bring it down. And at the top of that is America. That differs from China, India, Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, Norway, etc. Hell, nearly all of EU except for France, is going to have loads of issues going down because they are tearing down their nuke plants.
The problem with kyoto and the fools that back it, is that it actually sends more manufacturing on over to 3rd world nations as well as China (china is NOT 3rd world). That means that production per tonne of CO2 CONTINUES TO INCREASE MASSIVELY, rather than drop.
The blame will NOT be USA. The blame are the idiots that scream that we must all adopt a protocol that has done LITTLE TO NOTHING TO DROP EMISSIONS. In fact, all I have seen is an outsourcing of jobs to 3rd world nations whose emissions then jump faster then the meager savings that were in the developed nations.
So, quit being a fool and look at the facts. Even when you use something as irrational as emission per capitia, America comes up selling of roses in terms of turning things around, while others, esp. those under kyoto and fast growth nations, stink to high heaven.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Well, if give credence to the whole peer review thing, and acknowledge the fact that 97% of the world's scientists say it's real and caused at least in part by man:
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/06/scientists-overwhelmingly-believe-in-man-made-climate-change/1
Then it's science.
In fact, I'd argue that it is deniers who are going for the faith based approach. Something like believing that hiding under the blanket will protect you from the monsters under the bed.
Check your premises.
Having just worked my way through many of the Climategate 2 emails (and yes, read a rather lot of the literature) it isn't all that surprising that Kyoto is about to be a major fail. The science is far from settled, the primary researchers are perfectly aware that it is far from settled and openly admit it in their internal discussions, but they are far more concerned with things like having a person's Ph.D. revoked (for the sin of disagreeing with their conclusions), having journal editors fired (for the sin of publishing a paper that weakened their "cause"), winning the "PR war" (what about figuring out the science?), verifying on their own that the infamous MBH hockey stick graph is crap (yes, in the internal climategate letters you discover that the primary hockey team members know perfectly well that trend-fit white noise put into Mann's algorithm produces nothing but hockey sticks at this point, but do they openly admit the mistake and remove the graph from all of the public policy presentations on the subject? Hell no! Both MBH and MJ are still there on the wikipedia pages for global warming, because admitting error and removing crap results that are known to be completely wrong weakens the message and undermines the PR war).
Throw in that the UAH temperature anomaly since 1981 -- evaluated with openly accessible methods from openly available datasets and not susceptible to e.g. UHI "corrections" liberally applied, unlike e.g. HadCRUT3 -- is a whopping 0.11C. That would be 30 years, call it a third of a century, and 0.11C net warming as of October. Over that time, CO_2 has gone from 335 ppm (Mauna Loa) to around 390 ppm. That is a 55/335 = 16% increase. Since the 1998 El Nino peak (and the end of the series of Grand Solar Maxima of the 20th century) global temperatures have gone down (or held nearly steady). The most pessimistic trending of post 1997 data is 0.2 C. During that interval CO_2 concentration went up around 8%. Even the IPCC is backing off from predictions of much warming "for a while" and of course everybody but Al Gore is sober enough to be able to see that there is no correlation between e.g. the frequency or energy in tropical storms and either the UAH (fairly reliable satellite derived) data or the God-knows-how derived HadCRUT data and especially not with raw CO_2 concentrations.
Now let's see. The earth's mean temperature is roughly 280 C give or take a bit. Let's assume that the thirty year anomaly is 0.28C, in rough agreement with UAH -- it won't matter for this argument. CO_2 up by 16%, T up by -- what would that be? Yes, that's right, by 0.1%! I won't even bother discussing climate sensitivity -- that's dead in the water right there! There are two things anybody can see from simple back of the envelope calculations, the sort one should do just to see if complex models (in the end) make sense. One is that 0.1% -- hell, 1% -- is surely within the bounds of natural variability for a tipped planet with warm, complex oceans, and the most cursory glance at temperatures over the entire Holocene stand is clear evidence that it is a lot larger than that, with or without human civilization. The other is that if 100% of that gain was pure response to CO_2 forcing without any confounding factors or fudge factors contributing, the noise from non-CO_2 fluctuations greatly exceeds this signal and we cannot explain the noise!. For the last decade, temperature trends haven't even had the same sign as a nearly 10% increase in atmospheric CO_2.
This leaves a CAGW enthusiast doubly damned. If solar state is irrelevant, decadal oscillations are irrelevant, oceanic heat reservoir forcing (with up to 1000 year timescales, so some fraction of the energy contributing to the current SST comes from sunlight that warmed the ocean when Columbus was sailing the ocean blue!) is irrelevant (and unpredictable besides), and volcanic aerosols over that decade irrelevant, then that leaves only CO_2 and the sign of the tempera
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
I say the environment actions should be applied to companies instead of countries. As China becomes the world factory, it might not be fair to place a limited quota on China, especially as we all know that developed countries intentionally moved major highly polluting industries to China, taking advantages of cheap labor, land, and loose environmental control. For example, when Apple wants to sell an Iphone, they need to purchase the quota for the pollution it creates regardless whether the parts/chips are made in Korea, Singapore, US or assembly in China.
where can you escape to now ? Our multinational overlords are everywhere.
Not satisfied with the Ford overlord? Escape to the Toyota overlord. What's the point you're trying to argue?
The post you replied to mentioned that a single world government would be bad because there would be no alternative governments. You replied with a tired 19th century meme of Marxist ideology that some mods thought insightful.
It's not a valid analogy at all. A single world government would be like a single multinational corporation. The current system of many countries is equivalent to the current system of many corporations. Governments have alliances among themselves, like corporations have joint ventures, but they are different entities with different priorities.
Please learn to get your analogies right. And get rid of that Marxist set of dogmas. An ideology created for the industrial environment of 1849 is definitely out of date today. Victorian bric-a-brac may be charming for tea parties, but not practical for everyday use.