UK Scientists accuse Bush of 'fiddling while the world burns'

The Scotsman ^ | 3/7/5 | JAMES REYNOLDS - ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT

[dead]

BRITAIN’S most prestigious scientific institution has made an excoriating attack on George Bush, the United States president, calling him "a modern day Nero over climate change, fiddling while the world burns".

Lord Robert May, president of the Royal Society - the UK’s national academy of science - will this week say the rise in greenhouse gas emissions from the US since 1990 dwarf the cuts committed to under the Kyoto Protocol, emphasising the need for a truly global effort to fight climate change.

Speaking ahead of this week’s meeting of G8 energy and environment ministers, Lord May will tell an audience of scientists and policy makers at the British Embassy in Berlin: "The Royal Society has calculated that the 13 per cent rise in greenhouse gas emissions from the United States between 1990 and 2002 is already bigger than the overall cut achieved if all the other parties to the Protocol reach their targets.

"Even if emissions from the United States stay at the same level until 2012, which is an unrealistically conservative assumption, while the other targets are met, the overall results for the original parties to the protocol will be a rise in emissions of 1.6 per cent instead of the desired reduction of 5.2 per cent."

Although the US signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 it said in 2001 it would not ratify the agreement. This means it is not bound by its target of reducing its emissions of greenhouse gases by 7 per cent by 2012 compared with 1990.

Lord May said: "It is essential that the G8 summit in Gleneagles in July focuses on securing from the United States an explicit recognition that the case has now been made for acting urgently to avoid the worst effects of climate change by making substantial cuts in greenhouse gas emissions."

He added: "While recognising that the Kyoto Protocol is an important first step in tackling climate change ... the focus must now be on setting targets for the period beyond the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol and which include all countries, both in the developed and developing world."

[dead]

Fire on the mountain, run boys, run.
The devil's in the house of the risin' sun.
Chicken in the bread pin, pickin' out dough.
"Granny, does your dog bite?"
"No, child, no."

[Brilliant]

They could have had a Kyoto Treaty that included the US if they'd wanted one. They just decided that they did not want to make it acceptable to the US, or to China or India, for that matter. The result is that they ended up with a treaty that excludes the 3 largest producers of greenhouse gasses. Their fault, not ours.

[TChris]

The more of this Global Warming^TM crap the "scientists" spew on the world, the lower their credibility drops. Simply pathetic.

---

Repeat after me:

Anthropogenic Global Warming is a MYTH!
Anthropogenic Global Warming is a MYTH!
Anthropogenic Global Warming is a MYTH!

• The Truth About the Environment (Author is a former "Deep-Green" believer)
• Increasing Carbon Dioxide and Global Climate Change(Hint: No correlation)
• Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide(Hint: Plants grow faster)
• Breaking The Hockey Stick
• Global Warming? What a load of poppycock!
• Coconuts in Wyoming?
• Ice Core Temperature Reconstructions from Svalbard, Norway: 1930's Warmest Decade
• Debunking the Global Warming Hypes
• Global Warming is Not Scientific
• A Brief History of Ice Ages and Warming
• The myth of Kyoto
• A Major Deception on Global Warming (UN panel, IPCC, censored "Global Warming" skeptics)
• Are the Media Giving You the Whole Story on Global Warming?

[pissant]

Bush is fiddlin' alright. He's calling the tune for a revolution of freedom. This scientist is also fiddlin. But with his wanker.

[facedown]

...the Royal Society - the UK’s national academy of science -...

I'm old enough to remember when this outfit had some scientific credibility. Newton must be turning in his grave.

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

BRITAIN’S most prestigious scientific institution has made an excoriating attack on George Bush, the United States president, calling him "a modern day Nero over climate change, fiddling while the world burns".

Wow, I just looked out my office window and did not see anything burning. Is England on fire?

[lilylangtree]

Most of US manufacturing jobs are outsourced out of the country so how in the Sam Hill could there be a rise in greenhouse emissions coming for the US? Does this snotty Lord May have a thermometer stuck in the US atmosphere measuring the emissions? Why isn't he measuring all the other countries gas emissions since the US jobs went to Mexico, India, etc?

[rhombus]

Sounds like they need to "reach out" to the US. Perhaps they might consider a "fence-mending" tour. Bwahahahahaha!

[vbmoneyspender]

Five questions for those UK pointy-heads:

1. Is global warming occurring?

2. If global warming is occurring, is that bad?

3. If global warming is occurring and it is bad, are humans causing it?

4. If global warming is occurring and it is bad and humans are causing it, can something be done now to reverse it?

5. If global warming is occurring and it is bad and humans are causing it and something can be done now to reverse it, are the costs of stopping global warming outweighed by the costs of doing nothing?

If they can't provide factual support that demonstrates that each of those questions can honestly be answered in the affirmative, then they can't expect us dunderhead Americans to support their campaign against global warming.

[bahblahbah]

There were no fiddles in ancient Rome.

[SF Republican]

In Northern California on the coast it was 70 degrees yesterday, it felt like San Diego; fiddle away

[Semper Paratus]

I say global warming will forestall the overdue ice age.

[SlowBoat407]

"Granny, does your dog bite?" "No, child, no."

I always wondered what he was saying there. And by the way: It's not my dog.

[oolatec]

Wow... so now President Bush controls the climate too!

[anniegetyourgun]

Hey Lord May: Talk to the hand.

[Paradox]

If the Euros TRULY believed all that about the USA, then they ought to declare war on us and stop us from destroying the world, seriously.

[vbmoneyspender]

They can't do that because declaring war might worsen global warming by increasing the amount of hot air that comes out of Europe

[edcoil]

Five questions for those UK pointy-heads:

1. Is global warming occurring?

They would say yes

2. If global warming is occurring, is that bad?

They would say yes

3. If global warming is occurring and it is bad, are humans causing it?

They would say yes, however only 1% of the problem. 99% is caused by mother nature but, we need to do what we can even afterwards and billions spent the score is the same 99-1.

4. If global warming is occurring and it is bad and humans are causing it, can something be done now to reverse it?

Yes, for that 1% refere above.

5. If global warming is occurring and it is bad and humans are causing it and something can be done now to reverse it, are the costs of stopping global warming outweighed by the costs of doing nothing?

Society must pay the cost, not them. They do't care since they get paid to make these announcments therefore are a cost.

[Sloth]

the rise in greenhouse gas emissions from the US since 1990 dwarf the cuts committed to under the Kyoto Protocol

Along similar lines, the U.K. has failed to repeal all gun control laws as promised in the Sloth Accords.

[Southack]

Lets keep in mind that the Eurotrashes' favorite Kyoto Treaty exempts all underground coal fires, the fastest and cheapest way to reduce so-called "greenhouse" gasses...

Underground coal fires called a 'catastrophe'

Saturday, February 15, 2003

By Michael Woods , Post-Gazette National Bureau

DENVER -- ... a more common coal mine disaster is getting little attention, scientists said yesterday. It's the fire below.

Underground coal fires are relentlessly incinerating millions of tons of coal around the world.

The blazes spew out huge amounts of air pollutants, force residents to flee their homes, send toxic runoff flowing into waterways, and leave the land above as scarred as a battlefield.

"A global environmental catastrophe" is how geologist Glenn B. Stracher described the situation.

Stracher, of East Georgia College in Swainsboro, organized an international symposium on the topic at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"This symposium is dedicated to disclosing the severity of the coal fires problem," Stracher said, noting that some of the fires have been burning for centuries with few people aware of the problem.

Concern and action is needed, he said, because of the environmental impact -- especially of mega-fires burning in India, China and elsewhere in Asia. One coal fire in northern China, for instance, is burning over an area more than 3,000 miles wide and almost 450 miles long.

"The direct and indirect economic losses from coal fires are huge," said Paul M. van Dijk, a Dutch scientist who is tracking the Chinese blazes via satellite.

He estimated that the Chinese fires alone consume 120 million tons of coal annually. That's almost as much as the annual coal production in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois combined.

The Chinese fires also make a big, hidden contribution to global warming through the greenhouse effect, scientists said. Each year they release 360 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as much as all the cars and light trucks in the United States.

Soot from the fires in China, India and other Asian countries are a source of the "Asian Brown Haze." It's a 2-mile thick cloud of soot, acid droplets and other material that sometimes stretches across South Asia from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka.

The cloud causes acid rain that damages crops, cuts sunlight reaching the ground by 10 to 15 percent, and has been implicated in thousands of annual lung disease deaths.

Mine fires are frustratingly difficult and costly to extinguish, panelists said.

Weapons range from backfilling mine shafts to cutting off the oxygen supply with a new foam-like grout that's squirted into mine shafts like shaving cream and then expands to sniff out the fire.

Most are simply left alone to burn until they eventually exhaust their fuel supply.

Michael Woods can be reached at mwoods@nationalpress.com