Posted on 11/28/2005 4:54:15 AM PST by nuconvert
U.N. Climate Conference to Open in Canada
By BETH DUFF-BROWN, Associated Press Writer
Thousands of environmentalists and government officials from around the world have descended on Montreal to brainstorm on how to slow the effects of greenhouses gases and global warming. In the process they will probably witness the collapse of the Canadian government.
In a nightmarish turn of events for Environment Minister Stephane Dion, the House of Commons was set to topple Prime Minister Paul Martin's minority government on Monday, the same day Canada opens the 10-day U.N. Climate Control Conference.
The opposition has enough votes to bring down Martin's Liberal government — seizing on a corruption scandal within his party — which means Dion and other Cabinet ministers could be forced to forego the conference and instead hit Canada's short campaign trail for national elections in January.
The U.N. conference, with some 10,000 participants from 180 nations, is considered the most important gathering on climate change since 140 nations ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.
That landmark agreement, negotiated in Japan's ancient capital of Kyoto, targets carbon dioxide and five other gases that trap heat in the atmosphere, and are believed to be behind rising global temperatures that many scientists say are disrupting weather patterns.
The treaty took effect in February and calls on industrialized nations to dramatically cut their gas emissions between 2008 and 2012. The conference that opens Monday will set new agreements on how much more emissions should be cut after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires, though most signatories are already falling far short of their targets.
The European Union appears to be taking the lead, endorsing a plan in June to bring emissions of greenhouses gases down 15 percent to 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
The Kyoto accord was delayed by the requirement that countries accounting for 55 percent of the world's emissions must ratify it. That goal was finally reached — nearly seven years after the pact was negotiated — with Russia's approval last year.
The United States, the world's largest emitter of such gases, has refused to ratify the agreement, saying it would harm the U.S. economy and is flawed by the lack of restrictions on emissions by emerging economies such as China and India.
Kyoto calls on the world's top 35 industrialized countries to cut carbon dioxide and other gas emissions by 5.2 percent below their 1990 levels by 2012.
The targets for cuts vary by region: The European Union initially committed to cutting emissions to 8 percent below 1990 levels by 2012; the United States agreed to a 7 percent reduction before President Bush, who advocates the development of alternatives to fossil fuels, rejected the pact in 2001.
The conference comes amid new research showing there is now more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — a major contributor to greenhouse gases — than at any point in the last 650,000 years. The study by the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica, published earlier this month in the journal Science, analyzed tiny air bubbles preserved in Antarctic ice for millennia.
Earth's average temperature, meanwhile, has increased about 1 degree Fahrenheit in recent decades, a relatively rapid rise. Many climate specialists warn that continued warming could have severe effects, such as rising sea levels and changing rainfall patterns, variations already devastating ancient communities and wildlife, such as the Inuit and polar bears of Canada's far northeastern regions.
Skeptics sometimes dismiss the rise in greenhouse gases as part of a naturally fluctuating cycle. The new study provides more definitive evidence countering that view.
Deep Antarctic ice encases tiny air bubbles formed over hundreds of thousands of years. Extracting the air allows a direct measurement of the atmosphere at past points in time, to determine the naturally fluctuating range.
A previous ice-core sample had traced greenhouse gases back about 440,000 years. This new sample, from East Antarctica, goes 210,000 years further back in time.
Today's rising level of carbon dioxide already is 27 percent higher than its peak during all that time, said lead researcher Thomas Stocker of the University of Bern, Switzerland.
"Thousands of environmentalists and government officials from around the world have descended on Montreal to brainstorm on how to slow the effects of greenhouses gases and global warming."
Stop race baiting, end class warfare, and shut up the rappers. Temperatures would cool significantly.
Most imporatantly, keep the Clintons out of the news and we might see a new ice age.
And speaking of Antarctica, I am reminded of a recent Jay Leno show, in which he staged a quiz show with 3 dumb contestants, one of whom was asked about the Cold War.
Had she ever heard of the Cold War? A : "Yes"
Did she know why it was called that? A : "Because it was fought somewhere really cold?"
Which country did we fight against? A : "Antarctica"
And there you go! You learn something new every day!
Thanx
They'll get the same results as the UN conference on the Internet in North Africa.
If you would stop send thousands of people to jet set around the world for conferences, it would be a start.
watched a very interesting Documentary last night on CBC newsworld...it was titled " Doomsday called off *. It featured 4 tops scientists from the US, debunking the Global warming myth...yes, believe it or not, on Canadian TV...was quite the eye opener...i tried to find a transcript of the show, i called CBC and they said that a private firm was now SELLING their transcripts, that they didnt have them available...
They also said that the computer generated reports ( IDE'S)?? that have been a model to predict global warming and greenhouse effects were biased...the computer simulation is by the UN.
It also showed that the atmospheric temperature hardly increased at all in the past few hundred years...they also noted that the UN forgot to include this data with their * computer*...they( said scientists) also noted that the UN measure of the Greenhouse effect was very biased as it did not include temperature fluxuations about 1000 years ago when the earth's temperature was considerably higher than today...and also didnt call into effect the * little Ice Age) that occured in the 1300's...
Talking about computer models got me thinking about Hedge Funds and Investment Banks. They use computer models to TRY to predict future direction of markets and individual stocks. Yet, there is no proof that these institutional investors perform any better than if they used old fashioned investment techniques or common sense. I imagine that nature even has more variables at work than what is experienced in the marketplace.
Yeah, I remember the “hockey stick” theory. It omitted an entire heating period that occurred in the last millennium. Got to love Clinton attempting to turn unproven scientific theory into policy.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
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