Here it is again: “agreement” not “treaty” so as to circumvent the 67 votes necessary to ratify a “treaty.”
I wouln't get too excited about that. They can call it "peanut butter" if they like and it won't make any difference.
The President of the United States cannot commit to binding agreements without the approval of 2/3 of the Senate. He could pass a bill with the same language making it U.S. law and that would be subject to a majority vote in both houses of Congress plus the requirement, presumably, to overcome a Senate filibuster with at least a 60 vote majority. But that's not going to happen. The whole Copenhagen business is, as far as we are concerned, a giant publicity stunt. For the Europeans it's different. They may sign up and start burning their money. That's their problem.
They are going to shout down anything that might destroy that carbon maket...scheme...
Like the fact that CO2 really lags any warming that comes from Climate Change...however it happens.
David Evans has an article:
No smoking hot spot **********************EXCERPT*********************************
* David Evans
* From: The Australian
* July 18, 2008 12:00AM
I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.
FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I've been following the global warming debate closely for years.
When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.
The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.
But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:
1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.
Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.
If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again.
************************************
FR Thread I started:
The Missing Hotspot ---The ‘Hotspot’ is crucial to the climate debate.