Kyoto critics better duck

When you question a multi-billion-dollar windfall, you'd better look out and, make no mistake about it, the Kyoto protocol translates into monster money for many researchers, bureaucrats and public institutions.

Kyoto is also perhaps the most potent weapon in the arsenal of those who oppose western capitalism and push instead for massive intervention.

That's why Toronto-based analyst Steve McIntyre and University of Guelph economics professor Ross McKitrick had better be battening down the hatches. Their paper, published last week in the respected British journal, Energy and Environment, is arguably the most damaging attack to date on the science behind Kyoto.

In a nutshell, they convincingly reveal that flawed calculations, incorrect data and a biased selection of climate records led Kyoto linchpin Michael Mann of the University of Virginia to declare that the 20th-century temperature rise was unprecedented in the past millennium. After correcting the data and then employing Mann's own methodologies, they found no such increase in global temperature variations had taken place, which places Kyoto's whole rationale in question.

The Canadian study comes on the heels of a recent Harvard climate study that made headlines in the scientific community by arguing that we are not living in the warmest period in the past 1,000 years, as Kyoto proponents claim. The authors, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, reviewed more than 250 research papers in the peer-reviewed scientific literature on past climate and concluded temperatures were higher in medieval times, from about 800 to 1300, than they are now.

Upon reviewing the study, David Legates, director of the Centre for Climatic Research at the University of Delaware, stated that it should lead the scientific community to the "inescapable conclusion that climate variability has been a natural occurrence."

A year ago, respected scientist Christopher Essex observed, "global warming ceased to be the subject of scientific debate years ago," but that sorry state of affairs now seems to be changing as an increasing number of scientists, even before the recent Canadian study, were recoiling against the political hijacking of the debate.

In September, at the closing session of the UN's World Climate Change Conference in Moscow, the conference chairman acknowledged that scientists who questioned the Kyoto "consensus" made up 90 per cent of the contributions from the floor. They pointed to numerous flaws and doubts in the scientific case underlying worries about climate change.

Keep in mind that this new research focuses on the science of climate change and doesn't include the numerous attacks on the economic analysis and modelling in Kyoto that John Reilly of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change declared were "an insult to serious analysis."

Asked why he changed his position on a particular issue, John Maynard Keynes once responded, "Sir, the facts have changed and when the facts change, I change -- what do you do, sir?"

In the case of Kyoto, the answer is predictable -- shoot the messenger. Both McKitrick and McIntyre can expect an avalanche of personal attacks from the politically motivated. In Canada, far too much money is at stake to derail the Kyoto juggernaut.

Kyoto is a monster that is not dead.

Perhaps not. But the Russians have critically wounded it. Following is a Wall Street Journal editorial from 10/28/03:

Cool on Warming
If a much-heralded global treaty falls in Siberia, is it news? Apparently not in the U.S. media or Senate, where proponents are still selling the Kyoto climate control treaty a month after Russian President Vladimir Putin all but iced it.
Environmental lobbies aren't known for reticence, but an odd silence has overtaken them since Mr. Putin offered his coup-de-Kyoto at the World Climate Change Conference in Moscow earlier this month. The delegates assumed the Russian would announce his government's intention to ratify the treaty. But instead he delivered an emperor-has-no-clothes speech that stunned the audience -- and changed the global warming debate.
Mr. Putin acknowledged that Russia would get an initial boost from the treaty as it sold spare quotas for carbon dioxide emissions. But having promised to double the size of the Russian economy in 10 years, he went on to say that Kyoto would soon become an economic albatross.
Even worse for the warming clergy, the Russian dared to dispute the science underpinning Kyoto . Mr. Putin said he has learned that we simply don't know why temperatures are rising, how recent trends relate to long-term temperature variations and, above all, whether or not changing human behavior would matter to any of this.
Finally, to gasps of horror, Mr. Putin noted that it would hardly be a tragedy if Siberia warmed a couple of degrees or if Russians had to "spend less money on fur coats." He added what is obvious to Americans who live anywhere north of Chicago, namely that warming temperatures would probably help Russia's agricultural output. The growing season is short in Siberia.
We'd have thought all of this was news, especially because at this point Russia holds an effective veto over Kyoto . The treaty requires countries representing 55% of emissions to sign up before it takes effect, and so far nations amounting to 44% have ratified. If Russia doesn't ratify with its 17% emissions share, Kyoto will be deader than those earlier theories about the looming global ice age.
On the other hand, perhaps this is precisely why the Sierra Club and friends are so quiet. They know this Russian challenge undercuts their refrain that the U.S. is the world's sole global scofflaw on climate change. With China also skeptical, the Bush Administration can now claim a majority of global opinion for its Kyoto opposition. Perhaps this will even encourage the White House to drop its split personality on global warming, claiming it is a problem but declining to do anything about it.
A good time to start would be this week, when Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain will offer their "Climate Stewardship Act" for a vote. The duo have also apparently missed the Moscow news, because their proposal to reduce emissions of "greenhouse" gases would revive Kyoto by the back door.
While their bill has less restrictive targets than Kyoto , its practical effect would be increasingly stringent controls on energy use. An emissions cap would create a property right in tradable pollution reduction credits, and companies facing the restrictions would soon become lobbyists for Kyoto ratification in order to take advantage of its emissions trading provisions. But there is no reason at all to impose such a "cap" because CO2 isn't a pollutant.
One irony here is that many of the countries that claim to be Kyoto's biggest fans may actually be pleased to see it die. That's especially true in a Europe beset both by slow growth and by Green parties that are part of center-left coalitions and believe in Kyoto as a matter of neo-religious faith.
Alas, the European Union passed its own version of Lieberman-McCain not long ago in an effort to show that Kyoto still had life after President Bush withdrew U.S. support. So if Kyoto does now finally collapse, the EU will have saddled itself with even more costly regulatory burdens. No wonder Europeans want the Senate to do the same for the U.S.
For this and other reasons, the lobbying of Mr. Putin to renege on his anti-Kyoto position will be intense. But Mr. Putin's Moscow doubts reflected the considered guidance of Russian scientists and his main economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov. Perhaps because they haven't been part of the global warming party circuit, Russian scientists also seem more able to think for themselves.
It's hard to recall now after years of media incantation, but in 1997 the U.S. Senate voted 95-0 not to ratify any climate-change treaty that would cause "serious harm" to the U.S. economy and from which developing countries are exempted. McCain-Lieberman is an attempt to repudiate that vote and pressure the White House into bending to the global warming lobby. Maybe someone should read Mr. Putin's Moscow speech on the Senate floor before the Members vote.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.