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Kinda like with John Lott's work on gun ownership.
All this proves, is that medieval society was more industrious then we had previously thought--obviously they must have been driving SUVs. I would not be suprised to find that the evidence of this industrial history was purposly suppressed by the big oil comapanies.
Researcher's question key global-warming study
The McIntyre-McKitrick paper is getting a lot of publicity for a paper that will likely turn out to be very, very wrong about what it tried to do. Apparently the mistakes in the paper haven't gotten out to the editorial writers who only read press releases.
Yes, it should, but it won't. The real beast to kill is the why it this won't lead the scientific community back to real science.
Perhaps not. But the Russians have critically wounded it. Following is a Wall Street Journal editorial from 10/28/03:
Cool on WarmingIf 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.