Britain criticizes U.S. climate record

UNITED NATIONS -- In another jab at its closest ally, Britain criticized U.S. environmental policy again on Thursday, urging the Bush administration to place climate change high on its agenda.

At a U.N. event marking the entry into force of the Kyoto accord on global warming, Britain's ambassador to the United Nations, Sir Emyr Jones Parry, said it was "important that climate change rises up the US agenda."

He called for a "strong U.S. contribution" to international talks on cutting gas emissions beyond the targets set by the Kyoto agreement. "We need much more effort. The post-Kyoto regime will require serious, concerted international commitment," he said.

The pact, which took effect Wednesday, limits emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for rising world temperatures, melting glaciers and rising oceans.

The United States has refused to ratify the agreement, saying the pact would harm the U.S. economy.

"Global climate policy, or any environmental initiative, cannot be considered in isolation of economic and energy interests," Republican Senator Chuck Hagel told a conference sponsored by the United Nations Foundation.

Jones Parry suggested U.S. concern about economic impact was unfounded, saying there was "no need for a trade-off" between environmental protection and economic growth. "Emissions reduction can be achieved without serious economic cost," he said.

Washington has also criticized the Kyoto agreement for a lack of restrictions on emissions by emerging economies such as China and India.

"Any reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by the United States and other developed countries will be eclipsed by emissions from developing nations, such as China, which will soon be the world's largest emitter of manmade greenhouse gases," Hagel said.

Britain has made climate change a top priority this year for its presidency of the G8 group of the world's wealthy nations, and its presidency of the European Union.

Jones Parry called global warming an "urgent problem," noting that the five hottest years on record have occurred since 1997.

He singled out the United States as a major polluter, saying that it has only 4 percent of the world's population, but produces 20 percent of global emissions.

"It consumes almost a quarter of the world's energy, more than China, Russia and Japan combined," he said, adding that the average U.S. citizen produces twice as much carbon per year as a British or Japanese counterpart.

Hagel agreed that the United States must remain engaged in international initiatives to reduce manmade greenhouse gas emissions.

This week, he introduced legislation that would use the amount of carbon emitted relative to economic output as the baseline for U.S. global climate policy.

Climate change is nothing new guys.

Ice Ages & Astronomical Causes
Brief Introduction to the History of Climate
by Richard A. Muller

Origin of the 100 kyr Glacial Cycle

Figure 1-1 Global warming source NOAA

Figure 1-2 Climate of the last 2400 years, source "GISP2"

Figure 1-3 Climate of the last 12,000 years, source "GISP2"

Figure 1-4 Climate of the last 100,000 years, source Greenland ice data

Figure 1-5 Climate for the last 420 kyr, from Vostok ice data

http://newton.ex.ac.uk/aip/physnews.252.html#1

INTERPLANETARY DUST PARTICLES (IDPs) are deposited on the Earth at the rate of about 10,000 tons per year. Does this have any effect on climate? Scientists at Caltech have found that ancient samples of helium-3 (coming mostly from IDPs) in oceanic sediments exhibit a 100,000-year periodicity. The researchers assert that their data, taken along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, support a recently enunciated idea that Earth's orbital inclination varies with a 100-kyr period; this notion in turn had been broached as an explanation for a similar periodicity in the succession of ice ages. (K.A. Farley and D.B. Patterson, Nature, 7 December 1995.)
Farley & Patterson 1998, http://www.elsevier.com/gej-ng/10/20/36/33/37/32/abstract.html
Farley http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~farley/
Farley http://www.elsevier.nl/gej-ng/10/18/23/54/21/49/abstract.html

http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/pr96/dec96/noaa96-78.html

ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE DURING LAST GLACIAL PERIOD COULD BE TIED TO DUST-INDUCED REGIONAL WARMING

Preliminary new evidence suggests that periodic increases in atmospheric dust concentrations during the glacial periods of the last 100,000 years may have resulted in significant regional warming, and that this warming may have triggered the abrupt climatic changes observed in paleoclimate records, according to a scientist at the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Current scientific thinking is that the dust concentrations contributed to global cooling.

Here Comes the Sun

"Carbon dioxide, the main culprit in the alleged greenhouse-gas warming, is not a "driver" of climate change at all. Indeed, in earlier research Jan Veizer, of the University of Ottawa and one of the co-authors of the GSA Today article, established that rather than forcing climate change, CO2 levels actually lag behind climatic temperatures, suggesting that global warming may cause carbon dioxide rather than the other way around."
***
"Veizer and Shaviv's greatest contribution is their time scale. They have examined the relationship of cosmic rays, solar activity and CO2, and climate change going back through thousands of major and minor coolings and warmings. They found a strong -- very strong -- correlation between cosmic rays, solar activity and climate change, but almost none between carbon dioxide and global temperature increases."
The above material is from freeper ancient_geezer

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