Posted on 07/31/2005 5:16:21 PM PDT by saquin
Wednesday, July 6 was a day to bury good news. The members of the House of Lords select committee on economic affairs could hardly have anticipated the bizarre decision of the International Olympic Committee, which did so much to help their report on "The Economics of Climate Change" to pass unnoticed - and we all know what happened the following day.
In fact, the report is a sensational document. It is, in effect, an attack on the Kyoto accord through its weakest point, the underlying science. The committee savages the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the body on whose "research" Kyoto is built. The language, as befits their lordships, is suitably restrained.
"We have some concerns about the objectivity of the IPCC process," they write, "with some of its emissions scenarios and summary documentation apparently influenced by political considerations. There are significant doubts about some aspects of the IPCC's emissions scenario exercise. . . the Government should press the IPCC to change their approach. There are some positive aspects to global warming and these appear to have been played down in the IPCC reports . . ."
There's much more, but you get the general idea. It's the nearest the Lords ever comes to blowing a raspberry. So who are these people to come up with such heretical ideas? The 13 committee members include two former chancellors of the Exchequer, a former governor of the Bank of England and three distinguished economists. Unlucky for some, you might say, including Sir David Wallace, the vice-president of the Royal Society.
He's the man who wrote, in his official capacity, to journalists in April warning that "there are some individuals on the fringes. . . who have been attempting to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change". He appealed for us "to be vigilant against attempts to present a distorted view of the scientific evidence".
Their lordships have taken him at his word, but their attempt at scientific rigour has produced quite the wrong answer, at least from his point of view. Let's hope he doesn't find himself in the position of that individual on the fringe he's urging us to avoid.
Coincidentally, the very day the Lords report came out, his position and that of the other Kyoto believers was already looking a little shaky. The environment was high up the agenda of the G8 meeting in Gleneagles, and the participants were faced with the choice of either casting America as a polluting pariah or signalling that the Kyoto accord was a blind alley, as President Bush had always maintained. To the surprise of many, they chose the latter.
The Americans had argued that both the science and economics of climate change were highly uncertain; that there was nothing in Kyoto for them other than extra costs; that it would all be pointless if developing countries are excluded from restrictions; and that the solution to global warming lay with technology rather than rationing. The logic of this position overcame the political warm glow that the other leaders might have felt from condemning America (again), and while it's something of an exaggeration to say that the Kyoto accord is dead, it's certainly looking very ill.
It was not helped last week by the US-led coup which launched the snappily named Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. Endorsed by Australia, China, India, South Korea and Japan, the plan is to try to find practical solutions rather than don hair shirts. While Robert Zoellick, America's deputy secretary of state, claimed that "we are not detracting from Kyoto in any way", it looked suspiciously as though he was playing Brutus to the Kyoto Caesar.
If so, the European Union countries are playing the other senators, since they have no realistic chance of meeting the targets they have agreed for 2012. Having set themselves unrealistic limits on carbon dioxide emissions, with draconian penalties if they are missed, the outcome promises to be a re-run of the Stability and Growth Pact farce. Breaches of that pact, which was designed to control government deficits for countries in the European single currency, are now so widespread that it's essentially a dead letter.
Since signing up to Kyoto, the EU members have actually drifted further away from their targets. Twelve of the 15 original signatories are so far away that they are virtually certain to miss them, and to incur the eye-watering financial penalties as a result. Only Britain and Germany are closer, thanks to the switch from coal to gas here and the closure of East Germany's heavy industry there. The politicians may claim that we are "on track" to meet our targets, but as a whole the EU is already miles off.
Christopher Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute - and one of those people Sir David warned us journalists to beware of - goes further: "Given these penalties, Kyoto seems designed to fail. There is the increasing possibility that sufficient greenhouse gas credits will not exist at any price for the EU to try and buy its way to compliance even if it wished."
This is what their lordships seem to have grasped in their little-noticed report. They conclude: "The Kyoto protocol makes little difference to rates of warming, and has a naive compliance mechanism which can only deter other countries from signing up to subsequent tighter emissions targets. We urge the Government to take a lead in exploring alternative 'architectures' for future protocols, based perhaps on agreements on technology and its diffusion."
Hard though it may be for the hair-shirt brigade and the Royal Society to accept, there's an awful possibility that the Americans were right all along. The Kyoto accord looks like yesterday's approach to yesterday's conception of tomorrow's problem.
Bump.
Stone cold truth. I wish these facts were driven into every skull in Universities with a 22 oz. framing hammer.
Come on,
You can't challenge Global Warming or Evolution!!
All the scientific community is in agreement! Sheesh! They're laughing at us for questioning them; don't we understand science?!?!?!?!?
(Closing can of worms now...heh heh heh)
Sarcastiacally yours,
;-)
Looks like one of the primary leg used for Anti American propaganda in Europe is getting sawed off
If you talk with many European (easy to do now with web forms on all sorts of subject and interest)… Our not going along with Kyoto always seems to be one of there primary proves of the "Evil Americans"… The Kyoto protocol and Global Warming is a “Truth” not to be question to many Europeans
***The Kyoto protocol and Global Warming is a “Truth” not to be question to many Europeans***
Or to my liberal neighbor who blamed our recent hot spell on Bush. Wish I could get him to read this article. But his brain is so fried by socialist college profs that he'd never believe it.
LOL !!! I think it would take a Senco nailer at 120 PSI though.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
I would love to see this article put the through the Mark Steyn brilliance enhancement process, and see what wonderful turns of phrase he can come up with...
This is an interesting buried story...
interesting article
I have come to understand something. I know several very intelligent members of the secular gentile left. Witout regard to any facts to the contrary, Bush is to blame for a" failed" economy, the US is to blame for the weather, and Israel is to blame for everything else. This is the "loyal" opposition.
God forbid they every achieve power. It is very tempting to become our own version of the "loyal" opposition, but could we so easily abandon our troops or our country? I think not.
Aye, that'd do the trick. What the information - once delivered - would be worth to the kiddies is another matter.
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