Posted on 12/19/2005 4:51:50 AM PST by johnandrhonda
Yes: Here are 10 good reasons why the global-warming issue can be put to rest Monday, December 19, 2005 DENNIS T. AVERY
The Kyoto Protocol has died. None of its supporters has cut carbon-dioxide emissions, and their big Montreal meeting this month failed again to agree on future cuts.
With apologies to David Letterman, the top 10 reasons to rejoice over the death of Kyoto are:
(10) Wind farms are expensive and really ugly. They kill birds and bats. Nor do they produce much electricity when really needed, during daylight hours. Kyoto would have planted them over huge stretches
(9) None of the sanctimonious coun tries backing Kyoto have cut their carbon-dioxide emissions since they joined the greenhouse club. Britain closed its antique coal pits and shifted to North Sea natural gas earlier, and Germany says it will cut emissions by half a percent. Smug Canada is 20 percent over its Kyoto allotment for carbon-dioxide emissions.
(8) Contrary to media reports, the ocean’s coral reefs aren’t dying from the heat. They bleach whenever the sea temperature changes, ejecting the algae partners that help them digest food and picking new partners adapted to the new heat or cold. That’s how they’ve survived Ice Ages – and the climate optimum 7,000 years ago that was much warmer than today.
(7) The Pacific islands aren’t being flooded. More than 90 percent of the world’s remaining ice is in Antarctica and Greenland, where measurements show the ice sheets are growing. Sea levels have been rising at a slow 6 inches per century, with no acceleration in the past 150 years.
(6) Kyoto wouldn’t make any real difference to global warming. A 5 percent cut in greenhouse emissions is ridiculous if warming is truly manmade and dangerous. Kyoto members would have to slash their carbondioxide output by 70 percent to 80 percent to make a real difference.
(5) Biologists can’t find a single wildlife species that’s extinct due to the warming of the past 150 years. The U.N. Environmental Program says we lost fewer major species in the latter part of the 20 th century than in the latter part of the 19 th. The big reason? We quit clearing First World forests for farming, thanks to high-powered seeds, fertilizers and pesticides.
(4) The claim that global warming will create jobs is simple-minded. We would certainly create jobs if we threw away all our cars and appliances and rebuilt the gasoline stations to handle hydrogen. But we could achieve the same job creation by breaking all our windows and hiring people to replace them. We’d still be poorer.
(3) If global warming isn’t dangerous enough to warrant using safe, costeffective nuclear power that generates no greenhouse gases, it isn’t serious enough to tax trillions of dollars out of our pockets.
(2) British grapes tell us Earth is having its third warming in 2,000 years. The Romans grew wine grapes in England in the first century, but it was too cold for them during the Dark Ages. The British grew wine grapes in the 12 th century, but again it grew too cold for grapes during the ensuing Little Ice Age, which lasted until 1850. Britain hasn’t warmed quite enough to grow wine grapes today, but it’s up to two good wine years out of 10.
(1) You needn’t feel guilty about changing the climate. The long ice cores brought over the past 25 years show Earth has had 600 moderate, natural periods of global warming in the last million years due to variations in our sun. Fossil pollen shows North America’s trees and plants completely reorganized nine times in the past 14,000 years. Temperatures rise suddenly and erratically about 2 degrees Celsius above the mean, and fall 2 degrees Celsius below it during the cold phases. It’s natural.
Goodbye, Kyoto. Sayonara.
Dennis T. Avery is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a public-policy research organization. Readers may write him at Hudson/DC, 1015 18 th St. NW, Suite 300, Washington, D.C. 20036. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
I generally stay at Marriott.
Like this post will file in favorites so I can present it to a few of my liberal friends...thank you
Great!
E to, Brute? When you've had 3 hours of sleep from your 2 year old keeping you up all night, "too" happens.
WRONG! It's Carl Rove... if he can make earthquakes and hurricanes, he can melt the ice caps on Mars. GO CARL...grin
Oy, thank goodness those days are long gone!!! :)
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