Posted on 09/30/2003 11:01:52 AM PDT by getget
Russia Puts Global Climate Pact in Doubt
MOSCOW - A senior adviser to President Vladimir Putin outlined strong reservations Tuesday about ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, saying the pact to limit greenhouse gas emissions is not sufficiently grounded in science and would harm Russia's economic growth.
Although Putin's economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, stopped short of ruling out Russia's ratification of the protocol, which is necessary for it to take effect, his strong criticism of the agreement appeared to leave little hope for approval of the document.
Illarionov, an influential adviser, spoke to reporters on the sidelines of the U.N. World Climate Change Conference. He made the remarks after Putin said Monday that his Cabinet hadn't yet made up its mind whether Russia would ratify the protocol.
To go into effect, the 1997 protocol must be ratified by no fewer than 55 countries, accounting for at least 55 percent of global emissions in 1990. After the United States rejected the treaty, the minimum can be reached only with Russia's ratification.
Illarionov said that the United States and Australia opted out of the protocol after deciding that compliance would be too expensive, and that it would be even less affordable for Russia, which has a much smaller economy.
He elaborated on Putin's statement Monday that Russia could benefit from global warming, saying that warmer temperatures would help increase harvests, cut energy consumption and open ice-encrusted seas to navigation.
"Public opinion was artificially focused on negative consequences of climate change, but there are also positive consequences for both our country and the planet as a whole," Illarionov said.
Yuri Vorobyov, Russia's deputy minister for emergency situations, challenged Illarionov's optimism, telling the conference that warmer temperatures could increase the number of catastrophic floods and damage energy pipelines and other infrastructure in the north.
Whatever the consequences, Illarionov voiced doubts about global warming being a stable trend, echoing Russian scientists who told the conference that the Kyoto protocol's advocates had failed to prove that emissions trigger global warming. They pointed at other factors, such as volcanic eruptions and the ocean's impact, saying they need to be more thoroughly analyzed.
The Kyoto Protocol calls for countries to reduce their level of greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2012. If a country exceeds the emissions level, it could be forced to cut back industrial production.
Russia's emissions have fallen by 32 percent since 1990 largely due to the post-Soviet industrial meltdown, but they have started to rise again as the economy revived.
Illarionov said that the Kyoto Protocol would hamper Putin's goal of doubling Russia's gross domestic product in 10 years and the subsequent growth by requiring Russia to launch a costly overhaul of its industries in order to cut emissions.
He said that doubling the GDP will bring Russia's emissions to 104 percent of their 1990 level, conflicting with the protocol. "But Russia isn't going to stop at this level, so the carbon dioxide level will be much higher," Illarionov said.
He said that the United States, China and many other nations staying out of the protocol account for 68 percent of global emissions, making the document largely senseless. He said that Russia currently accounts for some 6 percent of global emissions compared to U.S. share of 25 percent and China's 13 percent.
"We are facing a bizarre situation when Russia, which makes less emissions, must cut them, while nations which make much more, like the United States and China, won't curb them," Illarionov said.
"That raises the question about the document's efficiency," he added. "No matter what sacrifice Russia makes, it won't bring us closer to the goal. It would be strange to undertake such obligations if they aren't universal."
FYI, Putin's action might have something to do with coal. I read a while back that Russia aimed to increase coal electricity production to free up more oil for export and export earnings.
the pact to limit greenhouse gas emissions is not sufficiently grounded in science
Geee, yah think maybe?
http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/cap/2003/cap_03-02-20.html
"The Economist, which provides the best environmental reporting of any major news source, carried a small story last week about a simple methodological error in the latest U.N. global warming report that has huge implications. The article, "Hot Potato: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Had Better Check Its Calculations" (February 15 print edition), reviews the work of two Australian statisticians who note an anomaly in the way the IPCC estimated world carbon dioxide emissions for the 21st century."
......
"The IPCC's method has the effect of vastly overestimating future economic growth (and, therefore, CO2 emissions) by developing nations. The fine print of the IPCC's projections, for example, calls for the real per-capita incomes of Argentina, South Africa, Algeria, Turkey, and even North Korea to surpass real per-capita income in the United States by the end of the century. Algeria? North Korea? The IPCC must be inhaling its own emissions to believe this."
Mankind's impact is only 0.28% of Total Greenhouse effect
" There is no dispute at all about the fact that even if punctiliously observed, (the Kyoto Protocol) would have an imperceptible effect on future temperatures -- one-twentieth of a degree by 2050. "
Dr. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia,
and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service;
in a Sept. 10, 2001 Letter to Editor, Wall Street Journal
Anthropogenic (man-made) Contribution to the "Greenhouse
Effect," expressed as % of Total (water vapor INCLUDED)
Based on concentrations (ppb) adjusted for heat retention characteristics % of All Greenhouse Gases % Natural
% Man-made
Water vapor 95.000% 94.999%
0.001% Carbon Dioxide (CO2) 3.618% 3.502%
0.117% Methane (CH4) 0.360% 0.294%
0.066% Nitrous Oxide (N2O) 0.950% 0.903%
0.047% Misc. gases ( CFC's, etc.) 0.072% 0.025%
0.047% Total 100.00% 99.72
0.28%
The reality is a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration over current levels, that the UN/IPCC "story line" pretends, even if it were true, could not induce significant temperature change whatever its source.
Climate Catastrophe, A spectroscopic Artifact?
"It is hardly to be expected that for CO2 doubling an increment of IR absorption at the 15 µm edges by 0.17% can cause any significant global warming or even a climate catastrophe.
The radiative forcing for doubling can be calculated by using this figure. If we allocate an absorption of 32 W/m2 [14] over 180º steradiant to the total integral (area) of the n3 band as observed from satellite measurements (Hanel et al., 1971) and applied to a standard atmosphere, and take an increment of 0.17%, the absorption is 0.054 W/m2 - and not 4.3 W/m2.
This is roughly 80 times less than IPCC's radiative forcing.
If we allocate 7.2 degC as greenhouse effect for the present CO2 (as asserted by Kondratjew and Moskalenko in J.T. Houghton's book The Global Climate [14]), the doubling effect should be 0.17% which is 0.012 degC only. If we take 1/80 of the 1.2 degC that result from Stefan-Boltzmann's law with a radiative forcing of 4.3 W/m2, we get a similar value of 0.015 degC."
- "(1) correlation does not prove causation, (2) cause must precede effect, and (3) when attempting to evaluate claims of causal relationships between different parameters, it is important to have as much data as possible in order to weed out spurious correlations.
***
Consider, for example, the study of Fischer et al. (1999), who examined trends of atmospheric CO2 and air temperature derived from Antarctic ice core data that extended back in time a quarter of a million years. Over this extended period, the three most dramatic warming events experienced on earth were those associated with the terminations of the last three ice ages; and for each of these climatic transitions, earth's air temperature rose well in advance of any increase in atmospheric CO2. In fact, the air's CO2 content did not begin to rise until 400 to 1,000 years after the planet began to warm. Such findings have been corroborated by Mudelsee (2001), who examined the leads/lags of atmospheric CO2 concentration and air temperature over an even longer time period, finding that variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration lagged behind variations in air temperature by 1,300 to 5,000 years over the past 420,000 years."[ see also: Indermuhle et al. (2000), Monnin et al. (2001), Yokoyama et al. (2000), Clark and Mix (2000) ]
- "Other studies periodically demonstrate a complete uncoupling of CO2 and temperature "
[see: Petit et al. (1999), Staufer et al. (1998), Cheddadi et al., (1998), Raymo et al., 1998, Pagani et al. (1999), Pearson and Palmer (1999), Pearson and Palmer, (2000) ]
- "Considered in their entirety, these several results present a truly chaotic picture with respect to any possible effect that variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration may have on global temperature. Clearly, atmospheric CO2 is not the all-important driver of global climate change the climate alarmists make it out to be."
Global warming and global dioxide emission and concentration:
a Granger causality analysis
- "We find, in opposition to previous studies, that there is no evidence of Granger causality from global carbon dioxide emission to global surface temperature. Further, we could not find robust empirical evidence for the causal nexus from global carbon dioxide concentration to global surface temperature."
Those wacky Russians. What a bunch of kidders. As if it was ever about science to begin with.
Snort.
Great quote. I like this one from the article.
He elaborated on Putin's statement Monday that Russia could benefit from global warming, saying that warmer temperatures would help increase harvests, cut energy consumption and open ice-encrusted seas to navigation.
"Public opinion was artificially focused on negative consequences of climate change, but there are also positive consequences for both our country and the planet as a whole," Illarionov said.
Make Greenland green again.
hey the research is as good as any other junk science like evolution
Which is precisely why despite all the blathering about "climate change", the Senate voted 95-0 against the treaty.
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