Illarionov Attacks Britain, Vows to Bury Kyoto

President Vladimir Putin's personal adviser on all things economic last week accused British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government of declaring "all-out and total war on Russia" and using "bribes, blackmail and murder threats" to force it to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

In a six-hour diatribe, Andrei Illarionov accused visiting Blair adviser Sir David King, the British government's top scientist, of trying, through pressure from Blair's office and through Foreign Secretary Jack Straw personally, to hijack a two-day conference on the global environmental treaty at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

"During the past year [the British] have used bribes, blackmail and murder threats to put pressure on Russia, which shows how desperate their case is," Illarionov said without elaborating. "This has not been in the realm of the press, but it had to come out after Sir David King's behavior at the conference," he said.

King filibustered the conference for four hours in an effort to block opponents of the protocol from presenting their findings, Illarionov said.

Illarionov, an outspoken and respected liberal economist, has often clashed with government officials on a variety of reform issues -- including the Kyoto Protocol, which will die if Russia does not ratify it. It is not clear how much sway Illarionov has with Putin, a fellow St. Petersburger.

Putin appeared to back the protocol earlier this year in exchange for the European Union supporting Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization. But late Thursday, when asked by a Japanese journalist whether his fierce opposition to Kyoto reflected the Kremlin's position, Illarionov said Putin had never said he backs the treaty. "Putin didn't say he supports the Kyoto Protocol, he said he supports the Kyoto process," Illarionov said. He did not elaborate.

After signing a trade deal with the EU in May, Putin said Brussels had met Russia "halfway" on WTO, which "cannot but affect positively our position on the Kyoto Protocol." But he also stressed that Russia "did not package the issues of WTO and the Kyoto Protocol."

"I cannot say how things will be 100 percent, because ratification is not an issue for the president but for parliament," Putin said at the time.

Illarionov accused Britain and other "imperialist" rich nations of using Kyoto to keep poor nations from developing. The United States backed out of Kyoto in 2001.

"Global warming is an issue of concern for all citizens of the world and we need to tackle it," British Embassy spokesman Richard Turner said.

Peter Cox, head of the British Meteorological Office's climate, chemistry and ecosystems department, said last week's conference was a publicity stunt by Illarionov, who brought in well-known skeptics to discredit the findings of the International Panel on Climate Control, the basis for Kyoto, Cox said.

"The meeting was set up to challenge the IPCC line," he said. "Illarionov hijacked the meeting by inviting people who were outside the IPCC process and who were bitter about that."

Cox said the conference was "like no other" he had ever attended and said he felt very sorry for the Russian scientists that were used as a "rubber stamp for Illarionov's agenda."

The academy issued a statement after the conference saying that it found "no scientific basis" for the Kyoto Protocol, and that a warmer Earth is actually positive for Russia.

The stated aim of the 1997 protocol is to roll back global carbon dioxide emissions -- which many scientists say cause global warming -- to 1990 levels.

Many poor countries have argued that the agreement puts a disproportionate amount of pressure on their carbon dioxide-intensive, manufacturing-based economies. Illarionov, however, has also opted to attack the very scientific principles on which IPCC bases its argument for implementing the treaty.

Illarionov argued that the real reason every rich nation but America, the world's biggest polluter, backs the protocol is because they want control of emissions quotas, something he said will give developed nations unprecedented control of poor countries' economies.

"Europe has seen the effects of the national-socialist ideology and the Marxist ideology. The imperialist philosophy behind Kyoto is nothing short of these in its scale," he said.

Study: Siberian Bogs Big Player in Greenhouse Gas
National Geographic News
January 15, 2004
The barren peatlands of Siberia have been a massive methane producer since soon after the last ice age some 12,000 years ago, far longer than previously thought, scientists say. They also found evidence that suggests peat bogs rank among the world's top carbon stores, absorbing huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere... Radiocarbon dating revealed that the bogs were 2,000 to 3,000 years older than previously thought, and researchers believe the bogs may be responsible for a huge rise in atmospheric methane levels (identified from Arctic ice core records) 9,000 to 11,500 years ago.
Breaking the "Hockey Stick"
by David R. Legates
Monday, July 12, 2004
FR topic
Yahoo
Newswire
Consider that if 1) the amount of uncertainty is doubled (an appropriate representation of the "sheath"), 2) appropriate 20th century increases in observed air temperature are applied (a correct representation of the "blade"), or 3) the period from A.D. 200 to 1900 correctly reproduces millennial-scale variability (a reliable representation of the "shaft"), then one can have no confidence in the claim that the 1990s are the warmest decade of the last two millennia. The assertions of Mann and his colleagues — and, consequently, the IPCC — are open to question if even one component of their temperature reconstruction is in error, let alone all three!
Fossils nag at carbon's climate role
by Alex Kirby
Their first reconstruction of tropical sea surface temperatures during the Phanerozoic eon, dating from 544 million years ago, used a database of oxygen isotopes in calcite and aragonite shells... It is during two periods, the glaciation of the Late Ordovician period around 440 million years ago, and the cool climate of the Jurassic and early Cretaceous (about 220-120 million years ago), that expectations based on the CO2 record contradict the fossil data. According to the second reconstruction, tropical temperatures should have been higher than today during these two cold periods. The researchers say their findings have several possible implications. It could be that the reconstructed past CO2 levels are partly incorrect. There is also the chance that climate models are calibrated to the present and are therefore unable to reproduce correctly past climate modes. But they say there is a third possibility: that "the role of CO2 as the main driving force of past global (long-term) climate changes is questionable, at least during two of the four main cool climate modes of the Phanerozoic"... Lee Kump, of the Earth Systems Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, says their conclusion that CO2 "may not be the climate driver it has been made out to be deserves close scrutiny, because the policy implications are huge. If large changes in atmospheric CO2 in the past have not produced the climate response we thought they had, that undermines the case for reducing fossil fuel emissions." He considers the Jurassic mismatch "more persistent and problematic" than that of the Late Ordovician, though he says that neither of "these seeming paradoxes" is new.
Climatic Variations In Last 400.000 Years Derived From Polar Ice Cores
by Giuseppe Orombelli
From Antarctic ice cores one can now document the climate variations for the last 400,000 years. Four major climatic cycles can be recognized in this time interval. For about 10 per cent of this time the climate was similar to the present one (interglacial climate), for the remaining, hence for the most, period, it was colder (glacial climate). Interglacial climates typically last a few thousand years, while glacial climates last tens of thousands, with a series of internal variations, characterized by colder and colder temperatures. Transition to interglacial climates are usually fast. This cycle appears to be correlated with variations in the Earth orbital parameters.

Ice cores from Greenland allow a finer analysis but are applicable only to the last 100,000 years. The northern climate shows variations with respect to the southern climate. It shows variations of high amplitude and short duration (the Dansgaard-Oescher events), which have been related to variations in the oceanic circulation. Even with respect to the last transition from glacial to interglacial the northern hemisphere has shown stronger climate variations, some happening in a matter of some dozen years.
More Than 15,000 Scientists Protest Kyoto Accord
Speak Out Against Global Warming Myth
SEPP News Release

Global Warming Petition Project
Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine

Bush taking 'dark path' on global warming?
by Art Moore
February 15, 2002
"Spending any money at all to curb CO2 emissions is a complete waste of time," Dr. Arthur Robinson, professor of chemistry at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, told WorldNetDaily. "There is absolutely not a shred of evidence that humans are causing any change in the climate by generating CO2."
Greenhouse gas 'plan B' gaining support
by Fred Pearce
19:00 10 December 03
The Kyoto protocol is dying a death of a thousand cuts. Last week, the US reiterated that it wants nothing to do with the sole international agreement designed to save the world from runaway global warming. The European Union, Kyoto's main promoter, revealed that most of its members will not meet their treaty's obligations. And Russia once again seemed to be on the point of wrecking the protocol completely... [Plan B] goes by the name "contraction and convergence", or C&C... [T]he UK's Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, the UN Environment Programme, the European Parliament and the German Advisory Council on Global Change... [support] the idea... While Kyoto has become a convoluted, arbitrary and short-term measure to mitigate climate change, C&C could provide a simple, fair, long-term solution. And above all, it is based on science rather than politics... [I]ncreasing numbers of delegates are viewing Kyoto as part of the problem, not part of the solution. Its labyrinthine rules allow nations to offset emissions with devices such as carbon-sink projects, and are so complex they are virtually unenforceable. Even if Kyoto becomes international law, it cannot be the blueprint for future deals beyond 2012... [U]nder the C&C proposals, national emissions will converge year by year towards some agreed target based upon each country's population... [B]y a target date that the Royal Commission and Germany's advisory council agree should be 2050, every citizen of the world should have an equal right to pollute... Bush called it unfair that Asian trading competitors, as developing nations, had no targets. Under C&C every nation would ultimately have the same target. Some, such as China, already have per-capita emissions in excess of targets they might have to meet by mid-century... Six years after the heady Kyoto night when 171 nations thought they had signed up to save the world, the disconnect between the science and the politics remains huge.
Environmental Fast-fact Source
Posted on August 28, 2002
Matt Richardson draws attention to Ten Second Response, a reference site maintained by the National Center for Public Policy Research, providing concise answers and facts to the most commonly encountered questions and misconceptions regarding environmental issues...
Ten Second Response
National Center for Public Policy Research
Issue: George W. Bush killed the Kyoto Protocol.

Response 1: President Bush did not kill the Kyoto Protocol. It was dead when he took office. Senate Res. 98, approved 95-0 on July 25, 1997, states that the Senate will not ratify any climate treaty that would harm the U.S. economy or fails to require developing nations to reduce emissions. Kyoto fails both tests. The President simply recognized these facts.

Response 2: President Clinton signed appropriations bills in 1999, 2000 and 2001 prohibiting the Environmental Protection Agency from using any funds to "issue rules, regulations, decrees of orders for the purpose of implementation, or in preparation for implementation, of the Kyoto Protocol" until the Protocol is ratified by the Senate.
Nets Treat EPA Report Change as Scandal, CNN Sees Flat-Earthers
CyberAlert
Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996
Friday June 20, 2003
CNN's Aaron Brown ridiculously compared the Bush administration doubting global warming is fueled by industrialization to naive politicians of centuries ago who castigated Galileo for saying the Earth was round and not flat. If anything, the analogy could be applied in reverse, with modern environmentalists and their toadying media followers the equivalent of flat-Earthers with the Bush administration and conservatives willing to challenge the establishment orthodoxy... [O]ther than CNBC anchor Forrest Sawyer questioning an environmentalist during an interview, none of that subtlety made it into any of the hyperbolic network stories which assumed liberal environmentalists were correct, failed to feature a single non-liberal activist scientist and only tossed in a brief mention of how EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman denied politics motivated the changes to the report.

NOT A PING LIST, merely posted to: adam_az; Bonaparte; COEXERJ145; Cronos; expatpat; fat city; MadIvan; McGavin999; madrussian; nothingnew; nypokerface; proxy_user; Redcoat LI; RightWhale; struwwelpeter; swilhelm73; take; thoughtomator; ValerieUSA

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.