Kyoto is pointless, say 60 leading scientists

I think not

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Canada's new Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, has been urged by more than 60 leading international climate change experts to review the global warming policies he inherited from his centre-Left predecessor.

In an open letter that includes five British scientists among the signatories, the experts praise his recent commitment to review the controversial Kyoto protocol on reducing emissions harmful to the environment.

"Much of the billions of dollars earmarked for implementation of the protocol in Canada will be squandered without a proper assessment of recent developments in climate science," they wrote in the Canadian Financial Post last week.

They emphasised that the study of global climate change is, in Mr Harper's own words, an "emerging science" and added: "If, back in the mid 1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary." Despite claims to the contrary, there is no consensus among climate scientists on the relative importance of the various causes of global climate change, they wrote.

"'Climate change is real' is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified.

"Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural 'noise'."

The letter is the latest effort by climate change sceptics to counter claims that there is a consensus that human activity is causing global warming.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...to09.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/09/ixworld.html
 

#juan

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Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural 'noise'."

It has never happened that the ice caps have retreated to the point where they are. People have lived on Iceland for over three hundred years. They have no record of this happening before. I wonder where these "scientists" got their information.

Every year for the last 16 years has been the warmest year ever. That hasn't happened before either.


link
 

Kreskin

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Were these the same guys predicting an ice age in the 70's? Climate change has taken a few twists.
 

I think not

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From #juan's link;

Scientists have found the first unequivocal link between man-made greenhouse gases and a dramatic heating of the Earth's oceans. The researchers - many funded by the US government - have seen what they describe as a "stunning" correlation between a rise in ocean temperature over the past 40 years and pollution of the atmosphere. The study destroys a central argument of global warming skeptics within the Bush administration - that climate change could be a natural phenomenon. It should convince George Bush to drop his objections to the Kyoto treaty on climate change, the scientists say.

Is this article implying the Bush administration doesn't skew reasearch despite the fact the US government funded the research? Interesting.
 

Jersay

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Now are these the sixty or so scientists that don't believe in Global Warming who live with Bush in dunceville.

While hundreds of other scientists want Kyoto to continue.
 

FiveParadox

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With respect due to these scientists and, of course, the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, P.C., M.P., the Member for Calgary Southwest and Prime Minister of Canada, their opinions aren't going to change anything if, in my opinion, the three opposition parties continue to block attempts to remove Canada from the Kyoto Accord.
 

I think not

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I would like one of the proponents of the Kyoto Protocol to provide a link where there is undisputed scientific evidence that global warming is anthropogenic. Any scientific report will do.
 

FiveParadox

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I would assume, I think not, that a degree of research and study would have been conducted by those who chose to sign on to the Kyoto Accord — notwithstanding whether or not certain nations are going to attain their goals are specified in the accord, I doubt they would have agreed to those goals blindly without premise.
 

I think not

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Re: RE: Kyoto is pointless, say 60 leading scientists

FiveParadox said:
I would assume, I think not, that a degree of research and study would have been conducted by those who chose to sign on to the Kyoto Accord — notwithstanding whether or not certain nations are going to attain their goals are specified in the accord, I doubt they would have agreed to those goals blindly without premise.

No I disagree, politicians have a tendency to follow polls to get their approval ratings up. I would like to see the undisputed scientific data that has caused the world to sign up with the Kyoto Protocol, has anyone ever seen anything? I haven't. I have seen reports that claim global warming is a natural occuring cycle, but I haven't read anything about anthropogenic causes.
 

Toro

Senate Member
Re: RE: Kyoto is pointless, say 60 leading scientists

FiveParadox said:
I would assume, I think not, that a degree of research and study would have been conducted by those who chose to sign on to the Kyoto Accord — notwithstanding whether or not certain nations are going to attain their goals are specified in the accord, I doubt they would have agreed to those goals blindly without premise.

According to Jeffrey Simpson, Chretien made Canada's commitments based on what the US was doing, then going one better to one up the US and make himself look good at home.

Politicians are politicians.
 

fuzzylogix

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Apr 7, 2006
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Even if global warming wasnt occurring (although I definitely think evidence shows it is), look at the smog in the sky. I live in Southern Ontario and when you drive past Hamilton or the GTA you have to roll your windows up or you gag. Why do we need scientific evidence when the proof is right before our eyes and noses.

What can Canada do? For chrast sake, build proper public transport. We keep building more and more expressways. Screw that. Build high speed bullet trains to go from Niagara all the way across to Montreal and Ottawa. And have them run all the time, so people can use them. And have them so you can just turn up and hop on.....like they do in all the European countries and of course Japan. This would:
1. Create a lot of jobs in all fields- engineering, labour, catering, etc
2. Reduce all those car emissions sitting on the 401 parking lot so help reach Kyotos goals
3. Save money- it is estimated that each car accident on the express routes cost $1 million ( if you consider clean up costs, health costs for injuries, labour loss costs for workers held up, emergency service costs, gas costs for idling cars....) Also would reduce the cost of road upkeep
4. Reduce worker stress and anger
5. Reduce car congestion within the GTA

The government keeps saying that nobody uses Via Rail or the Go train. Yeah, because you have to book ahead on via rail. Id love to hop on and go to Montreal or Ottawa on weekends, but i cant do that last minute and the cost is horrendous, and it only goes about once in a blue moon, so I end up driving.
I'd love to take the Go Train to work, but it runs only hourly at times, so you cant count on it. Have it running every 15 minutes round the clock!! Not just for a few hours at rush hour.
 

fuzzylogix

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I dont believe it would, Toro. Prove that. Jobs in certain areas would be lost, but they can be made up for that in other areas- as I have indicated above.
 

Toro

Senate Member
Re: RE: Kyoto is pointless, say 60 leading scientists

fuzzylogix said:
I dont believe it would, Toro. Prove that. Jobs in certain areas would be lost, but they can be made up for that in other areas- as I have indicated above.

Not according to Global Insight.

Meeting Kyoto Protocol targets on greenhouse gas emissions will reduce European economic growth significantly.

That is the finding of a new study from the International Council for Capital Formation, a market-based think tank.

It projects that by 2010, Spain's growth will have fallen by 3%, and that Italy's will shrink by 2%.

In recent weeks, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has become the latest leader to suggest that constructing a "child-of-Kyoto" agreement involving firm targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions will be tricky.

"No country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge," he told a London conference last week, commenting further that talk of frameworks and targets "...makes people nervous".

Kyoto costs

The US and Australian governments have opted out of Kyoto over economic concerns; and this new analysis of four European states from the International Council for Capital Formation (ICCF) endorses their view that the protocol will prove expensive.

It concludes that by 2010 - the middle of the four-year period in which Kyoto signatory states are supposed to meet their targets - Spain's economic growth will be reduced by 3.1% from what it would have otherwise been, Italy's by 2.1%, Britain's by 1.1% and Germany's by 0.8%.

continued

(for 5Par)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4415818.stm

http://www.iccfglobal.org/research/climate/index.html

The Study

Output and employment losses would also be expected because:
• energy-using equipment and vehicles would be made prematurely obsolete
• consumers would be rattled by rapid increases in living costs
• financial ministers concerned over possible inflation would most likely need to target more slack in the economy to deflate non-energy prices and thus stabilize the overall price environment.

Consumption and residential fixed investment would be the hardest hit components of real GDP because of the direct loss in real disposable income.

The economy’s potential to produce would fall below Base Case levels initially with the cut back in energy usage, since energy is a key factor of production. Stronger investment would be required over the longer-term to build capital as a substitute for this lost factor. The decline in consumption and residential fixed investment relative to

Base Case levels, however, would have a depressing impact on business fixed investment in the near-term. Labour productivity would decline because the other factors of production would be less efficient. Only as investment grows and the capital stock is expanded would productivity begin to improve.

Germany, 600,000 jobs. http://www.iccfglobal.org/pdf/GermanStudy.pdf

Italy 400,000 jobs. http://www.iccfglobal.org/pdf/Italyfinal101705.pdf

Spain 700,000 jobs. http://www.iccfglobal.org/pdf/Spainfinal101705.pdf

UK 700,000 jobs. http://www.iccfglobal.org/pdf/UKfinal101705.pdf

Kyoto raises energy costs across the board. Higher costs means less jobs.

That's a lot of jobs to make up.
 

#juan

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ITN wrote:
I have seen reports that claim global warming is a natural occuring cycle, but I haven't read anything about anthropogenic causes.

I would like to know how anyone can know that global warming is a naturally occuring cycle when we have only been keeping records for a couple hundred years at the most. What we do know and can see, iis that the polar ice caps are melting faster than we have ever seen before. By core drilling down through several miles of ice, we've found that we can look at a record of seasons going back a couple thousand years and there is no indication of the kind of warming we are seeing now.
 

zoofer

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Dec 31, 2005
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Kyoto is a farce and should be dumped. China India and Russia dump more pollutants in the air than the rest of the world. They are essentially exempt.
That idiot Cretien signed on as quick as he could to bolster his legacy IMO. The only way the Liberals could meet Kyoto was to buy carbon credits from Russia. Russia lost alot of dirty high emmission industries when it broke up. So without adjustment they have carbon credits to sell. Putin jumped in on the bandwagon when he realized some idiot Western governments were prepared to buy credits for billions of taxpayers money. Without one iota of emmission reduction being achieved. Any government who pays Russia billions for carbon credits should be impeached and all personally held libel for wasting taxpayers hard earned money.
Curtailing pollution is a desirous endeavour. Linking it to natural temperature cycles is sneaky dirty tricks.
 

FiveParadox

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Re: Kyoto • Libel Charges

zoofer, I don't quite understand why you would have wanted anyone to have been charged with libel; that would make no sense, in context. Moreover, in terms of mistakes made by the previous Government of Canada and its predecessors, I don't think that there is any reason to seek legal compensation whenever a previous decision is determined to be incorrect. Decisions are made based on whatever information is there at the time, and new information always comes up later on — sometimes decisions are proven wrong, but people shouldn't be punished, in my opinion, for having done so.

As for the Kyoto Accord and its carbon credits program, I thought, and think, that it is a pretty good idea. The Accord, in my opinion, was meant to reduce emissions on an international scale — even if emissions in some particular nations happened to increase, or stay the same. So long as the aggregate emissions decrease, then I would assert that the Accord should be considered a success in that regard. Global warming isn't going to be kind to one nation in particular because they reduce their own emissions — the effects, one way or the other, are experienced by everyone.

My two cents. :)
 

zoofer

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Dec 31, 2005
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The carbon credits program is insane. It merely transfers wealth from us to them. It does not reduce pollution by as much as a toad's fart. Nothing, nix, nada, diddly squat.
Russia will pollute just as much as always. They were assigned too much leeway in the first place so they sell us their excess credits. We pollute just as much but pay Russia billions for their unused credits, the Nutters, the UN and Putin is happy.
Meanwhile nature goes on temperature cycling.
 

Karlin

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Jun 27, 2004
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Its great to see that almost everyone here is clearly on the side that sees global warming is real. Our numbers are growing well past 80% now. We can see the facts of it now - severe weather events and smog and lung disease, and everyone can tell the climate has changed.

The usual suspects and these "60 scientists" are still denying "that global warming exists and is caused in part by human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels". We have heard it before, and found your opinions to be lacking.


That global warming exists and is caused by human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels is a step we agreed to allready. The un-official marker was Pres. GW Bush saying it on TV last year, that exact phrase minus the fossil fuels part.

Global warming does exist and it is caused in part by human activity. Mostly, I believe. Thats the ONLY part we can't tell for sure yet, but we will know, be able to measure, just how much the burning of fossil fuels IS causing the warming.

Remember, we didn't even agree on if it was WARMING or not, hence the ice age talk. Then we witnessed the warming air around us, hmmmmm. We can do away with that issue now too, b t w. It was likely just a paid-for distraction anyhow, by irresponsible scientists like these group of 60.

The same words that we took seriously 25 years ago are starting to sound silly: "Warming is ok because we were nearly wiped out by an ice age, thank goodness for fossil fuels"

Maybe it is all an example of "Remember, they Create the problem and then offer the solution" - Just wait to see what they are going to offer people to survive global warming and extreme weather...
{- will it be for the wealthy only, as a way to come up with the 7% who will survive the apocalypse, as prophesised? Uh hu}