Unilateralism!

Posted by: Mark Buehner at December 2, 2003 11:45 AM

no, no sir, it’s not dead. it’s resting.

Posted by: wafflestomper at December 2, 2003 12:04 PM

Kyoto —

Another sly attempt by nations in demographic decline to destroy a growing nation.

It didn’t deserve to see the light of day, and now it (likely) won’t.

MG

Posted by: MG at December 2, 2003 01:37 PM

Just a few things wrong with Kyoto, but this sums it up best:

A spaceship lands on Earth. It’s January. The aliens take the temperature outside. It’s 8 degrees. ‘Man, this place is a deep-freeze, they think to themselves.’ They begin to explore the surface. March comes and the temperature is up to 30 degrees. ‘A decent warming trend.’ they think to themselves. ‘We can live with this.’

May brings temperatures in the mid-50s. ‘This is more like it.’ By July a really dangerous trend is spotted. The temperature is all the way up to 84. The aliens begin to panic. By mid-August the temperature hits 101. ‘We’ve got to get the hell out here.’ the commander reasons, ‘By December, we’ll be toast!’

Okay, a few things are wrong. Too small a statistical sample’s just one of them. None of the computer models used to predict global warming take the sun into account. You remember the sun, that star in our neighborhood? It’s not there, nor are those pesky solar cycles.

And while temperatures in urban areas have risen (heat islands), the average atmospheric temperature has not. The same people who predicted the Coming Ice Age in 1970 are now predicting the Coming Heat Wave.

Kyoto did nothing to curb pollution in the 3rd world, India and China (whose pollution is so thick it can cross the Pacific) were left completely unscathed, while western powers were saddled with ridiculously low, pre-1970 targets for CO2 emissions.

Planetary temperatures are cyclical. They go up and they go down, and they did it LONG BEFORE the industrialization of the West. Grapes once grew in England. Predictive models are as good as the people programming them. The 2-week weather forecast was abandoned in the 1960s because meteorologists realized there was NO ACCURACY after about 5 days. How is it that someone who can’t see the bike parked at the end of the driveway can tell us what they see in the next town?

And what kind of person believes them?

Posted by: torpedo_eight at December 2, 2003 09:52 PM

Torpedo, you are nuts. In fact I have diffinitive proof of global cooling! The temperature in Chicago ahs been dropping since August. By my calculations it will be 240 degrees below zero by next July. Argue with that logic!

Posted by: Mark Buehner at December 2, 2003 11:20 PM

If they want to keep this Kyoto crap going, they’d better suppress this 1991 graph of sun activity overlaid on avg temperature:

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/glob-warm.html

or, better yet, discourage critical thought in the school systems…

Posted by: Is My Blinker On? Yes, no, yes, no... at December 3, 2003 01:22 AM

Blinker, Thanks so much for the link. Isn’t that amazing? A .02% increase in sun output is equivalent to a doubling of carbon dioxide here on Earth. I thought for sure it was due to that aerosal can of PAM I released in 1985.

Mark, yes, let’s hurry to the basement - there’s no time to lose!! There I’ll show color slides of all the islands in the Pacific that have disappeared.

Not.

Posted by: torpedo_eight at December 3, 2003 04:27 PM

“.02% increase in solar output could have the same effect as a doubling of carbon dioxide”

The key word is COULD, and I don’t think this offers and end all explanation of why there has been a notable increase in global temperatures..

I think one would be extremely naive to believe that aerosol cans and carbon dioxide emmissions have no effect whatsover on this trend. Conversly, the same goes to someone who beleives that emissions are the only suspect.

Posted by: yossarian at December 4, 2003 12:59 AM

Additonally, Kyoto wasn’t put on the table as a solution to reducing emissions. Does anyone honesltly think that by reducing emissions to pre-1990 levels is going to make any serious impact on reducing greenhouse effect? No, it probably won’t. But that wasn’t the point. It was more of an incentive. To show that we have the technology, and the will, to change habits, to a more sustainable way of living (ie. renewable energy sources, fuel cells, hybrids, wood products..etc.). As much as you might like to think, fossil fuels are finite, and although I am sure that there will probably be 100+ years left of oil, we will run out, and oil doesn’t just power our vehicles.

Posted by: yossarian at December 4, 2003 01:04 AM

The clear point here, yossarian, is that the SUN has not been included in any of the predictive weather models - and the sun can influence temperatures far more than any fossil fuels we burn.

Or does it make sense to you to leave the sun out of the equation? Check the link above and tell me I’ve got it all wrong.

Posted by: torpedo_eight at December 4, 2003 03:16 PM

dude…I don’t think I said ANYWHERE in my post ANYTHING about leaving the SUN out of the equation.

So, you DO have it wrong, that wasn’t my point…read my post again and tell me what my real point was.

I study Climatology at school right now…and the SUN is included in many, many, many energy budget equations.

Posted by: yossarian at December 6, 2003 01:46 PM

Global warming has been the biggest fraud to hit the earth. Exploited by the liberal camp. I figure gobal warming must have been going on since the end of the Ice Age. Hell, if it means warm weather year ‘round….I’m all for it. I’m emptying every canister of R-12 I can find. (The expensive R-12 fiasco is another example of what can happen when the liberal doomsayers have power.)

Posted by: Jeff B at December 6, 2003 02:16 PM

When I said ‘Global Warming’, I was referring to the bogus scenario that our exhause fumes, aerosols, and refridgerants, (uhhh…wouldn’t they make it colder?), are the cause of world wide weather change. Jeeezz, when Sodom set the oil wells on fire in Kuwait, that should have pretty much microwaved the earth.,

Posted by: Jeff B at December 6, 2003 02:22 PM

Ahhh. Introducing SPF 45,000 sunscreen, new for this year, along with some lovely greenhouse gas cocktails, and bottled specialty refinery byproducts
conveniently located in aisle 3 between the automotive products and the cheap wine section
making quality greenhouse gases easily accessible, and fitting them within our economic interest, provided we grow gas masks-
Gee, W., do you suppose you would care if we pumped exhaust from 1,000,000 SUVs through your front door?

I thought this was a funny one.

Posted by: Paulie at December 6, 2003 03:36 PM

Oh Jeff B.
“Scientists know for certain that human activities are changing the composition of Earth’s atmosphere. Increasing levels of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide (CO2 ), in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times have been well documented. There is no doubt this atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is largely the result of human activities.”

This is written on the EPA website, an agency of our very own US Government. There are over 600 million motor vehicles in the world today, are you telling me if i took the exaust from all those cars and put it in your house, there would be no change in tempature? Give me a break, the only fraud here is our president not admitting there’s a problem.

paulie again..

Posted by: paulie at December 6, 2003 03:45 PM

Paulie…good to see that there are some people around here with some sense.

Paul B...grab a climatology text book, and look up what refridgerants actually are, and how they actually operate. Your sound like you are 10 years old.

Posted by: yossarian at December 6, 2003 09:56 PM

Dude, I read your note. Now read mine again: NONE of the predictive models used to forecast global warming included the SUN. I don’t give a fig about the energy budget equations you viddy in your current Climatology classes. I’m talking about the seminal king-hell predictive models used to forecast our impending doom.

As a counter to your Manchurian Candidate sessions in climatology, I suggest Chaos by James Gleick and The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg - that is, unless your PC university has banned these books.

Still waiting for the list of disappeared islands.

Lake Erie is dead. 1975
An new Ice Age is coming. 1970
All known chromium deposits will be gone by 2005. 1971
We know what causes AIDS. 1983
There’s a giant hole in the ozone and it keeps getting bigger. 1992

Question orthodoxy.

Posted by: torpedo_eight at December 8, 2003 10:33 PM

Dude, while we’re at it, can you cite the studies that demonstrate how CFCs break down O3 in the stratosphere?

Can you cite a study where they got CFCs to break down O3 in the lab?

Best of luck, this is a trick question.

Posted by: torpedo_eight at December 8, 2003 10:44 PM

I’m a huge fan of Mr. Lomborg and have read his book in its entirety. Have you?…or have you just heard about it. I’m guessing its the latter.

Bjorn Lomborg accepts that man-made global warming is occuring as well as man-made ozone depletion. His argument is on Kyoto…that implementing it is far to expensive that Kyoto treaty would cost $4 trillion to adopt, but only postpone a 2C temperature rise by a mere six years.

He goes on to state that this money is better spent on developing reducing poverty in the 3rd World and developing and implementing renewable energy sources.

Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina (1974) succesfully demostrated (in the lab) that CFC’s breakdown ozone. It was theorized that this could be occuring in the atmosphere. It has since been confirmed by the NAS, the UN, and all other respectable organizations. These guys won the 1995 Nobel Prize for this discovery.

Back in ‘74, they were labelled ‘Kooks’ by the entire scientific community…now…the only ‘kooks’ out there are those who beleive it isn’t happening.

The question remains…”does this happen in the real world?” Scientific experience suggests it probably does…but we can’t be sure.

By chance…torpedo…have you ever heard of the precautionary principle? It is an extremely important aspect of environmental management. Basically it is “premium on the long-term safeguarding of sytems, even in the face of uncertainty about the impacts”

I’m curious though..can you produce a paper that says confirms, completely that CFC’s DO NOT break down ozone?

Posted by: Yossarian at December 9, 2003 05:13 AM

I’m a huge fan of Mr. Lomborg and have read his book in its entirety. Have you?…or have you just heard about it. I’m guessing its the latter.

Bjorn Lomborg accepts that man-made global warming is occuring as well as man-made ozone depletion. His argument is on Kyoto…that implementing it is far to expensive that Kyoto treaty would cost $4 trillion to adopt, but only postpone a 2C temperature rise by a mere six years.

He goes on to state that this money is better spent on developing reducing poverty in the 3rd World and developing and implementing renewable energy sources.

Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina (1974) succesfully demostrated (in the lab) that CFC’s breakdown ozone. It was theorized that this could be occuring in the atmosphere. It has since been confirmed by the NAS, the UN, and all other respectable organizations. These guys won the 1995 Nobel Prize for this discovery.

Back in ‘74, they were labelled ‘Kooks’ by the entire scientific community…now…the only ‘kooks’ out there are those who beleive it isn’t happening.

The question remains…”does this happen in the real world?” Scientific experience suggests it probably does…but we can’t be sure.

By chance…torpedo…have you ever heard of the precautionary principle? It is an extremely important aspect of environmental management. Basically it is “premium on the long-term safeguarding of sytems, even in the face of uncertainty about the impacts”

I’m curious though..can you produce a paper that says confirms, completely that CFC’s DO NOT break down ozone?

Posted by: Yossarian at December 9, 2003 05:13 AM

Yossarian, no, I have the book and I’ve read it.

If O3 break down is all due to CFCs, then where is the epidemic of skin cancers predicted by NASA when the hole was ‘discovered’. Could the discovery have something to do with the fact the discovery was made weeks before NASA was up in front of Congress for additional funding? It’s always nice to have some disaster to justify your existence (not that federal programs ever DIE).

You made a big deal out of the word “COULD” a while back, but now I’m supposed to ignore the “THEORIZED” when it comes to CFCs causing ozone breakdown? Does every THEORIZED beat every COULD hands down?

The fact of the matter (and the fact of Lomborg’s book) is that we know right now doesn’t justifiy bankrupting the western world as a ‘precaution’. Far more polutants pour out of the 3rd world than out of West, yet Kyoto never addressed it. It’s death was justified.

For the record, Freon is now the No. 2 smuggled item in the US (after hemp).

Do I have any proof that CFCs DON‘T break down ozone? You know it’s always harder to prove fidelity than it is to prove infidelity, right? Besides, you’re the one proposing the $4 trillion expense. I’d say the ball is in your court.

Posted by: torpedo_eight at December 12, 2003 09:55 AM

First of all Kyoto is one of the best things that could happen to the world! With all the greenhouse emissions and all the horrible things we are doing to the planet it is time that someone put there foot down and stop this insanity. The world does not belong to the united states or to any individual. It is not there for us to use its ressources for $ and the economy but it is there for us to survive. Bush is wrong, Kyoto is not dead! Europe is doing awesome cuz they take the environnement seriously and they are the right ones. If we could all get over ourselves and do the same then maybe we could save the world, or at least slow down or diminish the consequences of global warming. Bill Clinton was the best president the states ever had, he was for Kyoto and he helped persuade people to sign the Kyoto protocol. He made peace not war! Now Bush is doing the complete opposite. He’s not only refused to sign with Kyoto and refused to take the responsibility of cleaning up the mess he has made but he is also trying to persuade others (like Japan) not to ratify the protocol! Why? Because he wants Japan to buy all his stolen oil and then he can profit. So his priority is himself and his money vs. the planet and all of our futur generations lives! That to me is pure evil!

Posted by: Stephanie at January 16, 2004 03:17 PM

Hello Bush, I think you have smelly feet and look like a chicken toasted twice with cheese and marmaelade. add a fish and a hamburger and you have your face!! You suck Bush! Why don’t you just do us all a favour and die!! Love from purple peter

Posted by: Chris Stevens at March 19, 2004 10:04 AM