The United States has pledged to sign a treaty to cut greenhouse emissions in half . . . by 2050:
In a statement Tuesday on climate change, President Bush and the other G-8 leaders said they would work with other countries to "consider and adopt" the 50-percent reductions as part of the new United Nations treaty to be negotiated in Copenhagen at the end of 2009. The leaders made it clear in their statement that they expected developing countries such as China and India, whose economies are also major polluters, to play a role in reducing emissions.Meeting on the scenic Japanese island of Hokkaido, the leaders also promised to make more immediate cuts in emissions over the next two decades, though they did not offer a specific numerical target. They indicated that they intend to write into the new treaty language that would bind them to "implement ambitious economy-wide mid-term goals in order to achieve absolute emissions reductions."
This is probably the only way we're going to get major emissions reductions; the politics of immediate cuts are just too ugly. Better to put it off until the current crop of negotiators is safely dead. When, likely as not, a new round of negotiators will vote to ignore them.
You have captured my global warming perspective in a nutshell. We may be on the road to hell but no one is acting like we are and smug EU folk haven't done anything meaningful (although with oil at 140USD, carbon permits are finally not effectively free).
The lack of firm numerical targets is a great achievement by the Bush administration. Their evil counterparts were the Germans, whose coalition government was "contractually" obliged to push for Kyoto-like agreements everywhere, especially if this would allow the German Social Democrats (SPD, the junior coalition partner) to ram it down ole Uncle Sam's throat.
The German position had become increasingly untenable in the lead-up to this summit. The French were never on board for hard numbers. The Italians got a new government. The Brits have become a bit more skeptical. The Japanese were never great boosters because of the threat to their own economy. Not sure where the Canadians stood.
Teutonic Ecotopian dreams are fading fast. A SPD grandee recently dropped an H-bomb on the leftist chattering classes by proposing that the agreement to phase out nuclear energy now be rescinded. The Greens are seething from their opposition benches.
The Greens were the ones who helped "modernize" the SPD by injecting all sorts of ecological policy gimmicks -- massive redistributive electricity pricing schemes to subsidize wind farms and solar panels, turning disposable drink packaging into for-deposit packaging, etc.
The modern EuroLeft is a lot like that, though, even in its imported variants. They'd have us living in caves and generating our energy on exercise wheels.
Chalk one up for the Bushies.
Canadian PM Stephen Harper has to look like he cares, but can't do anything substantial (and doesn't really want to). Canadians are probably more concerned with GHG than Americans, but at the same time are starting to realize that Canada's a really freakin cold country, and if you don't burn stuff you freeze to death pretty quick. Harper already said that there was no way Canada could ever meet Kyoto and wasn't going to kill the economy trying, but would work with the US, China and other big industrial countries on long-term solutions.
This is the only way we're going to get promises of major emissions reductions.
Look for the emissions to move to China, along with the manufacturing. Since China isn't a part of this boondoggle, we will claim to have done our part. Our air will be marginally cleaner, since the particulates will settle before they get here.
So the EU wants to cut greenhouse gases by 20 percent until 2020, the G8 by 50 percent until 2050. Why is nobody promising to cut emissions by 100 percent until 2100? It sounds even better and is as likely to never happen.
It's all in the definitions--by far, the major greenhouse gas is water vapor (at 95%), yet you near nary a word about it.
...50% of what, exactly? Present levels, 1990 levels, 2000 levels, 2010 levels, pre-revolutionary France levels? I demand that their vague and ambiguous 'goals' be explained as if they were at least pretending to be serious about the issue.
David Bowie said it best almost three decades ago, "Oooo bop/do do do do do do do do/ fa fa fa fa fashion."
GHG induced AGW is a Political Hoax befitting the best work of Bernays..
Note date of story below..
National Geographic: Melting Mars Means Man-Made Global Warming a Myth
By Noel Sheppard (Bio | Archive)
March 1, 2007 - 10:07 ET
An absolutely startling report about climate change was published Wednesday in National Geographic which stated “the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun” and not by man.
Unfortunately, as this goes counter to the position of an alarmist media and their seeming field general, Dr. Global Warming aka Al Gore, it seems quite unlikely that these revelations will be covered in today's papers or evening newscasts.
Regardless, the earth-shattering piece began (emphasis mine throughout):
Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural—and not a human-induced—cause, according to one scientist's controversial theory.
The article marvelously continued:
Story Continues Below Ad ↓
Earth is currently experiencing rapid warming, which the vast majority of climate scientists says is due to humans pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. (Get an overview: "Global Warming Fast Facts".)
Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.
In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.
Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.
"The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said.
To be sure, Abdussamatov is not the first scientist to make this claim. However, for a publication like National Geographic to report it should stoke some interest in the press – but don’t hold your breath.
With that in mind, the article then elaborated by almost thoroughly refuting the hysterical claims being made by an alarmist media and their current leader, soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore:
Abdussamatov believes that changes in the sun's heat output can account for almost all the climate changes we see on both planets.
Mars and Earth, for instance, have experienced periodic ice ages throughout their histories.
"Man-made greenhouse warming has made a small contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance," Abdussamatov said.
Yet, in an article about a somewhat contrary concept as far as the mainstream media are concerned, National Geographic expressed great skepticism. In a piece that debunked what the supposed consensus believes on this issue, the magazine spent almost the bulk of the space alloted citing scientists that don’t buy Abdussamatov’s conclusions starting with, “Abdussamatov's work, however, has not been well received by other climate scientists.”
However, the idea that National Geographic would present such a contrary view just when so many are buying into the junk science might be an indication that the work of skeptics is finally beginning to pay off.
Stay tuned.
*****Update: Sirius radio host Mike Church has sent us this humorous musical parody of Al Gore and the global warming alarmists. Set to Brownsville Station's hit, you're sure to get a kick out of "Smokin' SUV Fumes."
http://newsbusters.org/node/11122
—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.
These things obey tipping points.
5 years ago, it would have been inconceivable that a group of world leaders, including George Bush, would have even made such an announcement.
You watch. Environmental scientists expect a cooling of the Earth for the next 6-7 years (reversal of the El Nino effect). However CO2 concentrations last year grew by 60% faster than previous (over 3ppm vs. 1.9ppm). So the underlying problem of radiative forcing is accelerating.
Sometime in the 2020s the destabilisation of the Earth's climate will become so obvious that popular pressure will force drastic action. Global Warming denialism will go down along with 9-11 conspiracy theories etc.
The danger is that it will be too late. In any case, the costs of scrapping CO2-emitting capital equipment will be much larger then, than they had to be, because we delayed firm action.
But we have some so very far in the last 8 years, despite US obstruction and carefully crafted denialism. Despite willful tampering with scientific reports.
One feels rather as if it is 1938, on the world climate-- James Lovelock puts it exactly this way. A tired old British politician, seen by the Tory Party itself as a turncoat and untrustworthy, is crying in the wilderness that the danger in Mittleurope is both very real, and an existential one to Western Civilisation.
His hour lies before him. He will go down as the greatest Prime Minister in British history, the man who brought the nation, and the world, through the dark days of defeat and unto victory. Come the day of his funeral, the construction cranes of London will each, in turn, dip as his casket is carried up the Thames.
We have not yet found our Winston Churchill of global warming. But we will. Cometh the hour, cometh the man (or woman).
The danger is that it will be too late. In any case, the costs of scrapping CO2-emitting capital equipment will be much larger then, than they had to be, because we delayed firm action
...right.
By "CO2-emitting capital" you mean our entire steel industry, transportation, and cement industries.
See, there isn't an alternative. Scrapping means they're gone. Kaput.
If AGW is a problem, it cannot be solved without China and India. China is both the largest and fastest growing emitter. India is the 3rd or 4th largest emitter and also growing quickly.
Global average temperature has been increasing (this time) since ~1600, the trough of the Little Ice Age. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations have been rising since ~1750, when CO2 emissions were 1/2000th of what they are today. Stopping the accumulation would require reducing emissions to pre-1750 levels; or, essentially, to zero.
China is currently installing CO2 emitting capital equipment (coal-fired power generation) equivalent to 20% of US coal-fired generation capacity each year. This capital equipment has a 40-60 year useful life. India is doing the same thing at a slower pace. Neither shows any willingness to stop.
President Bush is correct in stating that China and India must participate. The rest of the world cannot stop CO2 accumulation without them, no less in the face of their rapidly increasing emissions.
Glorious
It's called Carbon Sequestration, and it will come.
Beyond that, we will find ways of producing these items without CO2 emissions. The march of technology is continuous, if not steady. Consider a electric steel mill (effectively no carbon emission) vs. an open hearth furnace.
But we need to put carbon emission into the cost equation now, to guarantee best practice use of the technology we do have.
It's like turning a giant supertanker. The sooner you start, the less painful it will wind up in the end.
Ed Reid
You are guilty of selectively using facts.
China and India, together, emit less CO2 than the US (that line will be crossed, shortly, but I don't believe it has been crossed yet). Remember also that the bulk of the extant CO2 in the atmosphere comes from historic western emissions: for example the UK is 2% of all emissions, but 6% of the stock of excess CO2.
The G8 emit 62% of all CO2. Strip out deforestation, and it's more like 80%.
Although China and India are a looming problem it is irresponsible and wrong to pretend that they are the problem, or that our efforts are somehow wasted if it takes longer for them to begin to restrain their emissions (China already has a national mandate to use the most energy efficient production technologies).
As you yourself point out, the issue with China is one of coal fired power stations. If those stations can be retrofitted with carbon capture and storage technology, or displaced with low carbon forms of energy production, then we have come a long way to solving the world's CO2 problem, by taking out about half of China's sources.
Just on your other number.
World carbon emissions are c. 7.5bn tpa. The planet sequesters c. 3.5bn tpa (multiply by 3.667 to get tonnes pa of CO2).
So stopping the rise of CO2 is not reducing CO2 emissions to 'virtually zero'.
It's about a 55-60% reduction from current levels.
The difficulty is much more about future growth in emissions. If we do nothing, emissions will rise to c. 15-16bn tpa by 2050.
Actually, China crossed that line last month.
And it is NOT a matter of tipping points, at least not yet. Gaia is a complex feedback mechanism, and we have yet to see the natural reactions to the increased CO2. Experiments done in closed rooms show that increasing CO2 merely causes the plants to get greener, so that the overall (when stable) CO2 level doesn't change much. And we have not been able to discern such a change in the wild.
So you can save your hysteria for a later date, if then.
AGW, like most, if not all religion, is a con-job, perpetrated by those who see it as their "club" - for our own good, of course, and suppported by "useful idiots".
The War on Carbon was started by scientists who noticed that CO2 and temperatures were correlated. By the time they figured out that the arrow of causation was pointed the wrong way, there were too many careers, reputations and cash on the line, so more and more ludicrous explanations are generated in order to blame "carbon". I am reminded of the intellectual contortions embodied in "epicycles": an elaborate construction created to protect a theory (earth -centric) that could not match observed reality.
The arguments for "doing something - anything" are based on computer simulations that ignore so many processes and add so many fudge factors as to make their outputs little more than intellectual exercise... or mental masturbation.
Basically, I object to carbon taxes or credits on Constitutional grounds - separation of church and state. You are entitled to believe anything you want, but you are not entitled to use the coersive power of the state to force me to pay for obeisance to Giaa.
Valuethinker,
Think again. http://www.pewclimate.org/facts-and-figures/international/annual-emissions
China's emissions have grown at ~10% per year since 2004; India's perhaps half that rate. China alone exceeded US emissions in mid-summer 2007.
Atmospheric CO2 concentrations have been increasing since ~1750, when emissions were ~3 million tpa. http://powerpoints.wri.org/climate/sld001.htm
Nice try!