Save the Planet

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yes septic we know you would prefer to be on the earth post neclear war so you can run rampid with destruction and depression.

 

I hope dear ole Blackthorne didnt think that I was out for The US ( well, not only...)

There is large problems with the way the Kyoto protocol is written but that doesnt change the fact that US is responsible for 25% of emitted CO2.

And I agree that there is problem with the developing countries, but their emissions is rather small per capita.

Concerning the use of forrested areas as carbon zinks.
The figures presented have been critizised hard from institutes outside US as being exaggerated and close to wishful thinking.

Which side that has the correct figures is beyond me to say, (I had enough problem with dynamic meteorology, climatology is a whole different ballgame, but fun)

I would have been more happy if the Rio treaty had been signed.

 

The Kyoto Protocol has not been ratified by any major industrialized country in Europe. If those countries who would criticize the United States for saying it will not support it, had in fact ratified it themselves, I would be more willing to listen to their arguments. Until then, their protests are falling on deaf ears.

 

Wow! Saw this post last night when it first came out, and now it's packed. Nice to see that there are still lots of concerned people out there.

I could (like most of you it looks) write about this for days, but I'll try to keep it short (for now).

The arguments against the reality of global warming really don't add up to much other than general disbelief. The amount of evidence that indicates the existence of this problem is overwhelming (anyone who is in doubt should really take a look at some of the research behind it -- start with the IPCC report referred to in the link Slappy provided, and go from there).

But, the Kyoto agreement as it stands is a flawed mechanism. Sorry. The problem of excluding (to a large extent) developing countries has already been discussed, so I won't go there. But that's only one flaw.

It also doesn't include any feasible mechansim for implementing the reductions. It simply states what each signatory would have to cut -- CO2 emissions to 1990 levels, and then further cuts in much later years (and 1990 levels are much too late when you consider that we've been adding CO2 since the beginning of the industrial age). And without an implementation plan, it's doomed to fail, just like any other plan. Incidently, almost none of the participating countries has ratified the treaty either.

Then there's the problem of allowing "credits". This isn't an accounting problem. Emissions actually need to be reduced, and the credits don't do anything to effect this. What they do is give a country the appearance of reducing their emissions. Kind of like how a tax credit can make your taxable income lower for the purposes of income tax. You still earned the same amount.

Related to this is the whole idea of trees as sinks of CO2. Trees do absorbe CO2 during their entire life time. But most of this occurs when the tree is growing -- mature forests do not have much of an effect on the CO2 balance in the atmosphere (lots of recent studies on this if you want to check them out). And, in truth, over the past couple hundred years, and the last 100 years in particular, more forests have been cut than have been replanted (take a look around you -- in most cases, it used to be forested to some degree). Thus, we've not only put more CO2 in the atmosphere, we've also reduced the ability of the terrestrial environment to absorb it -- two negatives in the CO2 balance, not one. Adding some forest by replanting doesn't come close to making up for what we've already removed.

And...no wait, I'll stop. Really.

Okay, one last thing: Just because I think the Kyoto agreement is deeply flawed, doesn't mean there shouldn't be something put in place. But let's get it right. And I can't stand Greenpeace (no offence to those who support them -- it's your choice).

Thanks for letting me rant!