The Trashing Of The Kyoto Treaty

[Billy_Dean]

Oh, OK, just wondered.

[hobbes]

Originally posted by J'Pol@7 December 2003 - 17:14
Why is it always the rainforests that people get so bothered about ?

I've always wondered that, it's always "What about the rainforests". Aren't they just big, wet forests ?

I have spottily read the thread and I must say that there is an enormous amount of speculation going on here.

I am particularly addressing the links left by RF if I seem off the Kyoto Treaty a bit.

The trend I notice is that people are not aware that the Earth is an organism. They like to think of it as a static entity and do not realize that it is constantly undergoing change in both position of its land masses and in environmental temperatures.

Remember, all land masses at one point were attached, but due to movement in the tectonic plates they have separated to form todays continents. These movements continue and there will be always be remodeling of our shorelines from erosion.

An example that is easy to appreciate is a river valley

At one point the river has a certain course, but over centuries it's specific course will meander back and forth within the river valley. As you can see, the river valley can be 50 miles or more across. So when Billy Bob puts his trailer next to the river and freaks out when it becomes flooded we understand that this is a natural phenomenon, not a result of global warming. So why must we consider coastal erosion to be un-natural entity, a man-made global warming side effect, rather than part of the natural cycle of the ocean.

It is probably because we look at the world from our myopic human points of view. We live in cycles of 100 years in a world that has billion year cycles.

Consider that we are all living at the time of the last Ice Age. Would we have felt that our campfires were melting the glaciars and this was going to lead to the flooding of the world. Man has this funny habit of thinking that he is so important. We all know that the development of the Ice Age and its retreat was part of the natural cycle.

Ice Ages will come and they will go. Temperatures have been higher in the past than they are today. This temperature cycle is akin to the fluatuations in the course of a river over time. There is nothing we can do about this, we just have to adapt to it.

So if you want to live on the coast, or in a flood plain, or next to a fault line, expect that nature is going to come visit you eventually and stop pointing your finger at fossil fuel emissions as if that has any significant bearing on natural inevitability.


I, of course, support being environmentally responsible, but I think that the whole global warming thing is just another of mans' megalomaniacal obssesions.


edit: quoting Jpol makes no sense in relation to the above post, I'm working on that now.

[hobbes]

Originally posted by J'Pol@7 December 2003 - 17:14
Why is it always the rainforests that people get so bothered about ?

I've always wondered that, it's always "What about the rainforests". Aren't they just big, wet forests ?

People get bothered about Rain Forests for an number of emotive reasons. It is largely unexplored and people fear that plants and animals may become extinct before they are even discovered.

However, my offense goes back to my belief that we should use resources as they were intended.

One misunderstanding about rain forests is that they have lush soil. The truth is that the soil is very thin and instead of tree roots burrowing deep for stability, they grow laterally just under the surface. So when you rip a swath in the rain forest, you are setting up a domino-effect of trees toppling.

But more to the point, this thin soil needs the protection of the forest canopy. If you use this land for grazing, the constant rain erodes the exposed thin soil turning grazing land into clay and rock.

The problem is that the local people are being used to raise cheap beef for McDonald's for their a short term gain. When a field becomes unusable, they just tear more forest down.

Once the soil is gone and the cows have been moved, that lost rain forest will take several hundred years to be reclaimed.

So land must be used for what it can support, not exploited short term because it is cheaper to have poor countries raise the cattle and import the beef, than to produce it locally. There is no shortage of land here to raise the cattle to support our beef market, it is simply a matter of economics.

Eventually, these short-term gains will end as the rain forests disappear and then what do you have? Nothing but useless clay and rock.

That is why rainforest exploitation is such an issue.

[J'Pol]

That makes sense, thank you. I wasn't aware of the thin soil / shallow root combination.

I can't pretend to be that bothered about all of these undiscovered species, it really isn't that interesting to me. I've done without them this far, I can just as well carry on without them.

Thank you for your last two posts btw, I thoroughly enjoyed them for both content and style. A pleasure to read.

[MagicNakor]

There is also quite a number of medical ingredients that can only be found in the rainforest, and so when the forest goes, so do various cures and vaccines.

[ilw]

Originally posted by j2k4@6 December 2003 - 21:33
that the effects are as transient as our presence here.

I agree, but i'm gonna be gutted if the effects are a major factor in our transience

Personally i'm a believer, after the amount of scientific debate and data gathering that has occured, I think i'm on safe ground siding with the large majority of researchers in saying that we are having an significant impact on the climate of our planet. I'll just cross my fingers that we (and by that i mean you ) don't leave it too late, i'm hoping a few more record breaking weather years may provide the impetus.

[j2k4]

Originally posted by ilw@8 December 2003 - 12:25
the large majority of researchers in saying that we are having an significant impact on the climate of our planet.

You'd be letting yourself in for a lot of work, but an attempt to solidly verify this supposition would prove revealing.

If you can make any headway, I think you will find no such majority exists; they do, however, enjoy great popularity with the media, due to their sensationalistic aspect.

[Barbarossa]

Originally posted by ilw+8 December 2003 - 15:25--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (ilw @ 8 December 2003 - 15:25)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-j2k4@6 December 2003 - 21:33
&nbsp; that the effects are as transient as our presence here.

I agree, but i&#39;m gonna be gutted if the effects are a major factor in our transience

Personally i&#39;m a believer, after the amount of scientific debate and data gathering that has occured, I think i&#39;m on safe ground siding with the large majority of researchers in saying that we are having an significant impact on the climate of our planet. I&#39;ll just cross my fingers that we (and by that i mean you ) don&#39;t leave it too late, i&#39;m hoping a few more record breaking weather years may provide the impetus. [/b][/quote]
An Asteroid is going to make a bigger "significant impact" than humans ever will, so don&#39;t worry about it.


...and don&#39;t think it won&#39;t happen, it will, it is as inevitable as night following day...

[ilw]

Fair point I can&#39;t prove it, but the UN backs me up:
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)
World Meteorological Organisation (WMO)

Their expert panels all agree (but they&#39;re all run by the UN so...)
I&#39;m gonna see if i can find any other worldwide organisations to back up my claim, but i gotta go home now so i&#39;ll leave it till tomorrow.
I haven&#39;t checked them out but if www.worldwatch.org and the wwf agree then I think thats all the big worldwide organisations.

[Rat Faced]

Causes of Global Warming
The causes of global warming are generally not in dispute. What is in dispute is the question of what the major causes of global warming are. The following things have an effect on the earth&#39;s temperature:
The trapping of heat by greenhouse gases (greenhouse effect)
Variation in the output of the sun (solar variation)
Reflectivity of the earth&#39;s surface (see deforestation)
...

Some of these causes are human in origin, such as deforestation. Others are natural, such as solar variation. The greenhouse effect includes both human causes, such as the burning of fossil fuel, and natural causes, such as volcanic emissions.
The greenhouse effect
The greenhouse effect is the trapping of some solar radiation by a planet&#39;s atmosphere, specifically by greenhouse gases, increasing the temperature on and near the surface. Without the greenhouse effect, the Earth would be about 14-36K cooler.

The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has increased in recent years, and many scientists believe that the greenhouse effect is the major cause of recent global warming.
The solar variation theory
In 1991, Knud Lassen of the Danish Meteorological Institute in Copenhagen and his colleague Eigil Friis-Christensen found a strong correlation between the length of the solar cycle and temperature changes throughout the northern hemisphere. Initially, they used sunspot and temperature measurements from 1861 to 1989, but later found that climate records dating back four centuries supported their findings. This relationship appeared to account for nearly 80 per cent of the measured temperature changes over this period (see graph). Sallie Baliunas, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, has been among the supporters of the theory that changes in the sun "can account for major climate changes on Earth for the past 300 years, including part of the recent surge of global warming." [http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/...ningSuni.html] On May 6, 2000, however, New Scientist magazine reported that Lassen and astrophysicist Peter Thejll had updated Lassen&#39;s 1991 research and found that while the solar cycle still accounts for about half the temperature rise since 1900, it fails to explain a rise of 0.4 °C since 1980. "The curves diverge after 1980," Thejll said, "and it&#39;s a startlingly large deviation. Something else is acting on the climate. ... It has the fingerprints of the greenhouse effect."[http://archive.newscientist.com/secu...g16622370.800] Later that same year, Peter Stott and other researchers at the Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom published a paper in which they reported on the most comprehensive model simulations to date of the climate of the 20th century. Their study looked at both natural forcing agents (solar variations and volcanic emissions) as well as anthropogenic forcing (greenhouse gases and sulphate aerosols). Like Lassen and Thejll, they found that the natural factors accounted for gradual warming to about 1960 followed by a return to late 19th-century temperatures, consistent with the gradual change in solar forcing throughout the 20th century and volcanic activity during the past few decades. These factors alone, however, could not account for the warming in recent decades. Similarly, anthropogenic forcing alone was insufficient to explain the 1910-1945 warming, but was necessary to simulate the warming since 1976. Stott&#39;s team found that combining all of these factors enabled them to closely simulate global temperature changes throughout the 20th century. They predicted that continued greenhouse gas emissions would cause additional future temperature increases "at a rate similar to that observed in recent decades."A [ of the relationship between natural and anthropogenic factors contributing to climate change appears in "Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis," a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). [http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/index.htm>http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/fig12-7.htm graphical representation of the relationship between natural and anthropogenic factors contributing to climate change appears in "Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis," a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). [http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/index.htm]


Consequences of Global Warming
Many researchers predict disastrous consequences for a warming of 1.5 to 7 degrees celsius.

If warming continues at the present rate, it may result in changes in ocean circulation, catastrophic global climate change, loss of biodiversity and irreversible damage to agriculture in those ecoregions most affected. In some regions, e.g. Western Europe, Bangladesh, damage is projected to be extreme, due to loss of Gulf Stream warming and global sea level rise respectively. More frequent bouts of destructive weather are also anticipated, and risk experts in the insurance industry have expressed very strong concerns, advocating a proactive approach based on the precautionary principle. Estimates accepted by the IPCC and by some insurance industry bodies estimate up to 3.5 billion people could be affected by rising disease, loss of fresh water supply, and other impacts.

Many public policy organizations and government officials are concerned that the current warming has the potential for harm to the environment and agriculture.

This is a matter of considerable controversy, with environmentalist groups typically emphasizing the possible dangers and groups close to industry questioning the climate models and consequences of global warming - and funding scientists to do so.

Due to potential effects on human health and economy due to the impact on the environment, global warming is the cause of great concern. Some important environmental changes have been observed and linked to global warming.

The examples of secondary evidence cited above (lessened snow cover, rising sea levels, weather changes) are examples of consequences of global warming that may influence not only human activities but also the ecosystems. Increasing global temperature means that ecosystems may change; some species may be forced out of their habitats (possibly to extinction) because of changing conditions, while others may spread. Few of the terrestrial ecoregions on Earth could expect to be unaffected.

Another cause of great concern is sea level rise.

Sea levels are rising 1 to 2 centimetres (around half an inch) per decade, and some small countries in the Pacific Ocean are expressing concerns that if this rise in sea level continues, they soon will be entirely under water.

Global warming causes the sea level to rise mainly because sea water expands as it warms, but some scientists are concerned that in the future, the polar ice caps and glaciers may melt.

As a consequence, the sea level could rise several metres.

At the moment, scientists are not expecting any major ice melting in the next 100 years.

(Sources: IPCC for the data and the mass media for the general perception that climate change is important.) Some researchers have found a negative correlation between sea level rise and average global temperature; water evaporates more quickly than it expands.

(Source: Science and Environmental Policy Project) As the climate gets hotter, evaporation will increase.

This will cause heavier rainfall and more erosion.

Many people think that it could result in more extreme weather as global warming progresses.

Global warming can also have other, less obvious effects.

The North Atlantic drift, for instance, is driven by temperature changes.

It seems as though it is diminishing as the climate grows warmer, and this means that areas like Scandinavia and Britain that are warmed by the drift might face a colder climate in spite of the general global warming. It is now feared that Global Warming may be able to trigger the type of abrupt massive temperature shifts which bracketed the Younger Dryas period.

However, global warming can also have positive effects, since higher temperatures and higher CO2 concentrations improve the ecosystems&#39; productivity.

Satellite data shows that the productivity of the Northern Hemisphere has increased since 1982.

On the other hand, an increase in the total amount of biomass produced is not necessarily all good, since biodiversity can still decrease even though a small number of species are flourishing.

Similarly, from the human economic viewpoint, an increase in total biomass but a decrease in crop harvests would be a net disadvantage. In addition, IPCC models predict that higher CO2 concentrations would only spur growth of flora up to a point; after that, though greenhouse effects and warming would continue there would be no compensatory increase in growth.

Other researchers (a small minority), feel that up to 1.5 degrees Centrigade of warming would increase crop yields and stabilize weather; many of these doubt a larger warming is likely. In response, some advocates of strong early measures (well beyond Kyoto) note that the belief in beneficial effects and the doubt that a large warming is possible should be independent if these conclusions were in fact neutrally derived from scientific research, rather than being optimistically driven by ideology or oil money.

Others go somewhat further and indicate that anyone who believes that to "wait and see," potentially disadvantaging 3.5 billion people to seek narrow advantage in a few growing regions in developed nations, or wait for "technological fixes," amounts to a declaration of war on the entire planet&#39;s population. They argue that long before any northern nation, e.g. Russia, Canada, would enjoy greater crop yields, the developed nations would be exterminated by biological warfare or other weapons of mass destruction launched by groups easily recruited from the most drastically affected world populations. This is of course a political not a scientific argument for action.


Actions in response to Global Warming
In opposition to action stand the fossil fuel industry and skeptics, who oppose immediate action to mitigate Global Warming. They argue that crippling industry and infrastructure to prevent an unconfirmed ecological catastrophe does not make economic sense and that healthy economies are required to fund technologically innovative solutions, as required by the UNFCCC. President G. W. Bush, made this argument in rejecting the Kyoto Protocol. Bush did not reject the science outright, and argued that the greenhouse gas control was a matter of voluntary restraint by industry. Many U.S. states have nonetheless put strong controls on greenhouse gases.
The Kyoto Protocol
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) establishes a process for developing an international response to the perceived global warming problem. 181 countries have ratified the UNFCCC, including all industrial nations.

The UNFCCC, however, does not provide any binding emission targets.

The Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC proposes binding greenhouse gas limits for developed countries. It has been ratified by 104 countries, representing 43.9% of emissions. Developed countries are required to limit their emissions to, on average, 5.2% below 1990 levels: 29% below pre-Kyoto estimates for 2010. The precise amounts vary from an 8% reduction for the European Union to a permitted increase of 10% for Iceland. Controversially, developing countries, including India and China, are exempted from reductions until they become sufficiently industrialised.

Because global warming is a "tragedy of the commons" problem, the Kyoto Protocol will not take effect until 90 days after countries responsible for over 55% of emissions ratify it. This will occur when Russia ratifies it. The United States, responsible for one-third of emissions of greenhouse, has signed the Kyoto Protocol, but does not intend to ratify it.

See also: Global warming potential, Carbon sequestration, Impact of global climate changes on agriculture


External Links & References
Every source has a point of view or a sponsor which might be a source of bias.

If you discover evidence for bias or a major source of its funding, please include it in the site&#39;s description.

Scientific websites:
NASA&#39;s Global Hydrology and Climate Center
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA, US Department of Commerce

United Nations websites:
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), established by WMO and UNEP (below) in 1988
http://www.wmo.ch -- the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
http://www.unep.org/ -- the United Nations Environment Programme
http://unfccc.int/ -- the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC)
IPCC report: summary for policy makers, (2001) (pdf file)
IPCC report: Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis -- Technical Summaries (pdf file)

Environmentalist websites:
http://www.greenpeace.org/ -- Greenpeace
http://www.panda.org/climate/ -- the Worldwide Wildlife Fund (WWF)
http://www.worldwatch.org/about -- Worldwatch Institute

Industry-sponsored (even in part):
http://www.cei.org -- the Competitive Enterprise Institute
Access to Energy
CO2 science magazine
http://www.junkscience.com -- PR Watch says, "Steven Milloy&#39;s website is actually a good example of junk science itself, heaping adolescent insults on any and all scientists (ranging from Samuel Epstein to the New England Journal of Medicine) who fail to defend the corporate, anti-environmentalist worldview." (Source: [http://www.prwatch.org/links/science.html>http://www.ipcc.ch -- the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), established by WMO and UNEP (below) in 1988
http://www.wmo.ch -- the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
http://www.unep.org/ -- the United Nations Environment Programme
http://unfccc.int/ -- the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC)
IPCC report: summary for policy makers, (2001) (pdf file)
IPCC report: Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis -- Technical Summaries (pdf file)

Environmentalist websites:
http://www.greenpeace.org/ -- Greenpeace
http://www.panda.org/climate/ -- the Worldwide Wildlife Fund (WWF)
http://www.worldwatch.org/about -- Worldwatch Institute

Industry-sponsored (even in part):
http://www.cei.org -- the Competitive Enterprise Institute
Access to Energy
CO2 science magazine
http://www.junkscience.com -- PR Watch says, "Steven Milloy&#39;s website is actually a good example of junk science itself, heaping adolescent insults on any and all scientists (ranging from Samuel Epstein to the New England Journal of Medicine) who fail to defend the corporate, anti-environmentalist worldview." (Source: [http://www.prwatch.org/links/science.html])

Independent (or receives too little support to constitute "sponsorship"):
Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical environmentalist, (2001) ISBN 0521010683. After investigating his book and his other work, the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty, a panel of eminent scientists, found him guilty of "scientific dishonesty.">[, analysis of industry efforts to discredit global warming science, by Bob Burton and Sheldon Rampton, published in the Earth Island Journal.
Testimony of Richard S. Lindzen before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on 2 May 2001 -- Lindzen is a professor at MIT
http://www.sepp.org/ -- the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
BBC News summary of climate change

Other websites (viewpoint or sponsorship unknown):
http://www.greeningearthsociety.org
http://www.globalwarming.org
http://www.theclimate.info

Source

Public controversy continues to surround the hypothesis that human activities are contributing to significant global warming. A small number of scientists with backgrounds in climate research -- notably S. Fred Singer, Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling, Sherwood Idso and Richard S. Lindzen -- dispute the theory (see global warming skepticism). Also, a number of industry-backed organizations (including the Global Climate Coalition, the Greening Earth Society and Singer&#39;s Science and Environmental Policy Project have claimed that the theory is fraudulent or unproven.

Same source...

The proportion of scientists who support or oppose any of the various global warming theories is a matter of controversy in its own right. Environmentalists and their allies claim virtually unanimous support for the global warming theory from the scientific community. Opponents maintain that it is the other way around, claiming that the overwhelming majority of scientists either dismiss global warming altogether or merely consider it "unproven" (see global warming skepticism).

Same source....

Considering something unproven does not mean you dismiss something... in my opinion the environmentalists win that arguement.