Third Party & Independents: Archives

Osama Bin Laden supports the Kyoto protocol and is pissed off at the Bush Administration for not supporting it. I actually agree with him.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6537.htm
I just wished that Republicans understood how complex foreign policy really is. This explains a lot. By understanding the enemies position, more coherant policies will unveil. Let’s face it, terrorism will never be defeated. It is not about befriending the terrorists, rather stop the selfish policies that have overtaken the US since World War II. Our foreign policy, including under the Bush Administration’s team, has been schizophrenic at best. By stopping selfish policies on foreign grounds, we are pissing off less people and then less terrorism will happen. I will also add that they might end up joining us on fighting the good fight and the road to world peace. I don’t know why so many Republicans have this Western cowboy appeal of pissing everyone off. Friends are good to have and supporting a simple policy like this keeps our people safe at home, indirectly, from terrorism and safe in health. I know this is a rather far out argument from your post, as it is a rather good one, but it serves a point. I will definately take hell from bloggers for this, but hey, this is a profile of courage for taking an unpopular stance with the general public. I will stand my ground. Good article Adam.

Leon:

Thanks for the positive response. The cowboy stuff of the Bush administration is pretty frustrating and embarrassing. We need friends in the world that will back us up because they believe in our causes, not because we have them against the wall economically. For some reason this idea has slipped our leaders’ mind in the last few decades. It’s not that far off to suggest that we treat these terrorists as human beings first and foremost. It is just counterintuitive to think that wars to kill people who are willing to kill themselves already is going to bring anything good. We need a new plan, and the War on Terror is not helping anything. I digress from the post though…

I agree Adam and excellent points you have mentioned. I don’t think Kerry would do a much better job but he is a step in the right direction. I have friends describe Bush as a raging Zionist. I see their point. I really ponder how much influence does AIPAC and Israel, in general, really have over our government. It is a shame that the Founding Fathers did not have the wisdom to stop foreign intervention such as AIPAC. I don’t blame them for not seeing it though. Who would have thought this would happen when they didn’t even think that the Constitution would last 20 years? I keep on telling everyone and I don’t think anyone is listening. The American people need to become educated on issues and if it takes, taking away the right to vote unless a thorough one year study is done; then so be it. It is for the common good after all. Just call it tough love.

What part of 98-0 do you not understand? Do any of you folks actually know WHY the U.S. Senate (including all the Democrats) refused to ratify the Kyoto Accords? Please go read up on the history of this and give us some factual references before you go blaming the Bush administration for Kyoto.

Simple solutions to complicated problems, or no solutions at all:
— Where do we draw the line on the environment?
— How do we handle a terrorist threat?
— How do we manage foreign policy?

Don’t know; don’t care. But, boy, [the current guy in office] sure is screwing everything up … that’s constructive, really constructive. (Apologies, I must clean up that mess; my sarcasm is leeking.)

Mike said;
“Don’t know; don’t care. But, boy, [the current guy in office] sure is screwing everything up … that’s constructive, really constructive.”

Siding against the ‘current guy in office’ without even caring?
Now that’s constructive.
Must be a Bush hater, or someone who just decided it would be ‘more fun’ to be in the ‘Hate Bush Club’??

‘The nations on board with Kyoto do not all agree as to the cause of the warming of the Earth’

‘There is no choice when it comes to cleaner air and the safety of our families growing up in this nation. It is something we must all do, or suffer the consequences.’

I think we can all agree that something is definitely going to happen

one way or the other

Or nothing could happen, I don’t think we want to rule that option out.

I will feel real guilty if we don’t do something.

So we should do it.

Or maybe I will feel more guilt because we made it worse.

But we could always go back to the way it is

But what if we don’t go far enough?

Then I would feel really bad.

Ok, I figured it out, somewhere in the next 3 months to 25 years, we should definitely figure out if we are going far enough.

Then I will feel good about myself.

Gandhi,
“Q. Did the U.S. Senate vote against ratifying the Kyoto Protocol?

A. No. The protocol has never been submitted to the senate for ratification. The Bush administration has referred to a vote on the non-binding Byrd-Hagel resolution, which registered views on some aspects of protocol negotiations. The vote on the Byrd-Hagel resolution took place prior to the conclusion of the Kyoto agreement, and before any of the flexibility mechanisms were established. The resolution was written so broadly that even strong supporters of the Kyoto Protocol, such as senators Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) voted for it. In doing so, Sen. Kerry said: “It is clear that one of the chief sponsors of this resolution, Senator Byrd … agrees … that the prospect of human-induced global warming as an accepted thesis with adverse consequences for all is here, and it is real…. Senator Lieberman, Senator Chafee and I would have worded some things differently… [but] I have come to the conclusion that these words are not a treaty killer.”
http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/akyotoqa.asp

Having provided a little history, I will now feel free to blame the Bush administration.

Most people would agree Kyoto has questionable provisions. It can definitely be improved. However, as the most economically powerful country in the world- some might even go so far as to call the US a leader- and as the biggest consumer of resources, and the biggest polluter- the Bush administration had the power to negotiate Kyoto from a position of strength.

Without consulting the other parties in the negotiations, we walked out. Oddly enough, many people from other countries consider that kind of unilateral and arrogant action, well, rude.

During the first years of this fossil fuel administration, conservatives denied the problem of climate change. Today, even The Drudge Report leads with remarkable picture of a glacial retreat.

Other than Exxon lobbyists and Rush Limbaugh, recognition of the problem of climate change is widespread in this country and others. The Bush administration has reached the point of ‘studying’ the problem, but has not brought itself to commit to effective international cooperation on the issue.

It’s disgraceful.

bugcrazy,

I didn’t think my sarcasm was that tough to field, but I will explain:
— The prior posts were largely bitching about Bush.
— I was suggesting that, instead, we should be discussing constructive solutions.
— Bush is irrelevant to my post. (I voted for him, because the Libertarian candidate was absent from my absentee ballot. I didn’t like my choices, but I like mindless bitching less.)

Where is the anti-Walmart (Buy American made products) crowd on Kyoto. It seems to me that if we handicap ourselves, but China doesn’t, aren’t we going to lose more jobs to them?

Let me guess? There is no one from the anti-Walmart crowd who thinks Kyoto is a bad idea.

Peter,
You’re presuming the US would enact Kyoto, and leave trade policy with China untouched? Assuming China also refused to participate? Would the Kyoto Accord be the same as the one other countries have enacted? Would it be different, if the US had bothered to participate and continue negotiation for, basically, whatever terms we wanted? Are you suggesting advocates of tariffs must be proponents of Kyoto? Or are advocates of globalization and international cooperation and Kyoto forced to oppose adjusting current Chinese trade policy?

Gotcha Mike.
There is alot of the mindless bitching that goes on around here.
If the U.S.(Bush) had signed on to the agreement, there would still be bitching about how things were not exactly the way they should be for the U.S. to wholeheartedly commit.
Then there would have been a fight about how to get the changes made after we already signed on.
Even Lieberman, today, said, the agreement needed some adjustments and that China and India would never sign on unless we do.(but we are the bad guys because WE have to be concerned about OUR economy)
It doesn’t really matter who is in the White House.
Someone always has a complaint because they don’t agree about everything 100%.
After all, some people think they may as well be dead if they aren’t complaining about something.
Not just here, all over the world.

We were never in the protocol. Bush did not submit it for ratification, but neither did Clinton. Of course, the non-binding vote highlighted the outcome. I felt it should have been submitted so every Senator would have to squirm and eventually go on record and vote against it.
Warming, if occuring, is natural. Maybe because we are in an inter-glaciaition period. Maybe because that’s just the way it is. Climate is not static. It is and always changing.
Approx. 95% of the CO2 is natural.
The US is a net carbon sink - meaning we sequester more than we give off.

Tflan
Extinction is natural, too.

Carbon content in the atmosphere is at the highest level in 400,00 years, perhaps in 20 million years, and it is rising. Passivity in the face of change is not a good strategy.

Hey Peter,

We don’t make anything in this country anymore. All WalMart does is take JOBS (you know all those mom and pop stores) that were ours to begin with, and give them to illegals because otherwise they couldn’t afford to sell even Chinese made goods and make a profit.

PBS has a show tonight on Global warming. I plan to watch. Maybe others will too and we can discuss something we have seen together.
Scientific America - I think….

‘We don’t make anything in this country anymore.’

Rocky, Dude, you got no clue. I mean none. Airbus, a European company, has 5 billion dollars worth of manufacturing in 40 states annually. Airbus could go anywhere they want for manufacturing, they certainly don’t have to come here, but they do. I don’t know where you are getting your facts bro.

Well… nothing new on that show.
Just reminded me how the world has dramatic changes in it’s life cycle and data from the last 50-100 years is not enough to be sure of anything.

“Rocky, Dude, you got no clue.”

Peter,
I want to graciously thank you for my intellegence evaluation.
While I’m at it I have a question for you.

When was the last time you bought an Airbus at WalMart?

Looking more and more like we need to slow things down and even go retro if we must. Would acutally help the kids and get all Americans down to basics again/down to earth (we don’t need most of this plastic junk, nor are we doing this exquisite piece of geography and bodies of water any good)

For one thing, would stop the Chinese glut over here which we must do…as well as the Japanese, S.Korean, Taiwanese, gluts over here with about zero of our products as imports in return ( for decades now, folks, which most people didn’t know). (as well as finding ways to stop the tech outsourcing too. What have we really gained?
Are like hamsters. Thirty five hour work weeks would give us much better quality of lives. Big money media positions should be shared time and moneys for several reasons. (besides the value of turning most of them off) and so on.

Keep in mind, the Great Lakes are the largest supply of fresh water lakes in the world. Now, as an adult wish we had never developed that area for manufacturing and just left several miles around each edge as open space.

We must and can use alternative energy sources than that __ __ oil, such as the sun, etc. Should have done so 30 years ago when the Mideast brought this country to its knees.

Guys,

By not joining the debate on Kyoto, we have let the rest of the world define the debate.

Is there one of you out there that opposes clean water or clean air?
Why are you willing to let the corporations of this country continue to screw you?
Since the industrial revolution began, the megolithic corporations have made the rules about the way they do business in this country. They made the labor laws, the pollution laws, how much they pay in taxes, how much they pay their employees, how much in health benefits they will pay, how much they pay their suppliers, and now where they will manufacture their goods so that their profit margin stays where they want it to. That is your level playing field.
I, for one, think that it is high time that “Corporate America” look to the responsibilies of doing business here. Their responsibility to their customers, employees, and neighbors, without whom they would have no business.
I think that environmental problems should be the responsibility of the corporation that creates the environmental problem. No more free ride.
Corporate America has been growing it’s profits and only looking out for it’s stockholders long enough. It is high time that these corporations become citizens of the communities they reside in.

Rocky,
You said; “It is high time that these corporations become citizens of the communities they reside in.”

I agree with you on that. There are problems with that from the corporate side of things that I have seen.
I can also see the problems coming from those who are supposed to be ‘looking out’ for the citizens.
There is a plant near me (major auto manufacturer) that was told by the authorities that as long as they stayed up and running and providing jobs in our community they did not have to clean up their toxic waste dump that built up over the decades near the plant. They did have to ‘buy out’ the people nearby, but, as far as I know, that was it.
There has been talk for years about this plant shutting down. As long as they weren’t cleaning up the mess we knew they were staying. They started to clean it up a few months ago.
We had a real nice deal struck there between a corporation and our city. ‘Keep on poisoning us as long as you provide us jobs’.
Now these jobs will be outsourced somewhere.
Our city will not recover very easily from the loss because we don’t have the resources to give big incentives to attract new business.
We have lost out on several ‘deals’ in the past few years due to lack of enough incentives. I have to applaud our ‘leaders’ for not ‘buying’ jobs for us though. Putting the ‘hurt’ to all of us to gain a few hundred jobs is not what I want. I guess being on the ‘poor end’ of this practice is what makes me want it done away with.

“No more free ride.”
I sooo agree with that too. Unfortunately this has happened for so long that companies will just pack up and leave and take the jobs with them if they don’t get their way.
We have politicians who claim they are working in our interest on these things. That they are doing what they need to do to save our jobs.
(including letting co.’s pollute)
I do not see how any of this can be ‘fixed’ in the near future. It is completely out of control.

There’s a “chance” that us not signing the kyoto agreement will have a negative impact on the environment in the next 40 or so years.
So whats the big hurry? Why not just leave things how they are and slowly work towards a solution when the time arises?

kctim,
Let’s do the same with Social Security.

ktim:

“So whats the big hurry?”

Maybe you are unaware that earlier this month, 200 of the world’s leading climate scientists met in the UK at Tony Blair’s request. They issued the most urgent warning to date that dangerous climate change is taking place, and that time is running out.

When the UK head of Shell, warns that unless governments take urgent action there “will be a disaster”, worry.

The experts at Exeter were virtually unanimous about the danger, as is the climate science community as a whole. Most skeptics of global warming are members of the media or government. The few contrarian climatalogists are often funded by the fossil-fuel industry and publish little research to support their views, concentrating on questioning the work of others. I mean, how many times do we have to go through this? Has the long struggle for acceptance of the link between smoking and cancer really gone down the memory hole?

“Let’s do the same with Social Security.”

Thats my point Rocky.
I thought when things were so far off into the future that we were supposed to just wait until something “has” to be done, just like the blue side was saying about SS.

kctim,

I guess the point I am trying to make is that recently it has become quite fashionable to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Why has it suddenly become such a black and white world?
Truth of the matter, I blame Bush and his religous right, neo-con buddies. There are no shades of grey in their world, and they have done everything in their power to divide the people of this country into right and left.

However, that said, we didn’t discover the possibility of these environmental problems last week.
From the factory hog farms in the east to the refineries and smog problems in the west it is time to get America’s act together.
Look, I live in Phoenix where the air is relitively clean, but on days when the naturally occuring particulates (dust) are up, combined with auto exhaust, and maybe an inversion, it gets pretty brutal here, and L.A. is still much worse than Phoenix.
On a car trip from Phoenix to the coast, you first see the polution over a hundred miles from L.A.
Salt Lake City, Denver, Houston, all have serious air polution problems.
It’s time to wake up and smell the pavement folks. It isn’t going to get any better until we make an effort to make it so.

The world is a horrible place and we are all going to die because we are destroying the earth. It is all because of rampant consumerism, and Americanism, and Republican hubris, and evil corporations, and private property.

Please someone save me from the religious right and the religious left.

There was time when everything was organic and there were no fossil fuels. It was not that long ago. It was dirty and dangerous. Life was nasty, brutish, and short. Most died young, and only full of the natural things that can kill you.

Feel free to go back there, but don’t drag me back into that dystopian hell.

Tflan—you’re already living in the hell of
oil and its products, effects of meglomanicac, and unbridled capitalism—different types of neanderthals and Attila the Huns but you and your peer types still don’t get it.

We could have had different types of development all along and should have had different models in place in the 1960s.

We go from one extr. to the other, the point many of us are making…which to many of us seems contrary to use of Reason in behaviors and effects.

Personally I liked my pop better in those returnable glass bottles * we kids picked them up out of the ditches to get money for candy * the good old days !
There is no going back * only forward * forward with the things that we want and need with ways to keep from destroying the world around us.
How can this happen?
Plastic * the best/worst invention in history.
Automobile * the best/worst invention in history.
Disposable diapers * ditto.
I just wish someone would hurry up and figure out how to send our garbage out into space or to another planet and get it out of my backyard!

“Feel free to go back there, but don’t drag me back into that dystopian hell.”

Tflan,
Why not use cacotopia as your example?

Look while I don’t claim to be a tree hugger, I do enjoy my infrequent trips to the mountains of Arizona. You know, Arizona. Distant horizons, multicolor sunsets, the whole bit.
Well on a trip to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, imagine my supprise at not being able to see the North Rim. Hey, it’s only 8 miles away.
The deal is that I’m up in the mountains over 5000 feet, where the air is supposed to be clean and crisp. Visibility was less than 8 miles because of the coal fired power plant known as Four Corners.

Look, we are supposed to be able to get away from the grind and grime of the city. That’s supposed to be what were all working for, isn’t it?

If your science fiction works for you, hey, you’re welcome to it.

I personally prefer reality. And I prefer a reality in which I can breath without the use of a ventilator.

Rocky, we all enjoy a nice clean environment. What on earth does that have to do with Kyoto, an economic treaty?

There is only one EU country that has a chance of meeting their emission reductions. Because of the countries excluded, China and India will be putting out more CO2 than the US in a short number of years and the end result of the Kyoto treaty is that more emissions will be in our atmosphere, not less.

The US is determined on reducing their emissions, but we don’t feel it is appropriate to join a treaty where we would unfairly be giving even more money to other countries than we already do at the expense of American jobs and quality of life. The US will find a way to burn cleaner fuels without sacrificing economic growth and we will do it without detrement to our economy which we all can agree could use some less federal spending, not more.

And any treaty that is serious about cutting emissions would not allow China and India to build the number of dirty coal plants that they are projected to build over the next 20 years. Just because a ‘coalition of the willing’ is willing to join to get a piece of the pie doesn’t mean the US need get involved.

Rhinehold,

This from the BBC July 2004

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3143798.stm

“The US emits more, absolutely and per head, than any other country - although it also produces more wealth. When Kyoto was agreed, the US signed and committed to reducing its emissions by 6%. But since then it has pulled out of the agreement and its carbon dioxide emissions have increased to more than 15% above 1990 levels.

For the agreement to become a legally binding treaty, it must be ratified by countries which together were responsible for a at least 55% of the total 1990 emissions reported by the industrialised countries and emerging economies which made commitments to reduce their emissions under the protocol.

As the US accounted for 36.1% of those emissions, this 55% target is much harder to achieve without its participation.

President George W Bush said in March 2001 that the US would not ratify Kyoto because he thought it would damage the US economy and because it did not yet require developing countries to cut their emissions.

He says he backs improvements in energy efficiency through voluntary emissions reductions - rather than imposed targets - and through the development of cleaner technologies.”

I guess we all know when “Corporate America” volunteers for something, well, that’s as good as gospel.

What ever happened to doing something because it was the right thing to do?
Nobody else is doing anything, so I’m not doing it either.

Jeeez, you guys sound like a bunch of little kids. Grow up will you.

The poorest amoung us in America have it better than 75% of the rest of the world’s population.

Sooner or later humans will be the only species on this planet to cause it’s own extinction, but it’s ok, because America was still the richest country on the planet, when we all died.

Hey, you can pay for it now, or you can pay for it later, when it will be more expensive, that’s the right’s mantra, right.

On blaming China

Right, we wouldn’t want China, the second largest producer of C02 in the world, with six times as many people as the US, the largest producer of C02 in the world, to be the leader in CO2 emissions by 2022. Bad treaty. America must be Number 1 in everything!

But seriously, I found some interesting information on the National Resources Defense Council web site:

http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/achinagg.asp

A study they published in 2000 found “China’s carbon dioxide emissions fell 6 percent to 14 percent between 1996 and 1999 at the same time as the country’s economy grew 22 percent to 27 percent.”

In response to articles questioning these results, they conducted a second study.

“This October 2001 analysis updates and replaces an earlier NRDC report showing that China’s greenhouse gas emissions fell dramatically in the late 1990s, even as the country’s economy grew rapidly. The earlier report was based on U.S. government analyses, which were later questioned in a Washington Post article that prompted NRDC to redo its analysis. Even after using new, more conservative statistics, NRDC has found that the original conclusion still holds true — China’s emissions reductions are real. By comparison, U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide over the same time period actually rose about 5 percent. These newer, more reliable figures still provide enough evidence to argue that China has done more than the United States to combat climate change over the past decade.”

Looking for another reference to these results, because I really don’t know anything about the NRDC (except that rather than telling everyone to SHUT UP! they churned through the numbers again), I found the following statement on the US embassy in China’s web site.

http://www.usembassy-china.org.cn/sandt/estnews091302.htm

“According to World Bank estimates, China’s economy could grow 6.6% a year for up to 20 years. However, by last year China reportedly had reduced carbon dioxide emissions 7.3% from 1996 levels, while methane emissions were down 2.2% from 1997 levels.”

Sooo, in the past decade China has already reduced emissions by at least 7.3% without being forced to by any treaty, surpassing the Kyoto target of 6%. Whaaaahhhhhh, it’s not fair! If China doesn’t sign, I’m not gonna sign. How about some good faith and leadership on America’s part? This is embarrassing.

“Hey, you can pay for it now, or you can pay for it later, when it will be more expensive, that’s the right’s mantra, right.”

Actually, I thought this was the lefts mantra lately.
Or have we all forgot about SS already.

“This is embarrassing”
Yes it is. Lets hate America more and blame everything on Bush some more, that should make you feel better.
This liberal crap is whats embarrassing!

kctim:

Given that sustainable life on earth is at stake here, I think that anger is a healthy response. Sticking our heads in the sand and yelling LA LA LA LA LA, not so healthy.

It must be a brutal experience, supporting the Bush administration. So wrong on so many issues, but the really sad part is that the unfortunate supporters don’t always get the word when the administration reverses itself.

Global Warming is occurring.

But the good news is that Exxon just passed GE to become the largest company.

Next week Bush visits Europe. Tony Blair will pitch a fit over climate change. It won’t be pretty.

Again with the mistakes. The US was never in Kyoto. According to our Const., a treaty has to be ratified by 2/3 of the Senate. This was never done. Regardless of who committed to it, it was never ratified, so there was never anything for us to pull out of. Constantly decribing the situation as otherwise is at best obfuscation and at worst a lie. Or perhaps people are just ignorant of the way we get into treaties.

Making industry cleaner is not synonomous with Kyoto. Kyoto seeks to restrict a gas that is supposedly a pollutant - a pollutant that is absolutely essential to most life on earth.

About 95% of all GHG (greenhouse gases) are natural. Water vapor being the largest, and then CO2. Even assuming Kyoto is necessary, it will do nothing.
The US is a net carbon sink. Meaning, whatever gas is produced is sequestered by growing things.

If you really want to help, try giving all those poor people a reliable safe energy supply. If you do that, then they can quit burning dung and wood. Doing that alone will be a great improvement, and not even considering the vistas that might clear up. Which from what I can gather from Rocky’s post is what he thinks nature is for: a place he can go to and look at. Never mind the people living in sqiualor as long as it looks nice.

Tflan,

“Carbon dioxide and other air pollution that is collecting in the atmosphere like a thickening blanket, trapping the sun’s heat and causing the planet to warm up. Coal-burning power plants are the largest U.S. source of carbon dioxide pollution — they produce 2.5 billion tons every year. Automobiles, the second largest source, create nearly 1.5 billion tons of CO2 annually.”
http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming

This describes climate change in a nutshell. The US represents 4% of the world’s pollution, but produces 25% of the CO2 pollution. 40% of that total is produced by coal-burning power plants. The total CO2 pollution produced by China, India, and Japan combined does not equal the amount produced by the US.

Kyoto attempts to address this.

You are correct. Kyoto was never voted on by the Senate. The US pulled out of the negotiations.

“Kyoto seeks to restrict a gas that is supposedly a pollutant - a pollutant that is absolutely essential to most life on earth.”

What does this have to do with the price of tea in China? Oxygen is “absolutely essential to most life on earth” too, but if Oxygen increased to a high enough level, I suppose we’d have spontaneous planetary combustion.

” About 95% of all GHG (greenhouse gases) are natural.”

What? Do they occur naturally? Yes. Is human activity producing enough excess CO2 to heat the earth? Yes.

“… Water vapor being the largest, and then CO2. Even assuming Kyoto is necessary, it will do nothing.”

CO2 traps heat in the atmosphere. The ocean absorbs this heat. Warmer air absorbs more water vapor. It starts with CO2 (among other pollutants), which the Kyoto treaty attempts to address.

Giving the world’s poor a better, cleaner energy source would be great, no question. But it pretends the world’s richest nation, the US, does not already account for more pollution than any other country in the world.

Please note, I have said repeatedly that Kyoto attempts to address the problem. The US could make the international effort more effective & successful, and we could do it on our terms, if we bothered to participate, and negotiate. And that is where the Bush administration is such a miserable failure.

He’ll hear about it in Europe next week.

correction: the US represents about 4% of the world’s population.

Don’t forget, the Australian Government is just as determined to back up the USA Government’s determination to do nothing in the face of such a serious threat. We are there, shoulder to shoulder, making sure we’ve each got a buddy to help the other out in case our blindfold looks like it might be slipping off.

http://andrewbartlettonline.blogspot.com/2005/02/ber-issue-climate-change.html

Not supporting Kyoto is not the same as ‘doing nothing’.

Kyoto was/is a very bad economic treaty that did absolutely nothing to reduce emissions while attempting to make the United States funnel money to the rest of the world.

The US and Australia are still working on reducing emissions, they are just doing it on their own instead of shouldering the burdon for everyone else more than they already do.

This is why Clinton, who originally agreed in principle to it, later said he would not support it or send it to the congress, just as Bush didn’t. And congress has said that unless certain aspects of the treaty were modified they would vote against it.

It’s a very bad treaty for the US, good for China, India and Russia and politically expediant for the EU for reasons having nothing to do with ‘the environment’. Italian citizens were demonstrating againt the US when they themselves have no chance of meeting their agreed upon goals.

Furthermore, the projections of what is going to happen in the future regarding the environment are based upon computer models that, when run backwards to ensure that the models are accurate, fail to match what has occured in the past. They are flawed.

Rh,
“Not supporting Kyoto is not the same as ‘doing nothing’.”

In terms of addressing the problem on an international basis, it amounts to the same.

“Kyoto was/is a very bad economic treaty that did absolutely nothing to reduce emissions while attempting to make the United States funnel money to the rest of the world.”

Kyoto is a compromise worked out by many nations. What would it look like if the US stayed at the table, and negotiated from a position of strength? We’ll never know. We walked away. The US turned its back on the idea of international cooperation. The same applies to a Senate vote, participation of China & India, etc. We’ll never know. The Bush administration is a fossil fuel administration. The status quo is the plan.

“Furthermore, the projections of what is going to happen in the future regarding the environment are based upon computer models that, when run backwards to ensure that the models are accurate, fail to match what has occured in the past. They are flawed.”

You’re right, the models are projections, mere projections. Know one knows exactly how climate change will play out.

For over twenty years theories about Global Warming have been in place. However, back then there was little supporting data. In the US, most temperature readings were taken in cities, which generate heat, and there was very little information available on ocean temperatures. Climate data from the archaelogical record, drilling into glaciers to examine atmospheric carbon content, etc., was sparse.

The same is not true today. The overwhelming body of evidence- and it is a large and consistent body of evidence- indicates Global Warming is occurring. .5 C warming has already occurred. Even such a seemingly small amount causes observable and troubling effects.

Projections suggest a range of 2-11 C warming over the next century. Exactly how much will temperatures increase? No computer model can predict exactly how much. But will warming continue? That is indisputable.

The whole world is literally in this one together. Until the current administration, most of the world looked to the US to take the lead.

“If you really want to help, try giving all those poor people a reliable safe energy supply. If you do that, then they can quit burning dung and wood. Doing that alone will be a great improvement, and not even considering the vistas that might clear up. Which from what I can gather from Rocky’s post is what he thinks nature is for: a place he can go to and look at. Never mind the people living in sqiualor as long as it looks nice.”

Tflan,

I would like to also thank you for the evaluation of my cognative ability.
Somehow I don’t think you got the point. Perhaps I was too obtuse for you. I will try to do better this time.
People have been burning dung and wood for millenia before there were problems with greenhouse gases. It is the addition of the cO2 from cars and trucks AND coal fired power plants AND steel mills, that have put us in the situation we have confronting us. In other words the rampant balls to the wall expansion of industry.
Do I have to remind you, that if you can’t see through the polution at the Grand Canyon, can you imagine what it is doing to your lungs?
That was the point you so eloquently missed. You guys need to start thinking outside the little box of progress that you have confined yourself to.
Do I also need to remind you that squalor is in the eye of the beholder?
Are you so confined in your thinking that wealth is the only standard that defines quality of life?

Burning fossil fuels was the best thing (as of yet )to ever happen to humanity. There is nothing like cheap, clean, and abundant enenrgy to dull the deadlier shards that nature contains.
The US is a net carbon sink. We do not release any net CO2 into the atmosphere.
About 95% of the CO2 in the atmosphere is natural - meaning that if there were no humans, there would still be that much CO2 in the atmosphere.
The US is about 5% of the worlds population. We produce about 1% of the total manmade GHG. We generate about a 25% of the worlds economy. That is efficient use of energy.
Kyoto will do nothing but increase prices which artificailly restricts supply and lead to thousands, likely hundreds of thousands of deaths.
However, this is of no concern to the religious zealots on the left.

“The US is a net carbon sink. We do not release any net CO2 into the atmosphere.
About 95% of the CO2 in the atmosphere is natural - meaning that if there were no humans, there would still be that much CO2 in the atmosphere.”

Tflan,

Please, feel free to name your source.