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hotter temperatures and rises in sea level "would continue for centuries" no matter how much humans control their pollution.

So what is the point of Kyoto?

Here's my analysis of the alleged human contribution. There are four major CO2 buckets as shown in this picture: http://science.hq.nasa.gov/oceans/system/carbon.html Assume the land and ocean and atmosphere buckets all started with ratio X of 13C/12C 150 years ago and the fossil fuel bucket has X - 1%, call it 99% We know the decrease in the 13C/12C ratio in the atmosphere and ocean over 150 years was about 0.15%.

Using the flows from the diagram, six cups of diluted koolaid (99%) are dumped into the the 760 cup atmosphere bucket decreasing that 13C/12C ratio by 0.008%. The atmosphere bucket mixes well with the ocean surface bucket which is about the same size so really the 6 cups of water are mixed with 1560 cups of ocean/atmosphere to cause about a 0.004% 13C/12C decrease overall.

Plants prefer 12C so the land bucket takes more 12C and releases a small amount of 99% in forest fires. Similarly, the ocean takes in whatever the atmosphere offers, but plankton will only sequester 12C, not 13C. If fossil fuels should cause 0.004% decrease but we are only seeing a 0.001% decrease (0.15% averaged over 150 years), where is the missing decrease going? I.e. there must be more nonpreferential carbon storage somewhere to get rid of that extra 13C, or the numbers in the diagram are wrong, either case is enough to make the human component a nonissue.

The better question to answer is how long the CO2 hangs around on average in order to achieve a relatively low difference between the oceans and atmosphere for 13C/12C (I'm not sure we can measure the overall ratio on land). From sources like this http://www.fiu.edu/~vcorne01/paper.htm there is about a 1% greater 13C/12C ratio in CO2 in seawater than in atmospheric CO2. The fossil fuel ratio should be about 20% less than the atmosphere ratio. That implies a rapid rate of interchange between atmosphere and ocean although I have so far not figured out the rate of diffusion.

However people who have analyzed this (e.g. Tom Segalstad) here: Carbon Isotopes in Atmospheric CO2 show a CO2 lifetime of about 5 years, giving lie to the "centuries" claim made today by the IPCC.

So what is the point of Kyoto?
Global socialism - with the US taxpayer footing the bill.