Did I hear someone say Kyoto?

OTTAWA - The feds floated four trial balloons above Kyoto on Wednesday -- adrift, filled with hot air and full of holes.

Each one contained a flexible payment option for cutting greenhouse gases under the five- year-old accord.

You can pay through the pump, the power bill, toll roads or stiff parking fees. The government can pay through the purchase of imaginary pollution credits or generous tax incentives. The next generation of job-seekers can pay through slower economic growth 10 years hence. Or you can just hand the tab to Alberta and ice up the nation's hottest economy along with the Northwest Passage.

All this is on top of a long ugly list of "targeted measures" including prying owners out of their gas-belching rustbuckets, cracking down on speeding, making huge investments in public transit, overcoming the shock of a 6% jump in electricity and, I'm sure it's in there somewhere, a gas tax.

But a fifth option, none of the above, was there too, if not clearly expressed in this much-ballyhooed, long-overdue report, which took hundreds of bureaucrats (giggling department officials couldn't even hazard a guess on the exact staff number) many months to crunch let's-pretend numbers into blue-sky scenarios.

The code words of Kyoto's eulogy were sprinkled throughout the 54-page report, billed as the definitive projection of the whack the accord would deliver on Canada's economy.

For starters, the word "Kyoto" does not appear on its cover and only surfaces sparingly inside, usually attached to phrases discussing it as "a major challenge."

The authors acknowledge the threat it poses to Canadian competitiveness, being the only country in North or South America bound by its restrictions. The report acknowledges investment could flow south under the economic restrictions necessary to cope with Kyoto targets.

It admits there might be a sacrifice in the non-renewable energy sector, including the tar sands, to alternative energy developments.

And it even acknowledges the potential global warming benefit of cracking open a deiced Northwest Passage to container ship traffic. They should probably factor in the benefits of a longer golf season too.

Meanwhile, Environment Minister David Anderson has perfected the art of never using the word "Kyoto," substituting "climate change" for it at every opportunity. He now talks of "considering" the accord and not its 2002 ratification.

But the heart of the report mercifully eliminates the need for reporters to continue studying ministerial musings for signs of the government's rapidly changing disposition. Inside the report sit those four vague options which highlight its demise.

The feds could only be bothered to detail two of their four Kyoto impact scenarios. Of those, one was immediately discarded as politically impractical, because it violated the government's prime directive that Kyoto shall not ruin one region and spare the other. The other scrutinized option sets up major energy and chemical industries for a hard hit and takes a heavy toll on the GDP.

Only one surviving scenario, which the feds couldn't bother studying in detail, is favoured for having the potential to cut gas emissions in economical fashion while accommodating provincial concerns. But it is contingent on something the international community won't give -- credit for natural gas exports to dirty power producers in the United States, which refuses to sign the Accord.

In a perverted way, Anderson is right when he says the discussion paper focuses the debate -- all that's left to talk about are three far-fetched scenarios and one figment of the government's imagination.

The discussion is no longer focussed on the least destructive route to Kyoto, but the safest detour into a made-in-Canada alternative. In other words, how to deal with climate change in the spirit of the accord without shouldering the albatross of being the only participant on the continent chained to its international targets.

So bet on the Alberta Option, to be unveiled next week, which will link Canada to the Americans under NAFTA emission trading credits, while extending the implementation phase by several years.

A couple months ago, David Anderson warned me the estimates of Kyoto's impact would not take into account technological ingenuity factors and, as a result, would be virtually meaningless. How right he was -- in a wrong sort of way.

If the best his department can come up with are a bunch of far-fetched options that don't even meet his own criteria as an acceptable plan, it leaves the provinces with only one choice -- to make ratifying the Kyoto Accord no longer an option.

ECO-POLITICS
Kyoto Paradox I:
Climate is an extremely complex, chaotic, coupled, non-linear, time-dependent system.
To say we can control it by a small set of factors is ridiculous.

Kyoto Paradox II:
Climate is an extremely complex, chaotic, coupled, non-linear, time-dependent system.
You can no more predict successfully the outcome of doing something than you can
of not doing something. Therefore, the impact of implementing Kyoto is as unknowable
as the impact of not implementing it.

Eco-warnings are now politicised and are being spun by those who profit from them.

It is "a media myth" that only a few scientists are sceptical of global warming theories.

MODEL BUILDING:
Climate models are filled with assumptions, bad data, tweaks, simplifications, etc.
These parameters can be "tweaked" to force the model to show any desired result.

Projections of climate change are based on models and assumptions which
"are not only unknown, but unknowable within ranges relevant for policy-making"

Models fail to adequately handle clouds, water vapour, aerosols, precipitation,
ocean currents, solar effects, complex weather patterns, etc.

Model simulation of surface temperature appears to be little more than fortuitous
curve-fitting rather than a demonstration of human influence on global climate.

Temperature rise projections this century are "unknown and unknowable".

"Climate models [are] projections, story lines, [more aptly termed] fairy tales."
-- Hartwig Volz, geophysicist, RWE Research Laboratory, Germany

"Global warming projections [are] completely unrealistic...assuming extreme scenarios
of population growth and fossil fuel consumption"
-- S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist, University of Virginia, Environmental Policy Project

"The balance of evidence suggests that there has been no appreciable warming since 1940.
This would indicate that the human effects on climate must be quite small."
-- S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist, University of Virginia, Environmental Policy Project

PREDICTING THE PAST:
Climate models, which serve as the basis for long-term climate predictions,
have clearly failed when tested against observed climate data.

Models fail to reproduce the known difference in trends between the
lower troposphere and surface temperatures over the past 20 years.
They don't show the actual amount of temperature change at the Earth's surface
Models can't predict the recent past, let alone the long-term future.

Antarctica has been cooling since 1966, directly contradicting model results
that suggest that warming will be more pronounced in the Earth's polar regions.
-- Nature magazine

the Antarctic ice sheet is expanding rather than shrinking,
contrary to what global-warming enthusiasts would have us believe.
-- Science magazine

The danger I see is that Chretien is so caught up in his delusional efforts to be seen as a relevant statesman that he'll ram the treaty through the House with utterly no regard to its medium and long term economic effects.

The man's priorities are : Self, party, country. In that order. He cares not a hoot about this nation and its citizens. He is out of touch and I suggest his continued leadership is dangerous to the future health of Canada. We must demand the right get its act together immediately or we'll be stuck with him for a fourth term.

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