Fight Kyoto

Five months before the Kyoto conference in 1997, the U.S. Senate did something Canada's House of Commons did not do.

They actually had a real debate -- and then a vote. Oh, to be fair, Canada did have a debate -- a "take-note" debate, as they are often called, for at the end of them, no resolution is passed, and no law is written. Government MPs are allowed only to read pre-approved speeches handed out by the Environment Minister's staff.

That's not the case in the U.S. Individual Senators can be immensely powerful -- even senators from small states or states that rely on carbon-based energy.

States such as West Virginia -- represented by Robert Byrd, the 85-year-old Democrat who was first elected to the Senate in 1958. West Virginia is a tiny state, and its population is actually shrinking -- there are 1.8 million West Virginians, in a country of 288 million. An aging senator from a tiny state with a declining population and a sprinkling of old coal mines wouldn't carry clout in most places. But in July of 1997, Senator Byrd introduced a resolution that forbade the U.S. from agreeing to the Kyoto protocol, unless developing countries were required to do so too, or if Kyoto "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States."

What's more, Byrd's resolution required that any treaty, even if it met his two criteria, would have to be "accompanied by a detailed explanation of any legislation or regulatory actions that may be required to implement the protocol ... and should also be accompanied by an analysis of the detailed financial costs and other impacts on the economy of the United States which would be incurred by the implementation of the protocol."

Senator Byrd's resolution was approved unanimously, 95-0. Sixty-four senators liked the resolution so much they asked to be "co-sponsors" -- so they could take credit for it back home in their states.

Barbara Boxer, the ultra-liberal Democrat from California, joined with Sen. Jesse Helms, the arch-conservative Republican from North Carolina.

Kyoto debate bears striking similarities to the furore that erupted around the implementation of the National Energy Program two decades ago. And, like the NEP, the issue has awakened the sleeping dragon of Western separatism.

1. There is some doubt about whether the earth is actually warming or not with thermometers giving a different answer from satellites, balloons, and numerous proxies.

2. There is more doubt about the causes of the possible change with natural, cyclical, solar, ocean currents, land use changes, aerosols, greenhouse gases, or one of multiple combinations being advanced by various scientists.

3. There is some doubt about whether warming is good or bad for life on this planet.

4. There is great doubt about the accuracy of computer climate models.

5. It seems there is little doubt that, even with full implementation and compliance with Kyoto, the affect on the earth's climate will be so small that it will not be measurable since it will be within the bounds of natural variation.

6. It seems rather foolhardy to embark on public policy of complying with Kyoto that could potentially have serious impacts on our standard of living when the affects of that policy will be unmeasurable and insignificant.

7. The people who want Kyoto are the same people who want a revolutionary change in society and a single world government. It seems they are just using climate change as an excuse to achieve their goals.

Great Points. Further amplification.

1. NASA Global satellite network that monitors atmospheric
tempatures around the world shows no chnage in mean
tempature for the last 25 years,

2. One factor that has never been controlled for in the data
coming from land-based wheather stations is urban heat
island effects. All the land-based data may be hopelessly
skewed.

3. In general, warmer climates raise agricultural, noone
can say for sure what the effects would be; that hasn't
stopped global warming advocates from positing nightmare
scenarios of coastal cities being inundated.

4. The computer models have been shown to be a joke. When
these models are given real climatological data from the
recent past and asked to predict current climate
conditions based on such data they have produced wildly
divergent results.

5., 6., 7.
The Kyoto treaty was and is the "America, jump in a lake
treaty so that European politicians can pander
irresponsibly to our Green parties in Europe treaty" from
the beginning.

All the European signatories were given compliance
exemptions because of their greater use of nuclear
power. The developing nations were exempted as well,
including China.

Only we here in the US would have had to make painful
adjustments under Kyoto . This was the case in spite
of the fact that North America is a Greenhouse Gas
sink, that is, our forrests absorb more greenhouse gases
than we emit despite out love of SUVs. This is so
because our agriculture is so productive many farmland
tracts have been allowed to revert to forrests.

Kyoto was a blatantly unfair treaty that we were right
to reject.

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