Volume 3 Issue 3, April 2001

Bush backs out of global warming treaty--called a pariah by the global community

The Senate resolution also said it would not vote for the proposed treaty because it would cause economic damage to the US. In 1998 the prestigious WEFA international consulting group analyzed what the treaty would do and found,

	It would nearly double energy and electricity prices
	Cost 2.4 million US jobs and reduce US total output $300 billion (1992$) annually, 3.2 percent below baseline Gross Domestic Product projections
	Harm US competitiveness as cost of production increases due to regulations not suffered by competing developing nations like China, Mexico, Brazil and others
	Reduce the average annual household income nearly $2700 at the same time the cost of products would be sharply increasing
	Reduce state tax revenues by $93.1 billion due to job and output loses

Europe "outraged" over announcement

Predictably the press, especially in Europe, have demonized Bush's decision. "America is now confirmed as the unrepentant outlaw, the dirty man of environmental politics," howled The London Guardian Unlimited on March 30 . "Mr Bush, clinging to his 'national interest' credo, seems incapable of seeing the big picture. He does not grasp the basic truth that America's national interest is inextricably intertwined with the global interest.... But most appalling of all is the message, taken alongside similarly short-sighted, self-centered actions in the fields of defence and diplomacy, that this Taliban-style act of wanton destruction sends around the world. Instead of leading the community of nations, Bush's America seems increasingly intent on confronting it."

No one argues that the US emits far more carbon dioxide than any other nation. The question that must be asked is, if carbon dioxide is not that important, it really doesn't matter that the US emits the most carbon dioxide.

Other European pundits point to "severe weather conditions around the planet — flooding for the second consecutive year in Mozambique, drought and famine in The Sudan — and say the U.S. is substantially to blame," claimed CBS News the evening of March 29. Almost all the media also regurgitated the old statistic that while the US only has about 4-6 percent (there seems to be unanimous disagreement over the exact number) of the world's population, it produces about 25 percent of the world's harmful greenhouse gas pollution. "This short-termism and this isolationism is profoundly flawed and misplaced," griped British Environment Minister Michael Meacher. The London Electronic Telegraph reported that Meacher also described global warming as "the most dangerous and fearful challenge to humanity over the next 100 years." He said that it was "almost unthinkable" that America should not be part of the agreement.

European Union (EU) environmental minister Margot Wallstrom issued a direct threat to punish the US. Wallstrom who confirmed the EU's commitment to ratify the protocol by 2002, said that climate change was not a marginal environmental issue that could be ignored, reported the March 29 Financial Times. "It has to do with trade and international relations...and we have to react as strongly and as quickly as possible," she said. Other EU officials jumped on the trade war bandwagon, warning that the "US position could affect trade relations with Brussels," said the Financial Times.

It was no surprise that the greatest condemnation and demonization came from the environmentalists who have made global warming their holy grail of doom and gloom. The March 30 London Guardian featured radical leftist Charles Secrett, director of Friends of the Earth, that climate change was a real and present danger. "Today, the greatest threat to world security is man-made climate change," accused Secrett. The jobs, homes and lives of millions of people — in the US as well as the rest of the world — are at risk from an ever accelerating rate of climate disasters. We must act now. Yet, as one might miserably expect, Republican isolationism has evolved, first to deny its existence and second to set the US against agreeing any effective international action."

But is the threat to planet earth from global warming all that serious? Is it even real?

Can the Kyoto Protocol be justified?

To listen to the outrage from around the world, anyone would think that President Bush had just dropped a nuclear bomb on every capital in the world. Only one news outlet offered any balance whatsoever to the cacophony of cries that Bush should be tarred and feathered and run off the surface of planet earth. The March 30 London Electronic Telegraph opined, "The prophets of Armageddon should cool down. The world is not going to end as a result of Mr Bush's decision. Even if the Kyoto proposals were rigorously adhered to, they would not affect the globe's temperature by more than a fraction of one degree over the next 50 years — and that is according to the estimates of the agreement's most enthusiastic supporters." The Telegraph's statement is true. The impact of a fully implemented Kyoto Protocol is almost nonexistent.

The ground based temperature measurements (red) show a rapid increase in earth's temperature compared to the far more accurate satellite temperature measurements (blue). It has long been known that ground based temperatures suffer from errors caused by the heat-Island effect, which occurs when the once rural meteorological station becomes surrounded by asphalt as the city expands around it. Just recently it was determined that the temperatures taken at sea were totally incorrect and skewed the ground based temperatures by as much as 40 percent too high. Factors like the solar activity and El Ninõs are far more important in determining earth's temperature than carbon dioxide emissions.

n spite of the constant drumbeat of doom and gloom from the former Clinton administration, the UN and the popular press there is simply no hard evidence that human-induced global warming is happening or a threat. In fact the UN and the globalists now seem to be entering the realm of the absurd, deliberately biasing research to "prove" global warming is a major threat to the world. The UN and the popular media continue to reach hysterical levels in their proclamations that global warming is proven and is worse than they thought. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which met during January in Shanghai, China, issued their five year report stating that "the world's leading climatologists say global warming is happening faster than previously predicted." This, in spite of the fact that over 17,000 scientists confirmed as having degrees in the hard sciences in America have signed a petition saying, "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."

The UN issued its final report from Working Group III on mitigation on March 5. Professor G.O.P Obasi Secretary-General of WMO (World Meteorological Organization), which together with UNEP launched IPCC in 1988, said that "the Third Assessment Report — the first major assessment of climate change since 1995 — represents a remarkable consensus and a sound basis for international decision- making." Professor Obasi called upon the world's governments to rapidly consider a legislative framework for effective implementation of the many available cost-effective solutions to the greenhouse emissions problem. This, in spite of the fact that the 17,000 scientists who have rejected the treaty also said that "We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind." Rather than helping, these scientists believe that the treaty would do more damage than good!

Klaus Töpfer, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme said "this report moves us from a focus on the problem to a focus on the solution." The report further concludes that the "costs to industrialized countries of achieving their Kyoto Protocol targets without the benefit of an international emissions trading system would be 0.2 - 2.0% of projected GDP in 2010. With full emissions trading amongst these countries, the cost would decline to 0.1 - 1.1%. If reduced air pollution and other ancillary benefits are included, as well as the removal of market imperfections and other factors, the costs can be reduced even further." This in spite of the fact that every credible authority that has investigated this issue has said the impact would be more than 3 percent of the GDP by 2010.

It is as though by shear volume of rhetoric and wild exaggerations the globalists can make global warming a reality. In seeming desperation, Robert Watson, head of the IPPC paints a very bleak picture of the future by predicting water shortages, disease, and agricultural damage. As reported by the January 23 Washington Post, Watson claimed that "Earth's average temperature could rise by as much as 10.4 degrees over the next 100 years" — the most rapid change in 10 millennia and more than 60 percent higher than the same group predicted less than six years ago.

Yet, Dr. John Christy, one of the world’s leading climatology expert and head author of the IPCC summary report, strongly disagrees. In response to the media’s clamor over the reports and Watson's wild assertions, Christy contended that "the world is in much better shape than this doomsday scenario paints. There were 245 different results in that report, and this was the worst-case scenario," he says. "It’s the one that’s not going to happen. It was the extreme case of all the different things that can make the world warm." (Bold and italics added for emphasis) Christy is a professor of Atmospheric Science and is director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama. Likewise, Dr. Fred Singer of the Science and Environmental Policy claims there is little scientific substance to base it on and lists 12 reasons why these claims are groundless.

Growth rate of greenhouse climate forcing. Dashed line is the forcing for 1% per year increase of CO2. The "forcing" is the estimated amount of warming caused by a particular factor. James Hansen, head of the Climate Change research for NASA is disturbed that there is no explanation for the drop in all of these gases in the 1990s.

Quite literally, the Kyoto Protocol is not about stopping global warming. It is designed as a massive socialist income redistribution scheme that will put control over the US economy in the hands of global social planners. There is no question but that President Bush has done the right thing by getting the US out of the Kyoto Protocol. It is a very dangerous treaty and one that gives control of America's economic destiny to the global elite. He should be applauded, not punished as some would desire to do. Punishment should be reserved for the true enemies of the world, those who would deceive us into giving up our freedoms so they would have control over us. mc