by Henry Lamb
December 8, 2004
The long-awaited meeting of the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change Treaty is now underway in Buenos aires, argentina. More than 5,000 delegates and non-government organization representatives are there to participate in the festivities. The overwhelming sentiment among the participants is to find a way to force the United States to "get on board." French Ecology Minister Serge Lepeltier said, "I am convinced that we are going to bring the United States into Kyoto, even if it doesn't want to."
Speech after speech lambasted the "cold-hearted" Bush administration for not "joining the Kyoto Club." U.S. Representative, Harlan Watson, was ridiculed by the Climate action Network when he tried to modify the agenda to reflect "climate variability," rather than "climate change."
The Kyoto Protocol becomes international law on February 16, 2005, 90 days after it was ratified by Russia. The U.S. and australia are the only major developed nations that have not ratified the Protocol.
The Kyoto Club now consists of 129 nations; only 30 of these nations are bound by its restrictive provisions. The other nations are free to use as much fossil fuel as they wish, and are designated recipients of the wealth transfer required of the 30 developed nations.
as far as the Kyoto Club is concerned, human-caused global warming is an absolute fact--regardless of a preponderance of scientific evidence to the contrary. Their battle cry is to prevent the world’s temperature from rising two degrees (C) above pre-industrial levels, which they contend will be catastrophic. They completely ignore the fact that a thousand years ago, the global temperature was at least two degrees (C) above current levels, during a period that science refers to as the "Medieval Climate Optimum." Greenland was actually green during this period.
Then the world entered a period known in science as the "Little Ice age," which reached its depths between 1560 and 1850. Since then, global temperatures have risen steadily, until the mid-1900s, when the temperature leveled, and began to decline slightly.
This scientific record is undisputed, though some global warming advocates have tried to obscure the record. The Kyoto Club simply ignores the record, and relies instead on computer models which can only predict from the data they are fed. When the same computer models are fed the known data from the last century, they fail to accurately project the known climate pattern. Why they should be relied upon to predict future patterns from projected data is a question that has yet to be answered.
Now that the Kyoto Club has the power of international law, it does not have to answer questions. It can simply issue decrees and declarations, create regulations, and penalize the non-compliant.
already, the participants at COP 10 are dreaming of ways to penalize the United States, to force the U.S. to join the international global warming club. Cathie adams, President of Texas Eagle Forum, who is attending the gathering, reports that the World Trade Organization is seen to be the enforcer of choice. Floy Lilley, vice chair of Sovereignty International, who is also attending the conference, reports that the delegates and the NGO representatives have declared that climate change is at "least as great a threat as terrorism."
The Kyoto Protocol is like a giant snowball that has been pushed uphill for 10 years, and now, with its entry into force, has passed the summit and has begun its downhill plunge. It will gather speed and force and crush whatever stands in its way--including the U.S. economy.
The Protocol enforcers, through the several wealth-redistribution schemes embodied in the Protocol, will penalize U.S. industry, artificially increase the cost of energy in non-compliant nations, and roll out the red carpet for U.S. industries to move to developing nations.
Sadly, if the Kyoto Protocol were fully implemented, with every nation, including the U.S., meeting their Kyoto emission reduction targets, it would have zero impact on global climate. Reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide would be not be detectible, even if the five-percent reduction below 1990 levels could be achieved.
Of course, this target cannot be achieved by the 2008 - 2012 target dates. High on the agenda in Buenos aires is setting the reduction targets for the second target period. That’s right, the five-percent reduction target is only the first step in the Kyoto program, which is designed to keep adding new and stiffer reduction targets until fossil fuel use is completely eliminated.
The economic impact this horrendous international law could have is beyond comprehension. The only thing worse--is the knowledge that the power of this international law is in the hands of a bunch of unaccountable U.N. bureaucrats whose goal is to bring down the United States.