Kyoto; I can't believe the US's arrogance.

Rossonero

As everyone knows, the US is refusing to sign the Kyoto agreement even though it's the largest pollutor with 22% of the Worlds emmissions. I t says it's economy is more important.

However, having refused to sign, they are now complaining that China and India do not have to follow their limits strictly as they are regarded as developing countries. China is the 2nd largest emmitter of CFC's and 1/10th of what the US emmits.

This type of arrogance is surely unacceptable. It just goes to show, the US is in total control of the world. They can do as they please knowing all that they're going to get is an ear-bashing, but what do they care?

daveirl

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Boggle

Funny, there's the states, happily spinning around in the 6litre V-Tec lawnmowers with complete disregard for the worlds environment.... and then there's the Irish muppet, worrying about cow farts!

Scrap the bloody reaty - you'd be better spending money on better (cleaner) power sources...

Rossonero

daveirl wrote:

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dearg_doom

daveirl wrote:

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The reason the Kyoto treaty is so "flawed" is due to the Americans in the first place.

They made it very clear that there would be no American agreement with the initial proposals, so the targets were lowered and AFAIK foreign operations of multi-nationals was to be included with the parent country, but was changed at the USA's behest.

Kyoto as it is now IS a very flawed exercise, if one looks at it on its own, but the original idea was that this would be the first of many protocols designed to, over the space of decades, reduce mankinds impact on the natural environment.

what makes it even more interesting ATM is how one group can pooh-pooh a lot of the other sides arguments simply by shouting "bad science" over and over without offering reasonable "good science" of there own view-points, other than hlaf baked theories on solar phenomena

toiletduck

dearg_doom wrote:

what makes it even more interesting ATM is how one group can pooh-pooh a lot of the other sides arguments simply by shouting "bad science" over and over without offering reasonable "good science" of there own view-points, other than hlaf baked theories on solar phenomena

the solar phenomena and global dimming arent hallf baked theories, but i suppose if you wana debate science theres another thread for that.

Roisin Dubh

Why is pointing out the flaws of the Treaty arrogant. Surely they are only pointing out the reasons they didn't sign up to it.

The arrogance comes from the attitude that the US are all that matters and the rest of the world can go jump off a cliff as far as they are concerned.

Kyoto isn't even enough, but it is at least a start. All but the lackies of the oil-industry and the underinformed know that the rise in global temperatures is caused by man-made pollution. The sun's rays normally bounce off the earth's surface and return to space. However, carbon gas emissions create a "Greenhouse Effect" that prevents much of the suns rays from returning to the atmosphere, leading to temperatures rising.

Some point to occasional wintery weather to dismiss the Global warming theory. However, if you watch the film "The Day after Tomorrow" you will realise why this is misleading. The ice-caps are definitely melting. Of that there is no doubt whatsoever. This causes sea-levels to rise, stopping the warm water current known as the Gulf Stream (which flows from Mexico) that keeps much of Europe and the US from getting tundra-like conditions. Hence, you could have an ice-age caused by global warming, in the Northern Hemisphere, while the Southern Hemisphere becomes a desert.

See how the US economy will fare then! Such short-termism from the oil-puppets Bush and Cheney.

toiletduck

Roisin Dubh wrote:

Some point to occasional wintery weather to dismiss the Global warming theory. However, if you watch the film "The Day after Tomorrow" you will realise why this is misleading.

Are you serious? Are you basing your beliefs on what a Hollywood blockbuster says? That film was full of a lot of "pseudo-science" and it was crap!

Memnoch

well I can't remember the last peer review science journal that said "global warming doesn't exist" yet the bush administration said this exactly for the majority of their tenure and changed their stance only in a very literal sense for a brief while.

Kyoto isn't the be all and end, however it is a small first step in the right direction. And its a first step that needs to be made because there is no such thing as a second step without a first.

Dave IRL - Are we now resorting to using the wrongdoings/crimes of others to justify a defence? What Australia does WRONG or any other country for that matter cannot be used as an excuse to justify the US doing something wrong, particularly since in THIS case it is THE largest contributor of the problem in the first place. I hope next time you will think it acceptable if people start using one murder to justify another? "Ah sure yer honor, didn't yer man murder someone the other day?"

D-Generate

Roisin Dubh wrote:

However, carbon gas emissions create a "Greenhouse Effect" that prevents much of the suns rays from returning to the atmosphere, leading to temperatures rising.

I would just like to point out how this is a completely foolish comment and in my eyes your argument is null and void for lack of understanding.

Without the Greenhouse Effect on Earth we would all die. Its as simple as that. No heat would be retained and we would be like the moon or any other planet that experiences extremes in temperature differences. Millions and dare I say it billions of years before man stuck his arse in the first automobile there was still the Greenhouse Effect.

Recent industrial activity has not created the Greenhouse Effect but it has caused us to experience Global Warming which I and many others would define as the name given to an expected increase in the magnitude of the greenhouse effect, whereby the surface of the Earth will amost inevitably become hotter than it is now.

So to summarize
Q. Is the Greenhouse Effect a good thing?
A. Yes it is if you appreciate living.

Now that that is out of the way let the debate continue.

Roisin Dubh

D-Generate wrote:

I would just like to point out how this is a completely foolish comment and in my eyes your argument is null and void for lack of understanding.

Without the Greenhouse Effect on Earth we would all die. Its as simple as that. No heat would be retained and we would be like the moon or any other planet that experiences extremes in temperature differences. Millions and dare I say it billions of years before man stuck his arse in the first automobile there was still the Greenhouse Effect.

Recent industrial activity has not created the Greenhouse Effect but it has caused us to experience Global Warming which I and many others would define as the name given to an expected increase in the magnitude of the greenhouse effect, whereby the surface of the Earth will amost inevitably become hotter than it is now.

So to summarize
Q. Is the Greenhouse Effect a good thing?
A. Yes it is if you appreciate living.

Now that that is out of the way let the debate continue.

Do you regard Global Warming as a good thing?

I don't, and neither should you, unless you think an ice-age in Western Europe is someone desirable, together with the desertification of the Southern hemisphere, keading to us starving.

Polar bears are expected to be at risk of extinction in the next 20 years because as the ice melts there are fewer ice holes for them to catch seals (their main diet) when they come up for air. I personally consider this to be undesirable from the point of view of conservation.

monument

The '(natural) greenhouse effect' is a good thing. The 'enhanced greenhouse effect' created my mankind (ie the cause of global warming) is not a good thing.

See here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect

Capt'n Midnight

I've posted before about several runaway effects leading from climate change any one of which would trash us.

Look at the climate over the last couple of thousand years, hippos in London, Green Sahara etc. Also the Med takes about 1,000 years to dry up when it gets blocked (happened up to 50 times about 6 million years ago). The Black Sea flooded about 5,000 BC and 10,000 years before that most of Romania was covered in shellfish.

Runaway effects - lower moisture in the grasslands adjoining the amazon allowing massive fires increasing CO2

at present floating ICE is melting so no major sea level change, when the ICE floats away from the ross Ice shelf there will be a lot of it flowing off land and into the sea - this will displace it's own weight of water => more sea level changes.

release of methane hydrates on the seabed from warming of water at bottom of continantal shelf.

Yes Kyoto is not enough all it does is slow down the rate at which CO2 increases, it don't stablilse the amount in the atmosphere and it don't reduce it and unless the climate starts cooling bad things happen.

The oceans are about 3,000 meters deep - as they warm up they expand - a 0.1% expansion alone is 10 feet.

China and India are also out of it - the patenting of non-CFC's hasn't helped

Perhaps the EU / Kyoto nations could bring in leglsitation that puts a tariff on imported goods that cause a lot of greenhouse gases to be emitted. The logic being that otherwise many companies could bypass thier obligations by having subsideries in India or whatever generate the pollution there (just like the land fill of old computer monitors or hazardous conditions in third world "recycling" plants)

Hairy Homer

There was a good article in the Village suggesting that before we throw stones at the Americans for not attempting to adhere to Kyoto we in Ireland might like to move out of our greenhouse. (pardon the pun)

We are so far over the limits set for us for cutting emissions that we will be facing billions in terms of Kyoto sanctioned fines if we don't pull our fingers out.

A little less righteous indignation directed at those who won't take a blind bit of notice of us and channelled towards those we might have some influence over could actually result in us achieving something small.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all in favour of slagging off the yee haa how y'all doin' cheeseburger-arsed supporters of the Texas toe-rag like any good aging trendy liberal. But a little self criticism never did anybody any harm.

Hobbes

Hairy Homer wrote:

We are so far over the limits set for us for cutting emissions that we will be facing billions in terms of Kyoto sanctioned fines if we don't pull our fingers out.

You have a linkage on that? I know for a fact Dublin has gotten a lot better in the last 10-15 years. Not sure if it passes the limit now though.

Btw, as far as I know you can bypass the fines by buying pollution credits (forget the real name) from other countries that don't exceed their quota.

monument

http://www.sbpost.ie/breakingnews/breaking_story.asp?j=133706516&p=y337x7zzz&n=133707276

D-Generate

Roisin Dubh wrote:

Do you regard Global Warming as a good thing?

I don't, and neither should you

And indeed I don't also, I never said in my original post if I regarded Global Warming as a good thing or not. I was just clearing up the misnomer of the Greenhouse Effect.

Do you regard the Greenhouse Effect is a good thing?

I do and so should you.

daveirl

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dearg_doom

toiletduck wrote:

the solar phenomena and global dimming arent hallf baked theories, but i suppose if you wana debate science theres another thread for that.

firstly, great name!

secondly, 'solar phenomena' is a theory that the sun is getting hotter which is the cause of the rise in global temp's recently. Proposed by scientists backed by Exxon et al.

'global dimming' basically happens due to the increase of small particles in the air, these particles are a by-product of burning fossil fuels.

the idea behind 'global dimming' means that the effect of global warming, thus far, has been 'masked' to an extent because as the 'enhanced' Greenhouse effect has sent spiralling temperatures upwards, less of the sun's rays have been getting thru to warm the earth. resulting in little net change.

the whole idea is similar to someone lying in bed in a room that's getting colder, if they put an extra blanket onto their bed the net temperature inside the bed doesn't change a lot.


Hobbes-> true for Dublin at least, we used to get horrible smog here, but I'd say the poster was talking about the world in general

Capt'n Midnight

Hairy Homer wrote:

There was a good article in the Village suggesting that before we throw stones at the Americans for not attempting to adhere to Kyoto we in Ireland might like to move out of our greenhouse. (pardon the pun)

We are so far over the limits set for us for cutting emissions that we will be facing billions in terms of Kyoto sanctioned fines if we don't pull our fingers out.

AFAIK we are on target for double our limit, and it will cost us about €40 per tonne of CO2
and which company got a derregation recently ?

Memnoch

daveirl wrote:

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Yes but the US seems to consistantly pop up as the "rogue" state doing its own thing against the majority (and it is a very large majority) of world opinion yet again to serve its own selfish petty interests