Monday, March 05, 2007

Global Warming

Data from the Paris-based International Energy Agency indicates China's greenhouse gas emissions have been growing by an amount much greater than that of all industrialized nations put together and will pass the US in 2007 or 2008 as the world's biggest source of Greenhouse Gases, according to the SF Chronicle.


I'm not sure this is true, but if it were isn't this what the Kyoto Protocol was aiming to achieve? By imposing crippling penalties on energy use in the First World, where production technology is relatively efficient and exempting countries like China and India, where production is relatively dirty, their policies had at least two forseeable consequences. First, it would export pollution to the Third World; and second, it would ensure that the marginal unit of production would occur where it would produce the most pollution.

I have argued that the Kyoto Protocol never fully accounted for the negative environmental effects of throwing Workers out of jobs in unindustrialized Third World countries due to cutbacks in imports from the developed countries. I've reasoned the unemployed would revert to destructive subsistence farming in the absence of alternative employment. Maybe one day the Greenies will bury their Kyoto Protocol t-shirts the way Leftists now shun their Mao hats and pins, after he was revealed as a monster rather than a savior. You don't think so? Well neither do I.

13 Comments:

Blogger What is "Occupation" said...

and... china is polluting it's own soil, water and air and it's rate of cancer is going thru the roof!

so much for the undefeatable china..

at this rate within 80 years china will be self destructing from the inside..

no more cheap undies...

3/05/2007 07:10:00 PM  
Blogger allen said...

"Today's global warming problem has been caused mainly by us in the West, with the cumulative (carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere, but China is contributing to the global warming problem of tomorrow."

Did I miss something? Hasn’t China been contributing all along, just as has India?

“What China needs, many experts say, is help from the United States and other Western nations to help adopt energy-saving technologies.”

Hmm…Expert advice is so important to the solution of any global warming problem. But as a non-expert, I am thinking that some of the billions of dollars China is plowing into defense could be used here. It couldn’t hurt. Right?

3/05/2007 07:31:00 PM  
Blogger Sean said...

That's right, China, which like India, would have been exempt from Kyoto. Link.

3/05/2007 08:24:00 PM  
Blogger 3Case said...

"Today's global warming problem has been caused mainly by us in the West,...."

To any and all Man-made Global Warming believers:

When you see the Easter Bunny, please tell him that I would like candies with cherry centers and cremes and with Macadamia nuts and Almonds. Thank you.

3/05/2007 08:37:00 PM  
Blogger Meme chose said...

Just watch global warming hysteria lose a lot of its appeal the moment the US is no longer the biggest source of greenhouse gases.

3/05/2007 09:22:00 PM  
Blogger chickelit said...

"Just watch global warming hysteria lose a lot of its appeal the moment the US is no longer the biggest source of greenhouse gases"

That would be good for my coal stocks

3/05/2007 09:40:00 PM  
Blogger Gene Felder said...

Those who pretend to be concerned about global warming and the emissions of greenhouse gases spent years negotiating. They support the Kyoto Treaty which exempts developing countries, even large fast growing China and India. Does this make any sense?

Bush wants to assist China in providing their energy needs increasingly via nuclear power. Read the Wall Street Journal December 27, 2006 article Illegal Power Plants, Coal Mines In China Pose Challenge for Beijing by Shai Oster and see who makes more sense.

■ “One fifth of the power plants in China are illegal, according to government estimates -- enough to light up all of the U.K.”
■ “By eschewing even basic environmental safeguards, they stand out as polluters even in an industry that is one of China's leading sources of emissions”
■ “In China, more power plants almost invariably mean more coal consumption. The country has been unable to diversify away from coal”
■ “They also have driven up the demand for and price of coal, the country's most abundant source of fuel. That, in turn, has spawned thousands of illegal coal mines that have contributed to more than 4,000 coal-mining deaths in China this year”
■ “The country's economy has expanded an average 10% a year since the late 1970s”
■ “the soaring demand for coal-fueled electricity has upended Beijing's efforts to rein in pollution”
■ “Last year, China consumed about 2.2 billion metric tons of coal, one-third of the world's total and more than any other country”

The article uses the word pollution referring to smog and air pollution, but burning coal and wood are major sources of greenhouse gases which may cause global warming. I don’t know, but I am serious enough to support zero greenhouse emitting nuclear power.

3/05/2007 09:45:00 PM  
Blogger Tony said...

The somewhat reliable Wikipedia tells us:

"U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95–0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98),[44][45] which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". On November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nation...."

Of course, that vote is mostly a secret if you rely on the NYT or MSM media, but not as big a secret as the A6 Agreement. I searched the NYT for "Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate", and found one mention in an obscure business article on the deficit in 2006, as compared to 5,721 mentions of "global warming." No wonder the sheep believe in global warming.

Here's the secret stuff, that actually addresses China's and India's ongoing and uptrending growth and technology trends, especially coal power in China:

"The Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate is an agreement between six Asia-Pacific nations: Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea, and the United States. The partnership had its official launch in January of 2006 at a ceremony in Sydney, Australia. Within the past year, the six nations have initiated nearly 100 projects aimed at clean energy capacity building and market formation. Building on these activities, long-term projects are schedule to deploy clean energy and environment technologies and services."

Wikipedia - too damn easy for the NYT.

3/06/2007 04:42:00 AM  
Blogger weswinger said...

Follow - up on Tony: the Senate told algore before the Kyoto meeting three criteria for approval of the resulting treaty.

1. Universality: the emissions limitations apply to all countries.

2. Universal cap and trade: a provision to use the US'SO4 emissions allowance market as a model for determining a world price for a ton of CO2.

3. Low-tech carbon sinks. The US wanted to be able to plant trees as CO2 offsets.

Reading the proceedings of the Kyoto conference will show that not only did algore not push the US position, he rolled over immediately. One might suspect algore of being a little cynical, and that he found it much more fun to have a political hobbyhorse to ride, where he could become the scold he wanted to be.

3/06/2007 06:41:00 AM  
Blogger Gene Felder said...

Instead of carbon dioxide, maybe we should be concerned about real-McCoy pollution form China and India, “ozone, carbon monoxide, mercury and particulate matter from Asia”. See March 6, 2007 Los Angeles Times front page article “Asian air pollution affecting weather” at http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-sci-asiapollute6mar06,0,863902.story?coll=la-home-world
“Asia's growing air pollution — billowing plumes of soot, smog and wood smoke — is making the Pacific region cloudier and stormier, disrupting winter weather patterns along the West Coast and into the Arctic, researchers reported Monday.”

“Carried on prevailing winds, the industrial outpouring of dust, sulfur, carbon grit and trace metals from booming Asian economies is having an intercontinental cloud-seeding effect”

3/06/2007 09:07:00 AM  
Blogger Mike H. said...

I'm confused, is the world getting hotter because we didn't sign Kyoto, or because China did?

3/06/2007 02:21:00 PM  
Blogger Tony said...

Speaking of Global Warming, according to today's AP story Asian Pollution Affects Pacific Storms it turns out that an American President signed an international agreement that ...led to a reduction in chemicals released into the atmosphere in an effort to preserve the ozone layer that screens out many of the sun's damaging rays.

Those same chemicals are also potent contributors to greenhouse warming, and their reduction has resulted in a slowdown in global warming, according to a team led by Guus J. M. Velders of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. The savings in trapped heat are equivalent to about 10 years of growth in carbon dioxide concentrations, they estimated.


Was it President Clinton? President Carter? President Gore? Had to be one of those, because Republican Presidents are in the pocket of Big Oil and they LOVE all kinds of pollution, global warming is the apple of their evil eye.

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
December 21, ....

To the Senate of the United States:

I transmit herewith, for the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, done at Montreal on September 16, .... The report of the Department of State is also enclosed for the information of the Senate.

The Montreal Protocol provides for internationally coordinated control of ozone-depleting substances in order to protect public health and the environment from potential adverse effects of depletion of stratospheric ozone. The Protocol was negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Program, pursuant to the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, which was ratified by the United States in August 1986.

In this historic agreement, the international community undertakes cooperative measures to protect a vital global resource. The United States played a leading role in the negotiation of the Protocol. United States ratification is necessary for entry into force and effective implementation of the Protocol. Early ratification by the United States will encourage similar action by other nations whose participation is also essential.

I recommend that the Senate give early and favorable consideration to the Protocol and give its advice and consent to ratification.

Ronald Reagan
The White House
December 21, 1987


President Reagan on Montreal Protocol Ratification

For the Global Warming freaks, this is going to be like Luke Skywalker finding out Darth is his Dad.

3/06/2007 06:24:00 PM  
Blogger Steven said...

So I'm definitely learning some interesting perspectives here about global warming.

Perhaps someone can enlighten me on the following question. Why is it that we focus on vehicles and power generation as being the largest sources of relevant emissions but ignore the global warming effects from the land use/consumption/feeding/trucking and storage of cows, pigs, chickens?

“Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems,” senior UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) official Henning Steinfeld said.

Why is this issue being subordinated by the vehicle/powerplant issue?

I mean this question in a nonpartisan, honest inquiry and know this is the place to get such an answer.

4/06/2007 03:42:00 PM  

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