A confident Kremlin is throwing its weight around.

[jb]

Really off topic, but.....
I also note that the graph shows there was a steady temp increase (.5 degrees C from 1860 through 1980) for 120 years before florocarbons came into widespread usage.  The greenhouse effect Bruno is so worried about is probably more the result of the odd volcanic activity and maybe the proliferation of European and Asian coal fired factories than any problems we might have had with the odd airconditioner and our beloved styerofoam coffee cups.

However, because he USA did not sign that stupid treaty, of course it's all our fault.

[BC]

Saw somewhere that methane was more of a 'greenhouse' gas than old fridge gasses and that animal 'flatulance' played a big role.. I guess people do to..

fire in the hole!

[edit] or is it flatulence.. am too lazy tonite to go look it up..

[andrewfi]

No point in assigning blame for what happened in the past. Much more relevant to being a part of (if not the solution) the amelioration.

Even if greenhouse f\gases are not having an effect upon global climate, we do not have the luxury of second guessing Gaia! If we carry on with a situation normal tack, we WIL have problems. Kyoto is o\not perfect, but it is a step toward amelioration. Status Quo, or full steam ahead stances are very dangerous.

On the related topic. It has, in general, been found by business that the cost of abiding by pollution reduction is usually outweighed by the efficiency benefits that result. THe US stance is closely akin to protectionism of US industry, in fact very closely, given public statements by your glorious leader and, as we well know, protectionism is not a successful method of protecting an economy. The US will, in the end, get with the programme, as they learn the benefits of doing so, hopefully not too late.

[jb]

Our own EPA is far tougher on US business than the Kyoto accords ever thought about, every factory and refinery exhaust stack has a scrubber so effecient the only thing that gets through is just clean air. 

Those laws are the principal reason so many businesses are locating outside of the US and outsourcing labor and manufacturing.  The clean air laws are so strict here companies are being put out of business if they try to remain at home... They've gotta go somewhere else or die.

[Jack]

daaa Andrew, jb is right.

I know it seems that Uncle Sam is hesitant to agree to some terms of the global treaty but as jb points out, are laws for factory emissions are probably the most toughest in the world.

I have seem what flows out of stacks in Mexico, Russia and Ukr. Not a pretty site.

[Bruno]

Our own EPA is far tougher on US business than the Kyoto accords ever thought about, every factory and refinery exhaust stack has a scrubber so effecient the only thing that gets through is just clean air. 

Those laws are the principal reason so many businesses are locating outside of the US and outsourcing labor and manufacturing.  The clean air laws are so strict here companies are being put out of business if they try to remain at home... They've gotta go somewhere else or die.

Let see what think and say these EPA...

http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/emissionsindividual.html

- In the United States, approximately 6.6 tons (almost 15,000 pounds carbon equivalent) of greenhouse gases are emitted per person every year.

- Most of these emissions, about 82%, are from burning fossil fuels to generate electricity and power our cars.

- Emissions vary based on the country in which you live. The U.S. presently emits more greenhouse gases per person than any other country.

 

[ronin308]

Shadow, while I agree with you that China is poised to build a good  number of NG facilities, the facts show that they intend to build even more coal facilities.  There is a huge energy demand there as you know and they are willing to do everything they can to meet it.  The preference of course to go green will be there but once again have no obiligation to do so.  BTW by gas stations do you mean automobile filling stations or natural gas power plants.

Bruno of course Mexico signed the treaty, they have everything to gain by it.  You see as a developing nation they don't have any reduction targets which means they can pretty much go on doing exactly what they are doing or worse without any problems.  Additionally the "industrialized" nations get credits for investing in "green" technology for the developing nations.  So mexico gets free investment money for signing a piece of paper.  China is in exactly the same boat, they can pollute all they want as well as help the other countries get reduction credits by investing in their country.

Without getting the data used to create your pretty graphics it's impossible to defend or refute them. 

If we accept your data then there is another problem.  All of the "touted" computer models show that by now we should be at a little over a 1 degree C increase however your data shows us at about a .5 C increase.  That is a 100% error which shows that something is wrong with the entire theory used to create the model.

Now the model also misses 2 large factors that are currently occurring.  The first is urband heat islands which shows that temperature increases in urban areas.  Urbanization has been occuring at a steady rate since the turn of the century.  While climatologists have known about this effect for quite some time they are unsure exactly how much this effects the climate record.  The second item is the fact sun has been getting warmer, for how long we don't know since we've only been able to monitor solar temperatures accurately since the 70s. 

Of course no one yet has commented on the potential bias of the science involved in current global warming research.  I mean we go from having a potential ice age to global warming killing the planet in less than 10 years. 

Bruno if you were as wrong as the climate scientists have been you would have been fired long ago, yet we still listen to people who are 100% or more inaccurate.

As to the US, it's well known that the biggest number of industries moving out of the US are those effected by the EPA.  Environmental restrictions are the leading 3 reasons for outsourcing along with lower labor and material rates.

Additionally it's well known that most european and japanese cars need additional emissions equipment to be allowed to be imported into the US due to the strict EPA regulations.  It's well known that for many reasons the US leads in the per capita of cars so for that reason alone we're going to be pretty high.

Bruno you realize that even without signing Kyoto our government at every level is going to great lengths to reduce overall pollution.  As I have said the federal government is funding research on clean coal plants as well as subsidizing "green" power generation across the country.  What we have said by not ratifying Kyoto is that we disagree with the terms in the protocol not that we are refusing to do something about greenhouse gases.  At the same time we have been involved in the Asia-Pacific pact which is more consistant with the approach we feel is a better one than Kyoto.  The one consistant message we have tried sending to the rest of the world is that the US is capable of operating on it's own.  Unfortunately, enough of the world seems to hate us and uses our refusal to sign to vilify us instead of really understanding the real reason we did what we did. 

Andrew, the problem is that no one has any refined model to calculate the effects of greenhouse gases on the warming of the earth.  To that end we could cutoff our CO2 emmisions by 100% tommorow and the damage will already have been done or we could go on spewing  greenhouse gases at an even greater pace with no effect.  Historical evidence is the only way to prove or disprove the models that the "scientists" are creating and using to take us down this road.  Finally you realize that while the US has the highest per captia emissions, we've gone from producing 46% of global emissions annually to 26.1% in 2002. 

Finally if you were to take even a part of the money that is gathered by environmental lobbying firms and given to research grants we would have greatly reduced the hunger and suffering in the 3rd world. 

So what's of greater importance throwing huge sums of money to solve and reduce a problem that so far the scientists can't predict or model with any accuracy or take that money and use it to solve real problems that are effecting those in Africa and elsewhere.

Bruno, I used to think exactly like you but after spending some time reading my eyes have been opened.  Personally I don't think either of us will change each other's mind so this is the last you will hear from me on the subject.

And to tie this back into the original theme of the thread, where do you think China gets most of it's natural gas that it is becoming dependant on?  Russia of course so for the nations of Europe, most of the FSU and China they can't afford to piss the Russians off or things get very cold and dark.  In China's case she has enormous coal resources, so coal planets mean self-reliance if it wasn't for the dark little man called greenhouse gases. 

[andrewfi]

Gents, I am not going to even try to go through the real research that demonstrates efficiency improvements from reducing pollution output. This is stuff that I have dealt with over years. The evidence is in your libraries, go read. But a starter, read up on paper and pulp production and about the relative efficiency of US and Finnish plant and the relative profitability of each typical process!

Ronin, you may have forgotten that a key to the Kyoto accord is the trading of pollution credit. A coountry may have fairly strict emissions regulations, but the density of pollution from the country, for example, the US is huge. Kyoto is purposed with the production of a market in emissions so that relatively poor countries, with outdated and inefficient systems can be paid to upgrade, without hurting the other countries. So, Russia, for example, which has a relatively low density of pollution oputput, can be paid to trade some of its 'spare' emission capacity with the US. This provides funding for reduction in pollution through efficiency in Russia and incentivises reductions in the US, or other indsutrialised nations such as Germany or the UK. Your insight that becasue we do not know when a tipping point might be reached and thus we need do nothing is simply puerile. Sorry! But it is common, it is simply the 'tragedy of the commons' (again in the library, or on the web - basic economic concept!). We do know that our actions do have an effect, we do not yet reliably know where the tipping point is, or if it has been passed, but your argument, shared with the US government , is analogous to making a car without a steering wheel. We know such a car can transport passengers, but that eventually it will hit a wall and kill them. We just don't know when. A ridiculous situuation!  But, the US point of view is consistent with its historical love of protection of its own markets, one day the US will learn that protection does not, in the long term, pay off.

 

 

[Bruno]

Ronin, you may have forgotten that a key to the Kyoto accord is the trading of pollution credit.

The main key of the Kyoto accord was that it is a worldwide project... polution don't know border... ok, today, USA pollute the more but they have own intern agrement... but what when tomorrow, China become the country who polute the more... the american intern agrement can change nothing, kyoto can...

Local work is great but it is time that problem are taken worldwide... that everybody work together and not against each other...

We can make what we wish, the Western world need energy... if we don't work together for other source, soon or later, we will have problem... think to your home without electricity, gaz... return to the cavern time...

PS : For information, china have lower his polution level from 5.8% in the last 6 year... they make better that european country...

[andrewfi]

With the exception of coal fired power stations, about which China has little choice at the moment, they are doing what a sensibly managed economy would tend to do. They buy and install the latest and most modern equipment. This tends to be efficient and less polluting per unit output. This is why the US NEEDS to join the Kyoto accord! Only by being a part of the global economy can the US hope to retain its share of global industrial output. Not everyone can be a hairdresser! The process of leapfrogging development was one missed in the UK, well, not surprising as we were the first industrial nation and thus the cycles of industrialisation and growth were not understood, or even known about. The US and Europe today do not have the excuse of lack of knowledge! The middle class LDCs and aspirants do not install old plant!

[Oosik]

Read "State of Fear". It has primary source documents that show global waming has not accelerated with western industrial development. If that causation cannot be shown, then one cannot state that industrial development is the cause of global warming trends. The data shows that inthe last 100 years, the biggest temperature increase WRT time was the first half of the century, not the last half.

Kyoto is simply another attempt to instate a global tax on wealthy countries to the benefit of poor countries. It is a move by the UN to have the power to tax the wealthy countries.

The power to tax is the power to destroy.

The tax is in the form of tradable emmissions credits.

[latstaley]

To some extent you are missing the point - the continuous production means that fields, such as those in TX/OK etc. that were tapped-out years ago may in a few decades or so be capable of providing limited production. As the theory goes, the actual oil is entrapped deep within the Earth and then works its way up to the surface.  It becomes a renewable resource akin to trees growing to sufficient size to produce usable wood.  We may yet outstrip the natural production process, but many feel that a true crisis is decades away, or best case scenario, only the product of alarmists.

 

RacerX, I'm not sure where people get this idea that the oil and gas fields in Texas and Oklahoma are played out, but they are still producing a lot down there. True, it did drop off a lot in the 90's, but a good deal of that can be explained by Oil costing $19 a barrel at the time. Therefore, they did plug a lot of wells, but it wasn't because they had gone dry. Oil wells suffer from a build up of paraffin and they have to be cleaned on a regular basis. This takes time and the cost at the time wasn't worth it on a lot of the stripper wells. Now that oil is up over $50 a barrel, those stripper wells are coming back on line.

My grandfather was in the oil business all his life and knew all the old wildcatters. In fact, Red Adair showed up at his funeral in 2000. In his will, he left us some pretty sweet mineral royalties in the Hugoton field of the Oklahoma panhandle. I don't want to brag, but 2005 was a very good year. So was 2004.

One of the big problems they are having now is finding qualified rough necks to work the fields. It has been over 25 years since the last great oil boom in the United States and a lot of the old hands have either died, retired, or gone into other fields of work.

Sure, Alaska has a lot of potential, but from what I understand, it is a lower grade of crude than West Texas Intermediate or Oklahoma sweet. It's also going to cost a lot more money to drill up there.