Indonesian Amnesia
“And the Nobel Prize for Unsubstantiated Finger Pointing goes to …. “
In case you missed it, there’s a convention of hypocrites climate change conference going on in Bali.
Bali is a tropical paradise, so you might think the main leisure activity would be para-sailing or snorkeling but, as it turns out, it’s much more fun to play pin the blame on the U.S.
You can’t go three feet without some dignitary or publicity-seeking bureaucrat carping how it’s vital that the U.S. signs on to the Kyoto Accord and how it’s absolutely shameful that the U.S. is mucking up the global ecosystem.
There are just a few minor problems. Mostly they center around those pesky little things called “facts.”
The Kyoto Accord was hammered out in 1997. Soon afterwards came the hue and cry for countries to start signing and ratifying a treaty that would pave the way for well-to-do nations throughout the world to give up their sovereignty and transfer wealth to any nation that wanted to submit a bill.
Oh, yeah. Presumably, signing the treaty also meant everyone was going to get reeeaaally serious about reducing fossil fuel emissions.
So, let’s take a look at the results from 1997 to 2004 (the last year of data available) and see all the spiffy benefits the Kyoto Accord has provided.
Over at the American Thinker blog, they’ve done some of the math for us. Here are some of the highlights:
- Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%.
- Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%.
- Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%.
- Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%.
“In fact, emissions from the U.S. grew slower than those of over 75% of the countries that signed Kyoto.
Below are the growth rates of carbon dioxide emissions, from 1997 to 2004, for a few selected countries, all Kyoto signers. (Remember, the comparative number for the U.S. is 6.6%.)”
- Maldives, 252%.
- Sudan, 142%.
- China, 55%.
- Luxembourg, 43%
- Iran, 39%.
- Iceland, 29%.
- Norway, 24%.
- Russia, 16%.
- Italy, 16%.
- Finland, 15%.
- Mexico, 11%.
- Japan, 11%.
- Canada, 8.8%.
Are you kidding me? Luxembourg’s emissions are up more than six times that of the U.S?!
We need to start building some more factories right away.
The only good thing is, it’s now way easier to choose your holiday card for Al Gore and 75% of the U.N. delegates….
global warming, climate change, Kyoto Accord, finger pointing, Bali, STFU
December 19th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
The American Thinker results are merely driven by the fact that Hoven chose two random, unrepresentative and idiosyncratic years to compare the carbon dioxide emissions levels. What was going on in the years of 1997 and 2004 is not exactly representative of the pre and post Kyoto situations.
I used the SAME table he uses and compare the increase in emissions for a GROUP of years before 1997 and after 1997, and find very different results.
Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 11.65 percent while emissions from non-signers increased 12.01 percent.
http://unremarkablepolitics.blogspot.com/2007/12/kyoto-protocol-why-us-must-ratify.html
December 19th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
As explained in the article, 1997 and 2004 aren’t idiosyncratic. Kyoto was enacted in 1997 and 2004 is the most recent year for which data is available.
Even with your data, most of the points are still valid.
For all the hoopla and hyperbole, Kyoto signers have been, at best, marginally more effective than non-signers.
At worst, they have been grossly deficient in their actions while quick to vilify any country who doesn’t surrender its sovereignty to their cabal.
Think I’ll still go with my Xmas card to the U.N.