Latest Kyoto Report for EU
 

If the United States had ratified the Kyoto Protocol, this would be justification for nuking all of your capital cities.

If you want to sign a treaty should you not consider doing what you said you would do?

http://reports.eea.europa.eu/technic...0report%202008

Re: Latest Kyoto Report for EU
 

you are actually retarded aren't you?

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To whom it may concern in the US government,

Please sack him.

Kind regards,

The competent people who should have his job

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Doesn't it just piss you off that you try to do good things, and your damn countrymen keep burning fossil fuels?

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IQ of 134 last time it was checked. Did it ever occur to you that your judgement about some issues may be clouded?

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The competent people who should have my job don't want it. Hello, would you like to be the spokesman for an organization that trains Soldiers to deal with the problems they will face in Iraq and Afghnistan?

Your job is easy compared to mine. That's why I get paid more than you get paid.

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I would somewhat doubt you earn more than yahwe

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I hope to see the Apocalypse. To facilitate the process, I have put 25 radiators in my back yard, and I keep them all going 24/7, 365 days a year.

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did it ever occur to you that on some issues your judgement may be clouded?


also, you made me agree with yahwe, i hate you :p

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Um, sure. But cut by how much and at what cost? The devil is always in those pesky details. :)
I think there are a number of flaws with the Stern Review but the proof here is really in the pudding. If so few countries are able or willing to meet their Kyoto targets (and Kyoto is only a small fraction of what is needed) then that suggests (to me) that it might be rather difficult. But hey, prove me wrong! :)

I think the best proof you could offer would be to meet your Kyoto targets (preferably without doing major damage to your economies). It seems silly to me to argue how emissions reductions sufficient to halt global warming are really quite affordable and doable while so many countries are failing to achieve even the modest Kyoto reductions. Something's not adding up. :confused:
Well, amusing in a let's-wildly-inflate-the-numbers sort of way.

First of all, you can't just charge all military spending against Iraq and Afghanistan. Contrary to what you may have heard, the US military maintains ships and bases in all sorts of places outside the middle east--even places that don't have oil! In any case, US military spending is running at 3.7% of GDP. Second, total appropriations (including supplementals and continuing resolutions) for military operations, base security, reconstruction, foreign aid, embassy costs and veterans' health care for Iraq and Afghanistan are about $700B from 9/11/2001 through mid-2008 (source). The $700B figure represents the off-budget costs of Iraq and Afghanistan above and beyond the cost of maintaining the military. Averaged out over the ~7 years since 9/11, that represents an average of about $100B a year (although higher in the later years and lower in the earlier years). In FY2006, for example, $116B was allocated and US GDP that year was $13.2T; so the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan that year was about 0.9% of GDP--nowhere close to 10% of GDP.

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"Meeting Kyoto targets without hurting your economy" when there is full participation and doing the same when there is not full paricipation in the treaty are completely different things.

Let's say I have a widget plant in Stillwater, MN, and keep costs low by dumping my waste mercury in the mississippi.

Eventually, minnesota talks to wisconsin about reducing mercury pollution and wisconsin says "if you can prove that it's possible to reduce mercury dumping without massive job loss, we'll opt in".

Minnesota approaches me about reducing my mercury dumping, and I say if they even think about it, I'm moving right over to Hudson, WI and continuing my dumping.

Minnesota could move forward with the new restrictions, which will result in: massive job loss, and no reduction in the river contamination, or they could give up.

Either way, Wisconsin will claim they were proven right. Which is an intellecutally dishonest viewpoint; if both had opted in, widget prices would have gone up a few %, but the economy would be fine and people would be better off.

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If you consider after taxes and after basic living costs, I suspect I have considerably more expendable income. Maybe not greatly more, but I would be willing to bet that I have a thousand pounds a month more expendable income than Yahweh has. Expendable income means I can spend it on golf clubs, DVDs, furniture, etc. Not transportation, housing, clothing and food.

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It's clear you don't know the GDP of the United States. Either that or you sucked in maths.

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That's as may be, but Kyoto doesn't require full participation. First, only Annex I (developed) countries have to reduce emissions--meaning that high-CO2-producing industries like steel production by transferred to non-Annex I (developing) countries (you may recall that the lack of participation by China and other developing countries was the principle objection by the US to ratifying Kyoto); and second, not all countries had to ratify Kyoto before it went into effect.

Both of these flaws were well known when the treaty was drawn up. No country (to my knowledge) was forced to ratify it; yet nevertheless, many did. Hopefully, they will be more diligent when drawing up and ratifying such treaties in the future.

In any event, the Annex I signatories are stuck with a bad treaty largely of their own making. The best they can do now is to try to meet their targets with--hopefully--minimal economic impact. I sincerely wish them the best.
Or perhaps the widget industries would have relocated to some other state or country? It's a global economy now, and it would be intellectually dishonest for Wisconsin or Minnesota to claim they didn't know that.

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What on earth are you on about?

HOW could any nation state be forced to ratify anything?

This sort of slip up is indicitive of what is really going on in your and Texan's psyche in this utterly utterly pathetic thread.

1) George Bush decided not to ratify Kyoto
2) Therefore America did not ratify Kyoto
3) At the time of Kyoto we all knew it was not enough
4) George Bush would not even go that far
5) George Bush having not ratified it the treaty becomes pointless because without America things like this fail (see League of Nations)
6) Years later we can see that George Bush WAS WRONG. We know now that America should have backed Kyoto, indeed we all should have gone a damn site further
7) Texan (a frankly incompetent troll - more interested in arguing over my income with people who are not me than sticking to a point) decides that the only way he can justify his salary (and I don't care what it is because if it were tuppance a year it'd be a ****ing waste) is to attack the remnant shell of Kyoto

And in to this frame steps you, a usually rational chap, doing what? 'Boldly defending American values?'.

Do give it a rest.

It's not America who is to blame for Kyoto being a pointless pile of crap. It's one man with the lowest approval rating I have ever seen for a serving president (forgive me but Nixon was before my time and frankly I'm pretty sure you could argue that at least Nixon had charm).

Stop, stop, stop for goodness sake always jumping on bandwagons.

Re: Latest Kyoto Report for EU
 

I'm not really into the subject. But I do hope you realise that the kyoto-targets were set for 2012 and 2020. Even though not every country had reached the set greenhouse gas emissions targets yet in 2006, one year after the treaty went into effect, a lot of west European countries, such as Germany and the Netherlands seem to be well underway towards exceeding the set targets.

And Texan, I don't know if you wanted to make a point by linking that 580 page report, but I'm not going to read that entire report in hope that I might find something that supports your claim. You'll have to be more specific.

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If (statistics about) the subject interest(s) you, but you're too lazy to read the entire report, then there's a nice easy graph on CO2 emissions on one of the first few pages.

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His post seems a bit retarded, because he's trying to hold us responsible for what's happening in foreign countries, who try to achieve similar goals as us. While 'our countrymen' are actually doing fine.

This forum is filled with Dutch, British and German people who's governments actually seem to do quite well in reducing emissions. He needs to understand that the polluting Spanish, for example, are not our countrymen, and we are in no way responsible for what they do, nor can we force them to do anything.

If he was posting on a Spanish forum then he might have had a valid point.

That aside, I don't see how 'others doing poorly at reaching climate goals' would justify not trying to reach climate goals at all.

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Maybe it would be time to openly discuss the effects of climate change in the USA. Without censoring climate change reports that is. Maybe then will participating in international attempts to reduce harmful emissions will sound more viable to Americans.

http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20071210101633.pdf

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Hey those hummers are cool.

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Um, I was being facetious. Apparently my meager attempt at humor sailed clean over your head. I'll try to aim lower. :)
I have no idea what you're talking about but if this thread is causing you distress then I would suggest you avoid reading it.
Well, no. George Bush can no more ratify Kyoto than Bill Clinton could. Admittedly, Bush is against Kyoto but even if he submitted it to the Senate for approval and used his vast rhetorical skills to argue in favor of it [warning: I was being facetious there as Bush has no rhetorical skills], it still wouldn't get the necessary two-thirds majority it would require (which is why Clinton--who was in favor of Kyoto--didn't bother to send it to the Senate). Even Obama, were he elected President, would not get Kyoto through the US Senate (and like Clinton, I doubt he'd even try). Since the rest of your rant seems to be based on this false premise that Bush has somehow single-handedly prevented the US from ratifying Kyoto I won't bother with it further.
Which are, at best, just that.
See my reply to acropolis. If you negotiate/sign a treaty that encourages capital flight (because developed nations have emissions restrictions and developing nations don't) then you shouldn't be surprised if/when capital flight occurs. Duh indeed.
I don't know why you're so obsessed with our military spending, as it's really a small part of our budget (in spite of your attempts to inflate it).
OK, but it's still a long way from 10%.

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Dont worry, he just didnt notice the decimal point in the middle of it

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I laughed out loud at this one. I guess the questions should be, is the decimal between the 1 and the 3 or between the 3 and the 4.

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When costs and uncertainties are high, yes. But feel free to gamble with your own money. :)
I don't buy into the global warming alarmism (having lived through the global cooling alarmism), but nonetheless there are lots of good reasons not to burn carbon (dependence on foreign supplies, pollution, etc) when viable alternatives (such as nuclear) are available. It's just a question of cost (and if you can't tell me the cost then excuse my lack of enthusiasm).
Well I think there is considerable capital flight, but if you're now claiming otherwise than there's even less reason to discount the costs of meeting the Kyoto targets. And you misunderstand my argument: My argument is not that we should use Kyoto as a pilot program to measure it's effectiveness in stopping climate change because everyone knows the Kyoto targets are too small to matter regardless. Rather, my argument is that we should use Kyoto as a pilot program to measure the cost of reducing emissions. That is, for the countries that are required to reduce their CO2 emissions we can see how much it costs for them to do that (assuming they actually reduce their emissions, of course). X% reduction cost Y$. Why wouldn't that be useful information? Then we wouldn't have to rely completely on estimates; we'd have some actual data.
Actually China has surpassed the US in CO2 emissions and is increasing at ~12% a year. US CO2 emissions are barely growing (<1%) since 2000 (and thanks to the recent oil price increases, I'm confident that US CO2 emissions won't be going up anytime soon). If you're really serious about reducing global CO2 emissions, then you really need to get China on board (probably India and Brazil too).
This we do.
No it isn't. It's mostly an expensive boondoggle.
I don't believe there's any massive resource crisis looming, but we already do recycling--more than is economically sensible in fact.
To the extent that increasing energy efficiency (and thereby reducing emissions) saves money then people are, for the most part, already doing it. I know I've replaced most of my incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescents.

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Mother Earth is eternally grateful.

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The average U.S citizen uses more energy than the average european citizen. The US is quite far behind the EU (even if it hurts me acclaiming the EU) and many countries in Europe when it comes to envirmental standards and recycling (Germany recycles 3/4 of the paper it uses).

There is ofcourse going to be costs when it comes to cutting Co2 and other greenhouses gases. Oil is a very easily used and still rather cheap energy source. However, oil supplies are running out and will eventuelly run totally out on a world wide basis. But the costs of cutting emissions should also be balanced against the cost of weather changes and the effects that have. Sadly the rich can move away from problems (just imagine if Floridia and California got badly hit), while the poor can't.

I won't go into why capitalism is a huge part of the problem and a hinderance to a solution, since thats to obvious for all the well-educated readers of this board. ;)

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But then again, this wouldnt necessarily be useful information. If you assume that the emissions that are easiest (and thus cheapest) to eliminate get eliminated first, which isnt unreasonable, then the relatively weak Kyoto targets would not be a good basis for estimating the costs of future (significant) cuts to emission, due to decreasing returns to investment and/or increasing costs to scale of any such project. Sure, it would be a start, but it might also be a start to chronically underestimating the costs of taking it to the nth degree that T&F would prefer.

;). Capitalism also provides a solution for it too. Depressing, huh? ;)

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So, until China, and India
opt in there is no point in the US joining?

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America is the leader. "I am their leader I must follow them" - is that not the logic?

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The leader in what?

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Well America is the global Empire.

Has been for a while now.

(west country farmer voice) Orrdd, bat it dan't seeam t' lyke the warrd empire, praabably because it involves responzibilities

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Equally until the US joins then there's no reason for China and India to opt in. Someone has to set a precedent for everyone else to follow and only America can create the international pressure needed to get everyone to sign up.