Kyoto - hang on a minute...
Kyoto - hang on a minute...
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Discussion

simpo two

Original Poster:

92,671 posts

294 months

Wednesday 8th December 2004
quotequote all
Everyone loves to slate the US for not 'signing up to' the Kyoto agreement. Ooh the naughty bad Americans!

But hang on - China and India weren't included in the Kyoto deal in the first place, and still may not be because 'it might damage their economies'.

Diddums. What about OUR friggin' economies then?

NB Odd that the lentilists seem to have no opinion on these massive polluters.

bridgdav

4,805 posts

277 months

Wednesday 8th December 2004
quotequote all
Gazboy said:
The yanks still pump out 20% of the worlds shit btw,


I thought that was John Prescott...?

wolves_wanderer

12,951 posts

266 months

Wednesday 8th December 2004
quotequote all
An opinion I heard on R5 this morning was that if we gave moral leadership in reducing CO2 emissions then developing countries would follow our lead

Is it just me, or is that naivity of the highest order?

It's perfectly obvious that the world will still need things manufacturing, whether we do it or not. To be honest when the likes of India and China do industrialise properly then they will put even the US in the shade, so it doesn't really matter what we do.

Strangely my opinion on Kyoto didn't go down too well on an Environmental Science course at Uni

Plotloss

67,280 posts

299 months

Wednesday 8th December 2004
quotequote all
I would suggest that the reason that China arent included is that 90% of the country cook on wood burning stoves...

If you stopped them doing that then they would probably die...

minimax

11,985 posts

285 months

Wednesday 8th December 2004
quotequote all
Plotloss said:
I would suggest that the reason that China arent included is that 90% of the country cook on wood burning stoves...

If you stopped them doing that then they would probably die...


Incorrigible

13,668 posts

290 months

Wednesday 8th December 2004
quotequote all
Plotloss said:
I would suggest that the reason that China arent included is that 90% of the country cook on wood burning stoves...

If you stopped them doing that then they would probably die...
What a load of bollocks, you'll be telling me they don't get their rice from supermarkets next

Plotloss

67,280 posts

299 months

Wednesday 8th December 2004
quotequote all
You fool, they dont cook rice, they get it from the Chinese.

They are everywhere out there...

Apache

39,731 posts

313 months

Wednesday 8th December 2004
quotequote all
Incorrigible said:

Plotloss said:
I would suggest that the reason that China arent included is that 90% of the country cook on wood burning stoves...

If you stopped them doing that then they would probably die...

What a load of bollocks, you'll be telling me they don't get their rice from supermarkets next



Have you been to China? it's a seriously big and lumpy place where huge areas are without electrtickery or gas,

turbobloke

117,125 posts

289 months

Wednesday 8th December 2004
quotequote all
The Kyoto Protocol is based on junk science, and it's estimated it will cost $75 trillion to implement, and after this vast expenditure its impact will be - at best - to offset 'global warming' over the next 100 years or so by one twentieth of a degree. In other words, it's totally pointless anyway even if emissions controls could work, which they can't as carbon dioxide levels are affected by temperature and not the other way round.

In an unusual act of balance, the BBC have published a withering debunk of Kyoto and the man-made global warming claptrap that lit the blue touchpaper. Some of the juicy extracts include
"Global warming is indeed a scam, perpetrated by scientists with vested interests, but in need of crash courses in geology, logic and the philosophy of science"
and
"It provides the media with a new scare story, which has been picked up by the focus groups and turned into the new religion, offering us hell if we don't all change our ways. However, believing in anthropogenic global warming is not enough, but that is all it can offer."
with
"We know from the geological (and archaeological) record that weather variations and extremes are the norm. Such extremes occur gradually and rapidly, and obviously were not human-induced (anthropogenic). How then can they represent a threat greater than that of terrorism, as the UK's chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, maintains, except to minds unwilling to accept the inevitability of planetary change?"

The rest can be found at Kyoto and GWT

>> Edited by turbobloke on Wednesday 8th December 16:51

Incorrigible

13,668 posts

290 months

Wednesday 8th December 2004
quotequote all
Apache said:
Have you been to China? it's a seriously big and lumpy place where huge areas are without electrtickery or gas,
I've only ever been to Chinatown in London

Quite busy

telecat

8,528 posts

270 months

Wednesday 8th December 2004
quotequote all
Shame the BBC1 news team don't read the web pages then. Yet another set of debunked rubbish spouted by them this evening at 6.

tuscan_thunder

1,763 posts

275 months

Thursday 9th December 2004
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one interesting point made by researchers in Sweden:

Plants grown in an atmosphere with increased levels of CO2 grown much more quickly than those in 'standard' CO2 levels.

The plants which grew faster then produced far more oxygen (sorry, i've lost the report) than those grown in the lower level of CO2.

The research team also found that the so-called 'global warming' is such a small amount that it could even be put down to inaccuracies in early testing devices. They also added that the earth's temperature can vary by several degrees with little or no effect on the organisms living on it.

of course Kyoto glosses over this and the lentilists use it as an excuse to attack cars. which demeans the whole thing somewhat

neil.b

6,546 posts

276 months

Thursday 9th December 2004
quotequote all
Plotloss said:
You fool, they dont cook rice, they get it from the Chinese.

They are everywhere out there...


PMSL

Reminds me of the time I rang the local take-away and said "Hello, I'd like to order some chinese....."

My mates were pissng themselves and I just didn't understand what they were laughing at....

Then the penny dropped.

Fair play to the chinese guy, there's no end of sarcastic retorts he could've answered with.

"There's 8 of us here, how many do you want?"

or

"You've come to the right place..."

or

"That's all we serve..."

Is sarcasm prevalent in Asian culture? Curious...

simpo two

Original Poster:

92,671 posts

294 months

Thursday 9th December 2004
quotequote all
Spring Rolls are Number 8 on my takeaway menu. I tried to order one and - yep - got 8 of the bastards.

FunkyNige

9,813 posts

304 months

Thursday 9th December 2004
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Gazboy said:
As they are developing countries, they were given a tempory exclusion. The yanks still pump out 20% of the worlds shit btw, and are the biggest polluters on earth. iirc the Chinease were a fair way down the list (could be wrong though).


The Chinese are having an industrial revolution as we speak - they've bought up all the quotas of next year's steel already.

turbobloke

117,125 posts

289 months

Friday 1st April 2005
quotequote all
Just a few of quotes to help the Easter eggs digest

August 2004
Dr Peter Kaznacheev of the Institute for Economic Analysis in Moscow said:
In the history of civilization, climate optimums are associated more with prosperity and progress, ice ages with hardships and catastrophes. The changing nature of our planet means we could start experiencing lower temperatures tomorrow. Today’s temperatures are not the highest in the history of the earth, mounting evidence suggests temperature variations cannot be explained by variations in CO2 concentrations


May 2004
Neil Collins in the Wall Street Journal said:
In fact, as the greens never admit, we are nowhere near an environmental catastrophe. Water and air in Europe are cleaner than they have been for centuries. Africa's deserts are not encroaching, but retreating. The Maldives, one of the first places due to 'disappear' under rising sea levels, are actually slightly higher out of the water than they were 30 years ago


March 2005
Franklin Cudjoe GTA Representative in Ghana said:
We do not need any alarmist theories clouded in climate control jargons like the UN style adaptation to delay us. In fact, previous experiences with whatever form of foreign aid resonates with Patrick Jake O’Rourke’s assertion that “giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys”. This is what ‘adaptation’ under the Kyoto Protocol will do to governments in poor countries.

JagLover

46,737 posts

264 months

Friday 1st April 2005
quotequote all
turbobloke said:

Neil Collins in the Wall Street Journal said:
In fact, as the greens never admit, we are nowhere near an environmental catastrophe. Water and air in Europe are cleaner than they have been for centuries. Africa's deserts are not encroaching, but retreating. The Maldives, one of the first places due to 'disappear' under rising sea levels, are actually slightly higher out of the water than they were 30 years ago



That part is true, part of the process of economic growth is that people become less tolerant of pollution-thus counter intuitively economic growth can lead to less pollution at the local level.

parrot of doom

23,075 posts

263 months

Friday 1st April 2005
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The USA is a net absorber of CO2, so why should they sign up?

wolves_wanderer

12,951 posts

266 months

Friday 1st April 2005
quotequote all
JagLover said:

turbobloke said:


Neil Collins in the Wall Street Journal said:
In fact, as the greens never admit, we are nowhere near an environmental catastrophe. Water and air in Europe are cleaner than they have been for centuries. Africa's deserts are not encroaching, but retreating. The Maldives, one of the first places due to 'disappear' under rising sea levels, are actually slightly higher out of the water than they were 30 years ago





That part is true, part of the process of economic growth is that people become less tolerant of pollution-thus counter intuitively economic growth can lead to less pollution at the local level.


Exactly, you aren't going to give a toss about the environment if you are struggling to put food on the table. This concern with the environment is a symptom of the comparative ease of Western life these days, not suprisingly governments love it as it gives them an excuse for lots of lovely "environmental" taxes.