[Schrodinger's Cat]

Originally Posted by Troubleshooter

Like it says here at the Reason website, Kyoto is a solution in search of a problem.

"However, the alarming 5.8 degree Celsius forecast resulted from a combination of very sensitive computer climate models with economic projections that assumed such unlikely developments as essentially no improvements in energy production technologies over the next century and a world population of 15 billion people emitting four times the current per capita levels of carbon dioxide."

Your Reason article assumes some unlikely things of its own and makes some outright unreasonable assertions. For example, it isolates out a US government statistic on per capital CO2 emissions and happily states that this amount has become flat - therefore we have nothing to fear. Actually, this flat rate of emissions is a 20 year average that includes the oil shock era of the 90's and does not include data from the past 4 years when Asian countries, China in particular, have begun to utilize an ever increasing share of the world's hydrocarbon based energy resources. Even if per capita CO2 WERE flat, population growth continues to increase, as do CO2 emissions.

From New Scientist (available by subscription here http://www.newscientist.com/channel/...climate-change):

IN 1957, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was 315 parts per million (ppm). It is now 360 ppm, that is, 0.036 per cent. Before the Industrial Revolution, the CO2 concentration was below about 280 ppm. Most of the extra carbon required to make the CO2 has come from burning coal and other fossil fuel; while part of the increase may be due to the destruction of tropical forests. When 1 ton of carbon is burnt, say in the form of coal, it produces about 4 tons of CO2, as each carbon atom combines with two oxygen atoms from the air.

The author of the Reason article somehow seems to think we are all now better off because we are now using more petroleum for our energy requirements then in the past when coal was the fuel of choice. Wrong.

Between 1850 and 1950, roughly 60 Gt of carbon were burnt, chiefly as coal. The same amount of carbon is now being burnt every decade as petroleum AND coal. Researchers estimate from the known amount of fossil fuel burnt, that in the middle of the 19th century the natural concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was about 270 ppm. This estimate has been shown correct by measurements of air bubbles trapped in the polar ice cores before the onset of the industrial revolution.

Up to this point anthropogenic CO2 levels have been mitigated by natural sinks - vegetation in the form of forests, as well as micoorganisms in the soil and plankton and algae in the oceans. Some CO2 is also dissolved in the world's oceans. One potential cause for concern is the possibility that whatever the natural sinks are, they may one day "fill up" and stop absorbing CO2. If this happened, the rate at which CO2 is building up in the atmosphere could double.

Again from New Scientist:

The three warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998; 19 of the warmest 20 since 1980. And Earth has probably never warmed as fast as in the past 30 years - a period when natural influences on global temperatures, such as solar cycles and volcanoes should have cooled us down.

The global warming would be more pronounced if it were not for sulphur particles and other pollutants that shade us, and because forests and oceans absorb around half of the CO2 we produce. But the accumulation rate of atmospheric CO2 has doubled since 2001, suggesting that nature's ability to absorb the gas could now be stretched to the limit. Recent research suggests that natural CO2 "sinks", like peat bogs and forests, are actually starting to release CO2.

I'm afraid Koyoto may be a day late and a dollar short.