19-02-2005 08:05									#181
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quote: Originally posted by Oncle Boris How is that an issue? The rich pay, the poor catch up and then pay.

It also lets Germany and Russia off the hook due to highly polluting industries that were shut down in the 90s as the old East bloc was dismantled.

So the problem is that not even all of the 'rich' are being required to pay.

And the poor never pay under Kyoto. The accord expires.

	19-02-2005 08:08									#182
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quote: Originally posted by Asmodean I meant that I would like to see the U.S. playing an active role in proposing an alternative to Kyoto, whilst at the same time working with scientists across the board to study tre long-time effects of global warming. Something to that effect. I am all against Kyoto, too. But I don't really see the Bush administration pushing for alternatives. That's what I meant by them not taking the problem seriously. Asmodean

Pushing for alternatives did Canada no good. Our negotiators did a piss poor job in the early stages and the accord was settled where growth of forests was rewarded, but not leaving exisitng forests intact. When the GoC realised how badly we'd screwed up, they went back and asked for credit for the massive forests that Canada leaves standing. We were told to f*ck off, the deal was done.

	19-02-2005 10:23									#183
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quote: Originally posted by notyoueither Pushing for alternatives did Canada no good. Our negotiators did a piss poor job in the early stages and the accord was settled where growth of forests was rewarded, but not leaving exisitng forests intact. When the GoC realised how badly we'd screwed up, they went back and asked for credit for the massive forests that Canada leaves standing. We were told to f*ck off, the deal was done.

paradoxically leaving forests intact will probably lead to no net CO2 reduction bennefit from those forests. To get an ongoing CO2 reduction from forests you have to clear biomass (wood for instance) out of the forest periodically and sequester it in some way in which it won't decay or be burned.

So it a round about way it makes sense that forest left standing would give less credit than one from which timber is actively harvested and which is continuously replanted.

	19-02-2005 11:38									#184
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Uhmmm. I don't buy that idea. The Earth functioned for millions of years without gnomes like us squirreling away the older wood.

Visit an old growth forest sometime. The trees don't stop growing. They get really, really big. Then from time to time one dies and tips over, to be replaced by a score of youngsters. Much of the mass of the dead tree gets buried in the following seasons.

Anyway, the benefit Canada asked for was recognition that our forests already existed in 1990. We couldn't plant many more. Other countries who had slashed and burned for centuries were to get benefits for planting due to the benchmark year. We are stuck in time. We had plenty of trees then, and would get no benefit from maintaining them.

At the same time, expansion of the oil sands really picked up in the late 80's and has accelerated ever since. Whereas Germany and Russia are already at or near their Kyoto targets due to the shutting down of old industry, we hadn't even begun to really develop the largest oil reserves in the world.

The benchmark year is a real pain in the ass, and the accord has been stacked in such a way that benefits accrue to certain coutries who will feel no pain at all, while others are expected to pick up the bill.

Bad agreement, and the US was very well served by the Senate refusing to have any part of it. I can only hope that Canada can navigate the deal so that it doesn't break the country. I can tell you what will happen if the Fed ever comes calling and tells the GoA that we have to shut down the tar sands. It won't be very pretty.

	19-02-2005 12:06									#185
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quote: Originally posted by notyoueither Uhmmm. I don't buy that idea. The Earth functioned for millions of years without gnomes like us squirreling away the older wood. Visit an old growth forest sometime. The trees don't stop growing. They get really, really big. Then from time to time one dies and tips over, to be replaced by a score of youngsters. Much of the mass of the dead tree gets buried in the following seasons.

Certainly, humanity wasn't squirreling away older wood but if we weren't burning fossil fuels why would we? We've only been burning fossil fuels for about 200 years. Furthermore, the overall biomass of the forest increases by very tiny amounts once it reaches a certain density. You also aren't addressing the effects of periodic forest fires in releasing the sequestered CO2 back into the atmosphere. Finally, even very very old forests typically have fairly shallow soil over the bedrock suggesting they don't sequester the biomass into the ground.

However...

quote: Originally posted by notyoueither Anyway, the benefit Canada asked for was recognition that our forests already existed in 1990. We couldn't plant many more. Other countries who had slashed and burned for centuries were to get benefits for planting due to the benchmark year. We are stuck in time. We had plenty of trees then, and would get no benefit from maintaining them. At the same time, expansion of the oil sands really picked up in the late 80's and has accelerated ever since. Whereas Germany and Russia are already at or near their Kyoto targets due to the shutting down of old industry, we hadn't even begun to really develop the largest oil reserves in the world. The benchmark year is a real pain in the ass, and the accord has been stacked in such a way that benefits accrue to certain coutries who will feel no pain at all, while others are expected to pick up the bill. Bad agreement, and the US was very well served by the Senate refusing to have any part of it. I can only hope that Canada can navigate the deal so that it doesn't break the country. I can tell you what will happen if the Fed ever comes calling and tells the GoA that we have to shut down the tar sands. It won't be very pretty.

I completely agree with all of your points here so it probably doesn't matter much if we differ a bit on the relative value of different approaches to forest management in removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

	19-02-2005 18:28									#186
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quote: Originally posted by Geronimo paradoxically leaving forests intact will probably lead to no net CO2 reduction bennefit from those forests. To get an ongoing CO2 reduction from forests you have to clear biomass (wood for instance) out of the forest periodically and sequester it in some way in which it won't decay or be burned.

But that would only aggitate the problem of soil depletion, making one problem worse through a half-assed attempt to bandage another problem.


I bet we'll start doing it.

	20-02-2005 03:44									#187
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trees have very modest soil requirements anyway. As a rule forest soil is usually poor regardless.

	22-02-2005 00:25									#188
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quote: Originally posted by notyoueither Uhmmm. I don't buy that idea. The Earth functioned for millions of years without gnomes like us squirreling away the older wood.

That is because the CO2 eventually finds itself made into a component of limestone. If we released the CO2 from all the limestone on earth our atmosphere would be like that of Venus. On timescales less than a million years the climate is regulated somewhat by the biomass, but on longer time scales, the earth is in control.

	22-02-2005 00:47									#189
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It is an interesting point about limestone. The atmosphere loses a great deal of CO2 due to the creation of calcareous deposits. Of course most of that gets recycled through tectonics or later gets uplifted then eroded so on a long enough time scale it ends up back in the system.

	22-02-2005 01:06									#190
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In the end... Canada and the others who signed this will continue to burn fuels for energy years from now just like they do today. Kyoto is not the solution. Something needs to be done... for sure we're messing this planet up. But humans have always been good at that. We're just REAL good at it now. and CO2 levels are at the lowest they have ever been if you look at the whole history of the earth - not just the last 80 years. i say go global warming - because when the ice comes back the planet can't support 7 billion people (it probably can't support that many now). and the ice will return.

	22-02-2005 02:32									#191
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quote: Originally posted by My Wife Hates CIV In the end... Canada and the others who signed this will continue to burn fuels for energy years from now just like they do today. Kyoto is not the solution. Something needs to be done... for sure we're messing this planet up. But humans have always been good at that. We're just REAL good at it now. and CO2 levels are at the lowest they have ever been if you look at the whole history of the earth - not just the last 80 years. i say go global warming - because when the ice comes back the planet can't support 7 billion people (it probably can't support that many now). and the ice will return.

it is true that CO2 levels appear to have once been ten times as high as they are today as recently as about 100 million years ago. However current CO2 levels are not record lows by any stretch of imagination. In fact current atmospheric CO2 levels are the highest they have been in all of human existance.

	22-02-2005 10:02									#192
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CO2 level is the highest in 20 million years.

	22-02-2005 23:26									#193
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quote: Originally posted by notyoueither Whereas Germany and Russia are already at or near their Kyoto targets due to the shutting down of old industry, we hadn't even begun to really develop the largest oil reserves in the world.

Bingo on both counts. Russia wasn't going to sign the thing at all until Putin did the math and realized he could make out like a bandit selling carbon-emissions credits to stupid countries like us who signed the thing without having a flip-flying clue how to actually implement it. (Thanks again, Jean Chretien, you asshat)

I can't wait to see the federal government try to justify sending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to Russia for the sake of Kyoto, or what the environmental lobby in this country thinks about that precious treaty when that happens.

	22-02-2005 23:57									#194
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quote: Originally posted by Geronimo it is true that CO2 levels appear to have once been ten times as high as they are today as recently as about 100 million years ago. However current CO2 levels are not record lows by any stretch of imagination. In fact current atmospheric CO2 levels are the highest they have been in all of human existance.

Over billion of years the CO2-Carbonate cycle has regulated Earth's climate, even though the Sun has gotten 20% brighter over the past 4.5 billion years (I can't remember exactly why, I know it has something to do with the gas laws) and the earth has compensated because when the planet warms up the rate of rock weathering increases, taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and traping it in limestone. The great fluctuations in climate over millions of years occur because the systen requires mountains to weather, and when there is little mountain building activity the levels of CO2 increase and you have a "hot house" climate, like during the Mesozoic. When there is lots of active mountain building, weathering removes Co2 from the atmosphere and you have an "ice house" climate with ice at the poles, like today or the late Carboniferous.

	23-02-2005 05:14									#195
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quote: Originally posted by Geronimo it is true that CO2 levels appear to have once been ten times as high as they are today as recently as about 100 million years ago. However current CO2 levels are not record lows by any stretch of imagination. In fact current atmospheric CO2 levels are the highest they have been in all of human existance.

And the period of human existence are the right way to measure if current level are high or not ?

It seems that CO2 and temperature in the last 400.000 years follows a pattern and in current time we are reaching a peak in both :

http://arctic.unep.net/index.cfm?is...e=&data_id=9100

	23-02-2005 13:48									#196
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quote: Originally posted by optimus2861 Bingo on both counts. Russia wasn't going to sign the thing at all until Putin did the math and realized he could make out like a bandit selling carbon-emissions credits to stupid countries like us who signed the thing without having a flip-flying clue how to actually implement it. (Thanks again, Jean Chretien, you asshat) I can't wait to see the federal government try to justify sending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to Russia for the sake of Kyoto, or what the environmental lobby in this country thinks about that precious treaty when that happens.

It could well be worse. The Fed would most likely require the polluting industries to pay the money overseas for the credits. Either that or tax them to make it up.

That may threaten to shut down some of or much of the tar sands developments that are planned or underway.

We did this once before. I'm really sure we don't want to go there again.

	23-02-2005 23:42									#197
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quote: Originally posted by BlackCat And the period of human existence are the right way to measure if current level are high or not ? It seems that CO2 and temperature in the last 400.000 years follows a pattern and in current time we are reaching a peak in both : http://arctic.unep.net/index.cfm?is...e=&data_id=9100

Ahhhh, the ice core CO2 data I was talking with Oerdin about about earlier in the thread.

	24-02-2005 04:55									#198
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quote: Originally posted by Odin Ahhhh, the ice core CO2 data I was talking with Oerdin about about earlier in the thread.

The unfortunate thing about that data is that it suggests that temperatures may be expected to spike sharply upward even in the absence of human activity. That means that should this increase in temperatures has unpleasant effects the increase will be seen as proof of anthogenic global warming and the effects will be blamed on the 'blindness' and selfishness of the the GW skeptics.

If only the past trend had suggested we were in for a period of cooling

	25-02-2005 03:24									#199
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quote: Originally posted by My Wife Hates CIV In the end... Canada and the others who signed this will continue to burn fuels for energy years from now just like they do today. Kyoto is not the solution. Something needs to be done... for sure we're messing this planet up. But humans have always been good at that. We're just REAL good at it now. and CO2 levels are at the lowest they have ever been if you look at the whole history of the earth - not just the last 80 years. i say go global warming - because when the ice comes back the planet can't support 7 billion people (it probably can't support that many now). and the ice will return.

Bingo. There is something very strange about the "global warming" debate. The studies show that agricultural capacity expands enormously in a warmer world. Particularly benefitted are Northern countries like the US, Canada, Europe and Russia. The new capacity certainly is needed to support an ever expanding population.

But the environmentalists are opposed to expanding population. They are also opposed to increasing the power of the Northern states at the expense of those to the South. Therefore, their opposition to global warming "could" be political.

	25-02-2005 05:08									#200
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Ned, you seem to be ignoring the huge costs that will be entailed by getting from here to there.

Such a shift of climate-ranges could only take place peacefully if there was only one political unit on the planet, as there are around 200 climate change is a recipe for war on a vast scale.

	25-02-2005 07:26									#201
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There is also this thing called disease. When temperature increases, tropical diseases are going to spread wider.

	25-02-2005 07:34									#202
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quote: Originally posted by el freako Ned, you seem to be ignoring the huge costs that will be entailed by getting from here to there. Such a shift of climate-ranges could only take place peacefully if there was only one political unit on the planet, as there are around 200 climate change is a recipe for war on a vast scale.

el freako, I think the recipe for war is in the Kyoto protocol. Forcing some countries to cut back their industry while letting others off the hook when the countries that are cutting back are the main beneficiaries of warmer temperatures is fundamentally unfair. Sometime or the other, some prominent politician is going to start talking about the "real" objectives of the promoters of Kyoto. The world will then divide on the issue. War is a possibility as the proponents of radical change, Europe, increasing made demands on the US and others that are wholly unacceptable.

	25-02-2005 12:59									#203
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quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger There is also this thing called disease. When temperature increases, tropical diseases are going to spread wider.

Food vs. Fever. Let's vote.

	25-02-2005 13:02									#204
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It's only temporary. Ned. Then we end up with glaciers that stop somewhere south of Kansas.

Real estate investments aren't advisable unless you sell at the right time.

	25-02-2005 18:15									#205
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NYE, reminds me of the Superman movie where Lex Luther was buying up "beachfront" property in Nevada and plotting to drop California into the Pacific with a manufactured earthquake.