ITALIAN FOLLY

The market-based system used in London -- the "congestion charge" -- works like a charm -- 7 days a week!

Several Italian cities, and notably Rome and Milan, are to ban private cars from their central neighbourhoods this Sunday due to excessive air pollution. The ban in Rome, to run from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm (0900 to 1700 GMT) will apply to around half of the central area within the city's ring-road, municipal officials said Saturday. In Milan, a major economic centre in northern Italy, a similar ban will run from 9:00 am to midday and then from 3:00 to 6:00 pm. Other northern cities, notably Bergamo, Como and Brescia, were applying similar bans.

The measures come amid efforts by many Italian cities to curb pollution by placing restrictions on the movements of private vehicles. From next week both Rome and Milan are to test a measure banning cars with even- or odd-numbered license plates on alternate Thursdays. Similar schemes are already in place in cities such as Venice, Turin and Verona. Florence, meanwhile, has decreed that on three days each week vehicles that are not equipped with catalytic converters on their exhaust systems are banned from its ancient streets.

Source






NO PLACE FOR KYOTO TREATY IN ASIA

"Britain is set to take up the G8 presidency this year and Kyoto Protocol advocate Tony Blair plans to make climate change one of his top agenda items. Writing in the Economist, the British prime minister has stated that the G8 should engage actively with developing nations to ensure that they meet their energy needs "sustainably." December's U.N. climate change conference also heard calls for developing nations such as China and India to somehow get on board with the Kyoto process. Would this mean that they should eventually sign up to Kyoto-style emissions caps, perhaps after the agreement expires in 2012?

Many developing nations would be wary of doing so. Emissions caps could seriously damage the high economic growth upon which their status of "developing" -- as opposed to just simply "impoverished" -- depends." (Greg Price, The Wall Street Journal)

Price is only partly correct. The Kyoto Protocol is certainly all-pain, no-gain but the reason is that it's the most expensive way imaginable to not address a non-problem rather than Price's assertion that it is an inadequate means of dealing with a massive problem. We seem to have drifted back to media-driven hysterics regarding the enhanced greenhouse hypothesis so perhaps it's time to review that consensus thing and what some of the major players actually said:

* "In sum, a strategy must recognize what is possible. In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the prediction of a specific future climate state is not possible." -- Final chapter, Draft TAR 2000 (Third Assessment Report), IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Note that "FAR" (the Fourth Assessment Report) is expected sometime in the future.

* "The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change." -- James Hansen - sometimes called "the father of global warming."

* "The consensus is that major advances are needed in our modelling and interpretation of temperature profiles . . . and their analysis by the scientific community worldwide." -- David Parker, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, Berkshire.

What does it all mean? In short, we still can't knowledgably forecast the weather a couple of weeks hence and, since "climate" is the sum of all weather over a period, we have no means of predicting climate 50 to 100 years hence, any more than we can do so for 2 weeks from next Thursday. We know that we need to learn a great deal more about what drives long-term climate change and we all agree that major advances are needed in our climate modeling and analysis. We can not agree on the current global mean temperature and we have no idea what constitutes an optimum mean temperature for the biosphere save perhaps that it's a lot warmer than an ice age.

Given that the fossil record indicates the biosphere truly thrives when the globe is significantly warmer than today it is surely time to wonder why some people seem determined to squander enormous sums in a vain effort to prevent the world becoming a more life-friendly place."

Source (Post of Jan 14, 2004)




THE LEGAL GAMBIT BEING TRIED ON AUSTRALIA

Reef madness: "Now that Russia has ratified the Kyoto Protocol, Australia is the only industrialized country besides the United States to reject the U.N.-sponsored climate treaty. However, a report commissioned by Australian affiliates of World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace denies that Australia has any choice in the matter. The report, prepared by the Sydney Centre for International and Global Law, contends that the World Heritage Convention a treaty administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) obligates Australia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and, thus, limit its emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), chiefly carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil-fuel combustion."

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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