ITALY INCREASINGLY CRITICAL OF KYOTO

A scornful article by Signor Antonio Martino, Italy's defense minister

The devastating hurricanes that hit the U.S. recently offered "eco-doomsayers" -- who like to blame human activities, preferably of the industrial kind, for all sorts of natural disasters -- yet another chance to lash out at the Bush administration. America's "failure" to ratify the Kyoto Protocol -- regularly held responsible for extreme weather conditions around the globe -- was quickly found guilty of the destruction brought about by Katrina and Rita.

As usual, the eco-doomsayers care very little for the small fact that their sweeping accusations have absolutely no basis in modern science. First of all, it is not true that President George W. Bush is alone in opposing the Kyoto agreements that his predecessor Bill Clinton signed. In fact, when Kyoto was submitted to the U.S. Senate for ratification on July 27, 1999, the result was 95 nays and zero yeas. Not a single senator, not even from the most liberal fringe, voted in favor of Kyoto. (The ratification of international treaties requires the support of at least two-thirds of the Senate.)

Mr. Bush's position, in other words, is not simply the product of a supposedly archconservative president who arrogantly imposes his radical views on a nation held hostage by religious zealots -- as a rather popular myth here in Europe would have it. It is instead a view shared widely on both sides of the aisle in Congress and supported by the vast majority of the American public.

Second, there is no scientifically sound link between rising global temperatures and an increase in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes. Nor are the events of the recent weeks unprecedented: As Max Mayfield, Director of the National Hurricane Center, pointed out, a comparable series of hurricanes of similar intensity has already been observed in 1915.

Third, and most important, while a scientific consensus about the true nature of climate change is still lacking, we know for certain that the impact of Kyoto on the average global temperature will be negligible at best. The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecasts that without the ratification of Kyoto, the average global temperature will rise about one degree Celsius by 2050. The same panel predicts that after the implementation of Kyoto, the temperature will still rise 0.94 degrees. In other words, the benefits from Kyoto amount to about 0.06 degrees in half a century.

Remarkably, this is even the most optimistic estimate: S. Fred Singer -- the climatologist who developed the method for measuring the ozone layer -- reckons that it may be as small as 0.02 degrees. This is a difference so minuscule that our available instruments wouldn't even be able to notice it! Moreover, the U.S. is not the only country that did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Both China and India, major and growing producers of so-called "greenhouse-gas emissions," are not required to abide by its terms.

The EU countries, including my own, ratified Kyoto. That the EU would still insist on implementing the protocol must be seen as an institutional form of collective self-flagellation. Kyoto will severely penalize the European economy without bringing any real progress toward the noble aims proclaimed by the EU. As Carlo Stagnaro, environmental director at the Istituto Bruno Leoni, Italy's free-market think tank, observes, the Earth's atmosphere cannot tell European carbon dioxide emissions from the rest of the world's.

What's more, the limitations imposed by Kyoto will make our current energy problems worse. The relative slowing of oil prices after the steep rise of the last weeks must not deceive us -- the world's energy demand is bound to grow in lockstep with the breathtaking economic growth of China and India. Those countries, such as Italy, that for decades steered clear of building new power plants and gave up on nuclear power -- the cleanest, safest and cheapest energy source available today -- will need to face up to a harsh reality: Compliance with the Kyoto Protocol will punish even the existing energy-producing capacity by capping emissions.

The cost of energy in Italy, already higher than the European average, let alone that in the U.S., will go up even more. Given the country's lack of competitiveness, that can only be described as a self-inflicted wound. Perhaps the problems of our times are man-made, after all. But rather than being caused by those "neocons" in Washington, they stem from the noble intentions of environmentalists so bent on "saving nature" that in the process they wage an unremitting war against mankind and its endeavors.

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RUSSIAN MINISTER QUESTIONS RUSSIA'S PLEDGES UNDER KYOTO TREATY

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a BBC interview Thursday Russia's pledges under the Kyoto Protocol on emissions of greenhouse gases were not quite fair. More specifically, those pledges ignore the fact that Russia is not by any means the largest polluter of the Earth's atmosphere, while the countries emitting far greater amounts of greenhouse gases do not have such restrictive commitments, Lavrov said.

He confirmed that Russia would take part in subsequent talks but with due account of facts and its own national interests, as well as the international community's interests. Lavrov indicated that Russia is establishing dialogue with European partners at the moment, but the pledges would be subject to new negotiations after 2012.

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POLITICAL HORSE-SENSE OVERTURNS ENVIRONMENTAL NUTTINESS FOR ONCE

The Premier of my home state of Queensland overturns a ban on dolphin feeding from his own environment supremo

Mr Walker, 42, of Barnacles Cafe, who manages the Cooloola Coast feeding operation with business partner Troy Anderson, had been locked in battle with the Environment Protection Agency since it banned feeding the dolphins in August. "I didn't know if I could fight the powers-that-be another day when I got a call from the Premier himself," Mr Walker said yesterday. "I have no idea how he got my mobile number, but he said, 'Mate this has gotten out of hand'."

Mr Walker said he sat in disbelief as Mr Beattie told him all legal action had been dropped and dolphin feeding would continue indefinitely. "A weight lifted and my fear of losing everything, especially our friendships with the dolphins, was gone," Mr Walker said.

Mr Beattie's overturning of a controversial decision by Environment Minister Desley Boyle to ban the feeding of two wild dolphins had the coastal community 280km north of Brisbane celebrating last night. "It's going to be a good night in Tin Can Bay," Mr Walker said. For the past two weeks Ms Boyle had threatened fines up to $250,000 for anyone who fed the two Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins, called Mystique and Patch. The Environmental Protection Agency believed the feeding sessions were endangering the animals, which have frequented the area for 13 years.

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CRYOSAT LOST

The Greenies won't care. They KNOW anyway

Space agencies are investigating why a rocket carrying a European mission to map polar ice fell into the ocean. The European Space Agency's Cryosat spacecraft was lost minutes after lift-off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia on Saturday evening. Russian officials say an error caused the rocket's second stage to run out of fuel, so it could not eject the probe. The 90 million pound (135m euro) craft was designed to monitor how the Earth's ice masses are responding to climate change. The Esa satellite was launched at 1902 local time (1602 BST), but mission controllers failed to make contact with the spacecraft as planned some two hours later.

Cryosat had a main mission goal of studying the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, which appears to be thinning rapidly. He said there was no other satellite like it on the books. "Space is a risky business, it always has been, it doesn't always go perfectly," he said. "We just have to think about where we go from today." Any moves to rebuild the mission now rest on funding. Ministers from member states must decide in December how much money to commit to Esa's science programme. But any "Cryosat 2" will face stiff competition from other projects such as a future robotic mission to Mars.

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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.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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