STUPID IRISH

I haven't heard of any other country paying for their breaches of this nonsensical treaty

Ireland could face a total bill of between EUR500 million and EUR600m for failing to meet its greenhouse gas limits under the Kyoto Protocol. But the Government yesterday said it would only have to pay EUR280m once a series of gas-cutting measures were introduced. A report commissioned by the Department of Environment found Ireland significantly in breach of its limits under the Kyoto agreement.

The legally binding treaty sets Ireland to a greenhouse gas emission limit of 13% above 1990 levels by the first commitment period 2008-2012. The report estimates that Ireland will produce 8.1 million more tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum than it is supposed to under the protocol. The Government plans to pay for the violation through an emissions trading system, under which countries breaching their limits can buy credits from countries below their limits. The consultants estimate the average price of carbon in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme will be EUR15 for the period 2008 and 2012. This would lead to an annual bill of EUR121m and a total bill of EUR607m over the five-year period.

The consultants said a range of cost-effective 'abatement' measures would be possible, reducing emissions by 1.34 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum. This would mean Ireland would produce 6.8 million extra tonnes per annum - resulting in an annual bill of EUR102m and a total bill of EUR510m. A spokesperson for the Department of Environment said the Government would only have to buy 3.7 million carbon credits per year between 2008-2012. He said this would be achieved by emission reductions in the non-trading sectors of the economy, participation by Irish industry in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and the purchase of carbon emission credits. "The figure of 3.7 million credits is not being revised upwards on the basis of the preliminary projections and the State will not be expected to purchase 8.142 million tonnes of credits per annum," he said. He said this would result in an annual cost to the exchequer of EUR55.5m and a total cost of EUR277.5m. Green Party spokesperson for Finance Dan Boyle TD said the Government continued to be negligent in failing to put in place fiscal measures targeted at those who have created our level of carbon dependency.

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BRITISH TORIES WIMP OUT AGAIN

Britain's main opposition parties are uniting today to call for a tough new policy for tackling climate change. The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are seeking cross-party consensus on countering global warming and new measures to cut greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide which cause it. The Lib-Con pact has been prompted by evidence of rapid climate change advances, such as this year's record melting of the Arctic sea ice, and by a sense that Britain's climate policy is starting to drift. UK CO2 emissions, which are meant to be going down, have gone up for three years in a row, and recent comments by Tony Blair have prompted questions of his commitment to the Kyoto protocol, the international climate change treaty.

The Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives believe the situation is so serious, and the time for action so limited, that normal party politics should be put aside. They want the three main parties to unite around a common position on global warming, which would involve a more rigorous approach to tackling CO2 emissions. They suggest there should be compulsory annual cuts in greenhouse gases, and that an independent body be established to monitor emissions. The idea of a cross-party initiative has come from Norman Baker, the Liberal Democratenvironment spokesman, and it has been accepted by his Tory counterpart, Oliver Letwin. In a Commons debate on climate change today they will make their case for unity.

Margaret Beckett, the Environment Secretary, described the idea as interesting. But she told Mr Baker: "The Conservative positions on a number of key issues, their leadership election, and your own ongoing review of all Liberal Democrat policy means that this would not be an easy discussion."

Government sources said that a fortnight ago Mrs Beckett wrote to Mr Letwin, pointing out that John Redwood, the Tories' spokesman for deregulation, recently said that "the fashionable media have decided that climate change is one of the biggest challenges to mankind, but they ignore the fact that the earth has lived through hotter times than today."

Mr Baker said he was disappointed in Mrs Beckett's response. "It looks to me as if the Government is finding reasons not to agree, rather than accept a degree of common ground and build on that."

Mr Letwin said: "Since this is the biggest environmental threat - and one of the biggest problems of any kind - facing humanity at present, it is right that the UK should develop a new approach which is based on cross-party consensus."....

Britain's CO2 emissions - along with those of many other European countries - have been steadily going up, largely because of a switch from burning gas in power stations, to cheaper but more carbon-rich coal. The Government accepts that as things stand it will not meet its target of cutting CO2 emissions to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010, and has instituted a review of its climate change programme to try and achieve this. The Government is confident it will hit its Kyoto target of cutting UK greenhouse gases by 12.5 per cent by 2010.

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MILLENNIAL-SCALE CLIMATE VARIATION AT CHESAPEAKE BAY, USA

From CO2 Science Magazine, 12 October 2005

What was done:

As scientists seek to determine the climatic impacts of rising anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, it is critical that they first obtain a firm understanding of the forcings and feedback factors that contribute to earth's natural climate variability. Only then can they honestly assess the likelihood that an anthropogenic influence may be evident in historical temperature data. Consequently, and in an attempt to advance our knowledge of natural climate variability, Willard et al. utilized pollen assemblages identified in four sediment cores extracted from the mainstem of the USA's Chesapeake Bay as a proxy for the winter temperature of this region over the past 10,000 years.

What was learned:

Multi-taper harmonic and power spectral analyses of the pollen data revealed five highly significant centennial- to millennial-scale oscillations with periods of 148, 177, 282, 521 and 1429 years, the troughs of the latter of which oscillations are temporally correlated with relatively prolonged minima in Pinus abundance and represent winter temperature declines of up to 2øC. The most recent such minimum was associated with the Little Ice Age and represented a two-stage event. The first and more severe low-temperature stage occurred between 650 and 550 years BP, while the second occurred between 450 and 350 years BP. With respect to the cause of the 1429-year millennial-scale oscillation, Willard et al. note that the climate cycle correlates well with a similar-scale cycle of solar activity evident in cosmogenic isotope records. In addition, they say it is well correlated with proxy climate cycles found in records from Greenland, the North Atlantic and Alaska, which have also been shown to be correlated with cyclical changes in solar activity.

What it means:

Evidence for an approximate 1500-year solar-driven climate cycle continues to grow, suggesting to us that the warming that has occurred since the end of the last cold stage of the Little Ice Age is most likely natural in origin.

Reference:

Willard, D.A., Bernhardt, C.E., Korejwo, D.A. and Meyers, S.R. 2005. Impact of millennial-scale Holocene climate variability on eastern North American terrestrial ecosystems: pollen-based climatic reconstruction. Global and Planetary Change 47: 17-35.

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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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