William Yeatman

Schools will have to issue a warning before they show pupils Al Gore's controversial film about global warming, a judge indicated yesterday.

It is well-understood that EU bureaucrats and politicians worship rhetoric over substance, but nowhere in “Yo, Kyoto – Bush shifts his stance on global warming” (Fiona Harvey, Financial Times, 1 October , 2007) did the FT actually note comparative U.S. and EU greenhouse gas emissions performance. The piece dwells on U.S. “rhetoric”, its “position”, “attitude” and “motivation”, which apparently are of more use to FT readers than actual U.S. performance for which it is so excoriated by the embarrassingly under-performing European Union. Further, as regards the White House claim that “Last year America grew our economy while also reducing greenhouse gases,” FT felt compelled not to quantify (or debunk), but only to wistfully mischaracterize it as a claim that “going green can lead to economic growth.” Despite Bush having apparently already "gone green", FT then notes that “the EU and other governments that have been frustrated at the lack of progress on tackling greenhouse gas emissions left last week’s meetings unconvinced.”

Disappointed though Europe may be in the U.S. rhetoric, imagine their despair over actual comparative performance, figures for which are publicly available. Under any relevant modern baseline, e.g., the year the Kyoto promise was made (1997) or thereafter, U.S. emissions have risen far more slowly than those of its noisiest antagonists. For example, over the past 7 years for which we have data (2000-2006), the annual rate of increase for U.S. CO2 emissions is 0.38%, compared to the EU’s 1.07%. Indeed, over the same period even the smaller EU-15 economy has increased its CO2 emissions in real terms greater than the U.S. by more than 20%. FT readers, and this debate, deserve better.

In his National Review Online piece yesterday, Dow Chemical’s Andrew Liveris paints a near-tipping-point picture of the U.S. manufacturing sector to support his call for Carteresque restraints on energy consumption. But there are two problems with Mr. Liveris’s argument: the predicate and the proposition.

I love the UNFCCC's decision to "rethink" the list of haves and have-nots for a post-2012 agreement, such that Russia is preemptively given the nod that it need not fear about pressure to stay in the game.  Bulgaria, which was recently bribed in (a la Russia) on the promise of selling 60 MMT to Europe — Heaven knows, they'll need them — has no business being among the "haves" and we thank them for playing, here's a lovely parting gift.  Romania, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland certainly no longer need apply, either, but make way for Bermuda, the Channel Islands, San Marino…who knows, maybe the Savoy will seize the moment to make a comeback (don't forget Qatar, UAE, Kuwait and Singapore, all of whom are far richer than many of the Kyoto Parties).  EU-member and Kyoto free-rider Cyprus is as wealthy as South Korea; surely we should expect them to pony up now?

Obviously this isn't a coherent argument to reshuffle the lineup.  What changed?  Nothing, except Russia made clear what others have known and predicted for years: they had no intention of being in the agreement should it require them to do anything other than receive wealth transfers.  What a lovely, face-saving way to preemptively deal with that: naturally, being among the 155 recipient nations is precisely where they belong.  But consider the thinking behind this step-down by the UNFCCC.  Apparently the agreement, whose original aim was to slowly include all countries (or certainly most) is really just for a rotating bunch of about 34. 

That'll teach you to grow.

The front-line of industrial nations fighting climate change needs shaking up to reflect that outsiders such as South Korea are now richer than insiders like Russia, the U.N.'s climate chief said on Monday.

Antarctic Sea Ice Undergoes Massive Meltdown In Less Than Two Weeks

According to New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin, that is.  In today’s Science section, Revkin writes that “there has been a slight increase in sea-ice area around Antarctica in recent decades.”  But in a Sept. 21 article, “Scientists Report Severe Retreat of Arctic Ice”, he reported that “sea ice around Antarctica has seen unusual winter expansions recently, and this week is near a record high.”

So if in the space of eleven days Antarctic sea ice has gone from a near-record high to only a slight increase, that indicates massive recent melting, doesn’t it?

How did Revkin miss this?  Perhaps because he’s been focusing on the melting of Arctic sea ice. 

In fact, he’s been so focused on the Arctic that his Sept. 21 article devoted one photo, one headline, and about 500 words to the Arctic melting, while the near-record high in the Antarctic was mentioned only in the very last sentence.

Well, we may not be getting much journalistic balance from the New York Times, but I guess you could say we are, technically, getting both sides of the story. 

"With climate change, we are looking at sharing the resources of the world and we are looking at bringing some justice in the way they are distributed — so the rich world has to reduce its emissions so that the poor world can increase theirs.”

Green activist Sunita Narain,

“Rich Must Reduce Emissions for Poor to Develop”, Reuters, 2 October 2007

As I’ve talked with other industrial and business leaders in the U.S. over the past several years, I’ve come to one inescapable conclusion: This country is in the middle of what could be a long and painful energy crisis.

I have noted previously the outrageous moralizing by (particularly, but by no means exclusively) Denmark’s Environment Minister last week, when she claimed to be an increasingly impatient emissary on behalf of “the planet”, demanding that the U.S. make the same promise as Europe to reduce its greenhouse gas (principally CO2) emissions.

That same week, I now see, Denmark released figures showing that it increased its 2006 CO2 emissions by 16.1% over 2005 levels, citing their growing economy (which relied on coal-fired power, it seems).

U.S. emissions dropped 1.3% over the same time, while the economy grew by 3.3%.