Kyota hypcrisies

George Will:

Enough already. It is time to call some bluffs. John Kerry says that one reason America has become an "international pariah" is President Bush's decision to "walk away from global warming." Kerry's accusation is opaque, but it implies the usual complaint that Bush is insufficiently enthusiastic about the Kyoto Protocol's binding caps on emissions of greenhouse gases. Many senators and other experts in climate science say we must "do something" about global warming. Barack Obama says "the world" is watching to see "what action we take."

Fine. President Bush should give the world something amusing to watch. He should demand that the Senate vote on the protocol.

Climate Cassandras say the facts are clear and the case is closed. (Sen. Barbara Boxer: "We're not going to take a lot of time debating this anymore.") The consensus catechism about global warming has six tenets: 1. Global warming is happening. 2. It is our (humanity's, but especially America's) fault. 3. It will continue unless we mend our ways. 4. If it continues we are in grave danger. 5. We know how to slow or even reverse the warming. 6. The benefits from doing that will far exceed the costs.

Only the first tenet is clearly true, and only in the sense that the Earth warmed about 0.7 degrees Celsius in the 20th century. We do not know the extent to which human activity caused this. The activity is economic growth, the wealth-creation that makes possible improved well-being—better nutrition, medicine, education, etc. How much reduction of such social goods are we willing to accept by slowing economic activity in order to (try to) regulate the planet's climate?

We do not know how much we must change our economic activity to produce a particular reduction of warming. And we do not know whether warming is necessarily dangerous. Over the millennia, the planet has warmed and cooled for reasons that are unclear but clearly were unrelated to SUVs. Was life better when ice a mile thick covered Chicago? Was it worse when Greenland was so warm that Vikings farmed there? Are we sure the climate at this particular moment is exactly right, and that it must be preserved, no matter the cost?

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President Clinton and his earnest vice president knew better than to seek ratification of Kyoto by a Senate that had passed its resolution of disapproval 95-0. Fifty-six of those 95 senators are still serving. Two of them are John Kerry and Barbara Boxer. That is an inconvenient truth.

Elizabeth Kolbert fights strawmen in defending the Globo warmer's agenda. She still does not explain the melting of the polar ice caps on Mars and the implications that might have for Earth also being warmer. Opinion Journal notes the report has substantial downward revisions on the impact of global warming and notes that early estimates of human contribution to warming were substantially overstated. Then there are the models used for the projections:

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U.N. scientists have relied heavily on computer models to predict future climate change, and these crystal balls are notoriously inaccurate. According to the models, for instance, global temperatures were supposed to have risen in recent years. Yet according to the U.S. National Climate Data Center, the world in 2006 was only 0.03 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in 2001--in the range of measurement error and thus not statistically significant.

The models also predicted that sea levels would rise much faster than they actually have. The models didn't predict the significant cooling the oceans have undergone since 2003--which is the opposite of what you'd expect with global warming. Cooler oceans have also put a damper on claims that global warming is the cause of more frequent or intense hurricanes. The models also failed to predict falling concentrations of methane in the atmosphere, another surprise.

Meanwhile, new scientific evidence keeps challenging previous assumptions. The latest report, for instance, takes greater note of the role of pollutant particles, which are thought to reflect sunlight back to space, supplying a cooling effect. More scientists are also studying the effect of solar activity on climate, and some believe it alone is responsible for recent warming.

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Hey, you mean scientist have actually noticed the impact of solar activity on climate? Could that be what caused the changes to the polar ice caps on Mars? Wouldn't that be a real bummer for the control freaks who want to "manage" the climate by controlling every aspect of economic activity? But, if they can really control the climate, can they make Washington feel like San Diego year round?