Re: Off Topic: NMD/Environment was: (Re: Ada and the NMD)

[Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <iOOl7.11306$592.607182@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>, chris.danx
says...
>Perhaps it's because Northern America is one of the biggest polluters.
>Something like 25% of all CO2 emissions are produced by Northern America.

About 17% by the US, and slowly declining (our output is increasing, but not as
much as everyone else's. See the graph at the bottom of
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/nov98/1998L-11-17-02.html ).

>If the US doesn't support it and Japan doesn't either then Kyoto is a dead
>duck.  IMO Kyoto is pants and there are better ways of dealing with lowering

You are absolutely right. Its a dead duck. Without the US it will be as useless
as the League of Nations, and it won't have the US. The only reason it happened
at all was that our VP at the time liked to think of himself as an
envirionmentalist, and thought a worldwide agreement would be his crowning
glory. The American electorate sure wasn't impressed. Talking emmision reduction
in this country is a vote *loser*.

>The recent train of thought is that we have 40 to 100 years before the
(tale of woe deleted)

No one is really sure what will happen. I've heard some scientists speculate
that it could actually touch off another ice age instead of warming things (we
are probably overdue for one anyway). The only thing I'd be willing to bet on is
that things don't stay the same, but historicly that wouldn't be a good bet
anyway. Earth's climate has always changed wildly over time.

The problem is that we don't really understand the global environmental system
yet. Given that, trying to fix a percieved "bug" in it isn't likely to be
productive (although staying the course is likely to be disasterous as well). 

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