It may not be a household word, but by now the Kyoto Protocol has become a well-known political slogan. President George W. Bush has called it “fundamentally flawed,” while some environmentalists in America and Europe have said it is essential for saving the Earth’s climate and the future of humanity itself.
The Kyoto Protocol is a treaty intended to ration the use of energy to address the concerns of those who believe we face a global warming catastrophe. These worriers include not only environmental groups and anti-capitalist radicals, but also a surprising number of mainstream technocrats throughout the West.
But the facts have always made it clear Kyoto would be outrageously costly and completely ineffective as designed, and it would not noticeably influence the climate. More importantly, in light of recent developments, the treaty is essentially defunct. Now may be the ideal moment to reexamine the origins and shortcomings of the Kyoto Protocol, and to learn its lessons before future global warming treaties repeat its mistakes.
A Treaty on Shaky Ground
The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997, insists on lowering global greenhouse gas emissions in the hope of reaching stabilization at some level, preferably one that is not too high. The basic requirement of the protocol is that industrialized nations (and only industrialized nations) reduce emissions of greenhouse gases to a level 5 percent below emissions in 1990 by the period 2008-2012.
But this requirement does nothing to stabilize the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. At best, Kyoto would merely slow somewhat the rate of rise, which by the year 2020 will be largely determined by emissions from major developing countries like China, India, Brazil, and Mexico–none of which is covered by the accord.
The protocol’s main emphasis is on carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels. By contrast, the powerful greenhouse gas methane is barely mentioned–perhaps because its main sources, while human-related, are “natural”: rice agriculture and cattle-raising. The protocol does not mention other factors that affect the climate, such as sulfate aerosols from coal-fired power plants, soot from diesel engines, and smoke from the burning of biomass (mostly in developing countries).
The Kyoto Protocol, therefore, would have practically no impact on global temperatures. Even if scrupulously adhered to, it would reduce the calculated temperature rise by 0.05 degrees Celsius at most–an amount so insignificant it can hardly be measured.
When confronted with that little-publicized fact, supporters of the protocol admit Kyoto is intended only as a first step, and that greenhouse gases will someday have to be further reduced by between 60 and 80 percent of 1990 emission levels. This fact, too, has not been much publicized by Kyoto’s supporters, and with good reason: Such drastic reductions would cripple the global economy.
Questionable Science
To understand the flaws of the Kyoto Protocol, it is necessary to look first at the climate science that allegedly provides a rationale for its provisions.
The groundwork for Kyoto was laid by a series of studies conducted by a United Nations-appointed group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Its first report was issued in 1990 and suggested that if the concentration of greenhouse gases were to double, a global warming of between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius would follow. Those numbers were based on crude climate models whose validity had never been tested by observations–and even today, there remains no validation for the climate models that are at the heart of most claims of climate catastrophe.
The IPCC maintained, however, that the model results were “broadly consistent” with observations. This claim referred to a warming trend that had begun in the late nineteenth century and continued until about 1940. That trend actually had little to do with greenhouse effects but seems to have been simply a natural fluctuation of the climate, a recovery from the preceding “Little Ice Age.”
Driving this point home, the global climate cooled after 1940 until about 1975–in spite of the copious emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the industrial boom years after World War II. By the 1970s, the persistent cooling trend had become a hot topic, so to speak. Magazines and books fretted about a coming Ice Age, and the federal government supported studies that calculated the economic disasters expected from a colder climate.
That cooling presented an embarrassment for climate models that could explain only greenhouse warming. In response, the IPCC added a cooling factor to its models of the atmosphere, consisting of tiny aerosol particles produced by the emission of sulfur dioxide from electric power plants. The second IPCC report, published in 1995, invoked the “sulfate-aerosol effect” and produced the memorable but essentially meaningless phrase that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.”
The sulfate aerosol “fix” proved to be in conflict with real-life observations, so it was swept under the rug in the third IPCC report, issued in 2001. It turns out these supposedly cooling aerosols are produced mainly in the northern hemisphere, where industrial activity is highest. Therefore, if the models are correct, the northern hemisphere would presumably warm more slowly than the southern hemisphere–that is, the sulfates would shield the northern hemisphere from more sunlight, reduce incoming energy, and thereby offset part of the calculated greenhouse warming. But observations show exactly the opposite. The highest rate of warming in the past 25 years has occurred at northern mid-latitudes.
An even more serious embarrassment to the IPCC claim is the fact that the global atmosphere has not warmed appreciably in the last quarter-century. The IPCC climate models very specifically call for the atmosphere to warm faster than the surface as a result of the greenhouse effect. The warming rate is supposed to increase with the altitude up to about five miles. But data from weather satellites and weather balloons show no significant rise in the global mean temperature of the atmosphere, in stark contradiction to the climate models.
Despite the paucity of proof for past climate claims, the third IPCC report said “new evidence” makes it likely “most of the warming observed over the last 50 years” comes from the human production of greenhouse gases. This “new evidence” is based on a single analysis of “proxy” data (that is, data that do not come from thermometers but rather from sources like tree rings, ice cores, corals, and ocean and lake sediments) showing the twentieth century to be the warmest in the past thousand years. Not only does this analysis conflict with other published analyses of proxy data, but it was also exploded in a re-analysis published in 2003, which showed the IPCC claim was the result of a gross mishandling of the underlying data. If the dispute is settled in favor of the re-analysis–as seems likely–the IPCC claim of a “human influence on global climate” will be severely damaged.
The response of global warming theorists to these contrary findings has been twofold: One strategy has been to attack and attempt to discredit both the satellite data and the re-analysis of the proxy data; the other has been simply to ignore any contrary evidence. They make repeated references to the “warming of the past 25 years” but never mention the total lack of warming evidenced in both satellite and balloon observations.
To ensure the disparities do not get publicized, environmental lobbying groups (and their allies in politics and the media) generally refer to the science as “settled.” They refer to the “scientific consensus” of the 2,000 or so scientists connected to the IPCC, even though probably no more than 100 of those are true climate specialists; many are actually social scientists and government functionaries, and the list includes some skeptics of global warming who have expressed doubts about the IPCC’s conclusions.
Dead on Arrival
Even before the protocol was adopted, it became clear it would include strict targets and tight timetables for reducing emissions in the industrialized world, with pernicious economic consequences for the United States.
In response, the Senate preemptively and unanimously passed the Byrd-Hagel Resolution in June 1997, which expressed the body’s opposition to any attempt to impose strictures that would exempt developing nations and “result in serious harm to the economy of the United States.” (The United States would have had to reduce greenhouse gases to a level 7 percent lower than they were in 1990–which by 2012 would amount to a cut of roughly 40 percent.)
And so, even though the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in December 1997 and the Clinton administration signed onto it in 1998, the White House never submitted it to the Senate for ratification, knowing it would be dead on arrival.
Even without American accession to the protocol, Kyoto-related meetings continued: in Buenos Aires in 1998, in Bonn in 1999, and finally, in The Hague in 2000. These annual two-week conferences came to involve some 180 national delegations, with many smaller committee meetings in between.
In addition to those delegations, a permanent bureaucracy had been established, headquartered in Bonn, with offices also in Geneva and Nairobi, where the U.N. Environmental Program (UNEP) is located. Counting all of the scientists, economists, and policy experts who contributed to the IPCC reports, the effort now employs thousands of people, mostly in the U.S. and Europe.
By the summer of 2000, almost all the European countries had ratified the protocol, but the United States, Russia, Japan, Australia, and a number of Eastern European nations had not. Since the protocol could not go into effect until 55 percent of all industrial nations contributing at least 55 percent of emissions had ratified it, there was great pressure on the United States to do so. All this came to a head in The Hague in November 2000.
The U.S. delegation, handpicked by the Clinton-Gore White House, wanted very much to achieve a compromise with the Europeans that might make ratification by the Senate possible. The compromise would involve “emission trading” among nations that faced different costs of compliance, as a means of lowering the overall cost. The EU opposed it, although Europe had granted to itself the option of emission trading among European nations.
This so-called European “bubble” allowed the EU to set specific reduction quotas for each country. Some European countries were even permitted to raise their emissions over the 1990 levels, since they were still in a developing stage. Others, like Germany and Britain, took it upon themselves to take larger cuts, up to 25 percent.
While this sounds like a very large reduction in emissions, it must be recognized that the choice of 1990 as the base year made it relatively easy for Germany and Britain to meet these targets. Germany had just completed its reunification and was shutting down the former East Germany’s highly inefficient industries. Britain had started to substitute North Sea natural gas for coal in its power plants, which drastically reduced the country’s carbon dioxide emissions.
The sessions in The Hague were highly dramatic, and the conference had to be adjourned without an agreement. Had Europe compromised and permitted emission trading, as requested by the U.S., an agreement might have been possible. But western European nations, especially France, wanted to see the U.S. make painful cuts in its use of energy rather than permit the purchase of unused emission permits from Russia.
Meetings in Morocco in 2001 finally resulted in an emission-trading compromise that persuaded Japan to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. The compromise also seemed at first to appease Russia. In September 2003, however, Moscow decided the protocol was “scientifically flawed,” and that Russia would likely not ratify it.
Kyoto Is Dead, Long Live Kyoto
For a short while, there was talk among the Europeans that they might simply pursue Kyoto unilaterally–even without the United States and Russia. They are still stewing over it, with some public disagreement between the EU commissioners for energy and for the environment.
There were similar calls in Washington to institute a Kyoto-like regime unilaterally. In the U.S. Senate, John McCain (R-Arizona) and Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut) introduced a bill to do just that: a unilateral reduction of carbon dioxide emissions over time, albeit with the possibility of emission trading and credits for carbon dioxide “sinks,” like planting trees. The “McLieberman bill” (as it came to be called) failed to pass in November 2003, with senators voting mainly along party lines.
What, then, is the future of the Kyoto Protocol itself? Without Russian participation, it is unlikely the 55 percent threshold can be reached. The Kyoto Protocol, it seems, is dead.
But the concept of Kyoto may not yet be dead. Over the past 12 years, an impressive set of stakeholders has been built up: international bureaucrats and national bureaucracies; industries that build, sell, and operate wind energy and solar energy technologies; and a multitude of non-governmental organizations that make their living from climate scares.
It remains possible that a “son of Kyoto” treaty will someday follow in the footsteps of the now-defunct protocol. It would probably sound tougher than the original, perhaps requiring a 25 percent reduction with respect to 1990 emission levels, rather than 5 percent. But instead of carrying a target date of 2008-2012, the next-generation Kyoto might hold off until perhaps 2040-2050–well beyond the terms of office of current politicians. While the new Kyoto would at least pay lip service to the obligations of developing nations, it would probably not require them to reduce emissions.
Rational Environmentalism
The first and most important step toward a more sober environmental policy has to involve the underlying science. The assumptions of the global warming models must be publicly, repeatedly, and systematically critiqued, and when they do not stand up to scrutiny, these assumptions and policies must be rejected by the United States government outright.
The second step will need to be based in economics. Economists must offer convincing demonstrations of what is already apparent from the data: that modest warming correlates with increased GNP, higher average income, and enhanced living standards across the globe; and that carbon dioxide, rather than being a pollutant, benefits the growth of agricultural crops and forests. Economists must also demonstrate that control of carbon dioxide imposes huge economic penalties, particularly on lower-income groups. This is a matter of making the facts known.
Some years from now a future generation, having survived real threats–like international terrorism or weapons of mass destruction–may look back on this episode in human history as a passing aberration that gripped much of the Western world.
By then, fossil fuels may be mostly depleted, the cost of energy may be held in bounds only through massive investments in nuclear power or yet unforeseen technologies, and the chief worry may be that of a coming ice age still looming as our mild interglacial period draws to a close.
S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and president of the Science & Environmental Policy Project based in Arlington, Virginia. His most recent book is Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate (Independent Institute, Oakland, California). A longer version of this article appeared in the Winter 2004 issue of The New Atlantis.
Dr. S. Fred Singer was among the first and most-prominent scientist in the world speaking out against global warming alarmism.
