Would Kyoto treaty work?

The bottom line of government-2

Before people surrender wealth to governments in response to global warming, they should have reasonable assurance that programs on offer will work. The international protocol signed in Kyoto, Japan, last year can't satisfy this simple standard.

It can't satisfy the standard because it can't calibrate the problem-a worst-case guess based on a sweeping hypothesis grounded in a single observation.

The observation: The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has grown since humans began improving their lives by burning fossil fuel.

The hypothesis: Because CO₂ is a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, a build-up of it must heat Earth's surface.

The worst-case guess: This postulated heating will change the general habitat catastrophically.

Fading certainty

Certainty fades at each step. The Kyoto treaty anchors itself in the assumption that humanity can't wait to be sure about global warming, that if CO₂ emissions don't decline, catastrophic greenhouse effects may be irreversible before they become certain. Such prudence might be persuasive if observation supported the warming hypothesis and if there were no imaginable alternative to catastrophic outcomes. But neither condition applies.

Warming expectations diminish as knowledge grows about climate phenomena and as computer models gain sophistication. And satellite measurements of the lower atmosphere, which are more precise than surface measurements, show no warming trend for the past 20 years.

Even if a warming trend existed, the CO₂ buildup might not be its cause. And there is as much reason to expect benefit from warming and CO₂ growth as there is to expect harm. A warmer climate, richer in CO₂, would better support plant growth and, thus, animal life.

Politicians eager to act on global warming will hear none of this. Pointing to signatures of 1,600 scientists on a petition last fall supporting the Kyoto protocol, they declare that consensus exists on climate science and press forward. Last week, however, the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine published a petition opposing the protocol and challenging its assumptions. The number of scientists signing it: 15,000. So much for consensus.

As with the issue of trade sanctions, discussed here last week, the oil industry has much at stake in global warming. The Kyoto response would force consumers of fossil energy to switch to more costly fuels, to pay stiff taxes on carbon emissions, or both. For the sake of future market growth and the interests of its customers, the oil industry should apply the bottom line of government activity: Will it work?

Within its own parameters-emission reductions-Kyoto's reach is limited. The countries that will contribute most to future CO₂ growth have no obligations under the Kyoto protocol to cut emissions and will not volunteer for any. So, at best, Kyoto might lower the rate at which CO₂ enters the atmosphere.

Regardless of what happens to CO₂, measured temperatures might go up anyway. Warming observed in surface measurements since the late 1800s falls within the range of natural fluctuation. Some scientists attribute it more to sunspot activity or the end of a cooling era than to greenhouse effects. If they're right, cutting CO₂ would affect temperatures negligibly if at all.

Behavior changes

Where ratified and implemented, the Kyoto initiative will require great and costly changes in human behavior. Yet it will address in measurable ways only a postulated contribution to an imagined threat and not the threat itself. Since there's no way to identify temperature changes attributable to a CO₂ buildup now, there can be no way to isolate temperature changes attributable to controls on emissions.

There can be no way, in other words, to tell if the program works. It amounts to government activity with no bottom line, which threatens human welfare more certainly than global warming ever will.

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