THOUGHTFUL CLIMATE

All the hurricaine activity of the past month has yielded a lot of commentary about climate change policy, 99% of which has been almost totally worthless.

THIS L.A. TIMES OP-ED BY ROGER PIELKE JR. AND DAN SAREWITZ IS NOT LIKE THAT AT ALL, IT IS SO NECESSARY THAT I WOULD SAY THAT IT IS ABSOLUTELY COMPULSORY READING -

The truth is, the number and scale of disasters worldwide has been rising rapidly in recent decades because of changes in society, not global warming. In the case of hurricanes, the continuing development and urbanization of coastal regions around the world accounts for all of the increases in economic and human losses that we have experienced.

Even if tomorrow we could somehow magically put an end to global warming, the frequency and magnitude of climate-related disasters would continue to rise unabated into the indefinite future as more people inhabit vulnerable locations around the world. Our research suggests that for every $1 of future hurricane damage that scientists expect in 2050 related to climate change, we should expect an additional $22 to $60 in damage resulting from putting more people and property in harm's way.

None of this means that we should not pursue reducing greenhouse gas emissions, or that mitigating climate change is a bad idea. But we simply cannot expect to control the climate's behavior through energy policies aimed at lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

The current international policy framework for reducing greenhouse gas emissions — the Kyoto Protocol — is far too modest to have any meaningful effect on the behavior of the climate system. And even the modest agreements reached under Kyoto are failing.

For example, the European Environment Agency reported in 2004 that 11 of the 15 European Union signatories to Kyoto "are heading toward overshooting their emission targets, some by a substantial margin." And the other four are meeting their targets only because of non-repeatable circumstances, such as Britain's long-term move away from coal-based energy generation. To make matters much worse, most of the growth in emissions in coming decades will occur in rapidly industrializing nations such as China and India, which are exempt from Kyoto targets.

To make matters still worse, because of the way that greenhouse gases behave in the atmosphere, even emissions reductions far more rapid and radical than those mandated under Kyoto would have little or no effect on the behavior of the climate for decades. As James Hurrell, a scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, testified before the U.S. Senate in July, "It should be recognized that [emissions reductions actions] taken now mainly have benefits 50 years and beyond now."

The implications are clear: More storms like Katrina are inevitable. And the effects of future Katrinas and Ritas will be determined not by our efforts to manage changes in the climate but by the decisions we make now about where and how to build and rebuild in vulnerable locations.

Those - primarily the European press, as far as I saw - that have been more or less openly claiming that the tragedies we've seen on the Gulf Coast are in some way an appropriate consequence for the US's refusal to sign on to the useless Kyoto treaty are moral as well as intellectual retards, wrong in principle and in fact. And not only because their proposed solution would have no effect on the problem - the link between climate change and increased hurricaine frequency is largely speculative -

- whoops, more on that later, I've got to go meet up with my homework groups at school. OH YEAH, it's a big stats/accounting/econ Sunday!!! I could be watching the fucking TIED-FOR-FIRST Yankees today!!! >:o TIGER WANG!!!

BON JOUR NED MILLIGAN!!!