This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.
Objection:
The Kyoto treaty, even if fully implemented, would only save us about a tenth of a degree of future temperature rise many decades from now. What a waste of effort! You can see for yourself here at Junk Science's website.
Answer:
There are three big problems with this claim.
Firstly, this is really a red herring. The purpose of Kyoto is to establish an international mechanism for dealing with global warming by taking the first tentative steps towards a difficult goal. Political and economic mechanisms need to be worked out and agreed on. You may as well time me waking to the side walk where I parked my car (<cough>) bicycle, and then tell me at this rate I will never get home.
Secondly, Kyoto is a step by step process whose second phase (much less third, fourth etc.) has not even been negotiated yet, so how can anyone claim anything about how effective it is going to be? Junk Science and other sources of this propaganda are starting their dubious calculations from the assumption that Kyoto ends in 2012 when round one is over, this is just Plain Wrong.
Thirdly, the temperature several decades from now is to a large extent already determined by the current energy imbalance due to the extra CO2 already in the atmosphere right now, so short of a complete cessation of emissions today, there is no foreseeable way to avoid the bulk of the warming that is "in the pipeline". This is mostly the result of the extremely large thermal inertia of the oceans and therefore the climate system as a whole, and it means that our actions today, or our inactions, will have consequences felt several decades hence.
Finally, a rather personal peeve I have with this type of criticism. In general I have a big credibility issue with people who vociferously criticize any attempt at a solution and yet propose nothing in its place. You'd think if they were so sincerely concerned about how ineffective Kyoto will be (as frankly, they should be!) they would be agitating for more action, rather than shrugging their shoulders and saying "I guess we should just sit it out". It makes me think of some guy standing on the sidewalk watching all the neighbors fight a house fire, saying "you'll never make it, don't enough people."
Shut up and help!
This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.
"Kyoto is Ineffective" was first published here, where you can still find the original comment thread. This updated version is also posted on the Grist website, where additional comments can be found, though the author, Coby Beck, does not monitor or respond there.
Politics
Environment
Comments
"In general I have a big credibility issue with people who vociferously criticize any attempt at a solution and yet propose nothing in its place. You'd think if they were so sincerely concerned about how ineffective Kyoto will be (as frankly, they should be!) they would be agitating for more action, rather than shrugging their shoulders and saying "I guess we should just sit it out"."
You're in the area of economics now, and a better question is not about some level of effectiveness -- it's about opportunity costs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost.
Public Policy makers (who listen to economists, and it's the economist who factor scientific data into their models -- this is where the REAL GAME takes place) are starting to decide that the "costs" of stopping global warming outweigh the "costs" of a warmer world. Economist Bjorn Lomborg does a good job in explaining why this is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtbn9zBfJSs
~ Best,
Charters
Posted by: The Charters Of Dreams | September 14, 2008 10:04 AM
Well, I'm not a global warming skeptic. Just about the only thing I suppose I am inclined to agree with the skeptics on is this issue, that Kyoto (at least from a climate change standpoint) won't do much good. You haven't really made an effective argument to the contrary here. I suppose one thing that could be said, with respect to Kyoto, is that it will have collateral benefits unrelated to climate change, e.g. as polluter nations buy credits from poorer nations, those poorer nations (ideally) will then spend such revenues on infrastructure, feeding the hungry, supplying medicine, et cetera... the position that Kyoto is symbolic or just a stepping stone to the real solutions to come is hardly persuasive given that most of the developed signatories to the treaty are failing to meet their carbon-cutting goals even now; the prospect of, I can only guess, more aggressive cuts as a next step (while perhaps a beautiful idea) is not realistic.
Posted by: Nathaniel Pitts | September 15, 2008 3:24 AM
Kyoto is ineffective and wasteful. What the critics are saying isn't that we should do nothing, it's that if the walk to your bicycle is inefficient and wasteful, park your bike closer to the building. A bad answer to a problem isn't "better than doing nothing", it's simply a bad answer. If we took the money wasted on Kyoto and put it into alternative energy technologies so that they would become economically attractive, people would adopt them without bullying and penalties and we would have actual benefits both economically and in co2 reduction.
I predict that the next stages of Kyoto will be as wasteful and ineffective as the first because Kyoto is primarily a political weapon and not a serious attempt to best address co2 emissions.
Posted by: Brian | December 22, 2008 7:27 AM
I've heard several times that, considering the massive changes we've already seen and how much is already in the pipeline, as you had mentioned, that the climate change has already passed its tipping point and it is indeed too late. Whether this is true or not, I don't think "we're going to die anyways" is an acceptable excuse not to try. If we don't fix the error, we're already guaranteed a massive die-out, but if we start fixing the error now, there's at least a chance the nay-sayers are wrong. Kyoto isn't enough (especially when the US refuses to sign, and we're the biggest producer of CO2), but it's a start.
Posted by: Mrs. W | January 3, 2009 12:12 PM
Australia will introduce its own version of C02 reduction soon and will drop its levels by 5%, alot of people say this is a waste of time as we only produce 1% of global emissions so why bother. It is a fair point when most of the world are doing nothing. all the big polluters get thier credits for free!!!! the only thing this scheme will achieve is raising the governments tax intake a tax that comes from its citizens not from the companies that produce the C02 in the first place. The Aust version will do absolutely nothing to reduce the C02 content we produce now.
Oh and by the way we are about to allow another pulp mill to be built in Tasmania and apart from all the pollution it will pump into the river it will also increase our C02 foot print. How many carbon credits do you think this pulp mill will need to buy? NONE.
I have another idea why does the government not put solar panels on all the rooves of all the houses and factories an Australia, one can only imagine how much electricity this would generate reducing our dependence on coal fired power, we could reduce our C02 by a lot more than 5% thats for sure.
We do not do this because this will cost the government money whereas a bogus tax grab allows them to get money for doing nothing. Australia is full of examples of government stupidity and incompetence all they are interested in is taxing a problem that does not exist.
Posted by: Crakar14 | January 4, 2009 10:06 PM
The real argument is whether the expenditures required to achieve the Kyoto goals would not be better spent preparing for the climate change which appears to be increasingly inevitable. Coastal cities will have to be evacuated. Droughts and famines will have to be dealt with. Civil unrest is a possibility.
Posted by: RM | January 22, 2009 11:01 AM
The problem is that the solutions being offered don't provide any detectable relief from this so-called catastrophe. Congress is now discussing an 80% reduction in U.S. greenhouse emissions by 2050. But that would affect the global temperature by only a few hundredths of a degree by 2050 and a few more hundredths by 2100. We wouldn't even notice it.
What action(s) should the world take to stave off AGW?
At what cost?
And at what benefit?
I think until these questions are answered, it's fairly irrelevant if it's happening or not.
Posted by: Paul in MI | May 30, 2009 2:20 PM
It makes me think of some guy standing on the sidewalk watching all the neighbors fight a house fire, saying "you'll never make it, don't enough people."
Should this be: "You'll never make it, you don't have enough people"?
Posted by: Milan | November 6, 2009 2:05 PM
>Shut up and help!
Maybe instead of spending huge resources on the effort that won't change anything, that resources should be spent so the humanity can adapt to the climate change.
If a hurricane is coming towards you and you are a mayor of a town in its track with a limited budget, than if you spend your budget on some sort of action that decreases the strength of the hurricane by 1% and not on the evacuation/building a bunker where people can hide, than you are a criminal, responsible for all the deaths.
Again, spending all those trillions on "green technologies" and not on preparation/adaptation of humanity to inevitable climate change, may result in millions of preventable deaths after all, so
Shut up and help!
Posted by: N | November 8, 2009 2:59 AM