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Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

 
 
Mortkat
 
  1  
Reply Mon 7 Nov, 2005 02:31 am
"That assumption has not been verified by any actual measurement"

Expand on this? Certainly, I am sorry I did not do so.

Again---Clouds are related to the most important natural greenhouse agent, water vapor( see my last post) The computer simulations that produce alarming levels of warming over the next century ALL ASSUME that the water vapor will AMPLIFY the small bit of warming( see satellite temperature measurements of 0.05 C per decade-last post) expected from an increase of carbon dioxide concentration in the air.

THE ACADEMY REPORT( www.nap.edu/catalog/10139.html?onpi_newbooks_060801) STATES "The nature and magnitude of these hydrological feedbacks give rise to the LARGEST SOURCE OF UNCERTAINTY ABOUT CLIMATE SENSITIVITY..."

All the computer models assume that water vapor feedbacks produce a large gain in global warming , BUT IF THAT ASSUMPTION IS UNTRUE, THAN EVERY MODEL EXAGGERATES WARMING AT THE LOWEST LEVELS OF THE ATMOSPHERE.
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username
 
  1  
Reply Mon 7 Nov, 2005 02:36 am
"experts". If you can cite a source wrong, I can mistype a word. And that "corrected" citation doesn't work either.
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Mortkat
 
  1  
Reply Mon 7 Nov, 2005 02:51 am
It works for me! You had better try it again!!
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Mortkat
 
  1  
Reply Mon 7 Nov, 2005 02:58 am
Richard Lindzen

states that cirrus clouds may act as thermostats. As the earth warms, clouds adjust in their surface coverage, shedding more energy back to space. BUT ALL THE COMPUTER MODELS ASSUME NO CHANGE IN CLOUD ACTIVITY FROM WARMING.

In facr, Lindzen believes that clouds tend to reduce much of the warming expected from co2. His group estimates that if DOUBLING CO2 would increase temperature as much as 7 degrees F( NO WHERE NEAR WHAT IS BEING TOUTED) the cloud effect alone could hold that increase down to less than 2.5 degrees F.

Is Lindzen correct? Perhaps!!!!

Richard Lindzen is the Alfred P; sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT and ONE OF THE SCIENTISTS SERVING ON THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENTIST PANEL.
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Mortkat
 
  1  
Reply Mon 7 Nov, 2005 03:07 am
Old Europe- I will continue to show how you have either misinterpreted what I have said in my original posts or how you have been mistaken.

Cheers!!!
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username
 
  1  
Reply Mon 7 Nov, 2005 03:08 am
Ah, yes, Richard Lindzen again. I thought the rhetorical style was familiar. I suspect we've met before, under other names, in other discussion groups (and indeed if you are that person, you were convinced for the longest time that your personal hero was named Lindzner).

Incidentally, recent research (recent citations of article in Science in the last two months or so--extensive coverage on msnbc) show that the old measurements which showed no increased temperature in the troposphere were in error and raised temperature was in line with the predictions of the climate change models, contra Lindzen.
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username
 
  1  
Reply Mon 7 Nov, 2005 03:30 am
Hey, Mortkat, thanks for that citation. A lot of clicking around got it to work, and guess what? Your own source invalidates your satellite data. The stuff you cite was old and didn't take into account the orbital dynamics of the satellites, and some of the guys who did the original data say some simple algebraic work shows their earlier data had errors. Thanks, big fella. More citations like that, please.
http://www.marshall.org/article.php?id=312
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Mortkat
 
  1  
Reply Mon 7 Nov, 2005 03:49 am
Gee, the orbital dynamics of the satellites???

I really don't know a thing about that. Can you explain how the Orbital dynamics of the satellites invalidates what I have posted- SPECIFICALLY!!!

or are you just trying to obfuscate?
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username
 
  1  
Reply Mon 7 Nov, 2005 04:57 am
Nope, read the citation.
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username
 
  1  
Reply Mon 7 Nov, 2005 05:07 am
Jeez, why should I expect you to read the citation? You don't even seem to read your own cites thoroughly, let alone someone else's, so, from the site YOU cite:

Some Convergence of Global Warming Estimates
by Roy Spencer
August 11, 2005

In one of a trio of new global warming papers in Science, Mears & Wentz (2005) address what they consider to be a large source of uncertainty in our (University of Alabama in Huntsville, "UAH") satellite estimate for global lower tropospheric ("LT") temperature trends since 1979. The satellite measurements come from the Microwave Sounding Units (MSUs) and Advanced Microwave Sounding Units (AMSUs) flying on NOAA's polar orbiting weather satellites. The UAH estimate of the globally averaged trend since 1979 to the present has been +0.09 deg. C/decade, considerably below the surface thermometer estimate that has been hovering around +0.20 deg. C/decade for the same period of record.

This discrepancy between the UAH satellite LT trends and the surface thermometer trends has caused some consternation, since what we understand of atmospheric physics suggests that sustained warming at the surface should be amplified with height in the troposphere, not reduced.

Mears & Wentz, who are very capable remote sensing experts from Remote Sensing Systems ("RSS", Santa Rosa, California), found that the LT trend was particularly sensitive to the UAH method for removing the drift of the satellites through the local observing time. The satellites are launched into sun-synchronous orbits that are meant to cross over the same Earth locations at approximately the same time each day. But since the satellites do not have on-board propulsion, the satellites fall slowly back to Earth, which changes their orbital characteristics. In particular, what began as early afternoon observations from the daylight side of the "afternoon satellites" orbits drift to later in the day over the several years of each satellite's lifetime. This causes a spurious cooling trend as the Earth observations are made later in the afternoon to the evening.

The UAH method for removing this drift depended upon the spacecraft roll attitude (the accuracy with which it was pointing straight down, and not sideways) being almost exactly the same during the day side of the orbit as the night side. The new research paper presents Mears & Wentz's own estimate of LT trends using diurnal cycle corrections based upon a climate model estimate of the daily (diurnal) cycle of temperature at different levels in the atmosphere, on a global basis.

Their final estimate of the global lower tropospheric trend through 2004 is +0.19 deg. C/decade, very close to the surface thermometer estimate, and this constitutes the primary news value of their report.


While their criticism of the UAH diurnal cycle adjustment method is somewhat speculative, Mears & Wentz were additionally able to demonstrate to us, privately, that there is an error that arises from our implementation of the UAH technique. This very convincing demonstration, which is based upon simple algebra and was discovered too late to make it into their published report, made it obvious to us that the UAH diurnal correction method had a bias that needed to be corrected.

Since we (UAH) had already been working on a new diurnal adjustment technique, based upon the newer and more powerful AMSUs that have been flying since 1998, we rushed our new method to completion recently, and implemented new corrections. As a result, the UAH global temperature trends for the period 1979 to the present have increased from +0.09 to +0.12 deg. C/decade -- still below the RSS estimate of +0.19 deg. C/decade.

Our new AMSU-based (observed) diurnal cycle adjustments end up being very similar to RSS's climate model (theoretical) adjustments. So why the remaining difference between the trends produced by the two groups? While this needs to be studied further, it looks like the reason is the same as that determined for the discrepancy in deep-tropospheric satellite estimates between the two groups: the way in which successive satellites in the long satellite time series are intercalibrated. There has been a continuing, honest difference of opinion between UAH and RSS about how this should best be done.

In a paper accompanying the Mears and Wentz paper, a new analysis of radiosonde (weather balloon) data by Sherwood et al. also obtains larger levels of warming than have been previously reported. No other radiosonde dataset that has attempted to adjust for the calibration artifacts discussed therein has produced warming estimates as high as those obtained in this new study. As is always the case, it will take a while for the research community to form opinions about whether the new radiosonde adjustments advocated in this work are justified. At a minimum, the new work shows that at least one method for analysis of the weather balloon data (which have traditionally supported the much smaller satellite trends from UAH) results in trends much closer to the warmer surface thermometer trends.


The third paper (Santer et al, 2005) takes a more thorough look at the theoretical expectation that surface warming should be amplified with height in the troposphere. The authors restate what had already been known: that the UAH satellite warming estimates were at odds with theoretical expectations (as had been some radiosonde measures). Now, the convergence of these newly reported satellite and radiosonde estimates toward the surface warming estimates, if taken at face value, provides better agreement with climate models' explanation of how the climate system behaves.

I only hope that the appearance of these three papers together, with considerable overlapping of authorship, does not represent an attempt to make measurements fit theoretical models. For when this happens, actual measurements can no longer fulfill their critical role in independent validation of climate models. Ideally, measurements would be analyzed with no knowledge of what any given theory predicts they should be.

What will all of this mean for the global warming debate? Probably less than the media spin will make of it. At a minimum, the new reports show that it is indeed possible to analyze different temperature datasets in such a way that they agree with current global warming theory. Nevertheless, all measurements systems have errors (especially for climate trends), and researchers differ in their views of what kinds of errors exist, and how they should be corrected. As pointed out by Santer et al., it is with great difficulty that our present weather measurement systems (thermometers, weather balloons, and satellites) are forced to measure miniscule climate trends. What isn't generally recognized is that the satellite-thermometer difference that has sparked debate in recent years has largely originated over the tropical oceans -- the trends over northern hemispheric land areas, where most people live, have been almost identical.

On the positive side, at least some portion of the disagreement between satellite and thermometer estimates of global temperature trends has now been removed. This helps to further shift the global warming debate out of the realm of "is warming happening?" to "how much has it warmed, and how much will it warm in the future?". (Equally valid questions to debate are "how much of the warmth is man-made?", "is warming necessarily a bad thing?", and "what can we do about it anyway?"). And this is where the debate should be.


REFERENCES

Mears, C.A., and F.J. Wentz, 2005: The effect of diurnal correction on satellite-derived lower tropospheric temperature. August 11, online at http://www.scienceexpress.org.

Santer, B.D., et al., 2005: Amplification of surface temperature trends and variability in the tropical atmosphere. August 11, online at http://www.scienceexpress.org.

Sherwood, S., J. Lanzante, and C. Meyer, 2005: Radiosonde daytime biases and late 20th century warming. August 11, online at http://www.scienceexpress.org.
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satt fs
 
  1  
Reply Mon 7 Nov, 2005 06:11 am
Quote:
When Cleaner Air Is a Biblical Obligation
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 - In their long and frustrated efforts pushing Congress to pass legislation on global warming, environmentalists are gaining a new ally.

With increasing vigor, evangelical groups that are part of the base of conservative support for leading Republicans are campaigning for laws that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which scientists have linked with global warming.

In the latest effort, the National Association of Evangelicals, a nonprofit organization that includes 45,000 churches serving 30 million people across the country, is circulating among its leaders the draft of a policy statement that would encourage lawmakers to pass legislation creating mandatory controls for carbon emissions.

Environmentalists rely on empirical evidence as their rationale for Congressional action, and many evangelicals further believe that protecting the planet from human activities that cause global warming is a values issue that fulfills Biblical teachings asking humans to be good stewards of the earth.

"Genesis 2:15," said Richard Cizik, the association's vice president for governmental affairs, citing a passage that serves as the justification for the effort: "The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it."

"We believe that we have a rightful responsibility for what the Bible itself challenges," Mr. Cizik said. "Working the land and caring for it go hand in hand. That's why I think, and say unapologetically, that we ought to be able to bring to the debate a new voice."

By themselves, environmental groups have made scant progress on global warming legislation in Congress, beyond a nonbinding Senate resolution last summer that recommends a program of mandatory controls on gases that cause global warming.

Officials with the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council said they welcomed the added muscle evangelicals could bring to their cause. But they agreed that it remained uncertain how much difference it could make.

A major obstacle to any measure that would address global warming is Senator James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who is chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and an evangelical himself, but a skeptic of climate change caused by human activities.

Mr. Inhofe has led efforts to keep mandatory controls on greenhouse gases out of any emission reduction bill considered by his committee and has called human activities contributing to global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

"You can always find in Scriptures a passage to misquote for almost anything," Mr. Inhofe said in an interview, dismissing the position of Mr. Cizik's association as "something very strange."

Mr. Inhofe said the vast majority of the nation's evangelical groups would oppose global warming legislation as inconsistent with a conservative agenda that also includes opposition to abortion rights and gay rights. He said the National Evangelical Association had been "led down a liberal path" by environmentalists and others who have convinced the group that issues like poverty and the environment are worth their efforts.

At the same time, Mr. Inhofe said he took the association's stance seriously because of the influence its leaders had on people who generally voted Republican. Evangelical groups including the Noah's Ark Foundation lobbied successfully in 1996 to block efforts by the House to weaken the Endangered Species Act.

Now known as the Noah Alliance, the group continues to work on environmental issues, along with groups like the Evangelical Environmental Network, which describes itself as a "biblically orthodox Christian" organization. It subscribes to a policy of "creation care," which it defines as "caring for all of God's creation by stopping and preventing activities that are harmful," like air and water pollution and species extinction.

Mr. Inhofe said many other evangelical organizations held opposing views on the environment. He cited a coalition of faith organizations, scientists and policy experts known as the Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship. The council formed in 2000 only to issue a statement of concerns that declared global warming problems caused by humans as only "speculative." A new version of the council is planning to organize shortly, and members are re-examining their stances.

A member of the original group's advisory committee, Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative group that studies moral issues and public policy, said more recent disputes among conservatives over global warming focused not on the science behind it but on ways to address it.

Mr. Cizik said the alliance's draft position on global warming was still under review by its leaders and would not be issued unless they voted unanimously to support it. If only a majority supports it, he said, it could be released as "an evangelical statement on climate change."

While he was reluctant to predict its potential political impact, he said, "I don't think there's a Republican running for the White House in 2008 who will not have to deal with the emergence of evangelicals on creation care."

John Green, a senior fellow for the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, said a policy statement from the National Alliance of Evangelicals could influence Congress. But the real test, he said, was whether the group's leaders could influence their congregants.

"It's still early in the process," he said of evangelical involvement in the environmental movement. "Among rank and file, evangelicals are as environmental as the rest of us. They're in favor of environmental protections, at least in principle."

On the other hand, he added, "they don't like environmentalists. They associate environmentalists with the Sierra Club and with people who have nontraditional religiosity. Alliance leaders have a real opportunity here, but the impediment is getting over the image of environmentalists."

Mr. Green said the full impact of the alliance position would not be known for several years. But if their support for global warming legislation increases, "then," he said, "Senator Inhofe is going to have to sit up and listen."


cleaner air
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Steve 41oo
 
  1  
Reply Mon 7 Nov, 2005 07:52 am
Thanks for the article Satt. Laughed out loud several times.

Now we should all take a lead from the Noah's Ark Foundation. They know a thing or two about climate change and floods.

Was this article a joke btw?
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spendius
 
  1  
Reply Mon 7 Nov, 2005 08:14 am
The pub I frequent is 140 ft above sea level and we often fall to discussing how pleasant it would be if it became a beach front hotel and we could,in the summer,watch the golden sunsets through the picture windows as we worked our way through the capital gains we would get from the increase in our property values.Someone suggested that we leave our car engines running on the car park.
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Steve 41oo
 
  1  
Reply Mon 7 Nov, 2005 08:24 am
spendius wrote:
The pub I frequent is 140 ft above sea level and we often fall to discussing how pleasant it would be if it became a beach front hotel and we could,in the summer,watch the golden sunsets through the picture windows as we worked our way through the capital gains we would get from the increase in our property values.Someone suggested that we leave our car engines running on the car park.


and if properties now under 120 ft of water?
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Piffka
 
  1  
Reply Mon 7 Nov, 2005 08:49 am
spendius wrote:
The pub I frequent is 140 ft above sea level and we often fall to discussing how pleasant it would be if it became a beach front hotel and we could,in the summer,watch the golden sunsets through the picture windows as we worked our way through the capital gains we would get from the increase in our property values.Someone suggested that we leave our car engines running on the car park.


That's funny. But it is true, some will surely benefit from Global Warming. Too bad about those in low-lying areas though. They'll have ample time to move but nowhere to go.

-- --
About that oft-cited George C. Marshall Institute:

Wikipedia wrote:
... is strongly associated with attempts to play up scientific uncertainty about global warming, and to prevent regulatory action on global warming. Noted skeptics Sallie Baliunas and Frederick Seitz are on its Board of Directors, Patrick Michaels is a "visiting scientist" and Stephen McIntyre, Willie Soon and Ross McKitrick are "contributing writers".[3] Richard Lindzen served on the Institute's Science Advisory Board.[4] Four members of GMI's Board of Directors have been involved with SEPP. [5] GMI is a former member of the Cooler Heads Coalition.

In 1998 Jeffrey Salmon, then executive director of GMI, helped develop the American Petroleum Institute's strategy of stressing the uncertainty of climate science.[6] In February 2005 GMI co-sponsored a Congressional briefing at which Senator James Inhofe praised Michael Crichton's novel State of Fear and attacked the "hockey stick graph". [7]

Between 1985 and 2001 it received $5.5m in funding from five foundations, including the Earhart Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation and Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.[8] GMI received $515,000 from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2004.[9] The George C. Marshall Institute's CEO William O'Keefe, formerly an executive at the American Petroleum Institute and chairman of the Global Climate Coalition, is a registered lobbyist for ExxonMobil. [10]
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old europe
 
  1  
Reply Mon 7 Nov, 2005 09:06 am
Exactly, Piffka. They are, of course, presenting scientific data. But they are only presenting one side, "as if they were lawyers hired to defend a particular viewpoint", as James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, put it.

Let's maybe look at an example of how they present data. This is from an article by Hansen:

Quote:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/edu/gwdebate/00fig1.gif

Scenario A has a fast growth rate for greenhouse gases. Scenarios B and C have a moderate growth rate for greenhouse gases until year 2000, after which greenhouse gases stop increasing in Scenario C. Scenarios B and C also included occasional large volcanic eruptions, while scenario A did not. The objective was to illustrate the broad range of possibilities in the ignorance of how forcings would actually develop. The extreme scenarios (A with fast growth and no volcanos, and C with terminated growth of greenhouse gases) were meant to bracket plausible rates of change. All of the maps of simulated climate change that I showed in my 1988 testimony were for the intermediate scenario B, because it seemed the most likely of the three scenarios.

But when Pat Michaels testified to congress in 1998 and showed our 1988 predictions (Fig. 1) he erased the curves for scenarios B and C, and showed the result only for scenario A. He then argued that, since the real world temperature had not increased as fast as this model calculation, the climate model was faulty and there was no basis for concern about climate change, specifically concluding that the Kyoto Protocol was "a useless appendage to an irrelevant treaty".

Although scientists have a right to express personal opinions related to policy issues, it seems to me that we can be of more use by focusing on the science and carrying that out with rigorous objectivity.



Look up the whole article on the NASA website, The Global Warming Debate
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JustWonders
 
  1  
Reply Mon 7 Nov, 2005 10:08 am
Walter - this is my original statement:

Quote:
OE - you forgot to mention that part of the reason for Germany's reduced emissions is the closing of all those inefficient factories in the east, following reunification. Overall, the Kyoto report card for most of the Kyoto participants is pretty sad to date, and the reductions achieved by those few in the EU are largely attributable to circumstances rather than climate policy.


Are you saying that closing all those inherited manufacturing facilities from East Germany following Germany's reunification in 1991 had nothing to do with Germany becoming Kyoto-compliant as early as 1992, but is rather a result of newly enacted climate policy?

Of those 156 countries that signed onto Kyoto, how many do you think are on track to meet or exceed the goals in emissions reduction set out for them by Kyoto?
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blatham
 
  1  
Reply Tue 8 Nov, 2005 06:50 am
Here's a curious equation.

It is advisable and prudent to make adjustments in the policies regarding individual citizens' civil liberties (access to emails and other personal records including bank account information, etc) and to make adjustments in the policies regarding military prisoners (holding suspects perhaps forever without trial or access to lawyers, institutionalizing torture, etc). Indeed, it is held by some to be so dangerous to restrict government from such adjustments as to be traitorous if one objects or works against these adjustments. And this is because the possible consequences of terrorist attack could be severe.

Yet, for government to make adjustments in policies regarding corporate liberties to pollute and effect climate change, is clearly an example of government overstepping all proper bounds of prudence and freedom, even while the possible consequences are far more severe than a terrorist attack.
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Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Tue 8 Nov, 2005 07:54 am
JustWonders wrote:
Are you saying that closing all those inherited manufacturing facilities from East Germany following Germany's reunification in 1991 had nothing to do with Germany becoming Kyoto-compliant as early as 1992, but is rather a result of newly enacted climate policy?

Of those 156 countries that signed onto Kyoto, how many do you think are on track to meet or exceed the goals in emissions reduction set out for them by Kyoto?


To start with, you said I was wrong.

(The German unification was in 1990, btw)

I'm now more than a bit perplexed.
I mean, of course the modernising of the Ruhr industry in the 60' and 70' did good as well. And all the new techniques in the 80's and 90's especially.

But until 190 there have been two German states with different, independent environmental statistics.
And from 1990 onwards, most of those factories in the former GDR HAD to be closed due our environmental laws, which existed long before Kyoto.

I admit that we still have too many brown coal power stations there, the most modern in worls - but brown coal.

I'm not sure, how many countries are on track to meet or exceed the Kyoto goals, besides that I only can rely those published figures.

Thus, I know that we minimised our figures from 1990 to 2002 at -18,5 %, others got more or even less.
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JustWonders
 
  1  
Reply Tue 8 Nov, 2005 10:11 am
Well, you are wrong, Walter, if you were saying that part of the reason for Germany's compliance isn't in large part due to reunification.

That was one of the fatal flaws considered in Kyoto when it was rejected by the US Senate 95-0.

Why do you suppose 1990 was selected as the baseline year? All those senators wondered about this, as well.

Germany did not attain compliance solely through climate policy efforts and, in fact, probably wouldn't even have met their goals without reunification - seen by many experts as a non-climate related event.

Quote:
The EU's emissions are currently 4% below 1990 levels. It is important to note that non-climate related events benefit the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions profile in both the UK and Germany, as well as the EU.

If reductions from UK fuel switching and German reunification were not considered, EU emissions would be at 1990 levels. If the UK's and Germany's overall emissions were not considered, EU emissions would be 7.5% above 1990 levels. This fact drives significant concern that several European countries will not meet their Kyoto targets.

http://64.70.252.93/newfiles/Final_Report/II_Climate%20Change/II.3.h-CompAnalofCCRespons.pdf


So, Germany achieves almost instantaneous compliance through almost no effort, yet enormous economic strain would be imposed on the U.S. (through Kyoto) to achieve similar results. Is it any wonder that 95 of our Senators (including one of the left's all-time favorites, JFKerry) said.........NO!
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