Canadian ratification of the Kyoto Protocol is cause for alarm in the provinces: ``Kyoto is the key to the kingdom, and for some of the more ambitious centralizers in the government of Canada, Kyoto looks like a splendid opportunity to transfer a significant portion of Alberta's resource revenue to the federal government,'' writes Barry Cooper, Professor of Political Science at the University of Calgary.
An analysis of the politics, science, and economics of Kyoto-the subject of the January 2003 issue of the Fraser Forum-is full of lessons for the United States.
In a mockery of the process of representative government, ratification was pushed through the House of Commons on Dec. 10 by a confidence vote, usually reserved for money bills. Yet the sector of the economy most responsible for implementing the accord opposed early ratification by a margin of 3:1, and 91% reported having received no information from the federal government on the Kyoto Protocol, even though most collect emissions information for the government.
Prime Minister Jean Cretien, who forced the ratification, wants Kyoto to be his legacy: but the implementation of a 30% reduction in emissions below 1990 levels will be ``nasty, brutish, and long.''
Implementation will require the functional equivalent of a carbon tax. Research economists predict loss of 3% of Canada's GDP. The price of electricity would rise 85% in some provinces, natural gas by 40 to 90%, and the after-tax price of gasoline by 50%. The cost to the average family of four is estimated to be $3,300, or nearly 10% of its pre-tax income.
The impact, if Canada manages to achieve the targets, would be to decrease its share of global carbon emissions from 2% to 1.4%. The impact on climate would be negligible: ``Even NASA scientist James Hansen,'' writes Kenneth Green of the Fraser Institute, ``the modern `father of climate change,' agrees that it would take 30 Kyoto-like reductions-with full global compliance-to negate what the United Nations climate panel sees as the threat of manmade global warming'' (ibid.).
The economic consequences are minimized or glossed over by Kyoto proponents, or called irrelevant in the light of global apocalypse. In fact, the whole approach of economics, which discounts future events, is under attack:
``A straightforward view typical of an economist would be to conclude that climate change was important if it were principally responsible for a high proportion of current biotic changes. By this criterion a climate fingerprint appears weak. Most short-term local changes are not caused by climate change but by land-use change and by natural fluctuations in the abundance and distribution of species,'' (Parmesan C, Yohe G, A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems. Nature 2003;421:37-41).
If the desired conclusion is not obtained, then the global warmers change the method: ``We search for a climate fingerprint in the overall patterns'' (ibid.), a ``biologic'' model relying on statistical meta-analysis (metaphysics?) to seek a ``driver of small but consistent impact'' that ``systemically affects century-scale biologic trajectories and ultimately the persistence of species'' (ibid.). In this way, a ``diagnostic fingerprint'' was found for 279 species (ibid.). By extrapolation, ``many more far-reaching effects on species and ecosystems will probably occur in response to changes in temperature to levels predicted by IPCC, which run as high as 6° C by 2100'' (Nature 2003;241:57-50).
Even the politically correct AAAS concedes the existence of controversy, as over which data constitute a ``fair sample.'' The biologists on Working Group II of IPCC set the confidence level for a climate fingerprint at 95%, while nonbiologists, mostly economists, thought the confidence level was no more than 33% to 67%. The latter are expected to ``come around'' eventually (Science 2003;299:38).
For the present, the United States plans to rely on ``voluntary'' cuts in emissions, until 2012, and the Bush Administration proposes a 4-year plan to study global climate change further. Some ``climate experts'' consider additional study to be ``redundant'' and just ``an excuse to delay tough actions'' (Heilprin, AP, 12/4/02).
In addition to an article on the sun-climate connection by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, well known to DDP meeting participants, Fraser Forum provides an analysis of a major source of uncertainty in climate change computer models: assumptions about emissions. The Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies heavily on emissions inputs from the Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES). The famous global forecast of a 1.4 to 5.8° C temperature increase depends on projecting annual per capita carbon emissions of at least 1.2 tonnes, increasing to 2.5 tonnes in 2050. In fact, for the whole of the period 1970 to 1999, emissions per person exceeded 1.2 tC only once, in 1979. The level has been quite stable around 1.14 tC since 1970, despite striking increases in average per capita income. If the pattern persists, total emissions will fall by 10.3 to 12.1 gigatonnes by 2050. The low-end of the SRES emissions scenarios is the only one that is plausible, and that predicts a ``warming'' of 0.1°C per decade.
The SRES assumes no meaningful technologic change. It assumed, for example, that global coal consumption would increase between 4 and 31% over the 1990s, whereas it actually fell by 10%. The whole SRES exercise has been called an ``insult to science,'' and its method, ``lunacy,'' in the view of John Reilly of the MIT Joint Program the Science and Policy of Global Change (McKitrick R, Fraser Forum op cit., Fraser Institute, 4th fl., 1770 Burrard St, Vancouver BC, V6J 3G7).
Then there are natural emissions, as from the 1997-1998 wildfires in Indonesia, which consumed vast deposits of peat and released as much carbon as 13-40% of annual anthropogenic emissions from burning hydrocarbon fuels (Nature 2002;420:29-30, 61-65). Such events could be used as an argument for an even more expansive and intrusive global imperial regime of central planning, as they are attributed to land-use changes, such as agriculture, logging, and road-building.
There will be resistance. The preamble to Alberta's Climate Change and Emissions Management Act asserts that the province (not Ottawa) ``owns natural resources in Alberta on behalf of all Albertans,'' and that the ``determination of undue burden [of Kyoto implementation] must be made by the jurisdiction accepting the burden.'' But how can Alberta stand against the federal government?
The Canadian secession or ``separatist'' movement is even stronger in western Canada than in Quebec. However, the punishment inflicted by central powers on defiant political subdivisions-even those once considered to be ``sovereign states''-can be nasty and brutish indeed, as shown by the War Between the States. Canadians are already suffering the consequences of the effective destruction of private property rights. An individual who grows grain on the Canadian prairies is an economic serf. Selling grain to any entity other than the Wheat Board is punishable by imprisonment and confiscation of property (Fraser Forum, op cit.).
Kyoto implementation will weaken still further the discretion of provincial and local governments and the individual private property rights of citizens-also known as freedom. Clearly, centralization of power-empire building-is both the result and probably the intended objective of the Kyoto Protocol.
The 2003 meeting of DDP will be in Phoenix, AZ, at the airport Marriott, Saturday, July 12-Sunday, July 13: mark the dates! A special group tour will be organized for the preceding Friday or following Monday. Speakers confirmed to date for the all-star program include Otto Scott, Bernard Cohen, Arthur Robinson, Robert Balling, Willie Soon, J. Gordon Edwards, Peter Duesberg, and Russell Blaylock.
DDP, 1601 N. Tucson Blvd. Suite 9, Tucson, AZ 85716, (520)325-2680, www.oism.org/ddp.