14 Feb 2005 Patrick Michaels: Kyoto is Absurd

If arguments about climate change bore you to sleepiness, this is a week to drink a lot of coffee, because the Kyoto global warming treaty goes into affect Wednesday (for industrialized nations other than the USA, Australia, Liechenstein and Monaco).

So, in between the far-more important news about who-wears-what and who-sits-where at the Michael Jackson trial’s jury-selection circus, expect to see news clips blaming the United States of America for what we are told the weather will be 95 years from now.

Some of the news coverage will be nonsense, so in the interest of balance, here is something more reliable, courtesy of the Cato Institute’s Patrick J. Michaels:

Kyoto is absurd because it does absolutely nothing measurable within the foreseeable future about planetary temperature, while one nation – the United States – bears almost all the cost. Kyoto is an economic weapon, not a climatic instrument, pointed at America. Europeans, allies or not, know this full well. That is why, for several years, not only did the French and Germans demand the U.S. implement it but do so in the way that would do us the most financial harm.

Lift a glass of bubbly on Wednesday, folks, because America has gotten away unscathed.