France Tells U.S. to Sign Climate Pacts or Face Tax

This is just another in the EU's many attempts to prevent US goods from coming to market in the EU. They tried it with unwieldy regulations, and US companies managed to deal with them.

Note that the countries that produce the most CO2 (India, China, etc.) are not going to be taxed.

IBTL.

I saw something a couple of weeks ago that (I believe) it was German Astronomers had noticed that the Sun has been hotter in the past couple of years.

Also that the Martian Ice Caps are shrinking. Damn those Martians and their SUV's !!!!! Damn Them !!!!!

Global Warming caused by Man is junk science. In the mid to late 70's I remember my "science" teacher getting all worked up about Global cooling and the coming Ice Age due to our use of Fossil Fuels (and that we'd be out of oil in the mid '90's). Although seeing New York get slowly wiped out by a glacier was kinda cool.

The Sun goes through hot and "cold" cycles, The earth goes through hot and cold cycles. Can anyone explain the mini-ice age of the 1400-1500's. How about during the Roman empire when England was almost tropical ??

Who's to say what the "correct" temprature is ????


Bahhh.....

And your PhD relates to climatology in what way?

I don't have such a degree. A friend does, though.

He's not a tree hugger. Drives a Ford 250. He says global warming and the human cause is real and that the science is there for anyone who wants to spend the time in study to understand it.

Now every person has a right to their opinion, granted. However, the quality of those opinions vary. I'm a registered nurse. My opinion on neurosurgery is probably more pertinent than a plumber's. It's not as pertinent as a neurosurgeon's, though.

Bryon:

Then tell me why this guy thinks your friend is full of it?

First, we already signed the thing. We didn't ratify it however. Still, I'll assume it's a translation error.

Question: Isn't pretty much the entire European union not meeting their goals despite all efforts? Including France? And didn't that treaty set the goals for the USA even tighter than Europe? - Research says EU goal was 8%, ours 7%. Still our economy and population have been growing while the EU's have been mostly stagnating in comparison. Looking at it, considered on a per-capita and per-dollar economy basis, our goal, even though it's slightly smaller than theirs, is actually tougher.

Reading Wikipedia also shows me that the EU countries are taking advantage of the dirty soviet operations in 1990 to inflate their 1990 numbers, helping them improve their 'reductions', much of which was simply the modernization of the warsaw pact areas.

Germany blanket exempted their coal operations. Canada's chucked it aside. UK say's it's following it, but is doing in a 'future' kind of way. IE they're doing nothing except make empty pledges. China may have signed it, but they're not under any regulations for years, and they're building, on average, a new coal plant every week. China's increases alone swamp any reductions from the rest of the treaty.

Chirac is also going to be hurting in a few years if they go ahead with the plan to shut down many of their nuclear plants.

I say our response to Chirac is to ratify the thing, then go on a china style building plan for new nuclear power plants. I say ten a year. Build them to shut down the nastiest, most inefficient coal plants first.

There were/are numerous valid reasons why the US did not ratify the Kyoto Accords. The first and foremost was how it dealt with developing countries verses industralized countries.

Let France/EU tax what they want. Its just another pathetic attempt to be relevant on France's part. If anything, its a cry for help.


John

The better solution is to not allow the entire nation of France to own motor vehicles, airplanes or have electricity.

Think of the carbon savings, and the children!

Imagine the poor Europeans, having to work 40 hour weeks, no more month long holidays

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Plenty of us do work more than 40 hours a week.

The problem with Chirac wanting to tax us is we can turn around and tax them back. Smoot-Hawley started a lot of this garbage 75 or so years ago.
As far as global warming is concerned, while there is some evidence that the world is --- maybe --- getting warmer, there is little that it's caused by human beings. The carbon dioxide ice at Mars' poles is melting, too. Do we cause that? I DON'T THINK SO!!!!!! There is some evidence that the sun's output is not as consistant as once believed.
We also know for a fact that climate does change. There have been several ice-ages over the past several millions of years. Arctic ice sheets that have alternatly advanced and retreated, covering at their greatest extent much of North America, including New York City, where evidence of this remains today in Central Park.
Greenland is called "Greenland" because the Vikings once lived there and commenced agriculture there. Now, it's covered in a big sheet of ice, and it's too cold.
While a few glaciers seem to be retreating in the north hemisphere, a number of them in the southern hemisphere are expanding.
If this(Global Warming) were proven, legitimate science, then ALL scientists would be in agreement. Some aren't. And a lot are having their arms twisted by trying to deny them grants and funds for their work if they speak out against the theory. So don't tell me politics isn't involved in this -- it IS, and in a big way. A number of those promoting Global Warming are trying to hobble the U.S. They know they can't take us on militarily; they are jealous of us economically, and see this as one way to fight us without bloodshed or war.
I am not saying we should be unconcerned about the environment. I am against resuming pumping sulfer dioxides out into the atmosphere and polluting more than we are. So don't misunderstand what I'm saying here.
When I was in grammer school, the Ohio River was so polluted it caught fire. Now that river and a number of others have been cleaned up to a large extent.
We need to do more work, that's true.
But we DO NOT need to hobble ourselves with the Kyoto Treaty.
And we have to have the cajones to tell Chirac to go pouind sand......

Thank you Byron.

ok cool

All that french wine? Tax the ever loving *radio edit* out of it. Evian? Bic? Yep, tax it. They want to play the tax game we can play it as well to just as much effect.

The planet goes through natural heating and cooling cycles. It always has and anyone with any sense of science and climate knows that. There is a reason we find fossils of fish and other sea life in middle America. It used to be an ocean. I goes all the methane from dino poop? The Sahara and the region around it in Roman times was some of the most fertile farm land in the Mediteranian.

Global warming IS happening. However, placing blame on humans is junk political science.

But he warned that if the United States did not sign the agreements, a carbon tax across Europe on imports from nations that have not signed the Kyoto treaty could be imposed to try to force compliance. The European Union is the largest export market for American goods.

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Warned the U.S.? Obviously some has had a little to much vino. Perhaps the next time the Germans decide to conquer Europe again we will let them fight the entire thing themselves.

Global warming caused by humans is a joke. The earth changes climates every couple of million years, warm to cold and then back again. Working everyone up about it is just silly. Some day mother nature will pop the pimpel of humanity and there is not much we can do about it. I do believe that fuel efficiency is important along with emissions but lets keep our heads attached about it.

Like everyone else said lets tax'em back or completely ban the import of all European goods, see how they like it. Despite what everyone believes we really dont need European imports as much as everyone thinks. BUY AMERICAN again.

The climate of the Earth has NEVER been stabile. Right now, it is in a warming phase. Human activity no doubt has some effect on this, but how much is debatable. We should try to avoid "fouling our nest" as the population of the world has doubled just during my lifetime.
However, the only interest in all this that ANY of the world's governments have is strictly economic and political. None of the countries that have ratified the Kyoto agreement have done anything to meet their goals, but all have met again, (I think in Canada,) and have pledged even more stringent restrictions on themselves. Which mean nothing, and none of them will do anything about.
Economic sanctions always cut both ways. If they raise the price of their products, we buy less. If they raise the price of ours, they can afford less.
We all have to do our part to preserve our environment for our great grandchildren and future generations. However, international efforts to reduce global warming, however immenent it is, are nothing more that politics and economic warfare.
NOW, I'm outa this thread. On to something more on topic...
Marty

Thank God for global warming.

Would you druther have global cooling?

The reason they call it greenhouse gas is because it makes stuff grow.

Trees eat CO2 and excrete O2 That's how the carbon gets in the wood.

More CO2? More trees.

More Trees? More O2.

I don't care if the ocean gets two feet deeper. Let them guys down in NO wear hip boots.

Thank God for global warming.

I agree with scout 26

The sun is going through a hotter cycle. It could last for decades. The globalists are using this for a Global U.N. carbon footprint tax to drain more money from nations so the will have to use the World Bank and The IMF to comply. They are using everybody's good intentions of saving the earth to make big bucks. To heck with France, or the EU and the North American Union. Restore heavy tariffs on French wine.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/

I wonder if there is any correlation between more accurate thermometers and the increase? If they are using +/- .0001 degree C accuracy temperatures then that would make a difference. Those old mercury rectal thermometers didn't have that kind of resolution.

I saw something a couple of weeks ago that (I believe) it was German Astronomers had noticed that the Sun has been hotter in the past couple of years.
[...]
Global Warming caused by Man is junk science.

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No, it isn't junk science. Junk science is when Exxon tries to pay scientists to reach certain conclusions, for example. I've seen lots of people poo-pooh'ing global warming, but inevitably those are people who don't understand the science, or they're scientists paid by oil companies (which makes their motives, and thus conclusions, suspect. Real science should have no agenda other than determining the truth.)

I'm a professional research scientist, with a Ph.D. in astrophysics from one of the better UC's. And as an astrophysicist, I find it extremely unlikely that the recent warming trend is due to any change in solar flux.

The usual anti-GW arguments, which if those proposing them were honest enough to read about they'd never put forward in the simple black and white manner that they do.

This discussion is about firearms or firearms rights?

The Kyoto treaty was all about penalzing the US as usual. That is why the US said NO. What about China? I have yet to see any evidence that can not be interpreted as being a natural climatic cycle. We did have many hot and cold periods during the evolution of the earth as we know it today long before man came onto the scene. That is science.

The US has probably done more to clean up the environment (air, water, soil) than any country in the world. France criticizes us? Heck, you can't even find a clean public restroom there.

Sometimes I wish we would have just let the Germans keep France.

scout26
You are the only one, besides myself, that remembers "The coming ice age".
When I was a kid the dominating scare of the day was about how we were returning to another ice age and, I'm pretty sure, that is when the catalytic converter was born...So now its global warming I wonder..how did the first ice age end and why? Were the dinosaurs breathing too heavily back then?

Mr. Chirac's comments have nothing to do with the climate, and everything to do with rampant Euro-nationalism. Feh.

Besides - I like warm. I'm thinkin' that warm is a good thing.

Somebody who is smart or an apostrophisicist or something can probably tell me..........Where did all this carbon come from that is making up all this extra CO2?

Like when the dinosaurs were wading around in the primevil muck and eating those giant ferns that got trodden down into the tar pits and smashed and crushed and turned into petroleum and diamonds and coal and all like that.

Where did the extra carbon come from? At one time all this evil CO2 that is making the sea levels go up and penguins (they don't taste that good anyway) lose their habitat was floating around some where.

Did we have like a giant pure carbon meteroite smack into the earth?

It is the height of vanity, hubris to think that us dumb a$$ed humans are so all powerful that we can change the climate of the earth.

Let alone Mars.

Grow up. The universe doesn't rotate around us.

Okay, here are my thoughts on Global warming: it is happening, any time the earth warms up, that is global warming. What gets tricky is when we ask what is causing it- my personal thoughts are that humans do have a role in it, but I have never seen any evidence that supports that we are (seen all kinds of new reports, but no one has ever shown me the evidence). Now, personally, if humans do have an effect, I'm more inclined to believe it to be more a result of heat produced by human activities rather than the CO2 put out.