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Hi

We need to make of fuss about the emission of the green house gases only if it really makes a difference to global climate. According to me I have a completely new theory of why global warming occurs. The theory is based on "conservation of energy" and "kinetic theory of gases". My theory can be found here.

I'm sorry, were those per-capita or total overall emissions? The graphs dont say. Where were the scales on those graphs?

Many emissions aren't reported or even reported at all in Eastern Europe.

So the numbers here mean very little.

This is the dumbest thing I have ever read. Mr. Sweet should be ashamed of himself. The accord was signed in 1997 and THAT is when the measure of progress should be made, not 1990. By printing a big chart and devoting most of the text to the "evil" US because they generated more CO2 PRIOR to the agreement you lose all cred with me. Mr. Sweet, please go and take your CO2 to Europe, where you belong.

Jack A.
MIT SM EECS 1976

The graph is very selective. In simplistic terms, if every person in Warsaw (populaation 3 million) gets a second car and that is their only source of greehouse gas then their emission will increase by 100%. If every second person in Manhattan (population 7.5 million) does the same the emission from Manhattan increase by 50%. The increase is half that of Warsaw as a percentage but greater in actual terms, 3.25 million as against 3 million, 1/12 more.
Essentially, league tables by percentages are meaningless. As engineers we should know better.

Where is the information from China? I understand their emissions are out of control, yet they somehow are not considered an "industrial (SIC) nation" (the correct term is industrialized nation) for the purposes of this report.

Some comments on comments ...

Jack A.: 1990 was the base year because this helped get the ex-USSR on board: they had an artificial advantage from their emissions dropping as a result of the collapse of their industrial base. At least they are on board, unlike the US, which is hell-bent on sabotaging any attempt at addressing climate change. This is how the treaty was constructed, it's not up to a Spectrum writer to reinterpret it.

Shishir Pandey: your theory doesn't stand up -- I posted a comment on your blog.

Andrew Blackburn: these figures are usually quoted as actual not per capita reductions but I agree this should have been made clearer, as some countries' populations are changing faster than others.

Jeremy Willden: China didn't have targets under Kyoto. The plan was for developed countries to show the way, then bring in the developing countries. This was sabotaged by the US and Australia (the latter only ratified Kyoto after a change of government in 2007).

The fact that we have such patchy compliance indicates that a lot of world leaders are poorly advised on the science. Sad to see only crackpot theories and petty point scoring when I went to this discussion page. Read the real science on this stuff, not blogs by people who don't have a clue, and pseudo-science by has-beens riding their reputations to take apart other people's good work. I had a long discussion with one of the latter category, and it turns out his fundamental problem is that he dislikes "socially motivated research". Tough if it's actually correct, he didn't appear to care about that.

I've read a lot on this subject and there is a very small core of serious scientists on the denial side, and their arguments are not holding up. I really wish they were, because the political argument may well not be won in time.

A rational "skeptical" position on any field of science which identifies a problem is to examine whether the science is overstating a problem but ALSO to examine whether it is understating the problem. These so-called skeptics have become a kind of religion in which the fundamental belief is that the mainstream is alarmist.

The move to set the baseline at 1990 not only allowed Russia to claim to meet Kyoto without taking real action, it also allowed England to benefit from the move away from coal to natural gas from the North Sea during the 1990s, and the Germans get credit for shutting down obsolete, inefficient, and polluting East German factories that could not compete. (So the English and the Germans also get a head start without making real change under Kyoto, how nice).

Looking at the period after 2000, shows what the real impact of Kyoto has been. It has been a complete failure, ill conceived, and the people responsible for it should admit their mistake.

We need a real international solution to global warming. Kyoto is a poorly constructed political stunt that has done more harm than good.