Happy Anniversary (Late) to the Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol (an amendment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) requiring ratifying countries to commit to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases) celebrated its one-year anniversary last week. Not too surprisingly, I didn't find a whole lot of news related to this here in the States--since the US is not a signatory to it. But Andrew Leonard over at Salon's How The World Works blog discovered one interesting piece of commentary that attacked the KP "'as economic suicide,' citing a study that had found adhering to Kyoto's mandates would cut one or two points off GDP growth in various European nations." His curiosity aroused, he checked into it:

Written under the auspices of the National Center for Public Policy Research, an ultra-conservative think tank that makes the Cato Institute look like a hotbed of raving Trotskyist revolutionaries, the piece is a classic example of the bought-and-paid-for intellectual dishonesty of so-called "climate skeptics." The study that it quotes for its GDP predictions was produced by a group affiliated with the American Council For Capital Foundation. A quick look at the ACCF's "testimonies" Web page gives the strong impression that the organization's sole purpose in life is to fight emissions caps by any means necessary.

And why not? The ACCF gets hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from ExxonMobil, a company that, as noted here before, stands to lose more from the imposition of emission caps than perhaps any other corporation on the globe.

Speaking of global warming scepticism, the NYTimes has a story on an interesting visitor to the White House:

In his new book about Mr. Bush, "Rebel in Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush," Fred Barnes recalls a visit to the White House last year by Michael Crichton, whose 2004 best-selling novel, "State of Fear," suggests that global warming is an unproven theory and an overstated threat.

Mr. Barnes, who describes Mr. Bush as "a dissenter on the theory of global warming," writes that the president "avidly read" the novel and met the author after Karl Rove, his chief political adviser, arranged it. He says Mr. Bush and his guest "talked for an hour and were in near-total agreement."

"The visit was not made public for fear of outraging environmentalists all the more," he adds.

And so it has, fueling a common perception among environmental groups that Mr. Crichton's dismissal of global warming, coupled with his popularity as a novelist and screenwriter, has undermined efforts to pass legislation intended to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas that leading scientists say causes climate change.

Mr. Crichton, whose views in "State of Fear" helped him win the American Association of Petroleum Geologists' annual journalism award this month, has been a leading doubter of global warming and last September appeared before a Senate committee to argue that the supporting science was mixed, at best.