China objects to European efforts to curb its airlines’ emissions (as everyone should)
COULD a fresh row over airline emissions lead to a global trade war? That is the scariest prospect raised by China’s objections this week to the European Union’s new plan for controlling greenhouse-gas emissions from aeroplanes. The scheme, which came into effect on January 1st, forces airlines flying into the EU to buy tradable carbon credits as part of its broader emissions-trading system.
Many countries are unhappy with the policy, but China’s proclamations this week—official news agencies report that China has “banned” its airlines from participation without specific government approval—appear to be an escalation. Not least because Chinese and European officials are expected to meet for high-level talks in Beijing next week. It also raises the temperature of the row in advance of a meeting of 26 dissenting countries, including India, China, Russia and America, in Moscow on February 21st.
As an effort to make airlines pay for their pollution, the EU’s action is overdue. In global terms, their emissions are modest, about 3% of the total. Yet they are rising fast: between 2005 and 2010 they grew by 11.2%. Meanwhile the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), which was charged with taking steps to mitigate them, has done nothing of the sort. In 2004 it ruled out negotiating a global deal to curb the emissions of all airlines, and instead recommended that countries include their airlines in whatever national mitigation scheme they had in place. In 2010 it changed its mind, announcing that it would, after all, initiate a “framework”—whatever that might be—for a global deal to address airline emissions.
Unconvinced, the EU decided to push ahead with its plan to make all flights into the EU subject to the emissions-trading scheme (ETS). This is now enshrined in European law. The only ways foreign governments could extricate their airlines from it would be to stop them flying into the EU, or make them subject to an equivalent mitigation regime of their own.
EU: WAKE UP! THE CO2 FARCE HAS GONE FAR ENOUGH! CO2 advocates are just repeating past claims; the skeptics are increasing in large numbers; proving the advocates wrong in every single scientific claim – the well-read scientists are winning.
At last count, 22 non-fiction books support the position that the CO2 theory is wrong. Most important, the reason for the very modest warming the Earth has seen since the cold Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850) has been well documented – see Unstoppable Global Warming by Singer and Avery. The famous physics lab CERN, in 2011, has confirmed previous studies discussed in this book; the cause is the sun, amplified by cosmic rays (particles, mostly protons from previous supernova explosions – star dust). The modest warming and cooling cycles have been seen in temperature proxy records, from around the world, for many thousands of years, and in ice cores for the last one million years.
Moreover, the “sun/cosmic ray” cause matches our solar system sojourn around the Milky Way galaxy. The times the Earth passes through the spiral arms of the galaxy (heavily laden with cosmic particles) correlates extremely well with the major glaciations in Earth’s history over several billion years (read Heaven and Earth: global warming, the missing science by Ian Plimer, a famous geologist from Australia).
CO2 has never, and is not now causing any warming of significance. 98% of mankind’s CO2 emissions occur in the lowest levels of the atmosphere where laboratory results show additional CO2 saturates. The resultant temperature of a parcel of air from latent heat release, convection, etc. determines its blackbody radiation – a spectrum of many wavelengths. Both CO2 and water vapor have large wavelength ranges (open windows) that emit heat to space – acting as natural brakes on runaway warming of the atmosphere.
Further, increased CO2 is good for plants, animals and humans. There is no life without the mutual exchange of CO2 and oxygen between us and the plant world. At 200 ppmv the plant world would be rendered inoperable; at the current CO2 levels of 390 ppmv we have a green revolution. Doubling or tripling the CO2 causes insignificant warming (it has been 7 times what we have today with a major ice age; and 25 times what we have today with no runaway heating) and great benefits for food production. Read the NIPCC report Climate Change Reconsidered for the positive benefits of increased CO2.
The advocates refuse to read these books. The masses do not understand them – it is a difficult subject for a non-scientist. I have made it easy for the non-scientist by creating a fictional story about a nationally televised debate on this issue in 2012. The novel’s hero is a climate scientist that has studied both sides of the issue; he is a climate modeler who has switched sides and now is against the advocates. With 40 years of media hype, the rich business men (with carbon offset money in their pockets) and powerful politicians (having raised fossil fuel taxes in virtually every country of the world) do not want the “reverse Robin Hood” scenario to end “robbing from the poor and giving to the rich.”
The powerful opposition has heard the hero, a charismatic speaker, in action and wants him out of the way — drama ensues. The hero’s final speech summarizes the flaws in the CO2 theory in laymen’s terms. See http://www.rexfleming.com to read EXPOSURE.
Or the countries implement a tit for tat tax on EU exports and hand it over to their airlines to lower the cost.
Or the airlines can simply not participate in the carbon credit scam, save their money, and wait for the EU to sue. At that point the airlines join together and counter-sue the EU to prove that CO2 is changing the climate. This would be a long and very difficult task — dragging out the “experts” from both sides — with the EU eventually losing. This will result in the EU paying for all the legal fees, and possibly treble damages for any possible losses associated with the EU procedures.