Why Doesn’t Europe Just Cut Its Greenhouse Emissions?

Why doesn’t Europe put up or shut up on reducing CO2 emissions? If the threat of global warming is so desperate, why don’t they just go ahead and show us how easy and profitable it is to switch from coal and oil to “renewable” fuels? They keep telling us we don’t need fossil fuels or nuclear power to live well, but they haven’t had the courage to live Green.

They keep saying that converting our energy systems to non-fossil and non-nuclear will create jobs, and Heaven knows Europe needs more jobs for young Muslim welfare clients. So just do it!

In fact, most European countries are still increasing their greenhouse emissions. They’re even considering buying Russian “Get Out of Jail Free” cards—emission credits that Vladimir Putin’s government got because the Soviet Union’s dirty old heavy industries collapsed in the 1990s. Buying Russian emission credits may meet the letter of the Kyoto emissions cuts, but it sure won’t reduce the fabled risk of man-made global warming.

For seven years, countries like Germany and Britain had the excuse that the Kyoto Protocol they’d signed hadn’t gone into effect. Not enough countries with enough greenhouse emissions had signed. But last year the treaty went into effect.

Now is the ideal time for Europe to demonstrate how to save the planet. They can sell all their used cars to China and go back to commuting on bikes and horse-drawn trams. They can show us how to create jobs in the windmill factories, and how to keep warm with sweaters and environmentally-friendly insulation made from recycled newspapers.

Why is Al Gore hassling Americans? Europe’s greenhouse emissions are rising faster than ours. Al can jet over there, pick up his Nobel Peace Prize, and advise them on giving up their oil-fired furnaces.

We Americans still aren’t quite convinced that CO₂ is so desperately threatening. There’s no evidence that humans caused even the modest warming we’ve had. The warming from 1850 to 1940 looks just like the moderate-but-sudden warmings of the natural 1,500-year climate cycle.

Eduard Bard of the College de France and Martin Frank of the Technical University of Kaiserslauten, Germany, recently published “Climate change and solar variability: What’s new under the sun?” in Earth and Planetary Science Letters Vol. 248. They say varying solar activity explains the Medieval Warming and the Little Ice Age, and the bulk of our recent warming. They conclude that “our present climate is in an ascending phase on its way to attaining a new warm optimum.” “Optimum” means finest.Does it make a difference to our warming predictions if a natural cycle caused the 0.5 degree C warming that occurred between 1850 and 1940? Or, if man-made CO₂ caused, not a 6 degree C warming in the 20^th century, but a 0.l5 degree C warming after 1940? With each added unit of CO₂ having less climate impact?

But Europe shouldn’t worry about American doubts. There’s a scientific consensus, in Europe, within the UN, and among the folks feeding the unverified global computer models. Europe now just needs to start shutting down those fossilized power plants.

America will be watching.