Much Ado About Nothing?

Stop the presses! Stop what you're doing and let up a whoop of joy! Remember what you were doing on this day because...President Barack Obama helped bring about an "unprecedented breakthrough" with developing countries to curb greenhouse gases!

The United States, China, India, South Africa, and Brazil have all agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions and allow for independent entities to review these countries' plans and accomplishments. Also, we have committed to cap global temperature increases to 2 degrees! And all it takes from us is support of a global fund to the tune of $100 billion! Of course, we don't know all the details of the deal yet because there are some details to hammer out, but isn't it great that we've made such important progress?

Okay, enough sarcasm for one blog post.

Is it just me, or is this agreement destined to flop? For one thing, no matter how much we limit greenhouse gases, we can't overcome nature. Man's contribution to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is less than one percent. That leaves a whopping 99%-plus that we can't control, which includes volcanic eruptions. Unless Obama has a way to make volcanoes control their greenhouse gas output, our impact is going to be minuscule at best.

Then, there's the global temperature cap. We can't even predict the weather five days from now with any degree of accuracy. What makes these folks think we can control the planet's temperatures? And here's the trick. It's frightfully easy for the AGW cultists to "prove" that their efforts are working.

Adopt the science of those who have shown the planet has been cooling since 1998.

At the heart of the Left's environmental science is blatant dishonesty. (See the Climategate emails and the Left's attempts to spin or deny them for proof.) It would be easy to delay the release of the temperature calculations to coincide with any kind of plan they cook up in Copenhagen. All it takes is a little time, and the AGW cultists will believe that the Copenhagen agreement has impacted the planet (all without proof, of course).

I agree that we should do what we can to limit the damage we do to the planet, but making meaningless, expensive, simplistic, and unrealistic agreements isn't a way to do it. Let's actually...oh I don't know...do something that actually addresses the problem. Just sayin'.