HOW HE SEES IT Russia's vote on Kyoto treaty is revealing

By DENNIS T. AVERY
KNIGHT RIDDER/TRIBUNE
WASHINGTON -- The Russian Academy of Sciences is saying "nyet," to the Kyoto global warming treaty, following a recent international seminar on climate change in Moscow.
A team of British scientists, invited to present the scientific case for the treaty, clashed at the seminar with an international team of global warming skeptics. The British team leader, Sir David King, even staged a four-hour filibuster in a vain attempt to prevent the skeptics from being heard.
The British government desperately wants Russia to sign the Kyoto Protocol because it cannot go into effect unless countries that emit 55 percent of the world's human-produced greenhouse gases sign on. The United States and Australia have refused to sign, leaving the protocol's future in the hands of the Russians.
After hearing both sides, the Russian Academy says no. Why?
First, the academy says world temperatures do not follow carbon-dioxide levels. The warmest global climates in the last 2,000 years occurred during the Roman Empire and the medieval period, when temperatures were warmer than today -- despite lower carbon-dioxide levels.
William Kininmonth of Australian Climate Research told the Russian seminar that recent global warming can be directly linked to forces by the tropical oceans, and human-emitted carbon-dioxide could not have warmed the tropic seas in the relatively short period since 1940. On the other hand, Kininmonth says the tropical ocean warming is consistent with the estimated increase in solar irradiance over the last 300 years.
Second, the Russian Academy says there is a much better correlation between world temperatures and solar activity than with carbon-dioxide levels.
"Particles and magnetic effects from the sun are the decisive influences that control world temperatures," according to British commercial weather forecaster Peter Corbyn, who also addressed the seminar. "The evidence can be seen in the graphic representations of geomagnetic (solar) activity plotted alongside world temperatures. The two correlate very closely."
Sea levels
Third, the Russians noted that world sea levels are not rising faster with warming. Sea levels have been rising about 6 inches per century since the Little Ice Age ended about 1850. Dr. Nils-Axel Morner of Stockholm University notes that satellite measurements of sea level show no increase in the past decade. His team found evidence that sea levels near the Maldives Islands in the Pacific have actually fallen over the past 30 years.
Fourth, the Russian scientists discounted one of the most significant danger claims about global warming: a spread of tropical diseases due to higher temperatures. The Russians note that malaria is a disease encouraged by sunlit pools of water where mosquitoes can breed, not by climate warmth. In fact, the Soviet Union suffered the world's largest single outbreak of malaria, in 1923-25, when 16 million people were infected and 600,000 died.
Dr. Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute in Paris adds that "tropical diseases" are more a matter of living conditions than climate. He noted that mosquito-borne dengue fever is prevalent on the Mexican side of the Texas border and rare north of it -- thanks to the window screens and pesticides used in Texas.
Finally, the Russian Academy of Science pointed out the lack of correlation between global warming and extreme weather. Indeed, the British government delegation admitted that they could not claim any increase in storms due to climate warming. The seminar also heard from Dr. Madhav Khandekar of Canada, who has examined heat trends in Canada, thunderstorms and tornados in North America, and monsoons in Asia, without finding a link between warming and extreme weather events.
Poverty
Russian officials, from President Vladimir Putin on down, have warned that the constraints of the Kyoto treaty would prevent the Russian economy from growing, leaving large numbers of Russian citizens in poverty.
After 2012, the constraints of the Kyoto treaty must be tightened dramatically. The Ecologist magazine, published in Britain, is demanding an 80 percent cut in First World use of fossil fuels. Despite growing evidence that the predictions of runaway global warming appear to border more on fraud than on science, some foundations and think-tanks continue to spend millions of dollars pushing for costly rules to control it.
Investigating reporters might want to answer the intriguing question: who profits? One obvious answer is exponents of big government. Another is the profiteers, who hope to revive Enron's dream of making billions through the trading of carbon-dioxide emissions credits from one business to another.
When public do-gooders plead for massive measures to thwart what obviously is a phantom threat, it's time for all of us to hang on to our wallets.
X Dennis T. Avery is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services