President Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol in March as being "fatally flawed" and may take credit -- or assume responsibility -- for the dramatically softened new agreement.  At home he is now roundly criticized for isolating the United States from world affairs and diminishing the country's role in the global arena.  The dominating media appeared confused and embarrassed at first, as if the Administration had shown an appalling lack of tact in not joining the rest of the world in its environmental advocacy-induced concern for the future.  For a fleeting moment when the treaty seemed doomed, MIT's Richard Lindzen, who advised the President on the poor science behind the climate movement, was a budding hero.  He quickly disappeared from view, however, when the diminished treaty was salvaged and the media promptly forgot the relevance of what he had advised the President to do.

Ratification became an issue of righteousness, brilliantly illustrating the removal of the issue from the realm of science, where it belongs, to that of advocacy, where it does not belong.  Mixing politics and science to the point where neither makes sense forced the combatants on the side of ratification to resort to faith; and this faith was, and remains, vehemently defended, as is the case with anything that is not objectively understood.

The climate treaty began to fail for two obvious reasons: the reality of the immense expense of the effort was finally recognized, and recent scientific findings had shown the rationale of the treaty to have no basis in fact.  It was embarrassingly obvious from the moment the Kyoto Protocol was hammered out, for example, that a reduction in the CO2 emissions of Western Europe, North America and Japan by about 1 billion tons annually by the year 2012 would have no beneficial effect on anything if the rest of the world, with the exception of Russia, were to continue adding some 8 billion tons of emissions to the air each year.

Worse yet, no proof, not even the slightest shred of evidence, supports the plausible-sounding notion that the warming since 1860 actually is a man-made phenomenon.  Since news media by and large lack scientific expertise and, for reasons known only to those involved, always choose to side with environmentalists, the public has had no option but to believe what they are told.  The sole "proof" of man-made global warming, for example, is its prediction by the IPCC's General Circulation Models, which by virtue of their design predict catastrophic future warming unless something far more drastic than the Kyoto Protocol is adopted.  By definition, however, these models constitute nothing but the opinions of those who design and run them.

The IPCC claims that the models are "matched" to temperature variations over the past 140 years.  Be that as it may, the same models cannot be "matched" to climate changes in the more distant past, indicating a serious flaw, that being that whatever caused warming trends in the past is not accounted for in the IPCC models of today.  And if the same factors are at work now, the IPCC computers will be blissfully unaware of what these factors portend.  At the other end of the spectrum, the models are "matched" to opinions about the effects of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, something which did not exist in the past.

When all else fails, greenhouse warming proponents resort to referring to an "overwhelming majority of scientists" who believe in man-made warming, forgetting that attempts at majority rule in science amount to nothing but meaningless oratory and that only verifiable facts count.  Sadly, a fair number of scientists do adhere to the man-made global warming belief since it has acquired politically correct status.  Adherence often enhances careers in academia and is recommended when applying for research grants.  Critics, astoundingly, are systematically marginalized.

In contrast to this sad state of affairs in what we could call the field of political climatology, it is refreshing to study the facts of the matter, most of which have come to light in the last few years, long after the political arm of science had decided that further facts might only confuse the issue.  We now know, for example, that 71% of the warming from 1880 to 1993 was caused by fluctuations in solar irradiance.  In fact, every temperature maximum and minimum over this period coincides with corresponding peaks and valleys in solar activity.

Despite the factual evidence of the sun's dominating role, greenhouse followers hold the rapid accumulation of atmospheric CO2 since 1940 to be the cause of global warming.  However, most of the past century's increase in temperature was completed in the period before 1940, when CO2 emissions were much less substantial.  Adding insult to injury, the rapidly accelerating CO2 emissions after World War II coincided with a 30-year-long cooling period, prompting environmentalists of three decades ago to warn of a coming ice age!

The absurdity of the events in Bonn is further underlined by the fact that the opinions expressed by the models indicate an emissions reduction of 60 to 80% is required to avoid disaster; yet we see the United Nations and the EU rejoicing at a mere 1.8% cut for the world's industrialized nations -- except the United States -- while the rest of the world carries on expanding emissions.  If emission limitations truly were crucially needed and the champions of Kyoto really believed in their cause, the agreement in Bonn would be described as an utter calamity.  It is instead called a victory, indicating that bureaucratic prestige and jobs at the public's expense have been saved, not to mention the credibility of involved advocacy groups.

There is no doubt the original Kyoto Protocol was flawed, as adherence to the treaty simply could not have made the slightest difference to global climate, even if the current warming were of anthropogenic origin.  The present modified treaty thus represents a symbolic agreement to do something, while it is tacitly understood that what is actually done will be next to nothing.

Existing evidence of the perfectly natural cause of the past-century warming renders the modified climate treaty fatally flawed, as U.S. President Bush rightly noted.  By not yielding to pressure but staying on a less-than-popular course of principle, the Administration arguably showed the courage of conviction rather than the insensitivity and lack of tact reputed to it.  Other nations partly followed, to avoid economic losses of significant proportion in return for little or no benefits other than those of a purely political nature.  Consequently, the original intentions of the Protocol are now seriously compromised, which should be excellent news for the economies of the nations of both the developed and developing world.  Clearly, there are no benefits in avoiding risks that do not exist.

* -- Opinions expressed above are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.