A recent report published by the Science & Public Policy Institute (SPPI) - http://www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org/ - shows that natural variability from year-to-year and decade-to-decade plays a greater role in Georgia’s climate than any long-term trends.
At the century timescale, Georgia’s climate shows no statically significant trend in statewide average annual temperature, statewide total annual precipitation, or in the frequency and/or severity of droughts. Instead, observations show that the first part of the 20th century was warmer than the latter half - an indication that “global warming” is anything but “global” and also provides strong evidence that local and regional processes are more important than global ones in determining local climate variations and changes.
Also, CO2 mitigation strategies will prove useless. A complete cessation of anthropogenic CO2 emissions in Georgia would result in a climatically-irrelevant global temperature reduction by the year 2100 of no more than five thousandths of a degree Celsius. Results for sea-level rise are also negligible.
Even if the entire United States were to close down its economy completely and revert to the Stone Age, without even the ability to light fires, the growth in emissions from China and India would replace our entire emissions in little more than a decade.
In this context, any cuts in emissions from Georgia would be extravagantly pointless.
“Experienced state policy makers should know to never apply an ineffective sanction. And there is certainly no purpose in applying to Georgia citizens (but not to their international rivals) a strategically detrimental sanction that would confer no climatic benefit whatsoever,” said SPPI president, Robert Ferguson. Georgia would merely be exporting its jobs – and its emissions – to Asia, where emissions are far less carefully regulated. However one looks at it, there is no possible environmental benefit in that - only harm.
To read a full account of the Science & Public Policy Institute research report, please go to: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/climatehistory_and_change.html
Contacts
Science and Public Policy Institute
Robert Ferguson, 202-288-5699
bferguson@sppinstitute.org
