"The Kyoto Protocol is a treaty about nothing. It's the Seinfeld (TV sitcom) conference," declared Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the free market environmental group Competitive Enterprise Institute. Horner was referring to the former NBC sitcom that billed itself as a show about nothing.
Horner, a skeptic of alarmist global warming claims, is attending the conference along with a delegation of international free market activists who oppose the United Nation's economic and environmental policies.
"This is a conference where on the very first day, the participants agreed that they would not issue an agreement at the end of the conference -- which is the only thing they typically produce [at these conferences] besides lots of C02," Horner told CNSNews.com on Sunday.
Thousands of environmentalists and government leaders are in Buenos Aires for the Conference of Parties or COP-10 meeting that began December 6 and ends December 17.
The conference in Buenos Aires will be the final meeting before the Kyoto Protocol goes into effect in February, following Russia's recent ratification. The treaty, opposed by the United States, is an international agreement that seeks to reduce developed nations' greenhouse gas emissions by 2012.
One of the chief aims of the U.N. meeting here is to put pressure on the U.S. to agree to mandatory greenhouse gas emission limits.
Fred Singer, the president of the U.S.-based Science Environmental Policy Project, opposes the Kyoto Protocol and believes that the science does not support catastrophic climate-change predictions.
"[The conference] will try to prepare the world for the fact that Kyoto is completely ineffective and is only what they call a first step," Singer told CNSNews.com before the conference began.
Singer said Kyoto proponents concede the treaty will have little, if any, effect on climate change, and he predicted that Kyoto advocates will seek much more restrictive treaties to roll back emissions.
"We already know what [Kyoto Protocol supporters] want. They want a 60 to 80 percent reduction in emissions from the 1990 base, and you compare that with Kyoto, which calls for a 5 percent reduction -- so [they want] something like 12-16 more Kyotos," Singer said.
Singer said the environmentalists and U.N. delegates ultimately will fail in their efforts to impact the world's climate -- "which means they will continue to meet every year as they have, to spend money." He predicted that the bureaucracy will grow.
Singer believes that the overwhelming focus on the U.S. and whether or not it agrees to the Kyoto Protocol is misplaced.
"By the end of this decade, the [greenhouse gas] emissions from China and India are going to outstrip U.S. emissions," Singer said, noting that both nations -- as developing countries -- are exempt from Kyoto's emission restrictions.
"As we go along further into the century, the U.S. emissions are going to become irrelevant," he added.
Horner agreed, noting that the world's developing nations are going to be the biggest greenhouse gas emitters.
"By 2025, the developed countries will be producing more greenhouse gases than all industrialized countries combined," Horner said. He cited a recent Associated Press article as an example of how the media distorts the facts on climate science.
A December 7 AP article stated, "The United States produces roughly one-quarter of the Earth's total greenhouse gas emissions."
But Horner said the AP's assertion is completely incorrect. "All of mankind -- let alone the U.S. -- is responsible for only about two-and-a-half percent of the Earth's total greenhouse gases. It's a common -- likely intentional -- misreporting on the part of AP," Horner said.
"Of the 2.5 percent of greenhouse gases that humans produce, the U.S. produces a fifth. A fifth of 2.5 percent is half a percent. So the U.S. actually produces a half a percent of the Earth's total green house gases, which is 50 times less than what the AP reported," he said.
Horner said the bulk of greenhouse gases come from nature in the form of volcanos, dying trees and oceans.
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