Aussie wrote: If those cuts are achieved it will be via a combination of economic downturn and fossil fuel depletion, not government policy.

Would (downturn/depletion) make you happier?

I assert that this "agreement" is an attempt by political elites to get in front of a technological parade that will (without political intervention) make these goals achievable.

The extremely rapid improvement of human mastery of matter and energy will, combined with market economics, render irrelevant the CO2 control freaks and their bids for political power.

Despite the professional attendees spending government and grant money; reality intrudes.

CH4 levels are no longer rising in the atmosphere and already receding. One of the Big five GHG has been neutralized.

NO2 levels in the atmosphere are stabilized, and not rising. It is predicted that they will continue to slowly decrease. A second major GHG has been neutralized.

chloroflouro-hydrocarbon compounds have stabilized in the atmosphere and are now declining. We don't make Freon anymore. The third major GHG neutralized.

H20 which no one is even trying to control. And old line global warming scientists maintained was relatively constant, and so its GHG effect is neutral.

Except in a CO2 induced water catastrophe. They are proving wrong but they do not consider it a major GHG as its level doesn't change much except...

And finally the only remaining major GHG, CO2:

Problem 1: CO2 levels is the atmosphere as measured at the mouth of an active volcano, Mauna Loaha, are rising at a declining rate. Despite prediction the growth is slowing already.

Problem 2: New evidence from old scientific observations are kindling a scientific questioning of what constitutes a "normal level" of atmospheric CO2. Measurements by scientists of the 19th century, including Nobel prize winners, is in conflict with implied levels of CO2 produced by ice core analogues from the antipodes. The ice core analogues have now been revealed to be in conflict with each other, and a scientific scandal on processing several of them has been revealed. In any case under Occam's razor accepting a direct measurement,such as reading a CO2 measurement, is better than estimating something from the width of a tree ring in imputing a CO2 level, absent malevolence, any day.

Problem 3: In any case, CO2 is being revealed to have several attributes that are not what the global warming scientists feared. Postulated effects that must be there to produce GHG and specifically CO2 GHG, based based warming are being proven wrong. Problem 4: CO2 does not set off a "water catastrophe". Historical evidence and even the change annual winter summer solstices temperature, dwarf minute or even maximal centennial CO2 warming, and reveal no "tipping points".

Problem 5: CO2 is of lesser influence to effect the climate than originally feared as it is now calibrated and reported by the IPCC in IPCC TAR III and IPCC AR4. The Sun's output is claiming some or maybe most of the warming observed. 12-15% by more intense light as already attributed by the IPCC in AR4, and subtracted from CO2. Another 70% by modulating cloud formation on charged ion trails as partially accepted by the IPCC in TAR III and AR4 pending further experiments such as at CERN accelerator, to calibrate effect in the laboratory.

Problem 5: The uptake of CO2 by the flora of the planet is proving beyond the estimates of original climate scientists to absorb; this surprised the meteorologists but not the botanists. Plants grow better in CO2 enriched atmosphere. They evolved that way. Atmospheric CO2 is a "fertilizer" of sorts. The response to more available atmospheric CO2 is that the World is a greener place than it used to be. This is bad?

Problem 6: The ocean carbon buffer posited by the global warming scientists has been thoroughly disproven. This was a necessary assumption of a one-way trap door function that alters the exchange ratio between atmospheric CO2 and dissolved CO2 in the oceans. This needed and predicted effect has been shown to be in error. Only in this way, could CO2 exist for long periods of time in the atmosphere, and therefor persisting and accumulating to large amounts.

In the absence of a one way trap door buffer function, CO2 obeys Henry's Law of Equilibrium as does any other gas liquid mixture. The average CO2 molecule has been thus demonstrated to be no more than 5.7 years old in the atmosphere, by Henry's law and confirmed by tests with ocean water with varying amounts of carbon carbonic and carbonate "buffers". Another way of looking at this is to say that virtually all the CO2 in the atmosphere, was somewhere else, in another carbon sink as recently as 2002. Or alternatively, if Anthropogenic sources are the real difference, were to cease putting CO2 in the atmosphere, "natural levels" whatever they be, would return in but half a decade.

Problem 7: This short residence time is confirmed by analyzing data from old atmospheric nuclear Bomb tests of the radioactive created Carbon 14, measured residence time in the atmosphere at 5.7 years.

Problem 8: Recent experiments have revealed agreement with the C13 produced by cosmic rays and their residence time on the atmosphere as well. Experiments with ocean water and C12 and C13 composed CO2 molecules show none of the exaggerated solubility predicted by global warming scientists with their one-way trapdoor functions.

Problem 9: The IPCC in AR4 noted that the "buffer theory" was producing a "missing sink" of some 50% of the CO2; the IPCC was troubled by this missing sink, and said it must be found or accounted for. The new-old Science shows that it has now been accounted for, as the need for the missing sink disappears, if the "buffer effect" is minimal or nonexistent.

Thus even as CO2 levels grow at receding rates, the power of CO2 GHG declines; as Science minimizes its power to produce warming effects.

Who knew that nitrogen dioxide was a (major) greenhouse gas?

Please tell me who is paying you to put out the denialist propaganda.

Apparently someone who never took chemistry. :)

jack,

The IPCC knows that NO2 is a GHG. They discuss is at length in all their interim IPCC Reports. Try reading the TAR III or the current AR4.

But then you wouldn't know that. The Elmer Gantry flunkout, showed you a movie and you converted.

Having trouble finding it, Stan? I wonder why that is?

Still looking for the UN to tell you that NO2 is a GHG? It's been over a week, Stanley. This should have taken mere moments.