January 17, 2006

RALEIGH – If North Carolina cut its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, what effect would it have on global warming? Nothing that could be measured, even after 100 years. That’s according to a Spotlight report published today by the John Locke Foundation.

Dr. Roy Cordato, JLF vice president for research, points to undisputed research by Dr. Thomas Wigley of the U.S. National Center for Scientific Research. Wigley projected global temperatures for the year 2100 if countries cut greenhouse gas emissions as called for by the Kyoto Protocol. He compared those projections with projections of global temperatures if countries did nothing to cut emissions. The difference between them, he found, was so small that they could not be measured with any contemporary temperature-measuring device.

“What Dr. Wigley found was that, if every country complied with Kyoto, it would cut global warming by less than 13-hundredths of one degree in 50 years than if they didn’t,” Cordato said. “If that’s all the difference a global emissions-cutting effort could make, there’s no way an initiative by one state could make any difference.”

That doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be any effects of an initiative to cut CO2 emissions in North Carolina, Cordato said. “The benefits of cutting North Carolina’s emissions would be imperceptible, even after 100 years,” Cordato said. “The costs to the state’s economy and in job losses, however, would be immediately evident.”

Wigley’s findings were first published in a 1998 issue of Geophysical Research Letter. Unlike most global-warming research, Cordato said, Wigley’s figures have not been disputed. They pose a huge challenge to the North Carolina Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change, Cordato said. That’s because of stipulations included in the bill that established the commission.

“The commission has to show that the benefits of its policy proposals outweigh their costs,” Cordato said. “If the commission can’t show that Wigley’s calculations are wrong, then whatever it wants to propose will be dead in the water.”

Dr. Roy Cordato’s Spotlight paper, “State Can’t Change the Weather: Even Global CO2 Reductions Have Little Impact,” is available on the Locke Foundation’s website. For more information, please contact Dr. Cordato at 919-828-3876 or [email protected]. To arrange an interview, you may also contact JLF communications director Mitch Kokai at (919) 306-8736 or [email protected].