Canute was the legendary king whose sycophantic followers praised his power and wisdom. He was The One of his time. He once stood on the shore and commanded the waves to halt. As the story goes, he was exercising his ego when in fact he was giving his followers a dose of reality — the power of man over nature is finite and inconsequential.
We were reminded of this as members of the G-8 met in Italy on Wednesday to agree in principle to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050. The aim is to hammer out a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012. In December, the U.N. is convening a meeting in Copenhagen to forge a binding consensus on reduction targets.
The announced goal, which President Obama has signed on to, is to keep the earth's average temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). That should not be a problem. While the warm-mongers tout 1998 as a record warm year, no year since has been as warm as the earth has, in fact, cooled during an unusually quiet solar cycle.
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