text: Kyoto was supposed to reduce global emissions of carbon dioxide below 1990 levels during the period 2008-2012. But since it was signed, the atmospheric concentration of this putative pollutant continued to rise, pretty much at the same rate it did before Kyoto. (Even if the world had lived up to the letter of the Kyoto law, it would have exerted an influence on global temperature that would have been too small to measure.)