Has the Kyoto protocol made any difference to carbon emissions?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/nov/26/kyoto-protocol-carbon-emissions?intcmp=122


Vice president Al Gore, centre, shakes hands with the Japanese prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto at talks in Kyoto, Japan. The US signed but subsequently refused to ratify the treaty. Photograph: Katsumi Kasahara/AP

Under the Kyoto protocol most developed nations other than the US committed themselves to targets for cutting or slowing their emissions of the key greenhouse gases that cause climate change. The targets varied between nations. Some were allowed to increase their emissions by a certain amount; others were required to make significant cuts. The average target was a cut of around 5% relative to 1990 levels by 2012 (or more accurately 2008–12).

To give a sense of how countries have performed against their targets, in the charts below we've plotted the gap between each nation's percentage target (data from here) and its actual percentage change between 1990 and 2010 (data from here). So for example if a nation had a -10% target but its emissions increased by 10% it scores -20, of if it had a 5% target but cut by 15% it scores 10.

Here's how the results looks when land use emissions and sinks are excluded:

***graphs at link