Slashdot Mirror

AFAIK, Morocco is still in PCA. Here's a link for you to misunderstand: https://climateactiontracker.o...

China is doing incredibly well, vastly exceeding its already aggressive targets: http://climateactiontracker.or...

"Chinaâ(TM)s CO2 emissions appear to have peaked more than a decade ahead of its Paris Agreement NDC commitment to peak its CO2 emissions before 2030. The latest analysis from the Climate Action Tracker indicates that CO2 emissions may, in fact, already have stopped increasing and reached peak levels.

The on-going reduction in coal use for the third year in a row has had a major impact... China has already surpassed solar PV deployment target for 2020, and has now doubled its PV target for 2020 in response..."

Their main criticism is that the NDC target is too low (50-70% below 2005 levels) and should be further reduced to meet the maximum 2C global temperature rise goal, which is likely to happen in the next 5 year plan.

Here's the US assessment, by the way: http://climateactiontracker.or...

China is doing incredibly well, vastly exceeding its already aggressive targets: http://climateactiontracker.or...

"Chinaâ(TM)s CO2 emissions appear to have peaked more than a decade ahead of its Paris Agreement NDC commitment to peak its CO2 emissions before 2030. The latest analysis from the Climate Action Tracker indicates that CO2 emissions may, in fact, already have stopped increasing and reached peak levels.

The on-going reduction in coal use for the third year in a row has had a major impact... China has already surpassed solar PV deployment target for 2020, and has now doubled its PV target for 2020 in response..."

Their main criticism is that the NDC target is too low (50-70% below 2005 levels) and should be further reduced to meet the maximum 2C global temperature rise goal, which is likely to happen in the next 5 year plan.

Here's the US assessment, by the way: http://climateactiontracker.or...

You should check again - every country pledges to a series of goals when they enter/ratify the accord: http://climateactiontracker.or...

Playing Mod Roulette because you can never tell when the mods on Slashdot will allow different points of view especially evil Disabled Christian Conservatives like me.

As a disabled leftist European liberal this opening alone compelled me to answer to you.

As an example, the Paris agreement that Trump exited was non-binding. Get it, NON-Binding as in no penalties if a country breaks the rules. So what is the point besides a feel good measure.

The point is to agree and plan together to reduce the emissions. The reason it's not binding is that big players like the US, China and Russia will not agree to a binding treaty. But the general point is getting everyone on board and realizing that things need to be done to curb emissions globally.

China and India can build all kinds of coal plants and pollution factories without penalty until what 2030 and then what, they promise to be good???

First off, 2030 is the target year at which china is supposed to reach its peak emissions. That is, their total emissions (including traffic) will grow in absolute terms until the year 2030 at which point they're supposed to start going down. Look at what they're actually planning to do:

China’s NDC’s targets, if reached, would result in GHG emission levels of roughly 12.8–14.3 GtCO2e in 2030, a 64%–70% reduction of emissions intensity below 2005 levels (using the latest projections on GDP development (IEA, 2016b)). The NDC carbon intensity targets on their own would lead to 2030 emission levels of 14.0–16.0 GtCO2e. As the intensity targets are likely to be reached automatically if the non-fossil targets are achieved, and our rating is based on achieving all NDC targets, we do not address the intensity targets separately here. (In earlier assessments, we explicitly noted that China’s INDC target on its own would result in an “inadequate” rating.)

However, this range also implies that China’s NDC and its national actions are not yet consistent with limiting warming to below 2C, let alone 1.5C unless other countries make much deeper reductions and comparably greater effort than China. We therefore rate the emission levels estimated for 2025 and 2030 resulting from the most ambitious aspects of the NDC as “medium.”

Our analysis shows that China will achieve both its 2020 pledge and its 2030 plans. Current policy projections show that emissions in 2030 could lie in the range of 12.2–13.7 GtCO2e, implying that China may well overachieve the target levels implied by its NDC with its current policies.

China is implementing significant policies to address climate change, most recently aiming to restrict coal consumption, which may well have already peaked, based on recent estimates. China’s 13th Five-Year-Plan stipulates a maximum 58% share of coal in national energy consumption by 2020 (NDRC, 2016). The CAT assesses two scenarios of future developments in coal consumption: a continued coal abatement scenarios well as a stalled coal abatement scenario:

Under the “continued coal abatement” scenario, where the recent decreases in coal consumption continue at a similar pace for the next few years—forming the lower range of the 2030 projections—CO2 emissions would already have plateaued in 2015, and will decrease substantially up to 2030, reaching the NDC peaking target around ten years early.

In the “stalled coal abatement” scenario, total coal consumption stabilises after the recent decreases and remains constant through the decade 2020–2030 (see Current Policy section for more detail).

However, total GHG emissions are likely to continue increasing until 2030, as China has not yet implemented sufficient policies addressing non-CO2 GHG emissions (CH4, N2O, HFCs etc

You'd have to be a complete fucking idiot if you think CO2 is the control knob the Climate...pfft.

No, you'd have to be a scientist with a working understanding of the greenhouse effect. You can measure the heat trapping ability of CO2 in a lab or test it yourself by building a greenhouse, we can do the math on it and figure out how much an increase in CO in the atmosphere traps more heat. It's not the only controller of heat in the atmosphere but it is the most prevalent and therefore most important

Do you understand that increasing the greenhouse effect has real life implications really fast: sea-levels rising, rainfall increasing in other areas whereas droughts will increase alsewhere, more and bigger storms etc. Plus there's the risk of chain-reactions occurring: once the northern permafrost starts to melt it will release methane which is 20 times stronger as a greenhouse gas the CO2, which will them increase the warming yet again melting more of the frost and creating an unstoppable feedback loop.

We're not in complete control of the climate but we're having a major impact on it in ways which do not bode well for the future. The oil and coal companies are racking up short term profit the total cost of which will be seen in the daces to come when coastal cities start to get flooded and people start dying more from food shortages and droughts. If the oceans get acidified enough for mass extinction of plankton to occur that puts a stop to major oxygen producer and has the change to quite literally wipe us out as well.

These being the realities of the situation anyone favoring oil or coal for energy production at this point has to be an idiot, ignorant or just self-destructive.

FYI, China (the biggest contributor of global emissions) plans a 20% increase in coal by 2020:

Wrong. Their CO2 emissions are rising because of among other things cars/traffic until 2030 when they're projected to peak and turn it around. Providing clean energy for over a billion people is not exactly a project you can achieve overnight. As for coal itself: they're already planning restrictions on coal mining/use because major cities have severe issues with smog/pollutants causing significant damage to the people and industries, they have a vested interest in fixing this stuff.

Paris Agreement targets

China’s NDC, submitted to the UNFCCC on 3 September 2016 includes a number of elements:

Increase the share of non-fossil energy sources in the total primary energy supply to around 20% by 2030;
Increase the share of natural gas in the total primary energy supply to around 10% by 2020;
Lower the carbon intensity of GDP by 60% to 65% below 2005 levels by 2030;
Increase the forest stock volume by around 4.5 billion cubic metres, compared to 2005 levels;
Proposed reductions in the production of HCFC22 (35% below 2010 levels by 2020 and 67.5% by 2025) and “controlling” HFC23 production.
These elements were all in China’s INDC on 30 June 2015, and were carried over to the NDC submitted to the Paris Agreement on 3 September 2016. China’s NDC also includes a comprehensive list of actions to achieve its 2020 and 2030 targets. A large number of the policies have already been implemented.

2020 pledge

China’s 2020 pledge consists of the following elements:

Overall reduction of CO2 emissions per unit of GDP by 40–45% below 2005 levels by 2020;
Increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 15% by 2020;
Increase forest coverage by 40 million hectares and forest stock volume by 1.3 billion cubic metres by 2020 from 2005 levels.
We analysed the effects of all these targets, including the non-fossil target for 2020 and 2030. To do this, energy-related emissions until 2020 were assumed to follow current policy projections from the IEA WEO 2015,

China has committed to reaching to peak CO2 emissions in 2030 ( http://climateactiontracker.or... ) and may have already achieved this a few years back ( https://www.washingtonpost.com... )

India has set the following targets: http://climateactiontracker.or...

China has committed to reaching to peak CO2 emissions in 2030 ( http://climateactiontracker.or... ) and may have already achieved this a few years back ( https://www.washingtonpost.com... )

India has set the following targets: http://climateactiontracker.or...

According to Climate Action Tracker, Bhutan is leading the way. Also, China, India, the EU and Mexico are all doing a better job at emission reduction than the United States.

According to NY Times: China Burns Much More Coal Than Reported, Complicating Climate Talks, China is increasing emissions, not reducing them.

Which fails to speak to my original point, which is that as goes California, so the rest of the U.S., and California isn't going anywhere, despite talking a good game. So you are basically agreeing with me (but disagreeing with me and the NY Times on the slope of China's vector relative to the slope of the U.S.'s vector).

But since California is our leader, and they are sitting on their hands instead of leading... meh. Let the other countries who are *vastly* ramping up their use of fossil fuels to achieve a higher standing of living for their people (China, India) take the lead, if they want to.

According to Climate Action Tracker, Bhutan is leading the way. Also, China, India, the EU and Mexico are all doing a better job at emission reduction than the United States.