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Another Study Finds Earth's CO2 Emissions Have Flattened Over The Last Three Years (go.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Associated Press:
Worldwide emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide have flattened out in the past three years, a new study showed Monday, raising hopes that the world is nearing a turning point in the fight against climate change. However, the authors of the study cautioned it's unclear whether the slowdown in CO2 emissions, mainly caused by declining coal use in China, is a permanent trend or a temporary blip...
The study, published in the journal Earth System Science Data, says global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry is projected to grow by just 0.2 percent this year. That would mean emissions have leveled off at about 36 billion metric tons in the past three years even though the world economy has expanded, suggesting the historical bonds between economic gains and emissions growth may have been severed. "This could be the turning point we have hoped for," said David Ray, a professor of carbon management at the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved with the study. "To tackle climate change those bonds must be broken and here we have the first signs that they are at least starting to loosen."
Last week a study suggested earth's plant life is absorbing a greater percentage of global CO2 emissions -- although reductions in China could also be significant. According to the article, almost 30% of the world's carbon emissions come from China.
The study, published in the journal Earth System Science Data, says global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry is projected to grow by just 0.2 percent this year. That would mean emissions have leveled off at about 36 billion metric tons in the past three years even though the world economy has expanded, suggesting the historical bonds between economic gains and emissions growth may have been severed. "This could be the turning point we have hoped for," said David Ray, a professor of carbon management at the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved with the study. "To tackle climate change those bonds must be broken and here we have the first signs that they are at least starting to loosen."
Last week a study suggested earth's plant life is absorbing a greater percentage of global CO2 emissions -- although reductions in China could also be significant. According to the article, almost 30% of the world's carbon emissions come from China.
That the rate increase is going down isn't good enough, alas. That means it's still increasing. We need a reversal, with less CO2 pumped out than what is absorbed, and we're nowhere near that yet.
Still, it's a good first sign, but we're still getting worse, not better.
A big factor is of course the cost of solar and wind, which are now already cheaper than coal and oil, even without subsidies.
http://www.climatecentral.org/... contains the graph
http://assets.climatecentral.o...
This shows the rise in the CO2 level in the atmosphere over the last 5 years.
For over a year now, it's been over 400ppm, and the rise in 2015-16, over the same period the year before has been the largest this past year than any time in the last five years.
So why did the UK & USA go to war in Iraq on the basis of chasing weapons of mass destruction that probably did not exist at a cost of some $1.1 trillion? Answer: because it suited other goals that politicians wanted. So: today politicians are chasing short term goals and keeping their eyes shut tight to the probable huge long term consequences of not dealing with climate change.
Seriously?
The problem exists.
The models aren't failing.
There is scientific consensus.
The "good news" here is that the problem isn't worsening as fast as it used to.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html
Last year broke the record with a growth rate over 3PPM / Year. Looking at this years monthly data, in 2016 we're on track to smash last year's record with somewhere around 3.5PPM / Year. Every year this decade has been at or above the average for previous decade. Rather than a levelling off, the data looks like continual growth.
Confused as to how any report can be claiming a "levelling off". Mauna Loa is seen as the de-facto standard for global CO2 levels as it's in the middle of the pacific and therefore isolated from localised effects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauna_Loa_Observatory
CO2 does not cause warming. This has been shown to be a hoax.
If you want to be extremely pedantic, CO2 does not cause warming, the sun does. And no molecule that doesn't undergo a reaction (either chemical or physical) causes any warming. But that's pushing it a bit too much.
What a chemist will tell you is that CO2 or any molecule with three or more atoms has a scissoring motion that absorbs infrared wavelengths around the heat emissions that you can expect for a black body around the Earth's current temperature. So, rather than these emissions escaping towards outer space and having radiative cooling, you have them being partially absorbed by CO2 and other gases (water, methane, CFC gases and so on) and then emitted once again as the molecule relaxes to a more fundamental state. These emissions then happen in every direction, including back down to Earth, for a further chance at heating the planet. The important part here is the scissoring motion and the three atoms it needs. A diatomic molecule (oxygen, nitrogen, etc) will not cause this because the frequencies at which it absorbs energy are substantially different.
How you can judge this as being a hoax, it's a mystery to me or anyone else with more than 2 brain cells.
They're not comparing the same thing (human emissions versus atmospheric levels).
Probably did not exist?
Oh except that we found stockpiles of said chemical weapons all over the country, troops were killed when they hit IED's made of chlorine rounds that we missed, and Syria who never had a known stockpile has been able to use Chemical weapons a few times, meaning the suspected export of unknown quantities of Chemical weapons during the run-up to the invasion occurred as feared.
The only thing we did not find was an active production system but they had six months to dismantle and hide or ship such to Syria.
I would add that Gaddafi after seeing what happened in Iraqi decided to own up to a whole bunch of WMD that we basically didn't have a clue about and allowed them to be removed. It is highly unlikely this would have happened without the Iraqi invasion.
The problem with the invasion of Iraqi was not the invasion itself but the utter lack of post invasion planning by Bush and his fellow bunch of morons.
It's fashionable to pretend that it was all based on bloodlust but for those of us who were alive at the time, it seemed like it was the right thing to do. The decision was made with the best information at the time and in retrospect it was a mistake.
I was alive at the time, and it was a transparently stupid thing to do. It never looked like the right thing to do, and it was obvious before we even went in that it would spiral out of control. The administration sold it on lies and misinformation, and a lot of people bought it.
It's too early to celebrate because the data really doesn't show this purported downturn yet. Here's the measured carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for the last five years:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/c...
And the full record:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/c...
If there's a recent downturn, I can't see it.
(A different link graphing the same data: https://scripps.ucsd.edu/progr... )
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
You can't say that because it's racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, evidence of white privilege, and means you hate puppies and want unicorns to die. You monster.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky