The volume of carbon dioxide belched into the atmosphere from human activity this year is on track to decline slightly from last year's emissions, according to a new analysis published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Monday. The anticipated decrease in CO2 emissions comes even as the world economy is growing, suggesting a turning point in clean energy development—and a long-hoped-for "decoupling" of economic growth and increased carbon emissions.
[...] Decreased coal use in China—whose carbon dioxide emissions account for nearly one-third of global emissions—was largely responsible for the decline in global emissions, the researchers concluded. After a decade of rapid growth, China's emissions rate slowed to 1.2 percent in 2014 and is expected to drop by approximately 3.9 percent in 2015, according to the report. More than half of new energy needs in China were met in 2014 from non-fossil fuel sources, such as hydro, nuclear, wind and solar power.
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195 Nations Approve Historic Climate Accord
195 Nations Approve Historic Climate Accord
Following late-night negotiations and years of anticipation, delegates from 195 countries have agreed to curb the worst effects of climate change by limiting warming to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius. The agreement, the result of an international climate summit outside Paris and approved December 12, aims to be the world's roadmap to kicking the fossil fuel habit, with a possibility of an even more ambitious 1.5-degree goal in the future.
Even with the agreement in hand, political obstacles and technological challenges remain to reining in global warming. Individual countries will have to swap greenhouse gas‒emitting energy sources like coal, oil and natural gas for low-emission sources such as wind, solar and nuclear power. Along with yet-to-be-realized technologies that pull greenhouse gases from the air, these changes are meant to reduce net carbon emissions to zero in the second half of the century. By 2020, countries will release their long-term plans to cut emissions. Every five years, countries will reassess their progress and tweak their carbon-cutting goals.
COP21 has been signed
After a last-minute weakening of the text, COP21 has been accepted in Paris by almost 200 countries (that's our world, basically) and the French minister of Foreign Affairs, Laurent Fabius, hammered it off before proceeding with the group hug of world leaders.
The draft text [PDF] is currently available, but a crucial change in article 4 point 4 on page 21 is no longer there after the last-minute "oh sorry we were tired and made a typo".
Read about it on The Guardian.
Let me say in conclusion: Thank you Paris! Politics is the art of what is achievable.
Polar bears - Terrorists : 1 - 0 [Caution: to view this link you MUST accept the site cookie popup] (violent cartoon, possibly NSFW)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @02:22PM
I feel like this is a proxy measurement for what we actually care about. Like treating cholesterol instead of heart disease.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday December 08 2015, @03:20PM
A better analogy would be a pre-diabetic eating less calories than last year.
If I were their doctor I'd view it as an encouraging step in the right direction, but they're still eating more than enough to gain weight.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday December 08 2015, @03:25PM
Well there are proxies and there are proxies. If what you care about is "number of deaths by gunfire" then measuring the number of guns in public hands is not an exact proxy. Indeed, some people might have very opposite ideas about which way the proxy needs to trend for your issue to improve. On the other hand, "number of people who got shot" would be a much closer and less controversial proxy. In the case of TFA, I'd say we are much closer to the second than the first.
Personally I care about having an ecosystem that supports the global human population and sea levels that don't require me to drink Kevin Costner's recycled piss in fifty years time. What do you care about?
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday December 08 2015, @03:45PM
I feel like this is a proxy measurement for what we actually care about. Like treating cholesterol instead of heart disease.
It's not a proxy, C02 is a direct cause. It's more like treating lead poisoning by removing lead from the bloodstream.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @06:03PM
No it isn't. This is like treating lead poisoning by eating 3.9% less lead compared to last year.
Let's say you ate 10g of lead last year, and this year you instead ate 9.41g, next year you might just eat 9g...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday December 08 2015, @02:41PM
(yaaaay)
It's a start, at least. I eagerly await the day when this news becomes the norm rather than the exception.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday December 08 2015, @07:57PM
Almost submitted this story several days ago. then I thought better of it.
A) its just one estimate, and not all that convincing
B) simply mentioning this study gets you labeled as a Polyanna [wikipedia.org] in most circles. I've seen people ripped to shreds on other lists over this.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by TobascoKid on Tuesday December 08 2015, @02:42PM
Don't the figures for China indicate the exact opposite of 'a long-hoped-for "decoupling" of economic growth and increased carbon emissions'? 2014/15 has been a pretty crappy time for Chinese growth.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 08 2015, @04:06PM
China's not even trying to green. They are at the peak of their bubble, kinda like the Japanese bubble of the 80s or the American bubble of the 1920s and 2000s. China's in for a world of hurt. Their collapse is going to be utterly epic.
The article didn't report on Germany which is pretty crazy green and is likely what they meant by that weird isolated quote. Some of that is political rather than economic "I don't care how much it costs we're not going to have the Russians keep telling us what to do in order to buy their natgas". It helps that Germany is not 3rd world even after the refugee invasion and doesn't have the expenses of empire like the USA has. We could be as green as Germany if we could just avoid invading one middle eastern country, its actually pretty cheap compared to re-enacting Vietnam over and over. Germany is pretty close to self sufficient. Not there, but getting there very fast. Some day in the 2020's Russia is going to do its Bear thing and tell Germany "When I say jump you better ask how high or I'm not selling you natgas anymore" and the Germans are going to respond with a big F you instead of caving behind a shield of bluster like they always do. The political fallout will be interesting. Probably not military action, hopefully, but it'll be interesting. Germany being able to tell Russia to F off will be interesting. Along with the capital flow from Germany to Russia disappearing. No need to pay for natgas if you're not buying any...
(Score: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday December 08 2015, @04:50PM
China's not even trying to green.
This 83.3 billion dollars says otherwise. [fs-unep-centre.org]
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday December 09 2015, @11:33AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @04:51PM
pretty much agree. but dont forget that russia could be very super high tech by 2020.
they got a few super blue prints and scientiscts and methods from the ww2 germany (sputnik, helicopters, manufacturing) and europe is also super bigh tech overall. also russia was in the ring w/ usa for a long time and even if they lost they got a bunch of "training".
it is amerika that doesnt want this to happen so they are fraying the geografic edges around europa and russia ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @07:53PM
It's not the same. The US eventually left Vietnam...
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday December 08 2015, @05:29PM
The problem with looking at country-wide economies is that there's always all sorts of bogus correlations and missed real correlations. As in, there are simply ridiculous numbers of economic decisions being made that may or may not be related to any other economic decision being made.
It's possible that CO2 output and economic growth are correlated. If so, we're doomed, because no country will accept the decreased economic growth in order to fix the CO2 problem - instead each player will demand that everybody else accept the lower economic growth and thereafter treat it as Somebody Else's Problem.
It's also quite possible that it's not, and the real reason China's in trouble economically is that the consumers in their export markets are lacking the purchasing power to buy up all their products. In this case, China's going to have to completely re-tool their economy to deal with that.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday December 08 2015, @08:17PM
no country will accept the decreased economic growth
There is a growing body of economic thought that "economic growth" is neither necessary nor desirable, at least in the way we have sought to obtain growth in the past.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-gustave-speth/growth-fetish-five-reason_b_4018166.html [huffingtonpost.com]
http://steadystate.org/discover/downsides-of-economic-growth/ [steadystate.org]
Related, but not exactly the same thing:
We need horizontal growth, not vertical growth. It does the world no good to raise the standard of living in the EU, or the US, while leaving huge segments of the world living in utter poverty and despair. But this is a moral argument, and not really an economic one. Many economists are starting to believe that new industry should be located in poorer countries, rather than yet another factory in China or the US. And not because of lower wages, but precisely because doing so will raise those wages.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @03:05PM
more then half of new energy needs .. so if the new neads are like two percent then in 2015 1 percent was from "green" energy sources and most probably most of that 1 percent was radioactif nuclear...
climate change is just a push for non co2 emitting sources sans hydro, wind and solar thus just leaving nukes.
the race is on to push the scary factor of climate change beyond the threashold of fear of chernobyle and japan.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday December 08 2015, @03:32PM
> "green" energy sources and most probably most of that 1 percent was radioactif nuclear
Fun fact: Nuclear power plants release less deadly radioactive stuff into the environment than coal power plants! You see, the coal that gets dug up out of the ground has all kinds of impurities in it, including nasty radioactive things that end up in your lungs!
Another fun fact: If you add up all the people killed or poisoned by Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, Fukashima (be careful to count only the power-plant victims, not the tsunami victims) and every other nuclear accident ever, and then add in all the ever people killed/poisoned in the production / refining / transportation of Uranium.... you'd end up with a much smaller number of deaths per unit of electricity than any form of dino-fuel.
Nuclear isn't perfect, but in many ways it's the best we've got. (We should still make good use of renewables though).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by BananaPhone on Tuesday December 08 2015, @03:46PM
Borrow a Gieger counter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geiger_counter) and go near a Coal plant.
Oh. No coal plants?
Buy a bag of coal and burn it.
Use the Gieger counter one the ashes.
HINT: You will not be happy with your discovery.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @04:02PM
you are all morons!
if you weight all the radioactifity on the planet then burning coal yields no net gain.
however splitting uranium, on a global scale INCRESES overall radioactifity of the planet.
the radioactifity in coal was present already. coal plants dont generate radioactifity .. nukes however do .. and alot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @04:08PM
simple: shrink the planet to a billiard ball. measure radioactifity of billiard.
next start burning coal on the billiard ball ... measure radioactifity
compare ... its the same.
now fission uranium on tthe billiard ball and watch how it cools and starts to grow two heads and three eyes ^_^ and how it becomes MoORE radioactif
(Score: 4, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday December 08 2015, @05:52PM
The amount of radioactivity isn't anywhere near as important as where it is. The radioactivity in the coal (much like the carbon in the coal) was buried deep underground where it wasn't doing anyone any harm. Dig it up, burn it and suddenly you have pollutants in your lungs and little fishies nibbling at your ankles.
As for "increasing the radioactivity of the world" well splitting the odd atom here and there is only going to increase the radioactivity of the world in general by homeopathic percentages. Your "billiard ball" experiment would yield identical results to within far more decimal places than we can measure. It's like complaining about a spoonfull of piss in the Atlantic ocean - on the scales we're talking about, it's nothing. It's certainly nothing when you compare it to the alternative problems of climate change and global flooding.
Besides, haven't you heard? Fusion is only 5-20 years away!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @06:56PM
If our reactors "burned" more than 1% of the nuclear fuel, this would not be the case.
Increased radioactivity means that your reactor design is leaving energy on the table.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Tuesday December 08 2015, @09:54PM
1. learn how to spell radioactivity, or at least use your web browser's spell check
2. do you have a *clue* how much radiation is created every day?
http://physics.isu.edu/radinf/natural.htm [isu.edu]
It's like a Fukushima-equivalent being dumped onto the planet from cosmic sources every few months, but "natural", right?
3. maybe concentrate on trying to get rid of the world's nuclear weapons instead of clean power sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @04:07PM
Can there be an automatically included field for " associated scholarly journal article" attached to science-related articles? Often I have little interest in the media coverage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @06:52PM
No. But you are encouraged to dig up the scholarly article and post the URL in a comment to achieve the same effect for everybody else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @11:45PM
I am surprised by the report that CO2 is down. It was stated recently that the forest fires in Indonesia will "undo" any gains in atmospheric carbon abatement.
It is however, possible. I remember one anti-warming argument that volcanoes would undo all CO2 abatement, however volcanoes turn out to be less than 5% of emissions.
Anyone know more about Indonesia?
TDG
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 09 2015, @04:24AM
Well, it you assume the indonesia is not turning to desert (which may be a dubious assumption in the face of global warming), those forests will grow back, fixing carbon.