China To Begin Submitting Air Pollution Reports 176
smitty777 writes "China will start to publish air pollution reports, possibly in response to reports from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing which has been publishing its own data. This report is significant in that it's based on the PM2.5 standard, which measures the more harmful particles that are less than 2.5 microns. This comes on the heels of a separate report that lists China as the worst polluter worldwide. According to this report, China now produces 6,832 m tons of CO2, a 754% increase since 1971. While the U.S. is in second at 5,195 m, this represents an increase of only 21%. This article notes 'the rapid growth in emissions for China, India, and Africa. This will continue as their middle classes buy houses and vehicles. The growth in Middle East emissions is staggering, a reflection of their growing oil fortunes.' While we're on the subject of India, their pollution levels are thought to be responsible for a dense cloud of fog that is so thick it created a cold front, and is repsonsible for a number of deaths."
Re:Stupid numbers (Score:2, Informative)
This comes on the heels of a separate report that lists China as the worst polluter worldwide
No shit.
Last time I checked (big industry) == (big pollution).
Some people also expects a Ferrari is going to get great gas mileage.
Re:The USA in second place? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So the US was big polluter 30 years ago. (Score:5, Informative)
Per person you say?
Qatar is number one at 53.5 tons per person, followed by Trinidad and Tobago at 37.3 tons oddly enough.
Going down the list you find Australia to be the number one developed polluter per person at 18.9 tons, giving it 11th place. Immediately afterwords at 12th place is the US at 17.5 tons per person. We Canadians are 15th with 16.4 tons per person, and going down you find Russia at 12.1 tons per person or 23rd.
Germany is 37th with 9.6 tons per person, Greece is 41st with 8.8 tons, The UK is 43 with 8.5 tons. And France who can forget them at 6.1 tons, they are 65th.
For the drum roll, China is number 78th at a mere 5.3 tons per person.
All per the US Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So the US was big polluter 30 years ago. (Score:5, Informative)
This graph [cam.ac.uk] is more interesting - it shows Co2 emissions per capita against population (so area of rectange = absolute emissions). Being able to compare the area visually gives a better indication as to the degree of the problem in each nation. This graph [cam.ac.uk] shows another interesting thing - responsibility for cumulative/historical co2 emissions. Since co2 stays in the air for 50 to 100 years, the vast majority of co2 that is in the air right now was actually put there by the nations that were industrialised throughout the last century - ie. the US and Western Europe.
btw. The author of that book also addresses the issue of China:
What about China, that naughty “out of control” country? Yes, the area of China’s rectangle is about the same as the USA’s, but the fact is that their per-capita emissions are below the world average. India’s per-capita emissions are less than half the world average. Moreover, it’s worth bearing in mind that much of the industrial emissions of China and India are associated with the manufacture of stuff for rich countries.
So, assuming that “something needs to be done” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, who has a special responsibility to do something? As I said, that’s an ethical question. But I find it hard to imagine any system of ethics that denies that the responsibility falls especially on the countries to the left hand side of this diagram – the countries whose emissions are two, three, or four times the world average. Countries that are most able to pay. Countries like Britain and the USA, for example.
Whether "it is fair to share CO2 emission rights equally across the world's population" is an ethical question, as is the question of who should pay to clean up a problem like this, but it is hard to construct a moral argument that a Westerner should be entitled to emit more co2 than a person born in another nation. Why should we have this entitlement?
97% of climate scientists are convinced of AGW (Score:5, Informative)
And if that [pnas.org] isn't consensus, I don't know what is.
I too wish people would stop getting this wrong, as it's blocking the conversation about what to do about climate change.
Re:Meanwhile... (Score:3, Informative)
Heat islands have been known and accounted for in the numbers used. At this point climate change is as certain as anything is and I haven't seen any credible scientists disputing the view that climate change is real and largely driven by human development.
It's quite well known what we're emitting and scientists have records that go back a long time that show a general relationship between temperature and atmospheric composition. At this point there's very little question about what's happening and why.