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Earth Science

CO2 Emissions Rose for the First Time in 4 Years (vice.com) 317

Human emissions of carbon dioxide have gone up for the first time since 2013, according to the UN's ninth annual Emissions Gap Report, meaning the world isn't on track to mitigate the worst of climate change's already disastrous effects. From the report: The report, published on Tuesday, says that while carbon emissions stayed relatively level between 2014 and 2016, carbon emissions in 2017 went up by 1.2 percent. Composed by climate scientists using the most up-to-date scientific data, the report aims to determine whether we're on track to meet the goals set by international climate agreements, such as the 2015 Paris Climate Accord. The "emissions gap" is the difference between how low our emissions need to be, and where they actually are. The UN report concludes that the world isn't hitting the emissions targets necessary to curb warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. While the goal is not impossible, it's unlikely to be met under current political conditions, which have rendered us unable to take significant action against climate change for more than half a century. "According to the current policy and [Nationally Determined Contributions] scenarios, global emissions are not estimated to peak by 2030, let alone by 2020," the report reads. "As the emissions gap assessment shows, this original level of ambition needs to be roughly tripled for the 2C scenario and increased around fivefold for the 1.5C scenario."
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CO2 Emissions Rose for the First Time in 4 Years

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  • by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2018 @05:12PM (#57710846)
    Reversing the Obama fuel economy standards has greatly accelerated the submerging of Mar-a-lago!
    • How so? Show me that the US actually was the country responsible for the increase. Until then this is a lot of hot air.

      • How so? Show me that the US actually was the country responsible for the increase. Until then this is a lot of hot air.

        That explains it! There is a LOT of hot air coming out of Washington, DC. Most of it's probably CO2. :-)

    • You know what's really funny. That if Trump's tariffs can slow down China's manufacturing sector growth even a little, it will do more to lessen global CO2 output than if we mandated all new US autos to be EVs.

  • by Zorro ( 15797 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2018 @05:13PM (#57710856)

    Bananas growing in New Jersey! Mass Hysteria!

  • by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2018 @05:15PM (#57710876)

    According to Hansen
    https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]

    Still waiting for those 50 million climate refugees predicted by the UN
    http://www.spiegel.de/internat... [spiegel.de]

    Or how are things on the West Side of Manhattan these days ?
    https://www.salon.com/2001/10/... [salon.com]

    Then again snow is supposed to be a thing of the past as well
    http://www.climatedepot.com/20... [climatedepot.com]

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by lactose99 ( 71132 )

      Yeah, stick your head in the sand and pretend things aren't happening...

      at this stage you'll drown before long

      • If you believe, you will see signs everywhere.

        Personally, I have trouble with what these scientists are using as a control for their experiments.

        • If you believe, you will see signs everywhere.

          Skeptics used to be regularly admonished that "Weather is not climate!".

          But now every storm, every fire, every flood, every heat wave and every cold spell is "because of climate change".

          Funny how that works.

      • at this stage you'll drown before long

        Been hearing that for the last 30 years.
        Before that we were supposed to be killing each other to have something to eat
        We were also supposed to be out of energy by now
        and we were supposed to be out of almost all natural resources by now as well.

        It's almost as if the news is manipulated to fit agendas

        https://i.imgur.com/x7C10JP.jp... [imgur.com]

    • According to Hansen

      Nothing in that link was demonstrated as incorrect. In fact, the specific predictions (e.g. accelerated ice melting in Antarctica) have come true. Now, he said we had to act already to avoid a feedback loop, but that' not been resolved.

      Still waiting for those 50 million climate refugees predicted by the UN

      That article explains what's happened... those islands in the South Pacific have been expanding by adding mass, and staying above the sea level rise that way. That said, I would say t

      • Nothing in that link was demonstrated as incorrect.

        Hansen said current carbon levels in the atmosphere were already too high to prevent runaway greenhouse warming. Yet the levels are still rising despite all the efforts of politicians and scientists.

        Oh so he lied when he said that ? Or are we not doomed if we just invest more money with Al Gore's pet investment scheme of the week ?

        Are you not capable of understanding it was a somewhat hyperbolic quote?

        So when a climatologist makes a prediction about climate and gets it wrong, it's retroactively hyperbole ?
        Tell me can I do that with my stock trades ?

        That said, I would say that the hundreds of thousands of people who left Puerto Rico qualify

        Maybe qualify as being victims of a hurricane. These things do happen down that way.

        • Hansen said current carbon levels in the atmosphere were already too high to prevent runaway greenhouse warming. Yet the levels are still rising despite all the efforts of politicians and scientists.

          Oh so he lied when he said that

          Nothing he said is a lie, that is not logically inconsistent, etc. He said it seems to high to prevent a feedback loop, and you said it keeps rising. That proves his point.

          So when a climatologist makes a prediction about climate and gets it wrong, it's retroactively hyperbole

          • Didn't you read it? When asked what the world will be like he's like "traffic will be worse". And that's clearly rhetorical, because it leads him down the subtle consequences of climate change. I'm not saying it's in hindsight hyperbolic rhetoric, I'm saying that's how people speak when they are making a point, not a well-calibrated prediction.

            Yes specific predictions are hyperbole / sarcsm

            That's goalpost shifting

            No that's what happens with hurricanes. The reason people left was the island had a corrupt and nearly bankrupt government to begin with and couldn't do proper disaster recovery. Lookup the great hurricane of 1780 for just how bad that can be.

            Or, what would have to happen to convince you?

            Of what ? That climate changes ? That's a given. That we are doomed ? That ones a bit harder, You could start with predictions that at least pass the smell test and then work on from there.

      • According to Hansen

        Nothing in that link was demonstrated as incorrect. In fact, the specific predictions (e.g. accelerated ice melting in Antarctica) have come true.

        NASA says otherwise [nasa.gov], and explicitly states that Antarctica as a whole is gaining ice.

        • Sure, technically the snow that's been in Antarctica for 10,000 years is fusing to create new ice. Sorry to be imprecise. I meant: the total amount of frozen water on Antarctica, aggregated across all of its various forms, has increased melting.

          BTW, snow fusing to become ice is a process that either requires added pressure (nope) or cycling temperature that goes above a certain point. Gee, I wonder what could be causing Antarctica's temperature to rise above a certain point every year, when it used to no

  • by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2018 @05:22PM (#57710948)

    Carbon reduction is hard, there are often a lot of steps which are counter intuitive
    For example it takes less carbon to ship Apple from China to California then it does from New York to California. Mainly because cargo ships use less fuel per ton of goods then shipping via semi-truck.
    Then we have the Automobile guilt. While your home (in most climates) is polluting more then your car.
    To fix this solution we need real leadership who is willing to realize the problem is more then just solar panels, wind turbines and electric cars. It is taking a look at all our energy usage finding wastes and inefficiencies. Making sure businesses are playing by the same sets of rules globally just so we don't offset our emissions to an other country, because they will undercut our price.

    Such issues is too complex for average Joe Sixpack to deal with, or even an Latte drinking hipster. It will require a global change with everyone playing by the same rules, and firm penalties for anyone who wants to cheat the system.

    • I've ordered Apple equipment online and I've seen it be air-shipped from China via Anchorage, even when I chose regular shipping... Apple seems to do "just in time" sales vs warehousing hardware in the USA.

      The mode of shipping to brick-and-mortar Apple dealers may be by ship, though.

    • by Ichijo ( 607641 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2018 @06:10PM (#57711334) Journal

      For example it takes less carbon to ship Apple from China to California then it does from New York to California. Mainly because cargo ships use less fuel per ton of goods then shipping via semi-truck.

      Why are you shipping by semi-truck and not by train? Trains are 3x as fuel-efficient as trucks.

      • Why are you shipping by semi-truck and not by train

        It depends on the speed required. Many goods loaded into a standard cargo container can have that container moved from ship to truck to train to truck. There's no reason to not have trains do the cross country part, and trucks do the last mile. However, it works best when time isn't a major concern... the benefits of trains are the pooling of resources to move items, which means compromising on schedules. So, fresh food is probably going to require truc

      • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        But the cost of shipping by train does not always reflect the actual cost. Apparently the rail industry is the subject of some rather unfair tax policies due to it being an absolute cash cow in the past.

      • Shipping cost is not just the fuel cost. The cost to load/unload cargo is also substantial, which is why overseas commerce didn't really takeoff until the advent of container ships. The containers are much cheaper to load/unload than mixed bulk cargo.

        Why don't we use containers on trains, transferred to trucks at the final destination city? Because of the Interstate Highway System. It was created ostensibly to allow Americans to travel across the country at will. But fuel taxes from passenger cars pay fo
    • Also, those railroads would have much better regulated emissions and worker safety rules. One of the dirty secrets of the shipping industry from China is that they lose a few ships a month (and their crew). It's cheaper to let the ships go down than the build ships that won't sink. And yes, we can build ships that don't sink nowadays.
  • Stop breathing, don't try to lose weight, don't stay in shape, or better yet just die. That's the whole goal of this in the long run, isn't it? We have too many people on the planet going after too few resources which means depletion of eco-systems. The planet is fine, the people are fucked at 7 Billion+, we can't sustain that.

    • Generally people are afraid that in one day the shit'll hit the fan. But in reality this will be a slowly rolled out "situation" where we'll all just loathe things, much like today. I mean, if you told someone back in the year 2000, the state that things will be in by 2018, they'd have pictured that as the end of the world. But here we are.
      • Less war in the world, crime rates are down, home VR is a practical reality, we have dick Tracy watches, and the worst predictions of global warming haven't happened. How do you consider the present time a distopia?
        • I never said the present time was a distopia (although you probably meant dystopia). I'm just saying that for all of the fuss today (most or all of which is political), things aren't over. And like you say, things are actually lots better today, in ways.
      • Naw, I watched Idiocracy [imdb.com] when it first came out, so I knew what 2018 was going to look like. I also know what 2100 will be like too. Well maybe the Kardashians won't be around by 2100 but I can still hope.

        • by balbeir ( 557475 )

          Naw, I watched Idiocracy [imdb.com] when it first came out, so I knew what 2018 was going to look like. I also know what 2100 will be like too. Well maybe the Kardashians won't be around by 2100 but I can still hope.

          I am waiting for skyscrapers being fixed with ropes

      • Generally people are afraid that in one day the shit'll hit the fan. But in reality this will be a slowly rolled out "situation" where we'll all just loathe things, much like today. I mean, if you told someone back in the year 2000, the state that things will be in by 2018, they'd have pictured that as the end of the world. But here we are.

        The last 150 years (ie "since global warming") happens to correspond with the greatest improvements in the global human condition in history. I'm not expecting a reverse in that trend anytime soon.

  • by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2018 @05:38PM (#57711088)
    Cowardly closings of nuclear power plants post-Fukushima are finally hitting home? Less nuclear = more fossil fool energy. Never mind that, despite a few high-profile accidents, commercial nuclear power is a lot safer than any other mode of electricity production.
  • Look, nobody wants to tell you guys, but most of the US emissions are from two sources:

    1. Drilling and extraction of fossil fuels from US National Parks (25 percent of US emissions)

    2. Inefficient Southern States. Most of which still use expensive fossil fuels. Wind and solar are both cheaper. yes, cheaper than natural gas.

    Look at the actual report, you'll see Texas and the West are already meeting and exceeding the Paris Accord goals. It's not us. It's you.

    • What does that have to do with global trends if the US trend has been going down?

      Are you saying that the US has to pick up the slack of China, EU, and India?

      So much for it being a global problem when it must be solved by the US.

      • Who do you think is exporting all those fossil fuels?

        It's not Iceland.

        • What does that have to do with the emission levels?

          Are the countries that export fossil fuels more culpable than the ones that demand and burn it? The countries that are trending in the wrong direction should be called out more so than one part of one country. It's like you are purposefully going out of your way to point the finger at who you don't like. Treating science as a political cudgel really undermines the function and trust of science. Stop it.

          • Emissions are being measured worldwide. Exporting them just extends the emissions chain, using the standard cradle (mining/extraction) to grave (use/disposal) methodology.

            The article this thread belongs to talks about worldwide emissions increasing. Exporting only increases emissions.

            • What would happen to exports if there was no demand? Economics 101 supply and demand. If there were no demand then exports would lower. Emissions require usage of fossil fuels not export of fossil fuels.

              I am really confused by your comments. They're retarded.

        • Looking at the data [wikipedia.org], the US is way down the list. Russia is a top-3 across the board (with most of those exports going to Europe).
  • by magzteel ( 5013587 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2018 @05:41PM (#57711118)

    According to the chart on page 9 the US is doing pretty well.

    Yet somehow China which has 27% of global emissions and went up 17% is marked as "on track to meet the targets under current policies".

    Those targets must not be very serious

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Remember all the bitching about how environmentalists wanted the US to be poor and revert to a 3rd world standard of living? Of course it was completely bollocks.

      That's why China is still on the increase. They, just like the US, can't be expected to immediately slash their emissions and do themselves economic harm. Instead they have set a target for where the peak will be. Actually there was a previous one but they vastly exceeded it, so the Paris one was much more aggressive. Still not enough, but aggressi

      • Except that the US is slashing it's emissions. We're down 15% since 2007. Even as fossil fuel domestic production is up, and manufacturing output is up.
    • by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2018 @08:11PM (#57711860) Homepage Journal

      No, it really means the 23 states that are meeting and exceeding the Kyoto and Paris Accords are doing it well, and growing their GDP fast.

      Like the entire West, Texas, and the Northeast.

      It's the rest of the country that are failing. Both at job creation and at using much cheaper renewables, which are cheaper than both coal and natural gas are.

      Adapt. Because you're the areas that get the greatest negative impacts. Most of us will be fine.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      The targets make some allowances for the fact that that US emits more CO2 per capita than anybody except some middle eastern oil nations, a few Caribbean islands and Luxembourg (for some reason), and many times as much as many.

      • by magzteel ( 5013587 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2018 @11:42PM (#57712634)

        The targets make some allowances for the fact that that US emits more CO2 per capita than anybody except some middle eastern oil nations, a few Caribbean islands and Luxembourg (for some reason), and many times as much as many.

        Per capita is meaningless.
        The goal was overall reduction, and the US is achieving it. China and India are increasing a lot.

  • by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2018 @06:02PM (#57711278) Journal

    " While the goal is not impossible, it's unlikely to be met under current political conditions, which have rendered us unable to take significant action against climate change for more than half a century."
    That sounds very sad....but let's be clear on this.

    "Current political conditions" sounds an awful like "Those fucking stupid Republicans and Trump won't go along with the plan!" ...when in reality the facts or the "current political conditions" and "political conditions for the last half century" are/have been:

    - Kyoto ENTIRELY failed to address/regulate China or India (for...reasons).
    - the world's largest emitter is CHINA - double that of the US* - and it is growing the fastest as well. China's increase over the last decade alone was 60% of the world's increase.
    - the US has - despite disregarding International Kum-Bay-Yah handholding promise-sessions - decreased it's CO2 emissions. In fact the US leads other countries (it's just behind the EU collectively) in reductions. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/10/24/yes-the-u-s-leads-all-countries-in-reducing-carbon-emissions/#4a376eb73535)
    - the countries that HAVE signed such agreements are largely failing to reach the goals they promise, even though the Paris agreement had the most modest targets ever.

    Essentially, the "political conditions" are that the Climate Agreements are do-nothing SJW virtue-signaling, while the country pointed at as an international pariah is ACTUALLY improving significantly. The worst emitter in the world is now hailed as "leading the fight against climate change!"

    cf The Emperor's New Clothes, I guess?

    *don't give me "but...but...per capita emissions are lower in China!" First, it's an absolute problem, not a per capita problem. We don't talk about per capita CO2 levels. Per capita is West-hating ecomarxist apologists' desperate to find a way to blame the US for everything. If you want to talk about per capita CO2 output, then let's compare per capita PRODUCTIVITY (PPP) vs per capita CO2 production. Hint: China's an even-worse culprit in that context.

    • by Kyr Arvin ( 5570596 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2018 @07:59PM (#57711828)

      *don't give me "but...but...per capita emissions are lower in China!" First, it's an absolute problem, not a per capita problem. We don't talk about per capita CO2 levels. Per capita is West-hating ecomarxist apologists' desperate to find a way to blame the US for everything.

      If you have, say, 100 in group A generating a total of 500x pollutants, and you have 1000 people in group B generating a total of 1000x pollutants, if A tells B that 1000 is more than 500, so group B needs to cut their outputs more than group A... why should B listen? Group A sounds like a group of greedy hypocrites, having a much higher standard of living that energy use brings while denying it to others.

      Per-capita is extremely important unless you want to argue that one group of people is just far more important than another, and thus entitled to pollute more. If you go down that path, don't expect that the other people are going to pay much heed to your demands that they cut their emissions. Lack of per-capita controls is why I opposed climate treaties that put big caps on the US, but was fine with allowing, say, India to greatly increase their own per-capita pollution.

    • Why the hell SHOULDNT we give you a per capita figure? hmm?.

      Because Americans have a natural right to personally pollute more than others? Head buried in the sand much?
      Perhaps we should therefore hold america up the the emission levels of say New Zealand, because the problem is absolute, right?
      Lets see: 2014 figures (easily on hand)
      USA: 6673Mt, New Zealand: 75Mt
      I hope you are ready to drop your use by 90 times...
      Hell, why not Fiji? 2.7Mt,
      I doubt you can have cooking fires by now, but hey, its an ABSOLUTE pr

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Deef ( 162646 )

      It is a bit disingenuous not to mention that a big part of the US's recent reduction in emissions have been due to the 2008 financial crisis, and the temporary losses in production that resulted from it, and were not necessarily due to any particular nobility of purpose or deliberate action of the US government. When China suffers a big recession or depression (which seems likely in the near future, from what I have been reading), the same thing will happen to them.

      Also, the Trump administration has repeate

  • No problem. Trump is going to make the environment great again. He said so.
  • by rally2xs ( 1093023 ) on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @04:59AM (#57713374)

    People treating the associated costs of converting away from cheap coal and other dirty sources of energy as an inconvenience and people who don't like the inconvenience or additional expense as simply selfish.

    No, no, no.

    This is a matter of life and death. If you raise the price of energy, you plunge more people into poverty. Poverty kills. Smoking can take up to 7 years off your life, but living in poverty can take 10. People in poverty get poor nutrition, little or no preventive medical care, exposure to both the elements and criminal attacks because they're sleeping on a steam grate in an alley and freezing or getting beaten up by another person in poverty that wants to steal their shoes, and so forth. It isn't just that you might have to choose to carpool in order to afford to get to work 50 miles away each day, its that some poor schmuck died today because electricity went from 12.5 cents per KwH to 25 cents per KwH and they couldn't afford that and the rent too, and so were out living on the street and got mugged by a guy with a big knife, and bled to death in minutes. Yes, that's a death from poverty, because otherwise he would have been inside his house with a locked door between himself and the guy with the knife.

    I actually wonder if ANY of the proponents of the pain and suffering of "doing something" about global warming stop to calculate how many people they'll kill doing it, and whether those people they kill will exceed in number the people that would be killed by the global warming if we instead did nothing.

    OBTW I saw a headline a day or 2 ago that USA carbon emissions went down again for 2017, while the rest of the world's went up. Just sayin'...

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