Not News: Reductions In U.S. CO2 Emissions Dwarf The Rest Of The World

By Tom Blumer ~

The establishment press is making a big deal out of the fact that President Trump has not been and will not be personally invited to a climate summit in Paris in December.

Both the media and the folks running the summit, where the utterly unoriginal theme is “Make Our Planet Great Again,” should be thanking the U.S. for its outsized contribution — but to be clear, unnecessary, given that the link to “global warming” CO2 increases has not been definitively established— to carbon dioxide reduction.

According to Reuters, “The United States would still be invited to the summit but at a lower level than the president.” Though the UK Daily Mail is describing the action as a “SNUB,” it’s hard to imagine that Trump is feeling particularly bothered by it.

There’s certainly good reason to believe that wannabe controllers of the world’s economy who want to use bogus “climate change” claims as their premise for doing so aren’t interested in letting people know which nation has reduced its carbon footprint more than any other. That’s because that nation is the United States.

At Powerline on Thursday, using a chart seen at Watts Up With That, John Hinderaker showed that “the U.S. dwarfs every other country when it comes to actual reduction in CO2”:

Hinderaker adds: “America’s frackers say: you’re welcome.”

Additionally, back in June, Reuters headlined predictions that in 2017, the U.S. will reduce its CO2 emissions from energy sources to a level not seen in a quarter-century (bolds are mine throughout this post):

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from energy sources are expected to hit a 25-year low in 2017 as the power sector burns less carbon-intensive coal and more low-cost natural gas, according to government data released Tuesday.

… Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions were expected to fall to 5,134 million metric tons in 2017, which would be the lowest since 1992, before rising to 5,248 MMT in 2018, according to EIA’s latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO).

The all-time peak of 6,021 MMT was in 2007.

To be clear, CO2 from “energy sources” make up about 90 percent of all U.S. CO2 emissions, and the small remainder has been mostly stable during the quarter-century period involved.

This brings us back to an October 23 Washington Post fact check on two statements made by EPA Director Scott Pruitt (pictured) on October 17 in a Fox News interview, specifically:

“We are leading the nation — excuse me — the world with respect to our CO2 footprint in reductions.”

“We have reduced our CO2 footprint by over 18 percent, almost 20 percent, from 2000 to 2014.”

The Post gave Pruitt’s statements a single grade of “Three Pinocchios” — “Significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions. This gets into the realm of “mostly false.”

What rubbish. The statements should have been evaluated separately. That’s because Pruitt’s first statement, based on the chart seen above, is obviously true. But even that didn’t satisfy the paper’s Nicole Lewis, who whined that:

The United States may have had the largest decrease in carbon emissions, but it is still one of the largest per capita emitters.

Translation: Pruitt’s right, but I needed to invent a bogus reason to make it look like he wasn’t.

As to the Post’s two claims, Robert Rapier at Forbes disagreed with the Post’s assessment (also re-posted at OilPrice.com on November 8):

Concerning Pruitt’s first statement:

… the second largest decline during that period was registered by the United Kingdom, which reported a 170 million metric ton decline. At the same time, China’s carbon dioxide emissions grew by 3 billion metric tons, and India’s grew by 1 billion metric tons.

Thus, I don’t think it’s the least bit misleading to claim that the U.S. is leading the world in reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

As to Pruitt’s second statement, Rapier notes that the EPA director got the starting year for his statistic wrong — but my observation) that makes what has actually happened stronger than what Pruitt portrayed:

… the Washington Post story claimed: “The United States may have had the largest decrease in carbon emissions, but it is still the largest per capita emitter.”

That’s not accurate either.

According to World Bank data, U.S. per capita carbon dioxide emissions rank 11th among countries. (Note: As excerpted above, the Post claimed that the U.S. is “one of the largest emitters,” leading one to wonder, given Rapier’s direct quote seen above, whether the Post corrected its own fact check without notice. — Ed.)

… The story quoted Pruitt a second time: “We have reduced our CO2 footprint by over 18 percent, almost 20 percent, from 2000 to 2014.” The Post also disputes this claim, citing EPA numbers that stated “energy-related CO2 emissions” have fallen by 7.5 percent since 2000.

I am not sure why anyone is using numbers from 2000, as U.S. carbon dioxide emissions continued to rise until 2005. That’s when they began to fall. Between 2005 and 2017, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions fell by 12.4 percent on an absolute basis and by 19.9 percent on a per capita basis. The per capita number is certainly consistent with Pruitt’s claims, though the date range isn’t.

In other words, the U.S. has accomplished a 20 percent per capita reduction in the most recent 12 years (2005 to 2017) instead of a prior 14-year period (2000 to 2014), meaning that Pruitt understated the per-capita accomplishment — and that the Post didn’t sufficiently investigate what Pruitt said before issuing its bogus “fact check.” Sure, Pruitt didn’t utter the words “per capita,” but given the absolute truth of his first statement, there’s no way his omission of those two words and his differing time frame justify the Post’s “Three Pinocchios” evaluation.

As Rapier wrote in his wrap:

Pruitt’s claim is entirely defensible, and on a nuanced topic like this certainly shouldn’t be considered mostly false. I think the Washington Post got this one wrong.

Ref.: https://papundits.wordpress.com/2017/11/13/not-news-reductions-in-u-s-co2-emissions-dwarf-the-rest-of-the-world/

When the economy is growing .. plants rejoys!!

CO2 Emissions Growing Strongly Again

image

By Paul Homewood

Greenies panic that CO2 emissions are still rising!

Hopes that the world might be seeing an early peak in global carbon emissions were dashed today with the release of the latest Global Carbon Project report. Emissions barely rose at all in 2014-2016, despite steady growth in GDP, leading some to suggest that humanity had turned the corner in tackling climate change. However, carbon releases rose sharply again in 2017, with fossil fuel emissions hitting a new all-time record of 37 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.

The bad news comes as policy-makers gather for the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 23) at Bonn this week. The Global Carbon Project data, which involve numerous scientists from different institutions and the simultaneous publication of three major peer-reviewed journal papers, reveals a 2 percent rise in all human-originated greenhouse gas emissions in 2017, yielding a grand total of 41 billion tonnes of CO2.

“Global CO2 emissions appear to be going up strongly once again after a three-year stable period,” said Prof. Corinne Le Quéré, lead researcher and director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at UEA. “This is very disappointing. Time is running out on our ability to keep warming well below 2ºC let alone 1.5ºC.”

The main source of increased emissions seems to be an uptick in coal burning in China, where increased industrial production and reduced hydroelectric generation led to a resurgence in coal consumption. The United States also saw a slight rebound in coal use, after years of falling consumption, due to cheap fracked natural gas and increased use of renewables.

“The return to growth in global emissions in 2017 is largely due to growth in Chinese emissions, projected to grow by 3.5 percent in 2017 after two years with declining emissions,” said Dr. Glen Peters of the CICERO Center for International Climate Research in Oslo, who led one of the studies. “The growth in 2017 emissions is unwelcome news, but it is too early to say whether it is a one-off event on a way to a global peak in emissions, or the start of a new period with upward pressure on global emissions growth.”

Meanwhile, world temperatures continue to rise rapidly. The five warmest years in terms of average global temperatures have all occurred since 2010, and 16 of the 17 hottest years have all come since 2000. The year 2017 is on track to be the second-warmest on record, after the record-breaking highs seen in 2016. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations reached 403 parts per million last year and are expected to rise another 2.5ppm in 2017. They are likely now the highest they’ve been in at least 3 million years.

While the report states that renewables have increased by a rapid 14 percent each year, with a record installation of 161 gigawatts of renewable generating capacity in 2016, this is from a very small base and makes little difference to overall global emissions. For China, the largest emitter, the researchers state: “Solar, wind and nuclear growth is not nearly sufficient to make up for the combination of higher energy demand and lower hydro output.”

According to the 2017 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, renewables still only account of 3.2% of global primary energy, barely changed at all from the previous year. Renewable energy’s massive growth added 55 mtoe (million tonnes of oil equivalent) to global primary energy, but oil consumption grew by 75 mtoe and natural gas by 57 mtoe. Between 2000 and 2016, 80% of the increased global primary energy supply has come from fossil fuels. Oil consumption has now hit 97 million barrels per day, and is expected to cross the 100 millon barrels per day threshold in a few years.

The closure of carbon-free nuclear capacity elsewhere in the world, ironically often at the behest of environmental campaigners who claim to be also concerned with tackling climate change, has also boosted coal. Germany, where the UN climate summit is being held, is the sixth largest emitter in the world, after China, USA, India, Russia and Japan. Germany is now forecast to miss its climate targets because lost nuclear generation has meant a continuing reliance on dirty coal.

Germany was called “Europe’s worst offender on climate” in a report released last week by the campaign group Energy For Humanity. Because renewables growth barely compensates for the nuclear shutdown, “Germany does not deserve its reputation as a climate leader,” EFH’s director Kirsty Gogan said. “France, however, with this week’s timely decision to not force accelerated shut-downs on its nuclear fleet, is bound to stay on top as one of the most decarbonized nations, while Germany falls further behind,” she added.

Overall Europe’s rate of decarbonisation has slowed since the previous decade, the opposite of what European policymakers have repeatedly pledged in numerous speeches about the supposed seriousness of climate change. The EU’s emissions are projected to decline by a negligible 0.2% in 2017. The failure of Europe and the US to cut emissions significantly means that growth in the developing world – where per-capita emissions are dramatically lower than in rich countries – is not offset.

After all the hype and warm words after the successful Paris climate meeting, Bonn is likely to see a serious reality-check. Decarbonising the global economy is proving to be a hard task, made harder by ideological preferences for renewables over nuclear, and the continued lack of serious grid-scale electricity storage options. For most countries – even self-professed climate leaders like Germany – fossil fuels continue to be the most reliable and the cheapest option for their energy supply. The chance of meeting the 2 degrees target gets slimmer by the day.

https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/grim-news-climate-carbon-emissions-reach-new-record-high

I am constantly amazed that the likes of Mark Lynas and Corrinne Le Quere are surprised to see emissions still rising.

If they had bothered to read the Paris Agreement and the INDCs, they would have known that was exactly what was intended.

It surely must be obvious to Le Quere and co that the real problem is China.

s11_Projections

http://folk.uio.no/roberan/GCP2017.shtml

And the argument that it is all about per capita emissions no longer washes either, as China’s are now higher than the EU’s.

s12_Top_FF_Emitters_percapita

Footnote

I notice that Le Quere has this to say in the Tyndall Centre’s press release on the topic today:

This year we have seen how climate change can amplify the impacts of hurricanes with more intense rainfall, higher sea levels and warmer ocean conditions favouring more powerful storms.

http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/news/record-high-co2-emissions-delay-global-peak

As we know, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever for this statement.

image

It is a sad state of affairs when supposedly objective scientists are prepared to lie to support their beliefs.

Ref.: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/11/13/co2-emissions-growing-strongly-again/

Comment:

“It is a sad state of affairs when supposedly objective scientists are prepared to lie to support their beliefs.”

If that’s what they believe, are they then actually lying? But that is not the question, of course they know the truth, they also knows they are lying, it’s not a matter of beliefs ..

Support

Newscats – on Patreon or Payoneer ID: 55968469

Cherry May Timbol – Independent Reporter
Contact Cherry at: cherrymtimbol@newscats.org or timbolcherrymay@gmail.com
Support Cherry May directly at: https://www.patreon.com/cherrymtimbol

Ad

Why do CO2 lag behind temperature?

71% of the earth is covered by ocean, water is a 1000 times denser than air and the mass of the oceans are 360 times that of the atmosphere, small temperature changes in the oceans doesn’t only modulate air temperature, but it also affect the CO2 level according to Henry’s Law.

The reason it is called “Law” is because it has been “proven”!

“.. scientific laws describe phenomena that the scientific community has found to be provably true ..”

That means, the graph proves CO2 do not control temperature, that again proves (Man Made) Global Warming, now called “Climate Change” due to lack of … Warming is – again – debunked!