This article published in The Guardian, a UK based newspaper, summarizes the results of this review published in Nature Geoscience. The newspaper article states that this year has shown a rise of 2.5% in carbon dioxide emission over 2013, consistent with the trend over the last several years. At this pace, the article states, we will use up the total carbon budget within 30 years. Further in, it is stated that this rise in emissions comes despite the shale gas boom in the United States, which was supposed to have cleaner emissions than petroleum. However, the main bulk of the article discusses the politcal situation surrounding the upocming climate summit at the UN. The talking points here include the surpassing of Europe in carbon dioxide emissions per person by China. This is important because China has long argued against strong mitigation due to their lower per capita emissions.
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| Figure taken from the Nature article illustrating carbon dioxide emissions by country over time |
Overall, I thought this article was sufficient at summarizing the important points of the original scientific paper. The actual paper contained some more details and several other climate scenarios to be considered, but these would only serve to dilute the message the scientists discuss within the paper, which is that without drastic short term mitigation, severe climate change in the future will be unavoidable. I thought in terms of science reporting, this writer tried to write as unbiased a review as they could given the situation. The newspaper article seemed to mostly focus on the political action and ramification of action on the climate change issue, which illustrates the actual state of the climate debate currently. The science surrounding greenhouse gasses has not changed very much recently, the warming effect of the primary gasses is well characterized, now it is mostly a political issue of agreements to cut carbon emission drastically. To me, it is probably no coincidence that these emissions studies were all published shortly before a global summit on climate change, highlighting the politicized nature of these issues.
I am surprised that the CO2 emissions from China increased so fast since 2000. I think there are two main reasons: first, China has a large population; second, since the 21st century, China's economy developed rapidly. A lot of firms, like chemical firms, appeared which affected the environment.
ReplyDeleteThe red dots seem like an estimate for the next 15 years. I am curious how they got this estimate and if they had any evidence.
The projections made by the Nature paper are based on projected GDP growth from the IMF's World Economic Outlook. It is cited in the paper that on short time scales changes in CO2 are effectively shown by a measure of economic activity.
DeleteI understand that emissions continue to rise, but what continues to boggle my mind is that with all of the campaigning and understanding that global warming is a dire issue namely caused my anthropogenic CO2 emissions, more rigid policies haven't been put in place in the countries that continue to emit the most pollution especially, the U.S.
ReplyDeleteI am also curious about the evidence or methodologies for determining the red dots projecting the future.
ReplyDeleteI am also curious to know the leading sources (probably houses or transportation?) of carbon dioxide emission from each of the countries.
From what I could gather in the limited preview, the journal went into some depth about the potential short-term actions that could take place and the various outcomes from those actions. It would have been nice for the news article to include Figure 3 so that readers could see the potential consequences of current actions and the difference that changes can make.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the article could have done a better job of explaining the various tested scenarios and their projected outcomes, however figure 3 in the paper would likely be overwhelming for an average newspaper reader. It would have been nice if a figure editor for the newspaper had attempted to more concisely illustrate the point.
DeleteI had never heard the term "carbon budget" before this post. I did a short search and, of course, resorted to wikipedia
ReplyDelete"The global carbon budget is the balance of the exchanges (incomes and losses) of carbon between the carbon reservoirs or between one specific loop (e.g., atmosphere ↔ biosphere) of the carbon cycle. An examination of the carbon budget of a pool or reservoir can provide information about whether the pool or reservoir is functioning as a source or sink for carbon dioxide."
Here's a cool looking picture of the carbon cycle exchanges(save you a couple clicks)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Carbon_cycle.jpg
An interesting thing that popped up while searching was the punchlines about this topic. Here are a few
Three Decades Until Carbon Budget Is Eaten Through
22 years till we blow the 2°C Carbon Budget
Earth has 30 years before carbon budget is blown
Topic seems to made headway into mainstream news
With regards to "carbon budgeting", I am curious to know if any other countries/states have actually implemented one with carbon-use consequences. For instance, I know that Australia attempted a carbon tax in 2012 for a little while but it was repealed this year. Apparently it made significant reductions in power plant carbon emissions, and lead to more investment/focus on alternative fuels. But economic concerns from the financial crisis and industry complaints seemed to overtake a concern on climate shift. I think another problem is that combating climate change must be unanimously tackled by the major carbon-producing countries. As long as someone isn't enforcing carbon-cutting policies, someone else is gonna get jealous...
ReplyDeleteThe carbon budget mentioned in both articles is not directly linked to the mitigation strategies like the carbon tax. The " budget" mentioned here is just the total amount of carbon emissions needed to breach the 2C threshold marked for unavoidable future consequences.
DeleteIt might be interesting to point out that China's current target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions is to cut down the emissions per unit GDP (known as carbon intensity) by 40-45% by 2020, compared with 2005. Given the rapid development of China's economy in recent years, it is not surprising that the absolute emissions will continue to grow. I would assume the emission target is one of the evidence used to project China's future emissions till 2020.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteThe authors of the paper state that the projected future emissions are based on projected GDP of individual countries multiplied by a scaling factor of carbon emission intensities,the authors state that China's emissions intensity has decreased, but it is too early to determine if it is from mitigation efforts or other factors. The projections include a similar intensity factor to what is currently seen.
DeleteCorrect me if I'm wrong, but isn't China's CO2 emissions per capita now the highest in the world? If so, it seems to me like this is more of an economic/political issue than anything else.
ReplyDelete