Links tagged “emissions”

"The United Nations released its Emissions Gap Report 2020, an annual assessment of contributions to greenhouse gas...This report is evidence that, instead, the U.S. should just keep doing what it is doing to cut its own emissions. The U.S. is the most successful major country at mitigating its own pollution, and the U.N. shows this." ...

According to the UN report, “the United States of America emits 13 percent of global GHG emissions.” Comparatively, “China emits more than one-quarter of global GHG emissions.” The U.S. still contributes the most greenhouse gas emissions per capita in the world, but, over the last decade, the country’s GHG emissions have been in decline (0.4 per cent per year).“ Greenhouse gas emissions per capita in the U.S. are dropping precipitously while those of China, India and Russia continue to rise.

Daniel Markind: "Starting from a baseline on 2005 (which was also used by the Paris Agreement), CO2 emissions in the USA are down approximately 12%.  ... The overwhelming majority of that decrease has been caused by the change from coal based energy production to natural gas, facilitated greatly by fracking." 

"In 2020, American CO2 emissions are likely to drop another 10%. This would put the United States right on target, if not ahead of schedule, to meet American commitments under the Paris Climate Agreements (known as "NDCs," for Nationally Determined Contributions). Specifically, under the Paris Agreements, the United States pledged a reduction in CO2 emissions of 26-28% by 2025 from the 2005 baseline. ...

1. The United States is presently doing better than any other country in the world at reducing CO2 emissions, thanks mainly to the increased use of natural gas.

2. The United States is doing better than any other country in the world which gave a significant NDC for CO2 under the Paris Climate Agreements, and it is doing so without attempting to ban the use of fossil fuels.

3. The argument can be made that by insisting on an "all or nothing" approach and holding up the interstate pipeline buildout, the American environmental community is actually hurting the environment instead of helping it, by delaying the conversion from coal to more efficient and cleaner burning natural gas.

The American Petroleum Institute said Thursday that it supports the direct federal regulation of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from current and existing oil and gas operations. The position is a shift and concession by the largest oil and gas trade group, which is trying to position itself as willing to cooperate with certain aspects of President Biden’s aggressive agenda to combat climate change while opposing other efforts to limit fossil fuel production. ... API previously backed the Trump administration’s elimination of direct regulation of methane, arguing that existing regulations that indirectly capture methane, along with state rules and voluntary actions by companies, are sufficient.

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The American Petroleum Institute said Thursday that it supports the direct federal regulation of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from current and existing oil and gas operations. The position is a shift and concession by the largest oil and gas trade group, which is trying to position itself as willing to cooperate with certain aspects of President Biden’s aggressive agenda to combat climate change while opposing other efforts to limit fossil fuel production.

Prof. Larry Bell: This would occur as China and India which have represented 80% of the emission increases and are not bound to the pact, are dramatically ramping up coal and oil development. Although Beijing agreed to peak its emissions by 2030, they have a pass to do nothing to stem growth of CO2 emission growth during the 15 years leading up to that deadline. Meanwhile, China’s coal consumption has continued to increase in line with a rise in overall energy demand following a 2014-2016 "permitting surge" by local governments aiming to boost growth. When President Xi Jinping announced in September of 2019 that China would be carbon-neutral, he generously gave coal a four-decade-long "transition period."

Greanpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore: "What a farce the IPCC Paris Accord and all previous 'agreements' to reduce CO2 emissions have been. If only the collective billionaire-class would recognize that CO2 is entirely beneficial we could get on with making the world a better place."

Climate Depot's Marc Morano: "Get ready for more futility as the Green New Deal will continue meaningless 'climate action.'" 

The rule, finished just a week before the president-elect takes office, would block future limits on greenhouse gases from industrial sources aside from power plants.

Senator Manchin's 2010 campaign ad shotting Cap-and-Trade bill. 

The senator who once put a bullet through the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill for a campaign ad will become an even more important gatekeeper on climate change this year. West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin will take over the Energy and Natural Resources Committee as soon as next week as his party promises to push increasingly ambitious ideas against global warming.

Manchin: "I am an all-in energy person. I want to use all the resources we have. My first and foremost thing on this Energy Committee is to do everything I can to maintain energy independence in the United States of America...I think Joe Biden understands that there is going to be fracking in this country if we are to be energy independent, and there is a better, cleaner way of doing it."

Claim: There is less warming in the pipeline than we thought, said Imperial College (London) climate scientist Joeri Rogelj, a lead author of the next major climate assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “It is our best understanding that, if we bring down CO2 to net zero, the warming will level off. The climate will stabilize within a decade or two,” he said. “There will be very little to no additional warming. Our best estimate is zero.”

The widespread idea that decades, or even centuries, of additional warming are already baked into the system, as suggested by previous IPCC reports, were based on an “unfortunate misunderstanding of experiments done with climate models that never assumed zero emissions.”  Those models assumed that concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would remain constant, that it would take centuries before they decline, said Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann, who discussed the shifting consensus last October during a segment of 60 Minutes on CBS.

The idea that global warming could stop relatively quickly after emissions go to zero was described as a “game-changing new scientific understanding” by Covering Climate Now, a collaboration of news organizations covering climate. “This really is true,” he said. “It’s a dramatic change in the paradigm that has been lost on many who cover this issue, perhaps because it hasn’t been well explained by the scientific community. It’s an important development that is still under appreciated.”“It’s definitely the scientific consensus now that warming stabilizes quickly, within 10 years, of emissions going to zero,” he said.

UK Guardian:  "When lockdown began, climate scientists were horrified at the unfolding tragedy, but also intrigued to observe what they called an “inadvertent experiment” on a global scale. To what extent, they asked, would the Earth system respond to the steepest slowdown in human activity since the second world war? 
Environmental activists put the question more succinctly: how much would it help to save the planet? Almost one year on from the first reported Covid case, the short answer is: not enough. ... 

The respite was too short to reverse decades of destruction, but it did provide a glimpse of what the world might feel like without fossil fuels and with more space for nature."

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Flashback 2013: Fmr. UN climate head predicted COVID lockdowns?!: ‘The only way a 2015 agreement can achieve a 2-degree goal is to shut down the whole global economy’