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Greenhouse Gas Emissions Are Still Rising, UN Report Says 263

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Greenhouse gas emissions have risen steadily for the past decade despite the current and future threat posed by climate change, according to a new United Nations report. The annual report compares how clean the world's economies are to how clean they need to be to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change -- a disparity known as the "emissions gap." However, this year's report describes more of a chasm than a gap. Global emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases have continued to steadily increase over the past decade. In 2018, the report notes that global fossil fuel CO2 emissions from electricity generation and industry grew by 2%.

"There is no sign of [greenhouse gas] emissions peaking in the next few years," the authors write. Every year that emissions continue to increase "means that deeper and faster cuts will be required" to keep Earth from warming more than 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. [...] The United States is currently not on track to meet its greenhouse gas reduction commitments under the Paris Agreement, which the United States ratified and is technically still part of until its withdrawal takes effect in November 2020. According to the new report, six other major economies are also lagging behind their commitments, including Canada, Japan, Australia, Brazil, the Republic of Korea and South Africa.
What's interesting is that China's per capita emissions are now "in the same range" as the European Union, thanks to the country's large investments in renewable energy such as solar and wind.

Some of the recommendations for how the world's top economies could cut emissions include: banning new coal-fired power plants, requiring all new vehicles to be CO2-free by 2030, expanding mass transit and/or requiring all new buildings to be entirely electric.
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Greenhouse Gas Emissions Are Still Rising, UN Report Says

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  • by Lanthanide ( 4982283 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2019 @10:39PM (#59465114)

    The question is just how much farther past 3C we're going to go, and which unanticipated feedback loops will drive it over 4C without us being able to stop them.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      From the present and ongoing inability to do anything effective, _despite_ the problem being known for something like 30 years now, I conclude we will rush right past 4C, no unanticipated effects needed.

    • by memnock ( 466995 )

      I see people who are sitting in their cars idling in parking lots all the time, regardless of weather. In Oklahoma, people don't even turn off the car engine when they're in front of the gas pump and have the hose connected and they're filling the gas tank. The vehicle at that point is _not_ going anywhere, yet it's still on. That's just one type of purposeless burning of fossil fuel.

      Then there are the leaf blowers. I saw someone using a leaf blower on leaves that were on a grassy lawn in a park. Those leav

      • The amount of gas burned at idle during a 5m fill up is trivial. However, filling up while the engine is running seems suicidally stupid. Don't you guys have laws about that? The gas station attendant should shut that shit down to avoid a fire.
      • by MrKaos ( 858439 ) on Thursday November 28, 2019 @04:49AM (#59465728) Journal

        Then there are the leaf blowers.

        This this this. Leaf blowers. There is always some asshole who wants to use one on a Sunday morning at 7am. They blow the leaves onto their neigbors yard who then blows them back. Now a petrol power leaf vacuum, that's ok, but leaf blowers are a useless invention by comparison.

        I see people who are sitting in their cars idling in parking lots all the time, regardless of weather.

        This, this, so fucking this. A pet peeve of mine. Idle idiots sitting in their cars, idling, AC on on a perfectly fine day posting on FB, so it's not just in the US.

        1.2ml to start a 1.5 cc engine and after seven seconds of idling it is more fuel efficient to shut off the engine according to Society of Automotive Engineers [sae.org]

        Engineering Explained has a great youtube vid that explains it. [youtube.com]

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's too early to give up yet. People said we couldn't get this far.

      I wish I could find the link now but there was a comment on Slashdot maybe a decade ago about how electricity was going to become something only intermittently available, when the sun was out or the wind was blowing. Everyone would have to live a basically agrarian lifestyle, giving up all modern technology.

      You could argue that so far it's been the low hanging fruit, but I'd say there is still a lot we can do. Serious efforts to plant huge

  • by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2019 @10:43PM (#59465124)

    >What's interesting is that China's per capita emissions are now "in the same range" as the European Union, thanks to the country's large investments in renewable energy such as solar and wind.

    The pro-Chinese spin is strong in this one. Here's what story actually says:

    >Meanwhile, China's greenhouse emissions have continued to grow, although they appear to be on track to peak before 2030, which is the target date that Beijing set for itself. The new U.N. report points out that per capita emissions in China are now "in the same range" as the European Union.

    Those of you who don't know: Paris agreement encourages countries like China to grow their emissions as much as they can until 2030, because that's going to be the base level from which they count emission reductions after that.

    That is of course if China suddenly makes a dramatic change in its policy after 2030 and actually starts to meet its international obligations when its not aggressively forced to do so.

    • >What's interesting is that China's per capita emissions are now "in the same range" as the European Union, thanks to the country's large investments in renewable energy such as solar and wind.

      the actual take on this is that if they hadn't made the large investments in renewables then their per capita usage would be through the roof like USA's per capita usage.
  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2019 @10:47PM (#59465132)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

      But hereÃ(TM)s the weird thingÃ"more than half the time, ChinaÃ(TM)s coal plants are just sitting around collecting dust. If China already has more coal power than it needs, why does it keep building new plants?"

      It's a jobs program. China literally has cities sitting around mostly empty that they built in expectation of filling them with the new middle class, but hasn't managed to expand the number of jobs enough to actually produce that many new members of the middle class. The last thing they want is to have even less jobs. They need a large middle class in order to have a large group of the educated people they need in order to go from being copiers to inventors. Copying everything means always playing catch-up.

      • China has a ton of jobs, but centered around few industrial centers. There are empty houses in China, but at the same time real estate prices in places which have jobs are going through the roof. It simply easier to start a new business in a place which already has the supply chain and trained people than to go somewhere where these two don't exist.
    • They are building coal plants all over the world for other countries but the article doesn't mention that. https://www.npr.org/2019/04/29... [npr.org]
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      If you had just read the next paragraph, the one after the one you quoted, you would realize it doesn't support your point. Maybe you do realize and are just hoping people don't bother reading it.

      As your article says it was a mistake that the government is now undoing. Previous the central government directed energy production but they decided to give that responsibility to local governments to try to reduce the amount of time it took to approve new plants. Local authorities went nuts and built far too many

  • Turns out facts are worth something after all.

  • by Nicholas Schumacher ( 21495 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2019 @11:44PM (#59465258) Homepage

    The United States is currently not on track to meet its greenhouse gas reduction commitments under the Paris Agreement, which the United States ratified and is technically still part of until its withdrawal takes effect in November 2020.

    The United States never ratified the Paris Agreement, to ratify it would have taken a vote of the Senate. The Paris Agreement was never in fact even submitted to the Senate for ratification - Obama simply signed it and never had it ratified.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Barsteward ( 969998 )
      The USA is lucky in that a lot of the state politicians/city mayors are trying implement stuff in accordance with the paris accord in spite of polluter trump.
  • Since last I checked expectations for the near future and agreements for emissions weren't about reduction in GHG but reduction in rates of increase of GHG. (Somebody else can check up and find out when the UN or whomever was expecting GHG emissions to actually go down.)
  • "requiring all new buildings to be entirely electric"

    Are they talking about electric heating as well??? If so that is a REALLLY bad idea. Power plants are limited in their ability to efficiently convert thermal energy into electrical energy. As long as you have a well designed supply chain your carbon footprint will likely be considerably smaller if you heat with fossil fuels at the usage point (boiler, water heater, furnace) rather than trying to convert them into electricity and then use that electrici

    • The only way to reduce the energy footprint of buildings it to make them lose less energy: insulated walls, insulated roofs, and heat recuperation in ventilation and solar for hot water generation. It is actually quite cheap when building new homes, at least in Europe.
    • It also makes sense if you're worried about supply problems with fossil fuel. For instance, natural gas is scarce is Europe, and most of it must be imported from Russia. If there's a major conflict, Russia could decide to halt the supply at a moment's notice.

  • 'China's per capita emissions are now "in the same range" as the European Union, thanks to a couple suitcases full of cash in a dark parking lot outside Paris'

    FTFY

  • We're going to get the practical automotive battery to enable practical (cheap enough, refuelable in short enough time, have long enough range, and cheap enough) to make electric cars work. Refueling electric cars is blindingly cheap compared to gasoline. Advantage will be to electric cars.

    Read recently that renewable energy is destined to become cheaper than the next-cheapest electrical generating, natural gas, in about 2035.

    Those 2 things happen on schedule, then all the world, including the Chinese, a

    • We don't have time to fuck around for decades while new technology and "rational self interest" gradually replaces hydrocarbons. If electric cars had started to replace ICE vehicles in 1960 then you'd have a great point - but not now.

  • by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Thursday November 28, 2019 @03:41AM (#59465658)

    We're going to tear down the maximum 2 degrees we've set for humanity in the next decade. If we're not total dimwits we might be able to stall at +5 degrees centigrade although I doubt it. The ecosystem is toppling as we speak and when the dust settles in 30 years or so the planet will be a notably different place. Let's just all hope we can somehow avoid mad max or bladerunner and settle for something like the world in Cory Doctorows walkaway or Gibsons Bridge triology.

    This sucks. Big time. But I guess we'll have to deal with it one way or the other.

    • Stop being so scared. It is fear, and fear alone, which has since the beginning of humanity driven us to do stupid things. Keep in mind the fears always seem rational and the actions noble at the time.

      Climate change and rising CO2 are serious issues we need to discuss and resolve, but there is no reason to panic. Ecosystems aren't toppling. Try getting out of your city and regularly visiting natural spaces. The ones I frequent, covering a large chunk in North America, are thriving and you would have
  • Don't worry. The cybertruck is coming! The cybertruck is coming!

  • by Trogre ( 513942 ) on Thursday November 28, 2019 @06:57PM (#59467962) Homepage

    If you know any greenies who ever lobbied against nuclear power, look them straight in the eye as you tell them this is their fault.

    We had our near-zero-CO2 replacement for fossil fuels decades ago, and they killed it.

Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!

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