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Earth

Carbon Emissions Continued Increasing Last Year, Especially in China and India - But Not the US (apnews.com) 222

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press: Even as Earth sets new heat records, humanity this year is pumping 330 million tons (300 million metric tons) more carbon dioxide into the air by burning fossil fuels than it did last year. This year the world is on track to put 41.2 billion tons (37.4 billion metric tons) of the main heat-trapping gas into the atmosphere. It's a 0.8% increase from 2023, according to Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists who track emissions... This year's pollution increase isn't quite as large as last year's 1.4% jump, scientists said while presenting the data at the United Nations climate talks in Azerbaijan...

The continued rise in carbon emissions is mostly from the developing world and China. Many analysts had been hoping that China — by far the world's biggest annual carbon polluting nation with 32% of the emissions — would have peaked its carbon dioxide emissions by now. Instead China's emissions rose 0.2% from 2023, with coal pollution up 0.3%, Global Carbon Project calculated... [Although its growth rate now is "basically flat," O'Sullivan said.] That's nothing close to the increase in India, which at 8% of the globe's carbon pollution is third-largest carbon emitter. India's carbon pollution jumped 4.6% in 2024, the scientists said.

Carbon emissions fell 0.6% in the U.S. mostly from reduced coal, oil and cement use. The U.S. was responsible for 13% of the globe's carbon dioxide in 2024. Historically, it's responsible for 21% of the world's emissions since 1950... Twenty-two nations have shown steady decreases in emissions, O'Sullivan said, singling out the United States as one of those. The biggest emission drops from 2014 to 2023 were in the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and Ukraine. Europe, which accounts for 7% of the world's carbon pollution, saw its carbon dioxide output drop 3.8% from last year — driven by a big cut in coal emissions.

Some interesting statistics from the article:
  • Burning coal, oil, and natural gas is currently emitting 2.6 million pounds (1.2 million kilograms) of carbon dioxide every second..."
  • In the last 10 years, emissions have gone up about 6%.
  • Global carbon emissions are more than double what they were 50 years ago, and 50% more than they were in 1999.

"If the world continues burning fossil fuels at today's level, it has six years before passing 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, the limit agreed to at the 2015 climate talks in Paris, said study co-author Stephen Sitch. The Earth is already at 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 Fahrenheit), according to the United Nations."

Yet "Total carbon emissions — which include fossil fuel pollution and land use changes such as deforestation — are basically flat because land emissions are declining, the scientists said."


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Carbon Emissions Continued Increasing Last Year, Especially in China and India - But Not the US

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  • by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Sunday November 17, 2024 @03:53AM (#64951325) Homepage

    ...stop buying endless throwaway crap from China then their emissions won't go down. A lot of China's emissions are outsourced from the wests former industrial capacity. People need to take a good look in the mirror at their own lifestyles if climate change is really going to be combated, otherwise its all just virtue signalling.

    • by Senshi ( 10461927 ) on Sunday November 17, 2024 @04:22AM (#64951365)
      Let not kidding ourselves. It’s too late. Domino effect is already in the momentum. World population is explosive and most don’t believe in science or even care as long they follow their money and religions. Optimism is a way of telling you to keep it up with consuming, breeding, making money, and praying.
      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 )

        Let not kidding ourselves. It’s too late. Domino effect is already in the momentum. World population is explosive and most don’t believe in science or even care as long they follow their money and religions. Optimism is a way of telling you to keep it up with consuming, breeding, making money, and praying.

        It is too late. My initial calculations were that the tipping point was some time in the mid 80's. This was reinforced when the world's shipping fleets started switching away from bunker fuel, and were spewing les SO2.

        We have people telling us that world population will fall off, while India has added almost 2 entire populations of the USA since 2000.

        In an ironic twist it will. We simply cannot have Western level of lifestyle for everyone for a planet that at this moment is at 8.1 billion and hardly slo

        • by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Sunday November 17, 2024 @11:38AM (#64952029) Homepage

          We have people telling us that world population will fall off, while India has added almost 2 entire populations of the USA since 2000. In an ironic twist it will. We simply cannot have Western level of lifestyle for everyone for a planet that at this moment is at 8.1 billion and hardly slowing. https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]

          A useless link, since it does not, in fact, show the population growth is "hardly slowing." Try this one: https://assets.ourworldindata.... [ourworldindata.org]
          (Note that the left half of the graph, the solid line, is data; the right half, the dotted line, is projection.)

          The good news is that the population growth rate is slowing. The bad news is that the growth rate isn't likely to drop to zero until 2080. We'll have to solve the problem, or learn to live with it, well before then.

      • World population is explosive

        This is the basic problem, and a large part of the responsibility for this goes to the "church ladies" that "fought" to stop starvation and diseases in the third world post 1945 - but "forgot" to make some reasonable demands on the adult recipients - sterilization. If you must rely on aid to provide your current children with education, vaccination, food etc you have lost your right to propagate. That small "detail" did the emotionally controlled church ladies "forget" because "think of the chiiiiiildren".

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Even if we did that, China is not going to stop the transition from agrarian to urban for hundreds of millions of people.

      That's really what this is down to. Building, short term solutions to local energy issues. With the amount of renewables going in, it's only a matter of time.

    • ...stop buying endless throwaway crap from China then their emissions won't go down. A lot of China's emissions are outsourced from the wests former industrial capacity. People need to take a good look in the mirror at their own lifestyles if climate change is really going to be combated, otherwise its all just virtue signalling.

      The people buying endless throwaway crap, are also the same ones enjoying endless stock market returns.

      Nothing like egging on a situation when you’re the crap-hoarding consumer and the investor.

    • by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

      Well, yes, but the throwaway crap would still be eye-poppingly cheap if China adhered to some eco rules.

      So let's not act as if this wasn't a question of an inferior culture taking their profits from everybody's future including their own offspring.

      I am done with acting like every culture was equal in quality.

    • But if we're gonna look to per capita figure, we get a different picture, US isn't even in the top 10, but still almost double the co2 pollution per capita compared to China. Australia and Canada are also around the same spot as the US.. So with that in mind and you telling the west is offsetting their pollution to China, but now starting to move more factories back to the US, the pollution per capita in the US will just rise even more.
      • by Budenny ( 888916 )

        11 billion tons a year (China) has double the effect of 5 billion tons (US).

        Doesn't matter what per capita, what historical, what its used for... etc

        You do believe that total emissions drive climate, don't you?

        The China lobby is out in force in this thread.

    • by JBMcB ( 73720 )

      A lot of China's emissions are outsourced from the wests former industrial capacity.

      And China can't build renewable energy sources? It's not the rest of the world's job to manage China's energy sources.

  • by Growlley ( 6732614 ) on Sunday November 17, 2024 @08:05AM (#64951667)
    come Jan,
  • I don't understand the contradiction https://www.bbc.com/future/art... [bbc.com] Which is it - the most clean energy, or they are polluting?
    • Looking at geography China us polluting much more as a country like the US, BUT looking at per capita (per head), the US is polluting almost double as much as China, and the US isn't even in the top 10 per capita list. So when looking at the population per country , the US polluted much MUCH more as China.
    • Were it not for clean energy this wouldn't be close to true:

      Chinaâ(TM)s emissions rose 0.2% from 2023, with coal pollution up 0.3%, Global Carbon Project calculated. But it could drop to zero in the next two months and is âoebasically flat,â Oâ(TM)Sullivan said.

      I thought it might actually be because their buildout of skyscrapers was finally slowing down (if not crashing), but this recent source [nextmsc.com] says their construction industry is still growing rapidly.

  • by SuperDre ( 982372 ) on Sunday November 17, 2024 @09:11AM (#64951769) Homepage
    These numbers are how much a country pollutes per 'location', now show me the numbers per capita, which will show a completely different picture, and countries like the US will then be at the top of the list and China will drop considerably.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's also worth looking at emissions by economic group, and by business type.

      Some powerful interests really want you to blame anyone but them.

    • by skam240 ( 789197 )

      Regardless of how you want to look at the numbers the United States' declining emissions is working towards solving the problem of global warming where as increasing emissions are working against us. You can complain all you want about the US' outsized contribution to global warming but as long as our emission reductions are MORE than canceled out by other countries we'll never reach net zero. Western or just American reductions in emissions will never get us where we need to be on their own. It's a complet

      • Uhm, the US is one of the worst as it's still pumping out more and more pollution as China, almost double, so as long as the US isn't cutting down towards the output per capita as China, the US should shut its mouth and start working on really bringing the number down. China, is working hard on it, much harder as the US.
  • Everyone needs to see this cheesy hilarious explainer vid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] The extraction, transport, refining and delivery of crude oil uses shockingly large amounts of energy. After delivery use of petroleum fuels is only about 30% efficient and the rest goes into creating waste heat. Every bit of carbon fuel we don't extract actually has has a positive multiplier in how much carbon doesn't make it into our atmosphere.

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