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> even though they had no clue that China would become such a powerful force in terms of CO2 emissions I think you're making the same mistake that you're attri
by namirez 7y ago
> even though they had no clue that China would become such a powerful force in terms of CO2 emissions
I think you're making the same mistake that you're attributing to the story. It really doesn't matter what China does per se. The global energy consumption, roughly, follows a log-linear trend. If the energy comes from fossil fuels, the CO2 emissions would also follow the same trend [1]. It doesn't matter whether it's China or someone else; the CO2 emission would go up if we don't innovate and rely on fossil fuels.
As an analogy, think about the Moore's law. Does it matter whether the chip is made by Intel or AMD?
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Global_co2_emissions_graph.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Global_co2_emissions...
- ekianjo 7y agoDisagree. China's move to a more market based economy has resulted in them tripling their fossil CO2 emissions compared to the 1990s. India doubled. EU and the US are slowing down in emissions but on the whole China is driving the huge increase of CO2 emissions worldwide, matching their rapid economic development. If you did not take that into account you would miss on the acceleration of CO2 content in the atmosphere over time.
- polotics 7y agoThe manufacturing offloaded to chinese coal would then have been run on USA gas & shale oil: same difference.
- jamez1 7y agoThere is no physical phenomenon that causes the log-linear trend, its just a model that happens to fit for a small select period of history. Moore's law isn't an actual law I hope you understand that.. Rising prosperity comes with rising energy consumption. If China didn't export so much it wouldn't be able to import the fuel that it used. Its dramatic rise was definitely not a given.
- namirez 7y ago> There is no physical phenomenon that causes the log-linear trend, its just a model that happens to fit for a small select period of history. Of course it's a model. Please look up the Kardashev scale and correlations that people have developed based on it [1]. The energy output is not necessarily coupled with the CO2 emission unless we burn fossil fuels to generate power. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale#Current_status_of_human_civilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale#Current_status...