3 ms·

The source report is presented very nicely. [0] And this is an extremely interesting data point that we should all be celebrating!? > Emissions in advanced ec

The source report is presented very nicely. [0] And this is an extremely interesting data point that we should all be celebrating!? > Emissions in advanced economies fell to their level of 50 years ago [1] [0] https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissions-in-2023 https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissions-in-2023 [1] https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissions-in-2023/emissions-in-advanced-economies-fell-to-their-level-of-50-years-ago https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissions-in-2023/emissions-...

wahnfrieden 3y ago
What's the reporting on how much of advanced economies emissions have been exported to elsewhere in the world edit: > lower emissions per capita now than they did at the beginning of the 21st century Given the US for instance has grown by ~70 million people since the start of the 21st century, does this per capita reporting obfuscate a growing net impact?
- philipkglass 3y ago
  Our World In Data has a good collection of data sets and explanations for emissions adjusted by import/export. Here are a couple of them: https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit... As expected, a "consumption based" approach to measuring CO2 shows advanced economies with higher emissions than otherwise reported and big manufacturing exporters like China with lower emissions. The good news is that advanced economies are still making real progress: they have lower emissions per capita now than they did at the beginning of the 21st century, even after adjusting numbers for offshored manufacturing. EDIT: on an absolute (not just per-capita) basis, the US has also reduced its consumption based CO2 emissions in the 21st century: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-emissions?tab=chart&country=~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-emissions... It peaked in 2005 and has been below the year 2000 emissions level every year since 2009.
- copx 3y ago
  Good Point. It is easy to look green on paper if you outsource your industry to China.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    One of the most pervasively common tricks in greenwashing ...
perrygeo 3y ago
It's a clever accounting trick. Try it with a random selection of countries instead of a cherry-picked sample. We have seen no decrease in global emissions. Advanced economies rely on international trade for their emissions-heavy industries, effectively outsourcing emissions. Carbon molecules don't respect international boundaries and the atmosphere doesn't care what country burned it. From a climate perspective, global CO2e in tons is what matters, everything else is accounting tricks. You can build a more complex model to deal with the carbon accounting intricacies of trade. Or you can analyze on a global scale. But analyzing national data without proper controls is straight up invalid scientific inference.
- Arnt 3y ago
  Clever accounting trick? AFAIK noone has strict enough rules to make people bother with clever accounting tricks. I think it's more likely to mean that ① advanced economies have advanced further in the transition, ② advanced economies are also economies with few children and global per-capita emissions peaked about a decade ago, or ③ both.
  - perrygeo 3y ago
    In case there is a language barrier or something going on... by "clever accounting trick" I meant that the analyst in question committed a well-known scientific fallacy. Yet the author published it anyway because it proved favorable to their thesis. Whereas publishing the scientifically-valid statement would have undermined it. You're right though, let's not call it a clever accounting trick. That's confusing. Let's call it what it is - journalistic misconduct and scientific fraud.
    - Arnt 3y ago
      You really want someone to be Bad and Guilty and Nefarious, don't you?
      - perrygeo 3y ago
        No. I want people to do good science and to stop doing bad science. Especially when it comes to climate change, we have a moral obligation to root out bad ideas and invalid methods. I'm happy to have a conversation about the invalidity of the national GDP:emissions ratio method. That's the topic of this thread.
Yizahi 3y ago
Unfortunately there is no separate Earth for the "advanced economies" only. The Earth is shared and the emissions are shared, and the resulting greenhouse gasses are shared and the resulting temperature rise is shared. And so far if we skip numbers which can be fudged and manipulated straight to the actual measurements of the atmosphere, and not some "estimations", they show that GH gasses in the atmosphere are only ever increasing. Nothing to celebrate really.
- consumer451 3y ago
  Please see philipkglass’s reply to wahnfrieden’s peer comment, there is indeed good news.
  - Yizahi 3y ago
    That's precisely what I was talking about - his links all talk about emissions. Emissions can't be measured, they can only be guessed and estimated. Every outlet now talks about how emissions are decreasing, draw fancy graphs pointing downward and so on. There is a slight problem - we can and do measure results of said emissions, the actual gasses in the atmosphere. Imagine a pool with a water with two underground pipes, one ingress, another egress. There is no way to measure flow in either of the pipes. But there are partially available documents mapping pipes and their diameters across whole neighborhood. And there is access to some of the water plants in the area and some of the big consumers (not all). So you can hire a whole university of scientists to estimate how the whole water pipe network works at different times, estimate all inaccessible plants and consumers too, account for rusting and leakage and so on and so forth, and estimate the flow of water in and out of the pool this way. Or you can put a measuring stick in a water directly and measure with a clock the actual amount of water and dynamics of its level. And if thousand scientists say that their models say that a net inflow of water is decreasing, but the measuring stick shows stable increase year over year... Well, it's time to change something in the official papers.

wahnfrieden 3y ago

What's the reporting on how much of advanced economies emissions have been exported to elsewhere in the world edit: > lower emissions per capita now than they did at the beginning of the 21st century Given the US for instance has grown by ~70 million people since the start of the 21st century, does this per capita reporting obfuscate a growing net impact?

philipkglass 3y ago
Our World In Data has a good collection of data sets and explanations for emissions adjusted by import/export. Here are a couple of them: https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit... As expected, a "consumption based" approach to measuring CO2 shows advanced economies with higher emissions than otherwise reported and big manufacturing exporters like China with lower emissions. The good news is that advanced economies are still making real progress: they have lower emissions per capita now than they did at the beginning of the 21st century, even after adjusting numbers for offshored manufacturing. EDIT: on an absolute (not just per-capita) basis, the US has also reduced its consumption based CO2 emissions in the 21st century: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-emissions?tab=chart&country=~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-emissions... It peaked in 2005 and has been below the year 2000 emissions level every year since 2009.
copx 3y ago
Good Point. It is easy to look green on paper if you outsource your industry to China.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  One of the most pervasively common tricks in greenwashing ...

perrygeo 3y ago

It's a clever accounting trick. Try it with a random selection of countries instead of a cherry-picked sample. We have seen no decrease in global emissions. Advanced economies rely on international trade for their emissions-heavy industries, effectively outsourcing emissions. Carbon molecules don't respect international boundaries and the atmosphere doesn't care what country burned it. From a climate perspective, global CO2e in tons is what matters, everything else is accounting tricks. You can build a more complex model to deal with the carbon accounting intricacies of trade. Or you can analyze on a global scale. But analyzing national data without proper controls is straight up invalid scientific inference.

Arnt 3y ago
Clever accounting trick? AFAIK noone has strict enough rules to make people bother with clever accounting tricks. I think it's more likely to mean that ① advanced economies have advanced further in the transition, ② advanced economies are also economies with few children and global per-capita emissions peaked about a decade ago, or ③ both.
- perrygeo 3y ago
  In case there is a language barrier or something going on... by "clever accounting trick" I meant that the analyst in question committed a well-known scientific fallacy. Yet the author published it anyway because it proved favorable to their thesis. Whereas publishing the scientifically-valid statement would have undermined it. You're right though, let's not call it a clever accounting trick. That's confusing. Let's call it what it is - journalistic misconduct and scientific fraud.
  - Arnt 3y ago
    You really want someone to be Bad and Guilty and Nefarious, don't you?
    - perrygeo 3y ago
      No. I want people to do good science and to stop doing bad science. Especially when it comes to climate change, we have a moral obligation to root out bad ideas and invalid methods. I'm happy to have a conversation about the invalidity of the national GDP:emissions ratio method. That's the topic of this thread.

Yizahi 3y ago

Unfortunately there is no separate Earth for the "advanced economies" only. The Earth is shared and the emissions are shared, and the resulting greenhouse gasses are shared and the resulting temperature rise is shared. And so far if we skip numbers which can be fudged and manipulated straight to the actual measurements of the atmosphere, and not some "estimations", they show that GH gasses in the atmosphere are only ever increasing. Nothing to celebrate really.

consumer451 3y ago
Please see philipkglass’s reply to wahnfrieden’s peer comment, there is indeed good news.
- Yizahi 3y ago
  That's precisely what I was talking about - his links all talk about emissions. Emissions can't be measured, they can only be guessed and estimated. Every outlet now talks about how emissions are decreasing, draw fancy graphs pointing downward and so on. There is a slight problem - we can and do measure results of said emissions, the actual gasses in the atmosphere. Imagine a pool with a water with two underground pipes, one ingress, another egress. There is no way to measure flow in either of the pipes. But there are partially available documents mapping pipes and their diameters across whole neighborhood. And there is access to some of the water plants in the area and some of the big consumers (not all). So you can hire a whole university of scientists to estimate how the whole water pipe network works at different times, estimate all inaccessible plants and consumers too, account for rusting and leakage and so on and so forth, and estimate the flow of water in and out of the pool this way. Or you can put a measuring stick in a water directly and measure with a clock the actual amount of water and dynamics of its level. And if thousand scientists say that their models say that a net inflow of water is decreasing, but the measuring stick shows stable increase year over year... Well, it's time to change something in the official papers.