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US Carbon Emissions Hit 20-Year Low
- morinted 14y agoIt will be interesting to see if the "global warming" trend continues despite lower carbon dioxide levels. A note: The graphic shows the line moving FAR below '92 levels, and it marks that this is "estimated." I'd go ahead and assume that the change would be much more gradual than that spike... but I've been wrong before. This is pretty nice to hear none-the-less. Some positive news on a global scale isn't so common anymore.
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- trevelyan 14y agoAs the article explicitly states, CO2 levels are still rising globally.
- epistasis 14y agoAFAIK, if we stopped increasing CO2 levels tomorrow, temperatures would continue to rise for a couple decades, as it takes a while for the climate to reach equilibrium after the change to the system.
- jonknee 14y agoThere aren't lower carbon dioxide levels, we're just adding less every year than we were before. Also this is just in the US, other countries are adding more than they have before (China is building a lot of new coal fired electric plants for example).
- jellicle 14y agoThose are emissions, not levels; they are from burning coal only, not all U.S. emissions; read more carefully in the future.
- Tuna-Fish 14y agoAs others have pointed out, the graphs you saw were emissions, not levels. For actual atmostpheric CO2 concentrations, look here: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/#mlo_full http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/#mlo_full . The red line is monthly averages from 1958 to today, the black line is seasonally adjusted monthly average, based on the nearest 7 years of data.
- jussij 14y ago> It will be interesting to see if the "global warming" trend continues despite lower carbon dioxide levels CO2 levels might be going down in the US but throughout the developing world they are rising dramatically. So if there is a link between CO2 and 'global warming', which I suspect there is, then global warming it is here to stay.
- astrodust 14y agoAir-quotes on global warming, huh? You think it's some kind of fairy tale, a conspiracy of researchers? The only controversy left is not that it is happening, but how bad it's going to get even if we shut down every factory on the planet right now. Even the emissions in the 1990s were well past the red-line. Don't forget that China is also way past the United States, moving to levels the US has never even touched. Even if the US pulled the plug, China and the rest of the developing world are a much huger problem.
- millerski150 14y agoThe headline, while certainly nice to hear, doesn't fully capture the reality that this is not all good news (while the use of "cleaner" fuels is). Global warming has caused our winters to be warmer, which reduces energy demand (and thus emissions) from the most demanding time of year. From the source of the article: http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=7350 http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=7350 "However, CO2 emissions during January-March 2012 were low due to a combination of three factors: A mild winter that reduced household heating demand and therefore energy use A decline in coal-fired electricity generation, due largely to historically low natural gas prices Reduced gasoline demand"
- Daniel_Newby 14y agoThis is just normal weather cycles at work. A few years earlier the winters were cold and the summers mild.
- millerski150 14y agoI'm not sure the "13 years of average global temperatures have all occurred in the 15 years since 1997" is "normal. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8923881/Durban-Climate-Change-Conference-13-of-worlds-hottest-years-on-record-have-been-in-last-15-years.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8...]
- Daniel_Newby 14y agoI ignore temperature claims like that one. There are too many politically-motivated lies being pushed in the name of science.
- jussij 14y agoUnlike the minority of scientists that don't believe in climate change. They certainly couldn't be financially motivated by the big oil and coal companies.
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- jcampbell1 14y agoIt is ironic that the "drill baby drill" attitudes of conservatives led to fracking, thus cheap natural gas displacing coal, which drastically lowered greenhouse gas emissions.
- Daniel_Newby 14y agoThere is not even a molecule of irony. They were saying to drill because energy is prosperity and coal is dirty.
- jcampbell1 14y agoThe irony is that policies promoted by people who don't care about CO2 emissions and dimiss climate change have led to a significant decrease in CO2 emissions as an unintended consequence.
- smashing 14y agoThe word "irony" is frequently misused and doesn't mean "unintended consequences" or "rain on your wedding day". Irony would mean that those who supported drilling were actively trying to increase CO2 emissions and failed. That was not the intention of the Oil Lobby.
- jcampbell1 14y agoDrill in this context means to lift carbon baed fuels stored deep underground and bring it to the surface where it will be converted to energy and then go into the atmosphere. Irony requires a reversal of expectations. The logical expected consequence of drilling is increased greenhouse gas emissions. What in fact happened was the reverse. This is textbook irony.
- Daniel_Newby 14y agoNatural gas is a hydrogen based fuel.
- chubbard 14y agoAs we move away from coal burning the price will fall, but coal producers within the US will simply export the cheaper fuel to countries like India and China. Unfortunately, the overall picture hasn't changed because the coal that was being burned within the US is merely being burned in other countries without the US environmental restrictions. We might be actually worse off environmentally due to the same amount of coal is being burned globally.
- cantankerous 14y agoI think we're better off for sure. Had we kept burning as much coal, things would be even worse than they are now. You are most certainly correct about the exports, though: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=U.S._coal_exports#Net_US_Coal_Exports_and_Imports http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=U.S._coal_exports...
- protomyth 14y agoThe third world is going to use the cheapest, easiest, proven technology to get to first world standards of living, just like the first world did. That is just how its going to work. Look at China and India as case studies. If people really want clean technology, then we need to develop cheaper, easier to implement and deploy technologies than gas and coal. Anything else will not get the job done.
- chubbard 14y agoProblem with that is technology typically can't be both cheaper and yield the same performance. It can be cheaper but yield less performance or more expensive with higher performance. The more expensive technology typically is a sustaining technology, but the problem here is that not enough people want to pay more for a clean technology so we can't start to make it cheaper without government funding. It almost doesn't matter what we do because we will be dwarfed by the CO2 output of Asia if it uses conventional fossil fuels.
- president 14y agoThat's a benefit of having nasty manufacturing sent overseas. Oh, but then jobs take a dip too. Now what's more important to us, the environment or our economy?
- taligent 14y agoSince when are the two mutually exclusive ?
- chimi 14y agoYou can create new jobs. Can't create a new planet though. I vote for the environment.
- MordinSolus 14y agoThis is a false dichotomy. On the whole, our economy isn't hurt by sending manufacturing overseas. If it costs less to produce a product overseas than here, then the price for that product will drop. Lower cost of product means higher standards of living for everyone. Why do you think so many people have smartphones? How many do you think would have smartphones if they were manufactured here? On top of this, the number of jobs is not a fixed number. The workers who lost their jobs in manufacturing can be more productive in other jobs, which benefits everyone. Also, money people save by purchasing cheaper products is money that can be spent elsewhere, increasing demand for other goods and thus supply, which means more workers in other areas. By only looking at the smaller picture losses (manufacturing jobs), you're missing out on the larger picture gains (greater productivity, higher standards of living).
- ktizo 14y agoThe problem in loss of manufacturing jobs is deskilling. You only have a solid industrial design base if you have manufacturing communities, otherwise their isn't a wide culture to draw on of people who understand these kinds of problems. And so you might be able to compete on design for a while, but the places you have sent your manufacturing to will learn really fast and will be competing with you in design and research and have all the manufacturing base that you no longer have, and all the skilled workers.
- j_baker 14y agoPower plants that burn coal produce more than 90 times as much sulfur dioxide, five times as much nitrogen oxide and twice as much carbon dioxide as those that run on natural gas, according to the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Sulfur dioxide causes acid rain and nitrogen oxides lead to smog. You know, the more I read about it, the more I think fracking gets an undeserved bad rap. Certainly there are some concerns over the environmental impact drilling has, but the rewards seem to make perfecting the technology a no-brainer: cheap, abundant, clean fuel that will at least slow global warming down (if not cure it completely). Plus, we have enough of the stuff that we could extract and refine it in the US.
- astrodust 14y agoCoal is also extracted through mountain-top removal which is extremely damaging to communities. Start with a mountain and a valley, end up with a toxic wasteland. That said, the consequences of fracking could be far, far worse. It's understood what coal does. What natural gas extraction of that variety does is still a new thing waiting to be discovered. It could literally poison the well for hundreds of miles around, and with fresh water being such an important resource these days, squandering it on natural gas extraction and further contaminating the ground-water with chemicals may turn out to be a very bad idea.
- j_baker 14y agoThe economist would claim that fracking is actually far less invasive than other forms of mining: http://www.economist.com/node/21558462 http://www.economist.com/node/21558462
- stretchwithme 14y agoMaking things emits carbon. Making big, expensive things emits lots of carbon. Making too many of the most expensive thing most people ever own emits massive of carbon. That's what the housing bubble was. And its collapse caused much fewer big things being made. And much less carbon to be emitted.