To fly or not? Fashion, peer pressure and societal impacts

I don't think I've previously written about flight shame or flight shaming or whatever you want to call it and I see it occupies the minds of many people. So here are some random thoughts on the subject.

There are a lot of issues bound up in this. I'm not advocating anything one way or another. What an individual does to reduce their personal carbon footprint is their own decision. It's worth saying that multiple personal decisions can eventually add up to societal change. Also worth noting there is a lot of peer pressure involved, with some people arguing that flying is hypocritical or anti-social or whatever. This pressure can become a force for societal change as happened with smoking tobacco, sun-bathing, littering, recycling and other behaviours and attitudes over the years.

Larry Hamlin @wattsupwiththat reframes a small win in climate mitigation

As you probably know, when right wing extremists talk about problems that were averted, they often claim there was never a problem to begin with. That applies to lots of things, for example:

• smog, where right wingers would claim that clean air regulations aren't necessary because the smog has disappeared all by itself.
• population, right wingers would claim that family planning education programs and contraceptive devices and hormone pills aren't necessary, because the human population is "only" 7.4 billion, not 12 billion (yet)
• Y2K bug, right wingers would claim there weren't any problems (that they know of), so all the efforts to prevent the problem weren't necessary
• and more, which you can add yourself :)

Many deniers blame "the government" for water shortages from droughts and damage from floods and wildfires, not climate change or human activity. Right wing extremists are loathe to accept any blame themselves. Most will blame government for everything they see as wrong with the world, and take credit for every problem that has been fixed, or falsely claim there was never a problem to begin with.

Heaven forbid a denier giving the US government any credit for the recent dip in carbon emissions from energy use.

Willis Eschenbach and his carbon uptake mistake at WUWT

Willis Eschenbach is wondering about how much extra CO2 can go into the air (archived here, latest here). He's done some calculations and figured that atmospheric CO2 can't double. Even without doing any calculations it's easy to see that he's wrong. This is why.

Willis has used two models for his estimate, and two estimates of fossil fuel available to burn. He got his estimates from a diagram in the IPCC WG1 AR5 report, which put fossil fuel reserves at between around 900 GtC (gigatonnes of carbon) and 2000 GtC.  I will leave it to the experts to quibble over how much of the remaining fossil fuel reserves would be technically feasible to exploit. This article is about how and perhaps why Willis has underestimated the impact - or so it seems to me. Willis' two examples are described here as:

• Example 1: burning 900 GtC by 2100 and
• Example 2: burning an extra 2,000 GtC by 2100.

As far as I can tell, where he went wrong was in using single pulse models. That is, there's an inherent assumption in the models he used that CO2 will be released as a single pulse, followed by nothing. (Willis doesn't assume that himself, but the models he uses do, I think. That leads to a flaw in his reasoning.) Update: Willis mentions a tau of 33 years, suggesting he has factored in additional removal of CO2 from the air, over and above what the biosphere, oceans and land surface can already handle. In other words, he's erroneously double counted.

Christopher Monckton mixes things up @wattsupwiththat - the carbon budget

On WUWT there is an article by Christopher Monckton (archived here). It's a short article (for him), in which he fudges numbers and mixes up concepts. Anthony wrote what Roy Spencer excitedly thinks is a very clever headline: 2°C or not 2°C–that is the question. Is it the question or is the question something else? It turns out the question was something else - and the answer at WUWT was wrong as usual.

The article starts with a graphic from an old slideshare presentation from Jonathon Kooney. A slide which Mr Kooney dropped from his later presentations on climate change, possibly because it was hard to make sense of it. The slide was based on the 2009 paper by Malte Meinshausen and co: "Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2°C".

The "feeble intellect" of Anthony Watts and Eric Worrall at WUWT

WUWT gets it woefully wrong again. Back to front. Deniers deal in black and white, they do not "get" subtle. They are extremists and only understand extreme language. Overstatement might register. The understatement for which the UK (and Australia) is known, doesn't register at WUWT. If you want to make a point with a science denier, do not expect them to understand you if you speak normally. As we've seen here on many occasions, deniers will ignore what is actually said and substitute their own weird narrative.

Today Anthony Watts gets several things back to front (archived here). He post another silly article by ignorant Eric "eugenics" Worrall. (Anthony Watts has been really struggling to find anyone half decent to write for his blog these past few weeks.) Anthony wrote:

Eric Worrall writes about “The Conversation” Austalia’s favorite hangout of climate doomers:

Except this article was in the UK edition of the Conversation. It was about one of Owen Paterson's recent gaffes. Owen Paterson is the Conservative MP for North Shropshire who's been in the headlines in the UK lately. He was sacked as Environment Secretary back in July this year. The article was about how Owen Paterson was exaggerating. The headline of the article reads:

Climate change: it’s only human to exaggerate, but science itself does not

Notice the last part - science itself does not exaggerate.

Don't ditch the 2°C target

Today at WUWT (archived here) Anthony Watts is delighted to read a comment at Nature from David G. Victor & Charles F. Kennel, who are arguing that the 2°C target be replaced with different and a more complicated set of indicators. I don't agree.

Ditching a target because it seems difficult is a no-no in planning unless the target is clearly wrong. This one isn't. The problem with ditching an agreed target is that it gives people an excuse to water it down. Rather than ditch the target, there should be a greater urgency applied to achieving it. If we fail, then we will need to know by how much we've failed and the consequences of that failure.

I don't mind adding another target, like the one that was described in the IPCC AR5 WG1 report - a cumulative carbon emission budget. However I think the Nature article is muddled and its suggestions are not all that useful.

Denier weirdness: On cutting CO2 emissions - Anthony Watts is a stubby short of a six pack

Sometimes Anthony Watts appears to be thick as a plank, a stubby short of a six-pack, a screw loose (archived here).  He thinks that the following are contradictory:

• Currently proposed CO2 emission cuts won't be enough to limit global warming to 2°C
• The only way to limit global warming is to cut CO2 emissions.

The statements are not contradictory. They are different aspects of the same thing. The very same message that we've been told for something like fifty years or more.

It's perfectly clear to a clear thinker. It should be perfectly clear even to someone like Anthony Watts, who does not excel at clear thinking (to put it mildly).

How much CO2 can the atmosphere take?

Or, more properly, how much CO2 in the atmosphere can we, as humans, tolerate?

The EU Commission has agreed new targets for reducing carbon emissions. The EU plan is described at the Guardian as:

• To cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030, compared with 1990 levels.  
• 27% of energy must come from renewable sources by 2030, which is described as a binding target as well as being described as "not yet clear whether the target will be binding at the level of member states". 
• No new legislation to regulate shale gas development.
• Reformation of the EU carbon trading scheme.

There is an article at the Guardian by Fiona Harvey and Ian Traynor that describes the EU's new targets in a bit more detail and provides some context.  For example, at one point they write: "Studies show that the EU's emissions are likely to be 25% below 1990 levels by 2020, making the targets easier to meet."

It's not a done deal yet.  It is still to be debated by member state governments, which I gather will be happening during March this year via the European Council, and the European Parliament. Given that some countries are forging ahead with emission reductions through renewable energy development and other means (eg energy efficiency), I gather that the emissions target and the renewables target are thought to be achievable.

The Cumulative Carbon Emissions Budget

The plan may be thought by some people to be ambitious, certainly compared to targets in other places, but is it enough?

Damian Carrington has an article at the Guardian about this from the point  of view of the cumulative carbon emissions budget.  He wrote:

For those focusing on climate change – the atmosphere right now is half full of carbon dioxide – the European commission's plan is clearly inadequate to meet the EU's own target of limiting global warming to 2C. For those focusing on the economy of the bloc today – EU citizen's pocket are half empty after a crushing recession – the deal was the most ambitious possible.

Damian put up the UK Guardians' version of this IPCC chart, which I've annotated. (Click for larger version.)

Adapted from Figure SPM.10: Global mean surface temperature increase as a function of cumulative total global CO2 emissions from various lines of evidence. Source: IPCC AR5 WG1 Summary for Policy Makers

To keep global temperatures at or below two degrees of warming (ie two degrees above temperatures of the beginning of the twentieth century), we need to limit the total amount of carbon emissions from all sources to around 1000 GtC or less.

Temperature rises linearly with emissions

The interesting thing is that there is a robust relationship between temperature and emissions.  The temperature response to carbon emissions has been shown to be linear up to around 2,000 PgC.    It doesn't matter over what time period or what the resulting CO2 concentration is.

That's an important point, so I'll repeat it.  Whether or not we emit the next 500 gigatonnes of carbon over a decade or over a century, the temperature will rise the same amount.  And it doesn't matter if atmospheric CO2 goes up by double or a bit less or a bit more.  The relationship we're talking about is between emissions and temperature not CO2 concentration and temperature.

That is why the focus is shifting away from concentrations of CO2 to carbon emissions.

This is explained quite clearly in a paper by H. Damon Matthews, Susan Solomon and Raymond Pierrehumbert.  To get some idea of how much temperature goes up for every 1,000 PgC emitted, the above paper shows the following:

• a very likely (5–95%) uncertainty range of 1–2.5°C of global temperature increase per 1000 PgC of cumulative carbon emitted
• the observational record showed a mean value of 1.5°C per 1000 PgC emitted, and a 5–95% range of 1 to 2.1°C/1000 PgC.

I doubt the 1.5°C observed rise factors in slower feedbacks. So I suggest adding a half a degree at least.  This is a moving target because we are still increasing the rate of growth of emissions.

The EU targets and those of all other countries need to be assessed in the light of how much they will add to cumulative emissions.  If we don't keep cumulative emissions to less than 1,000 gigatonnes (1,000 PgC) then temperatures will be likely to rise above 2°C.  Obviously there needs to be a cooperative international effort to limit cumulative emissions.  That's not to say that all countries have to have exactly the same route to reducing emissions.  It is to say that taken together, the whole world needs to keep cumulative emissions to less than 1,000 gigatonnes of carbon.

With cumulative emissions approaching 500 gigatonnes and carbon emissions currently at around 10 gigatonnes a year and rising, it doesn't leave a lot of time to switch away from burning fossil fuels, such as by switching to clean energy.  This involves a massive change in electricity generation for example.

Thing is, we need to leave some spare capacity for future emissions even after we make the major switch away from burning fossil fuels.  Remember, this is a cumulative budget.  Even when we cut annual emissions to around 10% of what they are at present, we'll still be adding at least ten gigatonnes a decade to cumulative emissions.  If we use up all the budget now, then future generations will be much more limited in their options.

The chart above shows how much time we have or not, depending on which emissions pathway we choose.  But really, in the short term (say, to 2050), unless we make radical cuts in emissions in the next few years, we're heading for more than two degrees of warming this century.  If you took the cumulative emissions by the end of 2014 to be 500 gigatonnes and assumed a 2% growth in emissions each year, then we'd have reached the 1,000 gigatonne target by 2050.  Even if we were to stabilise emissions at the current approx 10 gigatonnes a year, we'd fill the 1,000 gigatonne quota by 2070.  After that we'd have to stop all emissions immediately to stick to the budget  - which just won't happen.  So the sooner we start to reduce emissions the better.

Anthony Watts goes for a literal interpretation

Damian Carrington wrote: "the atmosphere right now is half full of carbon dioxide", linking to an article about the carbon budget as described above.  Anthony put on his literal hat (as he does) and responded with (archived here):

Maybe Damian doesn’t understand that whole “parts per million” thing, if he did, he’s certainly know that 398.58 is nowhere close to “half full”. The value of 500,000 parts per million is what would be considered “half-full”. He’s only off be a couple orders of magnitude.

And showed he doesn't follow hyperlinks, by adding:

Maybe he was thinking in terms of saturation of the CO2 effect in the atmosphere on temperature? In that case, we are closer to 90%, and additional CO2 won’t make much difference.

No, Anthony.  You are very wrong when you claim "additional CO2 won't make much difference".  You are also wrong about what Damian was thinking.  Damian was referring to the cumulative carbon emissions budget, as you'd have realised if you'd read the article to which he linked.

Anthony then puts up this chart, with no humour or satire tag, so he does intend for it to be taken seriously.  Which means that post of his was meant to trick his dumber readers.  He doesn't explain what the chart is meant to represent.  What it appears to be is a chart of a log relationship of CO2 and temperature. Since Anthony chose temperature on the Kelvin scale, I've highlighted and enlarged bits of it to show just the relevant temperatures as anomalies.  I chose the baseline temperature as that when CO2 was around 280 ppm, which is what CO2 concentration was before industrialisation.  The result is shown below - as an animation:

Anthony's chart shows that with a doubling of CO2 from 280 ppm to 560 ppm, temperatures would rise by about 2 degrees Kelvin (which is 2 degrees Celsius).  So he's in the ballpark of climate sensitivity.  However what he wrote shows that either he doesn't understand that or he's deliberately deceiving his readers - neither of which says much about Anthony Watts.  He wrote:

This graph showing CO2′s temperature response to supplement the one Doug Hoffman cites from IPCC AR4. here we see that we are indeed pretty close to saturation of the response.

"Close to saturation" is a relative concept.  There is plenty of room for temperatures to rise and cause untold damage.   (Note that Anthony's chart stops at 800 ppm.  Plus he's got the Y axis at a scale that makes reading associated temperatures difficult, and hard to determine if his chart resembles reality).

Thing is, of course, that we're heading for much more than a doubling of CO2.  If we were to continue to increase emissions by two per cent a year, then by 2040 we'd have doubled the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere assuming that half the extra emissions continued to be absorbed at the surface.  Sooner if the oceans reckoned they'd already absorbed more than they could handle.  By the early 2060s CO2 would be up to around 800 ppm.  And by 2100 we'd be over 1500 ppm.

In terms of the carbon budget, that would take cumulative emissions to almost 2800 gigatonnes, which is off the chart (of the top chart SPM.10) and getting into the territory of six degrees of warming by the end of the century.  Not a pleasant thought.

In the meantime, fasten your seatbelts.  It's going to be a rough ride over the next few years.

---

Matthews, H. Damon, Susan Solomon, and Raymond Pierrehumbert. "Cumulative carbon as a policy framework for achieving climate stabilization." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 370, no. 1974 (2012): 4365-4379.

---

From the WUWT comments

The comments are mostly of the "dumb denier" type, which isn't a surprise given Anthony's article is also of the "dumb denier" kind. (Archived here.)

Les Johnson didn't bother reading Damian Carrington's article or following the hyperlink but says what "he thinks" he meant, which was wrong.  Damian was referring to cumulative emissions not CO2 concentration:

January 22, 2014 at 11:01 am
I believe that by 1/2 full, he meant that we are 1/2 way to a ‘safe’ level of CO2. From pre-industrial levels of 260, that would mean we are at 390 (we are), and must go no further than 520.

Just a guess. But you would think a journalist would be able to communicate the concept better. Warmist wonder they have communication problems…

albertalad goes for conspiracy lingo and says:

January 22, 2014 at 11:20 am
Sadly it isn’t just this guy off his rocker – it is the EU mass insanity driving themselves into poverty led by an even crazier class of leaders without a gain of common sense between the entire lot. Genuine science has ceased to exist in the entirety of the EU – replaced by a self imposed dark ages eagerly followed by the masses.

climateismydj says dryly of Anthony's speculation:

January 22, 2014 at 11:26 am
Maybe if the author of this article followed the link under his highlighted Guardian article text, he’d find the answer staring him in the face. But then again, WUWT has journalism standards to uphold…

nutso fasst says:

January 22, 2014 at 11:38 am
Given the atomic weights of carbon and oxygen, isn’t the total carbon in the atmosphere actually closer to 0.015%?

I don't know if DirkH is trying to be clever or if he is being extra thick when he says:

January 22, 2014 at 11:59 am
He thought it’s 398 percent, not ppm. And 398 percent is about half full.
Quite a good one from the Guardian.

thebleedingobvious is right when he says CO2 isn't the same as carbon, but not right when he suggests that "alarmists" always use the wrong term.  As he rightly points out, CO2 is not the same as carbon.  However total carbon includes the carbon in CO2 (and CH4 and other molecules containing carbon).

January 22, 2014 at 1:03 pm
Carbon dioxide is not the same thing as carbon.
Why do alarmists use the wrong term?

Illiterati dbstealey says:

January 22, 2014 at 1:06 pm
thebleedingobvious says: “Why do alarmists use the wrong term?”
The answer is simple: because they are scientific illiterates, who are just repeating the standard talking points given to them.

Bruce Cobb is keen to get to six degrees of warming and says:

January 22, 2014 at 1:43 pm
Since the ideal CO2 level is probably somewhere around 1,000 ppm, at close to 400 ppm we still have about another 100 ppm to go before we’re at half full. But, close enough. Burning more coal could help us get there.

As does "So dumb" MarkW who says:

January 22, 2014 at 2:33 pm
A few million years ago, the atmosphere had almost ten times as muchCO2 in it compared to today’s atmosphere. The idea that the atmosphere is half full is something so dumb that only someone completely in thrall to his religion could believe it.

Brian Davis says:

January 22, 2014 at 3:04 pm
Anthony, do you have the source for the chart at the end of your post showing the temperature response to CO2?

REPLY: See link in the story -A

Anthony's "link in the story" is no help at all.  It doesn't provide any source of his chart either!


Critical reading is not one of Ron House's fortés - he says:

January 22, 2014 at 5:50 pm
There it says: “The world’s leading climate scientists have set out in detail for the first time how much more carbon dioxide humans can pour into the atmosphere without triggering dangerous levels of climate change – and concluded that more than half of that global allowance has been used up.”

That just makes the stupidity even more appalling than the ignorance: Half of a maximum addition to something is not in general the same as half of the total amount.

Paul Homewood builds a strawman at WUWT and sends it off to China

Update: I almost forgot to write that I think it's a terrific turnaround for WUWT to suddenly take an active interest in urging nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions.  I look forward to many more articles by the environmental activists at WUWT.  Hopefully soon they will be strongly urging governments in the USA and Australia as well as urging China to cut its greenhouse gas emissions.

---

At Anthony Watts pseudo-science blog, WUWT, there is an article by Paul Homewood (archived here).  He criticises the efforts of China to cut greenhouse gas emissions.  Paul has done some sums and has worked out that China's commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, because it's based on a percentage of GDP, would result in their doubling emissions by 2020.  Based on my cursory reading, that is an overly simplistic view of what is happening in China.

Paul Homewood's strawman

I haven't checked Paul's numbers or assumptions, but what I did notice was his writing this (archived here):

All of this rather begs the question – if CO2 is really such a problem, why are not the UN, Greenpeace, UNFCC, Western politicians, activist scientists and all the other hangers on jumping up and down and demanding that China starts making real cuts now?

What is evident is either:

• Paul Homewood isn't familiar with what these agencies and organisations are doing and have done or
• Paul Homewood is familiar with these efforts but chooses to disinform readers at WUWT, knowing they demand that their dislike of the UN, Greenpeace and environmentalism in general (and their conspiracy ideation) be appeased.

I haven't checked the specifics of what the UN and UNFCC and Western Politicians are doing in regard to China in particular.  However the fact that the UN organises conferences to combat global warming and get countries to agree on sustainability commitments is evidence that they are encouraging all member nations to deal with these issues.  (I did some quick research on what Greenpeace has been up to - see below.)

There is no pleasing deniers at WUWT

On the one hand WUWT-ers rail at any initiatives to combat global warming and improve the environment and the next minute they are complaining that not enough is being done.

No-one could ever accuse WUWT of being consistent!

As an aside, I find it surprising that someone at WUWT would suggest that scientists get involved in policy, seeing it's something they usually castigate scientists for doing even when they aren't.

What Greenpeace is doing in East Asia

I'm not up on what Greenpeace does so I did a bit of a web search to see what Greenpeace has been advocating and what it's been doing in East Asia.  Here are just a few of the items I came across, going back several years:

• Greenpeace China: Background briefing for the COP19 in Warsaw. 28.10.2013
• Under "What we do" a campaign to reduce air pollution in China including Hong Kong, with lots of links to further campaigns and action plans
• China air pollution concerns forces a new direction for coal use
• An article about a Greenpeace report from 2009: China's three biggest power firms emit more carbon than Britain, says report

There is a lot more as you can imagine.  Greenpeace is a large, active organisation and has an East Asia section.  For example, only a few days ago there was this article at Greenpeace, which refers in part to the new Air Pollution Control Plan announced this September, and to the individual pledges made by four key provinces to reduce coal consumption in real terms.  Below are some extracts:

How do we translate China's policy shift on air pollution into progressive climate position? Li Shuo

...Facing mounting public pressure from Beijing, as well as many other regions in China’s populous eastern provinces, the government published a comprehensive air pollution control plan in September of this year. Coal consumption control is featured heavily in the plan.

According to various evaluations, coal combustion is the leading cause of China’s air pollution. China’s coal consumption not only contributes to two thirds of the global CO2 emission growth in the past five years, but is also leading to systemic damage of the health of its citizens.

Pursuant with the call from the central government, four provinces (two of them – Shandong and Hebei are China’s top and fourth-largest coal consumers respectively) made individual pledges to peak and decline their coal consumption by 2017 – the first time in Chinese history that negative coal consumption targets have ever been mandated. Added together, these four provinces will need to collectively reduce 83 million ton of coal in the next four years, a sharp annual average decline of 6% This is even more significant given that these provinces still kept growing at 6-8% over the past five years.

...As China prepares to slash coal, climate benefits will inevitably follow. According to the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency's 2013 Trends in Global CO2 emission report, the slowdown of China’s energy appetite in 2012 has already contributed to the slowest global emission growth. This trend, predicted by the Agency is likely to continue. If that is the case, it will have considerable implication on the way from Warsaw to the 2015 Paris COP.

Warsaw is therefore a good opportunity to foster this emission trend and bring it down even further. The global community should encourage their Chinese counterparts to put air pollution and greenhouse gas mitigation equally on the agenda. Strong connections between the two issues should be facilitated and communicated back to Beijing, so that a mutually reinforcing loop could be created in domestic policy making.

Li Shuo is a Climate and Energy Campaigner with Greenpeace East Asia.

Here are some more articles of relevance:

• China to send air pollution inspection teams to provinces (Reuters, October 2013)
• Can China’s Air Pollution Action Plan Slow Down New Coal Power Development? (World Resources Institute October 2013) This article also talks about the shift of new coal plants to western provinces, outside of the new Air Pollution Action Plan.
• How China's action on air pollution is slowing its carbon emissions (UK Guardian November 2013)

Greenhouse gas emissions per capita and in total

Here are some numbers to digest - showing greenhouse gas emissions per capita from CDIAC as at 2010.  The first number is the world ranking in terms of per capita emissions.  The last number is that actual emissions per capita in tonnes of carbon (not CO2):

• 1 Qatar  10.94
• 12 USA  4.71
• 14 Australia  4.57
• 18 Canada   4.00
• 37 Japan  2.52
• 39 Germany  2.47
• 47 United Kingdom 2.16
• 63 China (Mainland) 1.68
• 75 Hong Kong 1.4
• 136 India 0.45

China and India need to bypass fossil fuels and shift straight to clean energy production

Looking at the above, it's obviously of critical importance that fast-growing economies like India and China develop their economies using clean energy and avoid as far as possible a transition through dirty energy.

Top ten total emitters in the world

I downloaded the latest data from CDIAC, which has preliminary numbers on a per country basis up to 2012. China was by far the largest emitter, with 2,625 million tonnes C followed by the USA with 1,396 million tonnes, then India with 611 million tonnes.  Here are the top ten nations, with their total emissions and per capita emissions.  Note that the per capita emissions are ranked on the basis of this list of top ten emitters only.  It does not include all nations.

Country	2012 m tonne	% increase on 2010	Pop (million)	Per capita	Rank per capita out of top ten only
China	2,625,730	16%	1350	1945	9
USA	1,396,791	-6%	314	4448	2
India	611,226.3	12%	1237	494	10
Russian Federation	491,840.3	4%	144	3416	4
Japan	342,270	7%	128	2674	6
Germany	199,716.1	-2%	82	2436	7
South Korea	166,679.2	8%	50	3334	5
Iran	164,497.7	6%	76	2164	8
Saudi Arabia	137,877.7	9%	28	4924	1
Canada	137,819.8	1%	35	3938	3

China is now the largest emitter, followed by the USA and then India.  China and India are the two fastest growing in terms of emissions growth over the period 2010 to 2012. China and India are the lowest per capita emitters in this list.

The USA is the only one of the current top ten to have reduced total emissions between 2010 and 2012. However - out of the top ten emitters, the USA still ranks number two on per capita emissions behind Saudi Arabia.

From the WUWT comments

As usual, many WUWT-ers make snide comments and don't bother doing any investigation themselves.  (WUWT comments section is often nothing more than a splatter board at which science rejectors and conspiracy theorists fling empty, meaningless words.)  Some of them are more aware and interested in the issue than others though.

What's odd is that usually WUWT-ers rant at NGOs for being activists.  WUWT-ers usually despise activism, especially when it relates to the environment.  In this thread though there are a lot of people complaining that NGOs aren't doing enough - or aren't "doing anything".  If only deniers would make up their minds.

You can read more comments archived here.


Jimbo says:

November 24, 2013 at 5:07 pm
There are lies, damned lies and………………….

H.R. says:

November 24, 2013 at 5:29 pm
Glad to see the Chinese still have a great sense of humor. The joke is on all the rest of the world.

John says:

November 24, 2013 at 5:28 pm
On the flip side, haven’t US CO2 emissions already actually been substantially cut. Driving miles are down and natural gas replaced a lot of coal power generation.. I thought we were the only country to actually achieve the Kyoto targets.

The USA has reduced total emissions in the past couple of years and over the long term has had no growth in per capita emissions.  But it is still a huge source of emissions (ranking in the top 15 nations on a per capita basis) and can't sit back on its laurels.   Here is a chart up to 2009 from CDIAC:

Source: CDIAC

Nick Stokes is not a typical WUWT-er and looks at the numbers from a different perspective.  He says:

November 24, 2013 at 6:00 pm
“jumping up and down and demanding that China starts making real cuts now?”

The CDIAC site you cited also has per capita figures for 2010: China 1.68 ton C/cap/yr, USA 4.71, Australia 4.57, Qatar 10.9.

CO2 needs a world effort. We can’t expect people to respond differently just because of the size of the political unit they happen to live in. China has a big population and will have a big GDP. The best we can do is to ensure that the GDP is achieved as efficiently as possible. We can’t expect Chinese to respond to Westerners pressuring them to cut in absolute terms when

Westerners are using more than twice as much.

“But don’t believe the likes of John Gummer…”

In your quote Gummer expected Chinese emissions to peak about 2025. You attempted to refute that by saying that they would be emitting more in 2020 that now. That does not refute.

“Actual emissions were 2625, which represents a cut of 41% from 4430″

Well, then, they are indeed doing well.

William McClenney says:

November 24, 2013 at 6:09 pm
Ah, but the latent question is: how does it feel to have been played?

Neville. breaks the mold and says:

November 24, 2013 at 6:10 pm
Her are the EIA co2 emission forecast until 2040— see graph. The OECD emissions will essentially flatline for 30 years while non OECD emissions will continue to soar.

http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/emissions.cfm

They say that fully 94% of extra co2 emissions will come from China ,India etc and only 6% from the OECD until 2040.

The entire OECD could retire and live in caves and it wouldn’t make ZIP difference at all to climate and temp.

John says:

November 24, 2013 at 6:13 pm
Neville – Have we learned anything yet about models and forecasts.

Gary Hladik says:

November 24, 2013 at 6:16 pm
Out of curiosity, is China actually doing anything to really cut CO2 emissions, in addition to replacing old coal power plants with new, and building nuclear power plants?

Mike Smith says:

November 24, 2013 at 6:49 pm
China is an interesting case. There must be a huge interest in reducing pollution, by which I mean particulate matter, carcinogens, toxic materials etc.

I doubt that the Chinese give a hoot about CO2 but, of course, their politicians will make all of the right noises to appease the west since they’re rather tired of playing the western world’s punching bag. I think the “China reassures world” article is fine example of same.

AntonyIndia says:

November 24, 2013 at 6:50 pm
China is always excused by Green alarmists: those poor communist underdogs. The US are the main target: those wicket ultra rich top dogs. Dawn facts and statistics. Viewing the world through green coloured glasses damages the world’s environment the most.

Dr. Bob decides to complain that NGOs aren't doing anything - or so he thinks and says:

November 24, 2013 at 7:28 pm
At the 2007 Pittsburgh Coal Conference, I remember a poster session on coal seam fires In China, coal seam fires emit more CO2 than all the cars in the US. A little searching indicated that 20-200 million tons of coal per year are lost to mine fires. The number is very vague as no one really knows how much coal is lost to mine fires. CO2 emissions from these sources are probably not counted in net emissions but represent maybe 12% of China’s GHG emissions.
If GHG emissions are truly a threat to mankind, why haven’t the NGO’s gone after this source of uncontrolled emissions? If CO2 was a real problem, this would be the low hanging fruit. But no one mentions this