The New York Times is wringing its hands over “complicating” the December climate conference in Paris, but China is already skating on its worldwide responsibilities.
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Surprisingly, the estimated increase in the report is greater than the fossil-fuel emission recorded from Germany annually.
Smog in Changchun city in northeast China in October. But Yang is more optimistic. It turns out it’s worse than we thought.
The new figures have further substantiated the causes behind China’s staggeringly poor air quality.
China’s coal consumption data has reportedly been underestimated since 2000, but was believed to be significantly inaccurate in recent years.
But in the latest edition, the same number for the same year was given as 4.12 billion tons – a rise of nearly 600 million tons, or almost 17 percent.
And growth in coal is not only seen in developing economies.
However, China has since changed its position, and is on board with the concept of an global mechanism for measuring progress toward achieving emissions-reduction goals under a new agreement. “It’s created a lot of bewilderment”, he said. Part of the reason is that they realize that their emissions portfolio is undergoing a fundamental change and that is working in their favor. “I think this implies that we’re closer to a peak, because there’s also been a falloff in coal consumption in the past couple of years”, he said. Chinese capital Beijing was also accused of wrecking climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009 by opposing legally binding emissions cuts.
But China’s carbon dioxide emissions estimates have generally been unreliable which have complicated efforts to impose a cap-and-trade system. So simply reducing emissions, or holding them steady, won’t do, because it will still lead to an increase in Carbon dioxide levels. Korsbakken, a physicist, emphasized that deeper analysis of the new data was needed before firm conclusions could be drawn.
When estimating emissions, scientists prefer to account for coal use by the amount of energy in it rather than by its raw mass, which includes impurities that end up as ash. The revisions for 2001 through 2004 were smaller.
Climate Change: On the eve of the Paris summit, we learn that China has been fudging its carbon emission data for years.
japanfocusChina’s statistical agency has dramatically revised upward the amount of coal that the country burns, according to a front page New York Times article.
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While much attention has been given to a potential peak in China’s coal demand and worries about emissions, in Asia alone this year power companies are building more than 500 coal-fired plants, with at least a thousand more on planning boards.
