December 1, 2016

by Mike Kluk

New data shows that the yearly increase in global CO2 emissions has fallen to .2 percent per year from a 3 percent rate of ten years ago. This is the good news in the bad news. The year-to-year quantity of worldwide emissions is still increasing but this significant slowdown demonstrates that with concerted effort, the needle can move in the right direction.

It is encouraging that this comes on the heels of 2014 and 2015 which also came in with only a .2 percent increase. And it happened during a year when global economic growth was 3 percent which usually signals a corresponding increase in emissions.

This decrease in coal production was not brought about primarily by government action but economic realities.

The study was conducted by the Global Carbon Project and published in the journal Earth System Science Data. It represents the work of 67 researchers from institutions all over the world.

To be clear, emission rates are still moving in the wrong direction albeit more slowly. Industrial emissions still totaled 36 billion tons of CO2 last year which does not include other greenhouse gases such as methane and nonindustrial contributions such as deforestation. That’s still 63 percent above 1990 emissions.

In terms of total CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, last year at this time the date gathered by multiple reputable  government and academic sources  indicated 400.43 parts per million CO2. The current reading is 404.36 ppm. Go to the website CO2 Earth (powered by solar power in California) for the data in 20 languages and downloadable widgets.

If there’s any hope to slow and eventually reverse increases in global temperatures, emissions will need to be brought down to a level where more carbon can be pulled from the atmosphere by natural and possibly human-directed processes than is currently being added.

This dramatic decrease in the rate of emissions growth is the result of many factors but the largest has been the positive work of the world’s two chief emitters, the United States and China.

Cheap, cleaner burning natural gas has killed coal. Returning to a coal based-fuel runs counter to free market economy principles.

China’s emissions decreased by .7 percent in 2015 and are predicted to drop an additional .5 percent in 2016. The United States has done even better, bringing emissions down by 2.6 percent in 2015 and an expected additional 1.7 percent this year. Those are real decreases and can be primarily attributed to reduced coal consumption, the most carbon intensive fossil fuel.

This decrease in coal production was not brought about primarily by government action but economic realities.

Cheap, cleaner burning natural gas has killed coal. Returning to a coal based-fuel runs counter to free market economy principles.

Launched in July 2014, NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) was designed to give scientists comprehensive, global measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A group of scientists from the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) have used OCO-2 data to make satellite-based maps of human emissions of carbon dioxide. This map depicts carbon dioxide anomalies in the atmosphere; that is, places where CO2 levels were higher than the normal fluctuations that occur with the seasons. The highest values in the study were observed over eastern China, with other hot spots in the eastern United States, Central Europe, the Middle East, and Japan.

Even if coal production is increased, it’s not likely to add many more jobs. Most coal mining has moved from Appalachia to Wyoming and other points west because strip mining is much easier there and a handful of workers with massive machines can dig up coal more cheaply than miners underground.

It looks like fulfilling this particular political promise is a loose-loose. Ideally, reason and market forces will prevail.

The study notes that “in general, CO2 emissions for equivalent primary energy consumption are about 30% higher for coal compared to oil, and 70% higher for coal compared to natural gas (Marland, et al., 2007).”

For the text associated with the CO2 emissions map images in this article, visit NASAs Earth Observatory web site.

For a dynamic color coded experience, watch this video put together by the Earth Systems Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) showing global CO2 emissions starting from a pre-fossil fuel time through 2011-2012.

For detailed information, check out the abstract for the study online. For the serious scholar, read the full report,  titled “Global Carbon Budget 2016.” Be forewarned, it’s dense and technical. Those scientists!