Wednesday, June 20, 2007

It's concrete - China now top CO² emitter

China has officially become the world's largest CO² emitter, months ahead of the most dire warnings.

Estimates on when China would overtake the US on greenhouse gas emissions had varied, but Dr Fatih Birol, chief economist of the Paris-based International Energy Agency, said in April it could happen within months.

The country's economic growth had been so fast in 2006 and 2007 that the historic global shift of climate-changing emissions from west to east, which was previously predicted for 2009 or 2010, could now happen by November, Birol told the Guardian Unlimited site then.

[...]

According to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency's figures, China's emissions increased by 9.0 per cent in 2006 compared to its 2005 output. In the United States emissions rose 1.4 per cent from 2005 to 2006.
clipped from www.theage.com.au

China spewed out more carbon dioxide than the United States for the first time last year, making it the world's biggest producer of the primary gas blamed for global warming.

New figures from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency show China produced 6,200 million tonnes of CO2 in 2006, while the US produced 5,800 million tonnes, the Guardian Unlimited news site reports.

"China's 2006 carbon dioxide emissions surpassed those of the USA by 8.0 per cent," the agency said in releasing the figures late yesterday.

In 2005, China's emissions were 2.0 per cent below those of the US, it said.

The agency said the figures were based on its own preliminary estimates derived from recent energy and cement production data.

Industrial processes and the burning of fossil fuels - oil, gas and coal - are the main causes of carbon-dioxide emissions. Of the industrial processes, cement production is one of the principal sources of greenhouse gas, the agency said.

3 comments:

John Fitzpatrick said...

On a per capita basis, the U.S. is worse than China by a ratio of 4 to 1.

Wadard said...

Yes.

DANIELBLOOM said...

why is nobody address this issue: polar cities?
read my blog and weeeP: climatechange3000.blogspot.com
danny bee | Homepage | 06.22.07 - 11:56 pm | #

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Polar cities are proposed sustainable polar retreats designed to house human beings in the future, in the event that global warming causes the central and middle regions of the Earth to become uninhabitable for a long period of time. Although they have not been built yet, some futurists have been giving considerable thought to the concepts involved.

High-population-density cities, to be built near the Arctic Rim with sustainable energy and transportation infrastructure, will require substantial nearby agriculture. Boreal soils are largely poor in key nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, but nitrogen-fixing plants (such as thevarious alders) with the proper symbiotic microbes and mycorrhizal fungi can likely remedy such poverty without the need for petroleum-derived fertilizers. Regional probiotic soil improvement should perhaps rank high on any polar cities priority list. James Lovelock's notion of a widely distributed almanac of science knowledge and post-industrial survival skills also appears to have value.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Cities"
danny bee | Homepage | 06.22.07 - 11:57 pm | #

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