China’s CO2 emission in millions of metric tons from 1980 to 2009:
Source, EIA: http://www.eia.gov/countries/img/charts_png/CH_co2con_img.png
From Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences: Atmospheric scientists release first “bottom-up” estimates of China’s CO2 emissions
Estimates capitalize on instrumental measurements of CO2 in smokestacks and pollutants in the air by satellites and surface stations
Cambridge, Mass. – July 6, 2012 – Atmospheric scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Nanjing University have produced the first “bottom-up” estimates of China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, for 2005 to 2009, and the first statistically rigorous estimates of the uncertainties surrounding China’s CO2 emissions.
The independent estimates, rooted in part in measurements of pollutants both at the sources and in the air, may be the most accurate totals to date. The resulting figures offer an unbiased basis on which China might measure its progress toward its well-publicized CO2 control goals.
The findings were published July 4 in the journal Atmospheric Environment.
“China’s emissions of CO2 are of central concern in efforts to combat global climate change,” says lead author Yu Zhao, a former postdoctoral researcher at Harvard SEAS who is now a professor at the Nanjing University School of Environment in China. “But despite all of the attention to China’s CO2 emissions, they’re less well quantified than most people realize.”
Existing estimates for these emissions are calculated “top-down,” based on annual energy statistics that are released by the Chinese government. The nation has only once officially estimated its CO2 emissions, based on national energy statistics from 1994, although it is now constructing a data system to produce periodic national greenhouse gas inventories. Non-Chinese organizations, such as the U.S. Department of Energy and the Netherlands Environment Agency, produce widely cited CO2 estimates for China (among other countries), but these are also based on the national energy data.
A study published last month by a China–U.K.–U.S. team in Nature Climate Change spotlighted a large disparity in estimates of Chinese CO2 emissions when the numbers were based on national energy statistics versus summed provincial data. To illustrate the contrast, those researchers had applied a standardized U.N. protocol for estimating the emissions of any developing country by sector.
The new Harvard–Nanjing study goes deeper, however, constructing a “bottom-up” emission inventory that is specific to China’s energy and technology mix. It combines the results of Chinese field studies of CO2 emissions from diverse combustion processes with a plant-by-plant data set for power generation, independent research on transportation and rural biomass use, and provincial-level energy statistics for the remaining sectors.
The Harvard-Nanjing team believes provincial energy data to be more accurate than national statistics because the provincial data have been empirically tested in peer-reviewed atmospheric studies that compare the expected emissions of conventional air pollutants to actual instrumental observations by satellites and ground stations. Provincial statistics also take into account the large quantities of coal produced by small, illegal mines.
“There are several different ways to estimate emissions of greenhouse gases or air pollutants, from those designed to support policy processes to those made by scientists researching atmospheric transport and chemistry,” explains co-author Chris Nielsen, Executive Director of the Harvard China Project, which is based at SEAS.
The former methods suit the needs of policy, attributing emissions to identifiable sources for actionable controls, but the latter are often more environmentally accurate, according to Nielsen.
“The methods used by atmospheric scientists can be more complete, incorporating new research on dispersed sources that are poorly represented in official statistics or weakly targeted by policy—such as the burning of crop wastes in fields or biofuels in poor, rural homes,” Nielsen explains. “The data are also more detailed in spatial terms. This allows a comparison of emission estimates to the pollution levels measured at the surface, or from space, testing the underlying energy data in the process.”
The new study capitalizes on prior tests and a bottom-up data framework that has been demonstrated for conventional air pollutants to produce a more thorough estimate of China’s CO2 emissions.
The new study also quantifies the uncertainty of the emission totals, applying formal statistical methods. For instance, the team found that the 95% confidence interval for the 2005 CO2 estimate lies between −9% and +11% of the central value. This relatively wide range means that measuring China’s achievement of its national CO2 control targets may be more difficult—and potentially more contentious—than generally recognized by Chinese and international policy actors.
“The levels of uncertainty indicate that Chinese domestic frameworks to set control targets for CO2 emissions at scales larger than individual factories, such as provinces or sectors, may reflect unwarranted confidence in the measurability and verifiability of the impacts of policy interventions,” says senior author Michael B. McElroy, Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Studies at SEAS.
“Such levels of uncertainty aren’t unique to China among developing and emerging economies,” Zhao cautions. “All have less-developed data systems than those that have been built up over decades to serve energy markets and environmental regulation in the United States and other industrialized countries. It’s critical that international agreements to limit CO2 emissions recognize these differences in national data conditions.”
Beyond the policy implications, the availability of accurate estimates of China’s CO2 emissions (and the related uncertainties in the data) can improve scientists’ understanding of the global carbon cycle and the physical processes driving global climate change.
The work was funded by the National Science Foundation.
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I look forward to Bill McKibben and James Hansen going to China to protest in the streets.
[UPDATE] I trust that Anthony won’t mind if I add a comment here.
I’d seen this before, and thought “What’s the big deal”? It didn’t seem much different from what I’d read about before.
So I’ve graphed up the old data from the CDIAC, and compared it to the New! Improved! graph at the top of the page … here’s the result:
I gotta say, the Harvard guys are making a mountain out of a molehill. To read their puff piece, they’ve made huge strides in measuring Chinese emissions, but in fact the old method gives just about the same answer … which is that the Chinese are crushing the competition in the CO2 sweepstakes.
I’ve included the US emissions, because they show a very important point. If we were able somehow magically to reduce our emissions to their 1980 levels, that reduction would be offset by the Chinese gains in one single year. In other words, what the US does is meaningless in global terms.
w.
I’d love to see a part 2 of this article. In part 2, compare the increase of China’s emissions with that of the cuts in emissions from other countries. The graph would have 2 lines, total emissions with cuts and total emissions without cuts. I’m willing to bet that the difference is something of a joke.
So how do Warmists deal with this disturbing information? Two ways. The first by the authors themselves:
“The authors suggest part of the problem is provincial politicians boosting their GDP numbers, and so their emissions too, in order to win promotions in a system where economic growth is the main criterion of success.”
http://www.economist.com/node/21557366
Sound a little weak? In the same study that quotes a national Chinese official as saying that while the national government can get a handle on the volume of large and medium firm emissions, it is simply impossible for it to get figures on the millions of small enterprises?
I say it is far more likely that ALL the emissions are understated as the official hints.
And then there is the cause and solution approach.
“Is the West responsible for China’s CO2 emissions?”
“So enough with the China bashing. Let’s think about who really is to blame.
As importers and consumers, if we demand certain product standards, shouldn’t we pay the extra costs incurred to meet those standards? Shouldn’t international attempts to curb emissions focus more on where goods are consumed, rather than where they are produced? Dieter Helm has suggested that measures such as a border tax on carbon transfer could be used to ensure that net importers are offered incentives to cut emissions from products manufactured overseas.”
http://inspiredeconomist.com/2009/03/26/is-the-west-responsible-for-chinas-co2-emissions/
I want to know when they started giving out doctorates in stupidity.
“I look forward to Bill McKibben and James Hansen going to China to protest in the streets.”
China would just go tell them to pound sand. They know it isn’t profitable to tell China reduce their pollution nor will they get special favors from the government. The day the team can get money or power from the Chinese people or government is the day they will go to China and tell them to repent of their ways. It is no coincidence that the countries the team preach in is the same countries that treat them like gods and keep them living in luxury.
Thanks for all the food.
– The trees.
Bob Diaz says: “I’d love to see a part 2 of this article. In part 2, compare the increase of China’s emissions with that of the cuts in emissions from other countries. The graph would have 2 lines, total emissions with cuts and total emissions without cuts. I’m willing to bet that the difference is something of a joke.”
Here is some data- Kumar Venkat recently had an article/post about “When Emissions Are Outsourced” http://www.environmentalleader.com/2012/03/20/when-emissions-are-outsourced/
…………”When production is outsourced to developing countries, developed countries see relative stability in their territorial emissions, which are emissions produced within their geographical boundaries. But in reality, emissions are relocated to the developing world and outsourced along with the production. When finished products are delivered to consumers, those emissions are embodied in the products but are not attributed to those consuming the products. The reporting protocols today are designed for territorial emissions, so outsourced emissions remain entirely with countries that produce goods and services for export.
This is similar to companies reporting only their scope 1 and 2 emissions and taking no responsibility for scope 3 emissions. At a minimum, developed countries see a highly skewed picture of their own emissions. While it may appear that their absolute emissions are stabilizing, consumption-based accounting shows that emissions have actually increased significantly and more than wiped out the reductions made under the Kyoto Protocol.
The chart below (from Peters et al. in Nature Climate Change) captures the net effect of international trade and shows how consumption-based emissions have increased much more rapidly than the production-based territorial emissions for developed countries.”………………….
I have noticed that CDIAC still have not updated their CO2 numbers. The latest figures are for 2008, which was the situation well over a year ago. They have guesstimates for 2009 and 2010, but again these have been on the system since last year.
Have they lost interest or are the Chinese and co being uncooperative in providing data?
It is the US that gift wrapped and delivered the manufacturing capability, intellectual property and market from the US to communist China and Democratic government of India. Obviously no one thought they would be more interested in profits than global warming. Go figure.
China is having real economic growth. In recent times, U.S. economic growth unfortunately largely consists of inflating the money supply while in official figures underestimating inflation (contrast to what is seen in food prices, etc.) so as to have pseudo-growth in official “real GDP” as well as nominal GDP; by a more true metric like the actual ratio of the cost of living expenses (predominantly physical goods, from residences to food) to salaries, we’ve been treading water for a long time. More than most of our government, the Chinese tend to understand that increase in prosperity requires increase in physical output.
,
pat says:
July 6, 2012 at 10:01 am
I want to know when they started giving out doctorates in stupidity.
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Well, apparently long ago. There is an interesting story about the discovery of non-existing N-rays by a famous scientist. Note that more then 100 (!) scientific papers were published on the N-rays before the notion was debunked by the same American professor who later also debunked the AGW notion of warming by “trapped radiation” (1909!). Here is the story: http://www.scribd.com/doc/62514617/Fakebusters-II (page 14 of the document).
Who remembers the ‘china blip’?
Among the graphs, some of these disappeared, one is in SCIENCE VOL 319 4 JANUARY 2008 37
Who believes that in 5 years china’s GDP increased by +- 35% (1995 to 2000) while keeping their carbon emissions constant?
You want to know why China has a big hockey stick? Here’s the answer.
Take a look at the following link from the Federal Reserve, it shows the largest ever drop in manufacturing jobs which started near the end of 2000.
What happened near the end of 2000? Clinton and the Republican congress gave China PNTR and the result has been millions of manufacturing jobs sent from the US to China (and other countries). Even Senator Joe Lieberman noticed this when he released a report on offshoring a few years later that said “since 2000, we have lost 2.7 million manufacturing jobs, of which over 500,000 were in high tech industries characterized by large R&D investment-to-sales ratios.”
The offshoring was so damaging that only121,000 private sector jobs were created in the 00s.
One study showed that when a GM Factory With 2,100 Workers Closed, 33,000 Other People Lost Their Jobs — Impacting 120,000
Why didn’t more people spot this?
Because it was hidden by the rising prices of real estate that resulted in many people using their house to buy things which spurred the economy.
Interestingly, Clinton and the DNC took illegal contributions from the Communist Chinese government in the mid ’90’s. Naturally, Clinton has said that the illegal contributions did not influence foreign policy. — But that’s not how politics works in Washington D.C.
I would like to see a graphical depiction of the estimated China emission total compared with the US emissions per the EIA. I hope this can be presented in WUWT.
It is obvious that the warmists are barking up the wrong tree when they go after domestic coal when they should in fact go after Wal-Mart et al.
Of course that would require a bigger pair of balls because consumers would tell them to suck their hand-woven hemp shirts and driftwood-carved toys.
I’ve included an update in the head post …
w.
So let me get this straight. What I take away from recent WUWT posts is as follows: The world isn’t warming, but if it were, it’s a natural cycle anyway (or the sun, or – god help – us the planets), but if the warming were being caused by CO2, then it isn’t happening fast enough to be of any concern and/or it’s all happened before (and CO2 is plant food and warming is probably desirable), but if that weren’t true and there really was a problem, then it’s all China’s fault, not the USA’s, so there’s no point in anyone in the USA doing anything about it, because if they did, it would destroy the economy and standards of living would revert to the stone age.
Is that about right?
Sorry, I used to think there was some genuine scepticism at this site, but it’s recently all got really quite ridiculous, and the underlying political stance is increasingly clear. Whatever the science and the facts actually say, AGW can’t be true because we don’t want it to be true.
I’m assuming that I have now forfeited my right to post here in the future, but it has to be said. This site is not at all what it was only 3 or 4 years ago.
Nigel Harris says:
July 6, 2012 at 12:33 pm
So let me get this straight. What I take away from recent WUWT posts is as follows: The world isn’t warming, but if it were, it’s a natural cycle anyway (or the sun, or – god help – us the planets), but if the warming were being caused by CO2, then it isn’t happening fast enough to be of any concern and/or it’s all happened before (and CO2 is plant food and warming is probably desirable), but if that weren’t true and there really was a problem, then it’s all China’s fault, not the USA’s, so there’s no point in anyone in the USA doing anything about it, because if they did, it would destroy the economy and standards of living would revert to the stone age.
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This is not a contradiction, but merely a consequence of the fact, that the AGW concept has so many flaws.
That is why people can argue that even if there was CO2 induced warming the adaptation would be better then mitigation. Unfortunately, they often forget to use conditional thus causing confusion among sceptics and joy among warmists. But it is still legitimate argumentation if conditional is used.
Whether the world is warming or not should be considered unknown, because the data available is not sufficient to come to a scientifically proven conclusion. What the warmists do with the data is beyond science, unfortunately. Nevertheless, warming or cooling is possible because of the Sun.
That CO2 could cause warming is a pure misconception, this idea has already been debunked in 1909. But even if it could it could be beneficial for us. The same goes for cooling, so it is possible to speculate in both directions. Unfortunately warmists like only one direction.
Nigel Harris says:
July 6, 2012 at 12:33 pm
I haven’t seen anyone make this claim, so I’d say you are a long, long way from getting this straight.
I’d go for “Choice A”, a natural cycle, since it has been warming in fits and starts for about the last 300 years. What do you call a 300 year warming, Nigel? AGW?
At the moment, statistically the warming is indistinguishable from zero for the last 15 years. And in fact, it has happened before, the warming from say 1978-1998 is statistically indistinguishable from the warming 1920-1940 … which is very good evidence that it is not due to CO2.
In addition, I suspect that even you would agree that CO2 is indeed plant food.
Next, warming is likely to be of overall net benefit, as it has been in the past. You seem to be claiming that a couple of degrees of warming will be catastrophic, but we’ve warmed that much (according to the BEST data) in the last 200 years … perhaps you could point out the huge catastrophes resulting from that warming for us?
Whether there is or is not a problem, the reality is that the increase in China’s emissions of CO2 dwarf the increase of the US emissions. I commented on this above, but I didn’t say it was “China’s fault”, that’s your poor reading skills raising their head again.
There’s no point in the US doing anything, either with or without China in the picture. For example, the recently imposed EPA regulations are estimated by the EPA themselves as follows:
SOURCE
… if you know that and still think there’s some point in the US “doing anything about it”, you’ve lost the plot entirely.
Again, I know of no one making that claim but you. It would certainly cost a huge pile of money, EPA estimates $78 BILLION PER YEAR for their regulations, but likely that would not “destroy the economy” (whatever that means) or make us revert to the stone age. YOU are the only one making those claims.
That’s your fantasy, Nigel, and I wish you the joy of it. In fact, there is no unified stance here, political or otherwise. Me, I doubt that AGW is true because there is precious little evidence to support it. But if the facts change, I’ll change my opinion.
No, you haven’t “forfeited [your] right to post here in the future”, you must be confusing us with RealClimate or Open Mind or one of those censorious sites.
All you’ve done with your rant is shown that you have a large chip on your shoulder and a definite political stance that you think everyone should share. Oh, and your ridiculous and fatuous claims have likely convinced people that your opinion is worthless. So while you’re welcome to continue to post, don’t be surprised if people pay no attention to your smashingly profound insights.
w.
“I look forward to Bill McKibben and James Hansen going to China to protest in the streets.”
———
How about Maurice Strong start that ball rolling. Isn’t he already hiding out over there?
Now that’s what I call a Hockey Stick!
If you believe the utterances of one Mr J Hansen, China’s SO2 emissions are SAVING the world from global warming since 2000.
” … what the US does is meaningless in global terms.” Of course Australia’s new $23 per tonne carbon tax will make a world of difference … to Australian businesses.
Hmmm, 10 trillion tonnes per real soon.
There was a recent post on WUWT on record coal aerosol pollution in china. Visibility was down to 200 meters. I calculated the volume fraction of the aerosols from the figures given in the linked news paper article. Seems it was very similar to the volume fraction of CO2 in the global atmosphere.
Explains why you can’t see the surface of western china from space. Also explains why you cant see the surface of the earth from space at thermal IR wavelengths.
Have a good day.
In the update, there’s a sentence which reads:
So I’ve graphed up the old data from the CDIAC, and compared it to the New! Improved! graph at the top of the page … here’s the result:
The link that is accessed by clicking on “CDIAC” goes to “404 Not Found”. The “Not Found” page says they are reorganizing their website and changing file extensions from “htm” to “html”. When I added a lower-case “L” to the end of the file extension, I reached a page titled “Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions”.
So the link should be: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/meth_reg.html.
[Thanks, fixed. -w.]
Simple economic justice requires, at least from the graph, that the rapacious US has had at least 20 years of excessive CO2 than China; so China should be allowed such latitude. Too most of the emissions in China are for producing goods for the lazy Amerikans. /sarc