From the EUObserver
The EU’s statistical agency Eurostat announced Thursday (4 May) that CO2 emissions resulting from the EU’s energy use have “slightly decreased” in 2016, compared to the year before. But Eurostat’s press release did not mention that the small decrease has not made up for the small increase in CO2 emissions the year before, and that more CO2 was emitted in 2016 than in 2014.
source: Eurostat
In 2016, carbon emissions dropped by 0.4 percent compared to 2015, Eurostat said in a press release.
But in 2015, CO2 emissions had increased by 0.7 percent compared to 2014.
In other words, last year’s CO2 emissions increased by 0.29 percent compared to 2014, which means that for the second consecutive year the EU’s carbon emissions are higher than in 2014, albeit very slightly.
The flatlining contrasts with figures from 2014, when emissions dropped by 5 percent compared to the year before. In the two years before, the year-on-year decrease had also been at least 2 percent.
h/t to The GWPF
This just shows what we’ve been trying to explain all along. Yeah, grabbing the low hanging fruit is easy and doesn’t cost much. Every percentage point beyond that requires an exponential increase in money and effort to achieve. So, in effect, yes – we have reached peak CO2.
Peak CO2 reduction. I don’t see CO2 levels leveling off, much less dropping for a long, long time.
So these folks have totted up how much coal, oil, gas etc has been burned.
How much dirt has been burned? (growing stuff, stuff that we eat)
I ask because a few comments here have mentioned wood, forests and how we may as well burn the stuff as let it rot in the ground.
Again, this is really really simple elementary school science that says such things and sadly what government policy is based on also.
For peeps who say that, I ask “Where does dirt come from?” And I mean, good quality dirt with a high humic, carbon or organic content. That organic content is constantly rotting away, as you say, but must be replaced. That replacement has to be an ‘accretion’ process otherwise there wouldn’t be any anywhere. Would there?
Scientist types have measured it as best they can and if you’re REALLY lucky, subsoil turns into topsoil at a rate of 1 inch per century. 1 inch per millennium if you’re not so lucky and gets to be a maximum of about 2 feet deep.
Now think about it. How long has all that fertile soil been building under forests?
We know from actual experience in esp S America, cutting rainforest. At first the newly acquired dirt grows tobacco & cotton- really hungry crops. Then it grows sugar cane, then it becomes cow pasture at 1 cow per acre, then 1 cow per 10 acre then 1 cow per 100 acres (get the drift?), then sheep pasture, then goat grazing and then desert. The best definition of such a thing being ‘A place with very low carbon soil)
And it doesn’t recover. No amount of CO2 fertilation will do that – again, its really basic primary school science that says the planet is greening because of the extra fossil fuel being burned.
Planetary greening comes from extra nitrogen fertiliser being used, irrigation projects, the increase in coniferous (evergreen forest at the expense of deciduous) and farmers planting autumn sown cereals instead of spring planted crops. That alone makes fields appear (as seen by satellites) greener for an extra 7 or 8 months per year
All that CO2 in the sky did not come from burning fossil fuel. It came from burning dirt and the process of doing so (like my S America example) is what can/will change the climate.
Deserts have different climates from rainforests and plenty folks in Brazil will attest to that AND how it came about.
Boreal forest is not a rainforest, its biology is totally different. Basically a pine forest grows on gravel with little top soil. You’re welcome to look how the forest grows, the issue is not how to make it grow, more of what to do with trees pushing up all around.
Maybe 10000 years, after continental ice melted away. But the thing is, the trunks have little to give to podzol. It is leaves and needles, and the mushrooms that work with the trees. Mushrooms collect water and stuff, the tree creates sugar for them. Bacteria that are symbionts may create nitrous compounds in such manner alders don’t need to save the green of their leaves but just drop them down. People from outside the boreal zone don’t necessarily get this, and in the history humans coming from the North did not understand that the rainforest may work in a different manner.
To clarify, there was time when our forests were overlogged. That was centuries ago. The forests did recover, the only thing needed was to stop abuse and slash-and-burn. The wood content has been growing for a long time now, and certainly good forestry and CO2 fertilization are the biggest parts. Some can be assigned to reducing field capacity, which is caused by a low wheat market price. Efficiency in wheat production elsewhere leads to forest growth in Finland.
I am trying to grok this idea of dirt being “burned”. Nope, still doesn’t make sense. And I’m pretty sure the increase in CO2 did (mostly) come from burning fossil fuels. Still, food for thought.
And to think if Europe had done nothing to curtail CO2 over what it would have been had it done nothing to scale back CO2, that China and India emitted Euroland’s share in a few weeks making all that effort meaningless on a global scale.
I wonder how long it will take the green bureaucrats, politicians, raving environmentalists and MSM to walk back the whole AGW premise once it becomes abundantly clear that CO2 has nothing to do with driving long term climate?
I doesn’t take too long once temps start go down. I’m not confident they will soon do that.
I wonder if anyone has counted the number of smudge pot fires lit in an effort to protect vineyards and orchards during the recent cold snap in Europe in order to quantify their impact on CO2 levels? If not I’ll undertake the study when I’m provided with an appropriate grant, say a couple of million Euros or $ equivalent. I’ve got a theory that cold snaps are a side effect of CAGW. It could also be a plot by Big Grape (a front for Big Oil) to significantly inflate the wholesale price of grapes.
The phrase is “not inconsistent with”, to emphasize that no result is a positive result. Time to go to bed. Nice Friday night (Frinight?)
Carbon accounting, like all accounting, can be a creative endeavor. Sooner or later though, the numbers come home to roost.
How much of it has been exported, or is accounting fiction such as biomass burning?
Has no-one noticed the photo/picture? Belching tons of water vapor from cooling towers – stuff many times more Global Warming-effective than CO2 !!! (Doesn’t count, I guess.)
I hope all the Europeans in the EU realize, with Trump in charge for the next 8 years, nobody is coming to save your @ss for a third time !
Looking at that, looks like the more renewable energy they have, the more emissions have increased.
Lets be clear – this is the change compared to 2015.
so we look at Denmark and find in 2015 it had record low emissions…
https://stateofgreen.com/en/profiles/state-of-green/news/record-low-co2-emissions-from-electricity-consumption-in-2015
This isn’t emissions going up or stalling – it is some states not achieving as much as record years with high wind
From the link you provided:
“Thanks to more wind power and large imports of electricity from Norway and Sweden, CO2 emissions from Danish power consumption were reduced by a third in 2015, according to Energinet.dk’s environmental impact report for electricity 2015.”
yes… western Europe has a shared electricity market/grid
Here’s the EU total figures to 2014…
Looks like a continued drop to me
http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data/data-viewers/greenhouse-gases-viewer
Griff:
Did you look at the title to that graph. It is
You say you believe those numbers so I have to ask, do you also believe in Father Christmas and the Easter Bunny?
Richard
U.K. TO scrap diesels, lol
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39818083
BBC blames diesel makers for misleading the Government
You really cannot make this stuff up.
Double uh-oh. Germany’s increase of .7% is a particular embarassment given that the UNFCC COP 23 in November will be in Bonn. Germany will have some ‘splainin’ to do.
There’s the assumption that CO2 emissions can be measured to within tenths of a percent. I’d love to see the error bars.
Climate science seems to be the realm of hiding: “Hiding the decline” and “Hiding the uncertainty”.
“I’d love to see the error bars.”
With a few honourable exceptions, most self-proclaimed “climate scientists” wouldn’t recognise an error bar if you whacked them over the head with it.