Study: China will Meet Paris Climate Goals Nine Years Early

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

A new study suggests China’s shift from heavy industry to a high tech service economy will cause CO2 emissions to peak well before the 2030 goal – though the study authors admit they haven’t considered smaller cities.

China is on track to meet its climate change goals nine years early

ENVIRONMENT 26 July 2019
By Adam Vaughan

Now an analysis has found that Chinaā€™s emissions could peak at 13 to 16 gigatonnes of CObetween 2021 and 2025, making what the researchers call a ā€œa great contributionā€ to meeting the Paris dealā€™s goal of limiting temperature rises to 2Ā°C. The official target is a peak by ā€œaround 2030.ā€

However, Haikun and colleagues admit they didnā€™t analyse many small cities, which have the potential to develop more, so the real emissions may end up higher. The US-based thinktank World Resources Institute also says that while more countries are peaking emissions ā€“ 57 are due by 2030, up from 19 in 1990 ā€“ it will still not be enough to make global emissions peak in the next few years.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2211366-china-is-on-track-to-meet-its-climate-change-goals-nine-years-early/

The abstract of the study;

Chinaā€™s CO2 peak before 2030 implied from characteristics and growth of cities
Haikun WangXi LuYu DengYaoguang SunChris P. NielsenYifan LiuGe ZhuMaoliang BuJun Bi & Michael B. McElroy 

China pledges to peak CO2 emissions by 2030 or sooner under the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 2ā€‰Ā°C or less by the end of the century. By examining CO2 emissions from 50 Chinese cities over the period 2000ā€“2016, we found a close relationship between per capita emissions and per capita gross domestic product (GDP) for individual cities, following the environmental Kuznets curve, despite diverse trajectories for CO2 emissions across the cities. Results show that carbon emissions peak for most cities at a per capita GDP (in 2011 purchasing power parity) of around US$21,000 (80% confidence interval: US$19,000 to 22,000). Applying a Monte Carlo approach to simulate the peak of per capita emissions using a Kuznets function based on Chinaā€™s historical emissions, we project that emissions for China should peak at 13ā€“16ā€‰GtCO2ā€‰yrāˆ’1 between 2021 and 2025, approximately 5ā€“10ā€‰yr ahead of the current Paris target of 2030. We show that the challenges faced by individual types of Chinese cities in realizing low-carbon development differ significantly depending on economic structure, urban form and geographical location.

Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0339-6

I’m always a little dubious about analysis of China conducted by Chinese academics, particularly where a negative finding might cause embarrassment for the Chinese government.

The South China Post recently revealed massive fraud in reported economic growth in the city of Guanghan.

This isn’t the first time; fake reports of economic growth may even have been responsible for the myth of decoupling, a period several years ago when Chinese growth appeared to be surging despite a slump in the growth of reported Chinese CO2 emissions.

Then Chinese CO2 emissions suddenly surged; I still don’t know whether this was because actual economic growth started to catch up with reported growth, or maybe China decided to confess CO2 emissions they had previously been concealing.

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July 31, 2019 4:09 am

This is a completely ridiculous claim. China is planning to build over 200 new airports by 2035…

https://gbtimes.com/china-aims-to-develop-over-200-new-airports-by-2035

J Mac
Reply to  Paul Matthews
July 31, 2019 8:14 am

The Paris Climate Accord pretends that China has ‘Climate Goals’…. and China pretends to meet them. Thus, the requirements of the fraudulent ‘treaty’ are fraudulently met, to fraudulently validate the massively fraudulent Climate Change industry. And the climate change alarmists call it ‘Settled Science’…..

Reply to  J Mac
July 31, 2019 11:27 am

The rise of Chinese emissions I have argued for several years was Black Swan that no one in 1999-2000 foresaw (at the IPCC Third AR). Yes they knew China would grow. But no one expected what happened after China was allowed into the WTO in 2002. Everyone had expected the old Communist model of heavy bureaucratic intervention and anti-capitalist policy would keep China’s growth in check.
By the 4th AR in 2007, the were beginning to get an inkling of China’s emission growth, but the fracking revolution (the second Black Swan) hadn’t yet arrived, so everyone in 2007 was still expecting $200/bbl oil would curtail economic growth, and thus emissions growth, in the Developing countries in the 2010’s.

By the time of the 2013-2014 5th AR, the IPCC COP crowd was still in utter disbelief that this happened (China surpassed the US in emsiions and was grwoing expontentially unchecked) and knew their was no putting the China emissions genie back in the bottle. Obama’s toothless emissions agreement with China was supposed to be the white wash to hide that ugly fact.

So now they’ve just turned to full-on lying about China’s emissions and future growth, covered over with lies, half-truths, and tons of magical thinking.
It’s now all very Orwellian what is happening.

Bryan A
Reply to  Paul Matthews
July 31, 2019 8:19 am

The 2030 Paris related goal/promise of China was to reach Peak CO2 production. Not necessarily start curtailing production just Peak. Peaks, like the warming hiatus, can have LONG EXTENDED PLATEAUS prior to turning a corner. The report is just BS-ing that they may be PeKing early.

Malcolm Carter
Reply to  Bryan A
July 31, 2019 10:30 am

Perhaps the Accord is worried that the global temperature is actually cooling and they want to be able to point to China’s emissions and say, ‘See we told you if emissions were lowered, the climate would cool.”

Greg
Reply to  Malcolm Carter
July 31, 2019 11:43 am

We show that the challenges faced by individual types of Chinese cities in realizing low-carbon development ….

They are facing no such “challenges” since they are not attempting “low-carbon development”, that is a Western fantasy.

What they are doing is trying to increase production efficiency, reduce REAL air-borne pollution at well as maintaining growth. That may have some incidental effects in reducing “carbon” intensity but that is not the “challenge” they face, nor the desired objective.

They conceded NOTHING to Paris agreement, they said they intended to carry on developing as they had originally planned to do and that this “may” result in CO2 peaking around 2030. And if it doesn’t , well shoot, we only said we would try in a non binding way.

Suggesting China will peak in just 2y times is so farcical the paper should have been thrown out for that result alone.

Bookmark this one for a review in 2y so we can come back and laugh at it.

Don K
Reply to  Greg
August 1, 2019 8:48 am

Greg: Mostly you’re right, but I believe that China is running out of easily accessible coal. That, plus their reasonable desire to reduce urban air pollution, may in fact cause them to switch somewhat to other energy sources — all of which generate less CO2 per watt than coal — sooner than they thought a decade ago. They are still going to release an awful lot of CO2 in the coming decades. And probably they will burn every kilogram of coal they can get to sometime in the next century or three

dan no longer in CA
Reply to  Greg
August 2, 2019 7:07 am

China now has 12 large nuclear power plants under construction, 43 more planned, and 179 proposed. I expect that as coal prices get higher, the nukes will take up the slack.
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/facts-and-figures/world-nuclear-power-reactors-and-uranium-requireme.aspx

TRM
Reply to  Bryan A
July 31, 2019 1:00 pm

” they may be PeKing early.” – LOL

DaveS
Reply to  Bryan A
July 31, 2019 1:35 pm

And ducking the real issue.

Caligula Jones
Reply to  Paul Matthews
July 31, 2019 12:57 pm

Well, the also say they’ve shut down the concentration camps they are forcing Muslims into.

So, yeah, I can TOTALLY believe this report as well.

Dr. Bob
Reply to  Paul Matthews
July 31, 2019 3:29 pm

They will use biofuels for zero carbon growth so this will not be an issue.
Do I need to mention the “S” word?

Kmack
Reply to  Paul Matthews
August 1, 2019 11:58 am

Not to mention this is a problem:
Chinaā€™s power industry calls for hundreds of new coal power plants by 2030
https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2019/03/28/china-new-coal-plants-2030-climate/

July 31, 2019 4:11 am

… China is also about to open a huge new railway to transport coal, 200 million tons a year:

https://twitter.com/PDChina/status/1153764219176857603

William Astley
Reply to  Paul Matthews
August 1, 2019 8:52 am

Thanks. Great link.

July 31, 2019 4:13 am

Chinese statistics are in the same class of reliability as Nigerian emails on social media.

Sunny
Reply to  Tom Halla
July 31, 2019 5:26 am

Lolololol. So true. Australia just signed a 25 year contract to supply turkey and Cameroon with gas.. so much for cutting co2

ozspeaksup
Reply to  Sunny
July 31, 2019 6:56 am

yeah while WE pay megabucks for it for home and vehicle use and are told supplies are running out..
I liked this story for the laugh it gave me reading the header.

Bill Powers
Reply to  Tom Halla
July 31, 2019 8:46 am

Which makes them slightly more believable than ABNBCBS MS CNN.

Earthling2
July 31, 2019 4:40 am

This is the fox looking out for the chickens internal study of what is happening to their ‘carbon’ emissions by 2030. In no way, shape or form can we ever expect to believe anything China says under the dictator Xi. A lot of the time, you could just take the opposite of what they say, and that would be close to the truth. Remember all the lies they told Obama about stealing western tech, or their construction of 7 manmade islands in the South China Sea not being for military purposes? Thank goodness we have President Trump to stand up to that and call BS on their trade practises, which should also be expanded to call theft of the South China Sea from their neighbour’s EEZ. China is a bully around the world and must be checked.

Andy Espersen
July 31, 2019 4:54 am

China is running rings round us – and sitting there in Peking laughing because it looks as if their plan is succeeding. Their plan is to make us believe that they are sticking to the Paris agreement – so as persuade governments here to ruin the economy of the West. In a few years time China will rule the world in industrial output – because we are deliberately sabotaging ours by making our energy too expensive. I admire the Chinese for their prowess and intelligence.

Michael H Anderson
Reply to  Andy Espersen
July 31, 2019 5:23 am

Yep. And sock puppets like Roger Hallam and Greta Thurnberg are helping them daily. Maurice Strongā€™s vision coming to fruition.

ozspeaksup
Reply to  Michael H Anderson
July 31, 2019 6:59 am

well maurice moved to china so the greensocialist agenda he pushed was useful for them in longrange plans that they seem to do so well, as well as westernised PR and agitprop help hed give too I bet.
the belt n road things going to have “unexpected” outcomes

Warren
Reply to  Andy Espersen
July 31, 2019 5:33 am

Exactly we do business in China and they’re all astonished at how gullible the West is, particularly the USA. They are laughing and smiling every day!

Farmer Ch E retired
Reply to  Andy Espersen
July 31, 2019 6:16 am

Andy said “In a few years time China will rule the world in industrial output . . .”
I think that time has already come – I bought 4 unrelated items at Home Depot yesterday – all 4 Made in China. Try to buy fishing gear at Bass Pro Shop (or name your favorite retailer) and you will likely buy Chinese.

ResourceGuy
Reply to  Farmer Ch E retired
July 31, 2019 7:25 am

The Dems say to double the minimum wage to counter that and add student debt waiver and guaranteed incomes while using GND to redistribute wealth. Yes, it’s pretty much hopeless now. Retreat! or hurry up with the exoplanet search.

William Astley
Reply to  Farmer Ch E retired
July 31, 2019 7:51 am

The US has a $ 400 billion dollar/yr trade deficit with China, kind of makes sense that more and more items are made in China.

The problem is the Obama administration convinced us the losing our industrial base was ‘Free Trade’

The Chinese are now building high tech airplanes, high speed trains, computers, cell phones, and so.

A C Osborn
Reply to  William Astley
July 31, 2019 8:25 am

Mostly based on US & Russian designs.

richard verney
Reply to  A C Osborn
July 31, 2019 9:23 am

Obviously they realize that there is no point in re-inventing the wheel.

Stick to tried and proven design, and if possible improve on it. Makes a lot of sense, and one thing we know about the Chinese is they are not stupid.

They get away with what they can, but President Trump is on to them. No doubt they will seek to interfere in the 2020 elections to get a democrat elected, and the democrats will cover this up.

Roger Knights
Reply to  A C Osborn
July 31, 2019 2:23 pm

“Mostly based on US & Russian designs.”

The Japanese say the Chinese stole their high-speed train designs.

Alan the Brit
Reply to  A C Osborn
July 31, 2019 11:06 pm

Why not? The former BBC car show Top Gear demonstrated clearly they copy anything & everything, including BMWs & Mercedes etc, just simply copied in the full knowledge that suing them would be a huge waste of money!

Farmer Ch E retired
Reply to  William Astley
July 31, 2019 10:42 am

WA said “. . . the Obama administration convinced us the losing our industrial base was ā€˜Free Tradeā€™”.
This was probably not limited to the Obama administration. Remember, there is no ‘Free’ lunch – unless of course it’s promised by a bureaucrat – and especially a socialist bureaucrat. /double s

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Andy Espersen
July 31, 2019 9:03 am

“China is running rings round us ā€“ and sitting there in Peking laughing because it looks as if their plan is succeeding.”

Authoritarian rule has that advantage over divided Democracies. Authoritarians can focus a nation’s energy on specific things without much internal opposition, which makes them more efficient than nations that wrangle for years over which direction to take.

Intelligent authoritarians can make a lot of progress towards the goals they set for themselves. Good for them, but not so good for their enemies. In this case, us.

I imagine the Chinese would just love it if Donald Trump lost the next election. The North Koreans and the Mad Mullahs of Iran, too. It would make their authoritarian lives so much easier. Unfortunately, they have a lot of useful idiots here in the U.S. who are trying their best to help these dictators out. But, Trump is still winning and I think he will overcome all these obstacles, too.

After Trump wins reelection, the Chinese and the North Koreans will make a deal. I don’t know about the Mad Mullahs, though, they are seriously deluded and are religious fanatics so it is hard to predict their behavior. I would lean towards them doing something irrational which will require a military response from the United States.

The United States military posture used to be focused around being able to fight two regional wars simultaneously, just because of occasions like we have now where we could be at war with both North Korea and the Mad Mullahs of Iran at the same time. Let’s hope Trump’s rebuilding of the U.S. military puts us back in a position to be able to successfully prosecute two regional wars simultaneously, because that may be required.

Former President George W. Bush coined the phrase “Axis of Evil” to describe Iraq, under Saddam, and Iran, under the Mad Mullahs, and North Korea. One down, two to go.

chaswarnertoo
July 31, 2019 5:09 am

More Chinese magic unicorn poop!

Greg Woods
July 31, 2019 5:15 am

OT

Who let the crazies out of the asylum?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2019/07/28/the-next-step-in-fighting-climate-change/#79ac55ba5653

‘Climate change is the crisis of our time. As the human race sleepwalks its way towards a planetary calamity, there is a growing recognition of the need for a ā€œmoonshotā€ aimed at addressing the greatest existential challenge we have ever faced. The immediate problem is that a solid technical basis for such a moonshot does not yet exist. There is no audacious U.S. national plan in place to deal with climate change, quite apart from what other countries must do.’

Michael H Anderson
Reply to  Greg Woods
July 31, 2019 6:09 am

Oh yes there is, and itā€™s been advocated by environmental activists for decades and has long since entered mainstream thought: dismantle industrial society, causing the annihilation of billions if lives, and return to the Paleolithic. Extinction Rebellion is the thin edge of the wedge of making the idea acceptable to all ā€œwoke, progressiveā€ people.

Gary Mount
July 31, 2019 5:15 am

If the world still needs the heavy industry products that China currently produces, then won’t some other country make the heavy industry products and assumably still produce the co2 (that the world also needs).

Steve
Reply to  Gary Mount
July 31, 2019 7:30 am

Yes, and it is already happening.

Companies are moving production out of China to Vietnam, Thailand, and Bangladesh in search of cheaper labor and less stringent regulations (including less stringent environmental regulations). Even if this study is on the up and up, it just means that production will be relocated out of China over the next 30 years, the same way it was relocated out of the United States and the EU over the past 30 years. It will have a huge impact on national CO2 emissions, and absolutely no impact on global CO2 emissions. It’s a shell game.

Latitude
July 31, 2019 5:28 am

say what?

…so it was baked in that China could increase their emissions…and can emit 3 times more CO2 than we do….from the beginning

and they get a trophy for not emitting 20 times more

Reply to  Latitude
July 31, 2019 9:38 am

Their commitment was to do nothing.
They now promise to do nothing earlier.

Craig
July 31, 2019 5:40 am

There is a definition to solve every problem.

michael hart
July 31, 2019 5:42 am

“A new study suggests Chinaā€™s shift from heavy industry to a high tech service economy will cause CO2 emissions to peak well before the 2030 goal…”

That doesn’t mean that China will change how it chooses to generate it’s electricity, and they will presumably just shift the heavy industrial production to poorer nations in Africa or elsewhere.

commieBob
July 31, 2019 5:56 am

Iā€™m always a little dubious about analysis of China conducted by Chinese academics, particularly where a negative finding might cause embarrassment for the Chinese government.

Some friends were communicating on a messaging app. They got a message from the censor telling them to be more socially acceptable. I have no idea whether the censor was human or a bot but we’d be shocked if it happened in America.

People report to me that air quality is getting worse where it wasn’t previously a problem. link This could be a case of solving Beijing’s problem by moving it elsewhere.

MR166
July 31, 2019 5:58 am

“A new study suggests Chinaā€™s shift from heavy industry to a high tech service economy will cause CO2 emissions to peak well before the 2030 goal ā€“ though the study authors admit they havenā€™t considered smaller cities.”

There is no real logic here. If China closes its heavy industry some other country will open theirs and increase their emissions. There will be no net reduction in energy use. The would cannot run the world on mouse clicks.

max
July 31, 2019 6:56 am

Well, I certainly do remember how the Soviets were always one step ahead of us on environmentalism, according to them. That whole Chernobyl thing was just a Western disinformation attack, really.

Jones
July 31, 2019 6:56 am

Phew, was getting a little worried there.

Happy days…..

Ps. Is the suggestion therefore that the advanced industrialised nations should now commit economic Hara-Kirin post-haste? To mitigate our moral turpitude you understand….

Another thing: “though the study authors admit they havenā€™t considered smaller cities.”. Would that be cities of 10 million or fewer?

Another another thing, what about India?

I’m only askin…………

David Chappell
Reply to  Jones
July 31, 2019 7:14 am

Number 50 in the Wiki list has a population of 1.5 million so there are a lot of substantial “smaller” cities.

Jones
Reply to  Jones
July 31, 2019 7:16 am

Typo. “Hara-Kiri”. Bloody predictive onions.

Linda Goodman
July 31, 2019 7:03 am

C02: the breath of life

Emissions: substances discharged into the air (as by a smokestack or an automobile engine)

‘C02 emissions’: the inference that carbon dioxide is a pollutant

False narrative: to characterize a false story as real with repetitive phrases

Unwitting: not intended : INADVERTENT

Accomplice: one associated with another especially in wrongdoing

ResourceGuy
July 31, 2019 7:15 am

The authors have also not admitted to the reader that a wholesale policy shift in China would be needed in shutting down state-run industries that have been at the heart of global commodity flows and steel industry overcapacity that dwarfs other nations. All the nudging on policy shift has done nothing and steel output has gone up as has local government debt accumulation in support of local industry and projects. In other words China policy is running exactly opposite to what the authors and a lot of other central banks and trade negotiators are “wishing” for. At be honest with the situation though.

Also be honest with readers on what a “small” city is in China.

fxk
July 31, 2019 7:16 am

How is reaching peak emissions early a good thing? Are they saying total peak emissions will be lower than if they continued to 2030? What makes anyone think after they reach peak emissions that they will magically go down? Doesn’t this mean they can run at peak for an additional 15 years?

Zigmaster
July 31, 2019 7:16 am

I canā€™t understand how they interpret their commitment. They promised to do nothing to reduce emissions till 2030 . They managed to do nothing ever since they signed the Paris agreement. They are the only country in the world that has met its commitment.

This really is a Claytonā€™s commitment. If I was running the Australian government, I wouldnā€™t pull out of Paris, I would say instead that I think Australia should make the same sacrifice as China and agree to not do anything till 2030 then think about. If itā€™s good enough for the worlds largest emitter itā€™s good enough for a relatively tiny Australia.

Robert W Turner
July 31, 2019 7:27 am

If Balderdash 101 were a university course, that abstract could be the first lesson.

Mark Broderick
July 31, 2019 7:28 am

“Katy Perry, more stars attend Google summit on climate change in private jets, mega yachts”

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/google-summit-celebrities-climate-change

LOL……….

ResourceGuy
Reply to  Mark Broderick
July 31, 2019 12:20 pm

The monster truck wars of the Climate Change Crusades

WXcycles
July 31, 2019 7:45 am

“China will Meet Paris Climate Goals Nine Years Early”
>>

“… for as long as the economic downturn persists.”

Fixed

LdB
July 31, 2019 7:57 am

And the 300-500 new coal power stations are just imagination and the chinese government release showing the coal emissions growing even at 2030.

Griff would say this is all misinformation well he better take that up with greenpeace because that outlook is from there own report
https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2019/03/28/china-new-coal-plants-2030-climate/

griff
Reply to  LdB
July 31, 2019 9:22 am

The situation in China changes rapidly, every few months…

this report is about companies asking to build more power stations… it does not mean the govt will permit them. Recently new applications have been stopped by the govt… but then of course regional authorities have been getting round the central govt prohibitions …

If you look at it the other way, certainly there are an awful lot of new renewable energy sources.

Is China continuing at the old rate of construction? almost certainly not. But frankly it is a bit like the old pseudo science of Kremlinology deciphering it all!

Bryan A
Reply to  griff
July 31, 2019 12:03 pm

You are again correct Griff…
The PseudoScience of Climate Scientology is very similar to that of Kremlinology

Jones
Reply to  griff
July 31, 2019 2:30 pm

“it does not mean the govt will permit them.”

If you can’t trust the governments of the world then who can you trust?

LdB
Reply to  griff
July 31, 2019 5:26 pm

So the situation changes every few months … so lets get to the bottom line …. do you trust them to deliver on there promise?

Personally I don’t think they do change every few months, they have been consistent in that they will achieve the country growth target and to hell with everything else. I think you and most of the green groups are naive and stupid if you think China is a friend on climate issues. It isn’t like you are going to be able to go there and protest like you do in a Western Democracy and you can’t get published in the media because of censorship. At about that point we will get a good laugh laugh at how stupid you have all been.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  griff
July 31, 2019 7:48 pm

“griff July 31, 2019 at 9:22 am

The situation in China changes rapidly, every few monthsā€¦”

You mean like saying they are shutting down plans to build coal fired power stations one month and then the next saying they are planning to build more coal fired power plants. Yeah, I hear ya!

Sweet Old Bob
July 31, 2019 7:58 am

China must be getting even more desperate .
Karma !….;)

Editor
July 31, 2019 7:59 am

China has no intention whatever to meet any IPCC targets on emissions — unless it is accidental to their needs and plans to turn china into a world-class modern nation. They still have millions of peasants (in the Medieval sense) and intend to bring them up to modern western standards of living. That effort, along with the effort to remain The Factory for the World, will require orders of magnitude more cheap electricity — which they will produce however they can — they will burn a lot of coal.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Kip Hansen
July 31, 2019 9:28 am

“China has no intention whatever to meet any IPCC targets on emissions ā€” unless it is accidental to their needs”

I think that sums up the Chinese position nicely. šŸ™‚

markl
July 31, 2019 8:06 am

Every country wants to exist on a service economy because it’s supposedly ‘Green’ and provides a higher standard/level of employment. It’s already been said…. someone has to make the world’s “stuff” and to think for a moment China is willing to give up being the industrial leader is fantasy.

Steve
Reply to  markl
July 31, 2019 9:21 am

I absolutely think China is willing to give up it’s status as the world’s manufacturer if it can can obtain similar status in the much more lucrative technology and energy fields. They’ll gladly shift their manufacturing capacity to southeast Asia, Mongolia, the -stans, and Africa if it means they get their own Silicon Valley. That’s one of the reasons behind their attempts to economically ‘colonize’ much of the third-world through their Belt-and-Road program. Just like America and Europe shipped out all their ‘dirty’ industries to China over the last 30 years, China is planning to ship them out to over the next 30 years to the third world. The difference is, they are planning to financially cripple those countries first, so that they will always get a piece of the pie in ‘tribute’ from their indebted manufacturing colonies.

markl
Reply to  Steve
July 31, 2019 10:32 am

You may be spot on but I don’t believe there’s enough available tech sector jobs to take the place of the manufacturing jobs that would be lost in China. They already own computer/phone/TV/digital manufacturing (after we handed it to them). That may be the plan but I think it will quickly morph into hoarding all jobs to meet their population growth needs. The sleeping dragon has awakened.

Steve
Reply to  markl
July 31, 2019 3:52 pm

China has no population growth needs. In fact, they’ve got the opposite problem. Their population is shrinking rapidly, and unlike the west which uses immigration to bolster it’s population, the Chinese are insular and want no part of mass immigration. China will look to keep all the lucrative high-end manufacturing jobs for complex tech products, and ship out all the low-margin manufacturing for the cheap low-quality consumer products that Americans buy at Wal-Mart.

Reply to  Steve
July 31, 2019 4:10 pm

Say what? Steve, that’s not true at all.

China’s population is NOT “shrinking” as you claim.

w.

Steve
Reply to  Steve
July 31, 2019 6:09 pm

Sorry, I worded that poorly.

China is PROJECTED to have a shrinking population in the near future. It hasn’t quite happened yet.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/01/17/world/asia/china-population-crisis.html

Bill Treuren
Reply to  Steve
July 31, 2019 6:25 pm

they have peak workforce not peak population, in as much as you can define working age.

Reply to  Steve
July 31, 2019 6:59 pm

Steve July 31, 2019 at 6:09 pm

Sorry, I worded that poorly.

Nope. You made a false statement. You said

China has no population growth needs. In fact, theyā€™ve got the opposite problem. Their population is shrinking rapidly …

You made a false claim, not once but three separate times, and now you don’t have the albondigas to say “Oops, I was wrong”.

Pass … I can’t or perhaps won’t hold a discussion with a man who refuses to admit when he’s wrong three times and instead tries to cover it up by saying he “worded it poorly”.

w.

LdB
Reply to  Steve
August 1, 2019 5:33 am

What is worse his filmsy evidence of a shrinking population still shows it increasing until 2030 and then supposedly slowly dropping off.

Bryan A
Reply to  Steve
August 1, 2019 10:12 am

Eventually it will as numerous Girl Babies were outsourced so that families could have Boy babies to carry on the family name. Now the ration of Adult Boys to adult Girls is skewed and numerous Boys are without wives or opportunity for children.

ResourceGuy
July 31, 2019 8:42 am

China will meet its emission targets but only in models and western political statements, not reality.

David Burrows
July 31, 2019 9:26 am

Presumably the heavy industry will still need doing. Maybe the plan is that when we are sufficiently in debt to China they will force us to take up the heavy industry again while they do the high tech stuff and they truly will meet their emissions target.

tonyc
July 31, 2019 9:40 am

China is right now moving industry from it’s large industrial cities to it’s “small” cities. Regions like Shanghai have closed industrial development and are truly moving to a service economy. A small city can be up to 10 million people, and have huge brand new industrial zones. If this study ignored small cities then they lost the forest looking at the trees the trees.

This is addition to them moving manufacturing to other countries.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  tonyc
July 31, 2019 7:42 pm

You will find also China is moving some of it’s manufacturing to Africa. Africa has become China’s China with investment from China. Chinese invests more in Africa now more than any anywhere else.

Art
July 31, 2019 10:01 am

This is hilarious. They’re cheering about a Paris Accord commitment to INCREASE emissions.

ResourceGuy
July 31, 2019 10:56 am
July 31, 2019 11:15 am

Quoting the Nature paper:
This study was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFA0600204), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NNSFC) (41371528, 71433007, 71690244), IGSNRR and Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS (2019055) and the Harvard Global Institute of Harvard University.

and the authors’ affiliations:

“State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
authors: Haikun Wang, Yaoguang Sun, Yifan Liu, Ge Zhu & Jun Bi

School of Environment and State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
author: Xi Lu

State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Sources and Control of Air Pollution Complex, Beijing, China
author: Xi Lu

Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
author: Yu Deng

School of Business and Hopkins-Nanjing Center, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
author: Maoliang Bu

Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
author: Michael B. McElroy

Contributions
H.W. conceived and led the research. H.W., X.L. and J.B. designed the paper. Y.S., Y.D. and H.W. calculated emissions. Y.L., G.Z. and M.B. performed emission trends analysis. H.W., X.L., Y.D. and C.P.N. interpreted the data. H.W., X.L., C.P.N. and M.B.M. drew conclusions and wrote the paper with input from all co-authors.

I would’ve added to “Contributions”:

C.P.N.and M.B.M. played the role of useful idiots for the Chinese climate propaganda machine.

Bruce Cobb
July 31, 2019 1:48 pm

Good news! The US will meet its Paris Climate goal – leaving the Paris Agreement right on time, which is this year – 2 years before China meets theirs. We win!

Editor
July 31, 2019 2:29 pm

In general, CO2 emissions per capita tend to level out at about 5 – 15 tonnes per person once a country’s GDP/capita hits about $20K per person. That’s the Kuznets curve.

HOWEVER, China likely won’t hit $20K per person by 2030, AND with a huge population there’s a big difference between say 5 and 15 tonnes per capita emissions …

Finally, China’s population continues to expand. So the leveling off of the per capita emissions won’t stop emission growth.

Short answer? I can’t crank the numbers to get an emissions peak before 2030 despite trying lots of assumptions.

w.

michel
Reply to  Willis Eschenbach
August 1, 2019 1:00 am

Yes. I think it was Shellenberger who put the planned GDP growth against what they said they would do in terms of CO2 intensity per unit of GDP, and arrived at the estimate that they would come in higher than 15 billion tons in 2030.

The completely insane idea that getting that increase done earlier is a sign of meeting some kind of climate change reduction commitments?

Its insane. Its like applauding Stalin’s human rights record because he has managed to get more people than expected into the gulags faster.

Or applauding China’s commitment to privacy and diversity because their roll-out of surveillance is happening faster and more comprehensively than they had thought possible.

Patrick MJD
July 31, 2019 7:39 pm

IIRC, the Chinese didn’t set any goals in Paris. And talking or France, 25/07/2019, Normandy, the worlds longest solar road-way has been declared an abject failure.

Road opens;

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/22/solar-panel-road-tourouvre-au-perche-normandy

Road closes;

https://www.curbed.com/2019/7/25/8929870/france-solar-roadway-experiment-normandy

Anyone with an ounce of electrical engineering background could have told these people this would be the result.

Asp
July 31, 2019 9:21 pm

Joke of the Day: China leading the way in the fight against climate change.
Please send them all your carbon credits for this exemplary behaviour.

Johann Wundersamer
July 31, 2019 9:48 pm

“Iā€™m always a little dubious about analysis of China conducted by Chinese academics, particularly where a negative finding might cause embarrassment for the Chinese government.

The South China Post recently revealed massive fraud in reported economic growth in the city of Guanghan.

This isnā€™t the first time; fake reports of economic growth may even have been responsible for the myth of decoupling, a period several years ago when Chinese growth appeared to be surging despite a slump in the growth of reported Chinese CO2 emissions.”
_______________________________________________________

Eric, you can always check CO2 production on different states by different states satellite observations :

https://www.google.com/search?q=studie+Chinese+CO2+production+satellite&oq=studie+Chinese+CO2+production+satellite+&aqs=chrome.

michel
August 1, 2019 12:52 am

But think about what this is really saying!

The argument is that China is reaching its goals several years early. And what were those goals? How big were the Chines reductions expected to be, and how much sooner are they going to make them?

Guess what, they were not planning on reducing, they were planning on moving from 10 billion tons a year to around 15 billion in about 2030.

Now they are on track to get to that 15 billion tons five years earlier, by sometime between 2021-2025.

This, we are told, is the Chinese making more rapid progress than expected in doing their bit to tackle global warming. That’s right, the Chinese are tackling global warming by increasing their emissions, and the good news is, they are managing to increase them faster than anyone expected.

Its great news. Now if the rest of the world would only show the same dedication to tackling global warming, maybe we could double emissions by 2030. That would do it. i guess the US and UK had better think seriously about how to do this. it will take a radical approach. The only way that comes to mind is maybe if they strip mined huge amounts of coal and burned it in the open air? Or maybe if they could find some other way of generating humongous quantities of CO2 and releasing it into the atmosphere? We need a new Manhattan project to find new ways of generating CO2. We need to start NOW!

It won’t be easy to match the Chinese accomplishments. But the future of the planet and our children’s future is at stake. Buy more SUV’s, fly more, install more fossil fuel power stations. We can do it! China is showing us the way!

SAMURAI
August 1, 2019 6:14 am

China is ecstatic to see Western Leftist governments waste $trillions on insane wind/solar mega projects and colossal alt-energy subsidies, which have tripled the cost of electricity in many countries. This reality has driven Western manufactures to move to China which has extremely cheap energy prices, low taxes and minimal government regulation compliance costs.

Phase II of Chinaā€™s plan is for idiotic Leftist Western governments to rapidly increase wasteful spending on alt-en subsidies, carbon taxes, Green New Deal projects, Paris Accord idiocies, etc., by $100+ trillion over the next 10 years, while China quietly develops Thorium MSRs which will be commercially viable 2030.

When dirt cheap and unlimited LFTR energy is available at $0.03/kWh, while Western energy prices soar to $0.30+/kWh, a second tidal wave of Western manufacturing will flood into China to take advantage of the cheapest energy in the world…

Itā€™ll be nearly impossible for Western economies to quickly move to LFTR power as Leftist hate nuclear power and even if some LFTRS are planned, theyā€™ll take decades to build given all the Leftist protests and bureaucratic red tape that is required before even a shovel of dirt is dug on a new LFTR site…

The West has been totally screwed by lunatic Leftists…

Coach Springer
August 1, 2019 8:44 am

Meeting goals with projections (emissions) based on inaccurate representations (reports) of estimates (economic growth) barely related to the projection. Sounds like a sound basis for world wide government?

Peter
August 1, 2019 3:07 pm

Letā€™s assume that China does peak its use of fossil fuels by 2028 which is highly unlikely.

What happens then? Do they start closing down a trillion dollars of new coal plants, electrifying all their cars, trucks and aircraft, phase out gas heating and stop cows from farting?

Of course not, China is hell bent on replacing the US as the principle world economic power and is flexing its muscles in the South China Sea, the pacific and using its foreign aid to control third world countries.

It needs a strong expanding economy to do this and it is ludicrous to think they will do anything that will impede economic growth.

Justin McCarthy
August 1, 2019 4:26 pm

If the Chinese Communist Party rulers of China can disappear the head of Inter-Pol; I imagine it would not be hard to disappear a couple of Chinese academics for arriving at the “wrong” answers in a study. Incentives do work.

Fairsuckofthesav
August 8, 2019 11:34 pm

From the department you canā€™t make this crap up! Completely ridiculous by 2030 China will account for about 35-40% of world emissions (currently about 27% from memory). In their attempt to lift their population out of poverty, part of which involves building new coal fired power infrastructure to enable a larger demand from their manufacturing industries as more and more Western countries divest their industry in the sake of Climate change. I could bore with the figures however One only has to google Chinaā€™s contribution to global Co2 emissions over the last 20 years to see the stupidity of this claim.
Only dodgy brothers dodgy figures could arrive at their conclusion.