Australian emissions reductions target is undone by one week in China

JoNova ^ | July 30th, 2013 | joanne

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Here’s a graph showing something about Australian, Chinese and Indian emissions (thanks to Tom Quirk). At a glance you might think we are up there with the best of them (doing our bit to fertilize the flora of the planet, and to regreen the deserts). Alas, the Australian tally (the green triangles) represents the total emissions of Australia. The lines depicting Chinese and Indian emissions just show their annual increases.

Chinese annual increases in emissions are larger than the entire Australian output. India is not too far behind.

UPDATE: TonyfromOz points out the Y-axis scale  is missing three zero’s. Data source: CDIAC (Thanks Anton).

It appears the new coal fired power stations and cars coming on line in the breakneck-evolution-of-China produced twice the emissions of the entire continent of Australia.

Remember our aim to reduce our national output by 5% or so by 2020. Thanks to the Renewable Energy Target, the Clean Energy Fund, the Remote Indigenous Energy Program, the Low Income Energy Efficiency Program, the Living Greener program, the Regional Natural Resource Management Planning, the Light Vehicle CO₂ Emissions Standards, the Household Assistance Package, and not to mention another 36 programs I could have listed as well as the Emissions Trading Scheme (aka Carbon Tax), or the Climate Commission, and a multitude of state based schemes, the Australian citizens will spend billions to reduce that string of green triangles by an amount less than the error bars on a graph of Chinese emissions.*

Roughly speaking (and there’s not much point in being accurate), a 5% reduction in Australian emissions undoes the effect of one week of development in China.

Ask not the value for money you receive. Rest assured that by spending this money Australians are ensuring jobs for Chinese factory workers (albeit possibly in sweatshop conditions) and Australian bureaucrats (who bid against each other for Canberra real estate). We are making sure that if competitive solar energy is possible, someone somewhere will find that and then charge us royalties to buy those products back off them.

This is your brain on big-government funding.

Alas it is not your bank balance.

__________________

*You have to imagine the error bars on this graph. This is Chinese data after all. Look at the noise. There ought to be error bars on the error bars.

The short killer summary: The Skeptics Handbook. The most deadly point: The Missing Hot Spot.

[aimhigh]

In Oregon, 18% of the mercury pollution is coming from China.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

And California emissions might be something close to the size of Australia.

And WE..... are going to change the worlds Global Warming all by ourselves...../sarc

[molson209]

China Burps and oops

[RetiredTexasVet]

Remember, you can’t out-stupid a progressive .... they are professionals.

[Fred Nerks]

And meanwhile our public service broadcaster SBS is still giving us nightly lectures about the threat of global warming - during what they call ‘News’ - latest episode; the Pacific Islands are sinking due to sea-level rise.

[fireman15]

Fortunately, rising levels of CO2 have had no statistically significant effect on global temperatures for approximately 17 years now. The Chinese, the Indians, and the Africans can burn all the coal they want and the effects on the rest of the world at least from CO2 will most likely be negligable other than increasing the rate of growth of plant life.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Ernest.

[fireman15]

Well thankfully fish coming from Oregon rivers tend to be far lower in Mercury than your typical can of Charlie the Tuna. The government under Obama is currently on a mission to destroy the coal industry. The CO2 scare is not quite cutting it anymore... so they have moved on to another contaminant that they feel will be more effective. By setting acceptable mercury emissions at levels in the parts per billion range which cannot possibly be complied with they feel they can finally get rid of coal once and for all.

“The only cases in the scientific literature of mercury poisoning from eating fish on record were from fish tainted after an industrial chemical accident in Minamata Bay, Japan in the 1950s, which resulted in fish with methylmercury levels 40 to 1,000 times higher than the fish Americans, and most people around the world, eat.”

http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/12/do-fish-fly.html

[Marine_Uncle]

RE: "And WE..... are going to change the worlds Global Warming all by ourselves...../sarc"
And of course your sarcasim is well founded. And usual well written articles by Joanne. Thanks Ernest.