And they see nothing wrong with this statement? “Data indicate China’s carbon emissions could be 20% higher, prompting fears Earth is warming at a much faster rate“
Earth’s measured temperature is not rising, the measured atmospheric CO2 content did not suddenly change but, because China may not be telling everyone how much CO2 it generates, there are fears earth is warming at a much faster rate.
With thinking like that I fear humanity may be doomed after all.
China’s carbon emissions could be nearly 20% higher than previously thought, a new analysis of official Chinese data showed on Sunday, suggesting the pace of global climate change could be even faster than currently predicted.
China has already overtaken the US as the world’s top greenhouse gas polluter, producing about a quarter of mankind’s carbon pollution that scientists say is heating the planet and triggering more extreme weather.
But pinning down an accurate total for China’s carbon emissions has long been a challenge because of doubts about the quality of its official energy use data. It is used to compute how the planet’s climate will change, helping plan for more extremes of drought, flood and the impact on crops.
“The sad fact is that Chinese energy and emission data as primary input to the models will add extra uncertainty in modelling simulations of predicting future climatic change,” say the authors of a study in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The team of scientists from China, Britain and the US, led by Dabo Guan of the University of Leeds, studied two sets of energy data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics. One set presented energy use for the nation, the other for its provinces.
They compiled the carbon dioxide emission inventories for China and its 30 provinces for the period 1997-2010 and found a big difference between the two datasets.
“The paper identifies a 1.4-billion tonne emission gap (in 2010) between the two datasets. This implies greater uncertainties than ever in Chinese energy statistics,” said Guan, a senior lecturer at the School of Earth and Environment at Leeds University.
That is slightly more than the annual emissions of Japan, one of the world’s top-five greenhouse gas polluters.
