{"id":10290,"date":"2015-07-22T07:05:48","date_gmt":"2015-07-22T12:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10290"},"modified":"2015-07-22T07:05:48","modified_gmt":"2015-07-22T12:05:48","slug":"recession-not-fracking-behind-drop-in-u-s-carbon-dioxide-emissions-scientists-conclude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10290","title":{"rendered":"Recession, Not Fracking, Behind Drop in U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions, Scientists Conclude"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recession, Not Fracking, Behind Drop in U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions, Scientists Conclude<\/a><\/h3>\n

It\u2019s been a talking point for boosters of the shale gas rush for years: as fracking spread across the country and the supply glut drove prices down, utilities have been shuttering dirty coal plants and burning natural gas instead \u2013 meaning that America\u2019s carbon dioxide (CO<\/span>2) emissions dropped sharply. Fracking, the argument went, is actually good for the environment because it\u2019s good for the\u00a0climate.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>The boom in American natural-gas production is doing what international negotiations and legislation couldn\u2019t: reducing\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0carbon-dioxide pollution,\u201d Bloomberg\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a02012.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>While other factors, including a sluggish\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0economy and increasing energy efficiency, have contributed to the decline in carbon emissions from factories, automobiles and power plants, many experts believe the switch from coal to natural gas for electricity generation has been the biggest factor,\u201d\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0the Wall Street Journal in April\u00a02013.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn these last years, the natural gas revolution, shall we say, has been a major contributor to reducing carbon emissions,\u201d the Obama administration\u2019s Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0at Columbia University on Aug. 26, 2013, as he described the President\u2019s goals for reducing carbon emissions. \u201cWe are about halfway there, and about half of that is because of the substitution of natural gas for coal in the power sector, essentially driven by market\u00a0forces.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, it turns out, correlation is not the same thing as causation. And while the drop in emissions happened at roughly the same time as the fracking rush spread, shale gas had relatively little to do with the drop in carbon emissions, according to a scientific paper published today in the journal\u00a0Nature Communications<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>Before 2007, rising emissions were primarily driven by economic growth,\u201d ecological economist Dr. Klaus Hubacek and his fellow researchers wrote. \u201cAfter 2007, decreasing emissions were largely a result of economic recession with changes in fuel mix (for example, substitution of natural gas for coal) playing a comparatively minor\u00a0role.\u201d<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recession, Not Fracking, Behind Drop in U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions, Scientists Conclude It\u2019s been a talking point for boosters of the shale gas rush for years: as fracking spread across the country and the supply glut drove prices down, utilities have been shuttering dirty coal plants and burning natural gas instead \u2013 meaning that America\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4],"tags":[3193,113,1004,5317,1752,240,1290,331,1264,705],"class_list":["post-10290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-carbon-dioxide","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-co2","tag-desmog-blog","tag-economic-contraction","tag-economic-growth","tag-energy-efficiency","tag-fracking","tag-recession","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10291,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10290\/revisions\/10291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}