{"id":19302,"date":"2016-03-30T13:19:38","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T18:19:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19302"},"modified":"2016-03-30T13:19:38","modified_gmt":"2016-03-30T18:19:38","slug":"again-and-again-supposed-evidence-for-decoupling-emissions-from-growth-is-not-what-it-seems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19302","title":{"rendered":"Again and again: supposed evidence for decoupling emissions from growth is not what it seems"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Again and again: supposed evidence for decoupling emissions from growth is not what it seems<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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It can be difficult to form a view of what\u2019s really going on in our atmosphere, given the amount of information and of contradictory claims. This piece concerns recent reports on global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and levels. On 16th<\/span>\u00a0March, a Guardian headline over an article by John Vidal said:\u00a0Surge in renewable energy stalls world greenhouse gas emissions<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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That sounds good, doesn\u2019t it. But at best, the claim is only partly true. The article is actually about energy-related emissions. .\u00a0<\/span>Now this is clear enough if you read the article carefully,\u00a0\u201cPreliminary data for 2015 from the International Energy Agency (IEA) showed that carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector have levelled off at 32.1bn tonnes\u201d.<\/strong>
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\nYet the previous sentence says:\u00a0\u201cFalling coal use in China and the US and a worldwide shift towards renewable energy have kept greenhouse gas emissions level for a second year running, one of the world\u2019s leading energy analysts has said.\u201d\u00a0<\/i><\/strong>And here is the clue: the \u201cleading energy analyst\u201d is none other than Fatih Birol, Director (and former chief economist) at the International Energy Agency. The IEA was terribly slow in waking up to the promise of renewables and still maintains a thoroughly orthodox position on the relationship between economic growth and emissions.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0article<\/a><\/span><\/span>\u00a0on the IEA website that the Guardian is referring to has the headline:
\n\u201cDecoupling of global emissions and economic growth confirmed<\/a>\u201d<\/em><\/strong>, although the subheading again makes it clear that it was \u201cenergy-related emissions of CO2\u00a0[that] stalled\u201d. And Birol is quoted as saying:\u00a0\u201cComing just a few months after the landmark COP21 agreement in Paris, this is yet another boost to the global fight against climate change.\u201d\u00a0<\/i><\/strong>This would indeed be good news, but let\u2019s take a look at the data.<\/p>\n

Here is the IEA graph:<\/p>\n

\"IEA<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Again and again: supposed evidence for decoupling emissions from growth is not what it seems It can be difficult to form a view of what\u2019s really going on in our atmosphere, given the amount of information and of contradictory claims. This piece concerns recent reports on global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and levels. On 16th\u00a0March, […]<\/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":[4],"tags":[113,328,386,416,433,13181],"class_list":["post-19302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-greenhouse-gases","tag-iea","tag-international-energy-agency","tag-mark-burton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19302","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=19302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19303,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19302\/revisions\/19303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}