That’s a possible conclusion that could be drawn from a new CSIRO report which says that the growth in the rate of CO2 emission in the atmosphere has risen from “1.1 per cent a year in the 1990s to a three per cent increase per year in the 2000s”. (All this in a decade when there has been no increase in global temperature.)
One contributing factor is that we are burning more carbon per dollars of wealth created than we were. China appears to be the culprit, but would China be providing as much of the world’s manufacturing if the rich countries of the western world hadn’t agreed to effectively cut back on their own manufacturing to meet Kyoto targets. In other words, Kyoto has quite possibly led to substitution of energy sources which is worse for global CO2 emissions than the status quo ante.
A failing of this report is that it measures carbon output at the source of production. This is the global warming equivalent of punishing the prostitute while pinning a medal on the client. If there was no market for manufactured product, then the CO2 involved wouldn’t exist either. Rich Europeans can bask in the praise of the world for their carbon sanctity, while stocking their houses with consumer nick-nacks forged in the Chinese fires of Hades.
Australia’s role in all of this is interesting. Australia’s carbon intensity is 20 percent higher than the world average, which presumably means a lot of dirty brown Victorian coal. So the argument that Australia joining Kyoto would have led to environmentally damaging substitution effects probably doesn’t hold water, depending on where our high energy consumption manufacturing would be displaced to.
May 22, 2007 | Graham
Is Kyoto contributing to Greenhouse gas production?
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“(All this in a decade when there has been no increase in global temperature.)”
That’s not what the Australian Bureau of Meteorology says. Its 11-year running average of Global Annual Mean Surface Temperature Anomaly, at http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/g_timeseries.cgi, shows steadily rising temperature from 1970 to the present.
“… if the rich countries of the western world hadn’t agreed to effectively cut back on their own manufacturing to meet Kyoto targets”
Well, this is a theory I haven’t heard before. Are you suggesting perhaps that Chrysler, Ford and GM in the US focused on building gas-guzzling trucks knowing that customers eventually wouldn’t want them, and the resulting plummeting sales would enable the manufacturers to cut their greenhouse gas emissions? And perhaps open the way for Chinese vehicles to one day take over the US market?
Given that the US imported $197 billion worth of goods from China in 2004, which other US manufacturers agreed to stop manufacturing so as the US could meet a Kyoto Protocol target that it has never agreed to?
Very creative suggestion though.
Comment by MikeM — May 22, 2007 @ 1:38 pm
I said in the last decade, not the last 37 years! To a certain extent the increase in temperature is a function of where you start on the temperature continuum. But it was a throw-away line, not meant to be the basis for an argument. BTW, your link doesn’t work.
The rest of your argument doesn’t have any relationship to my article that I can see. All I am pointing out is that the effect of Kyoto has been partly to move manufacturing from Kyoto to non-Kyoto countries, which has most likely had a negative impace on the environment.
Comment by Graham Young — May 23, 2007 @ 12:05 pm
Okay, try this link and click on timeseries graphs of temperature:
http://www.bom.gov.au/silo/products/cli_chg/index_global.shtml
“I said in the last decade, not the last 37 years!”
I know you did. Global mean temperature has gone up in the last decade, the decade before that and the one before that.
“… move manufacturing from Kyoto to non-Kyoto countries”
Which manufacturing might that be that was moved for that reason?
Comment by MikeM — May 24, 2007 @ 1:15 pm