The dramatic drop in carbon dioxide emissions from the lockdown of the pandemic has pretty much disappeared in a cloud of coal smoke, much of it from China, a new scientific study found.
A group of scientists tracking heat-storing gases that are causing climate change said emissions for the first nine months of this year are slightly below 2019 levels. They estimate that the world will have emitted 36.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide in 2021, compared to 36.7 billion tons two years ago.
At the height of the pandemic last year, emissions fell to 34.8 billion tons, bringing this year’s increase to 4.9% according to updated calculations by the Global Carbon Project.
While most countries reverted to pre-pandemic trends, the rise in pollution in China was mainly responsible for global numbers returning to 2019 levels and then falling well below, said study co-author Corinne LeQuere , Climate scientist at the University of East Anglia in the UK.
Given the dramatically clean air in cities from India to Italy in 2020, some people may have hoped the world was on the right track in reducing carbon pollution, but scientists said it wasn’t.
“It is not the pandemic that will bring us around the corner,” said LeQuere in an interview at the climate talks in Glasgow, where she and colleagues present their results. “It’s the decisions that will be made this week and next. This is what will bring us around the corner. The pandemic is not changing the nature of our economy. “
If the world wants to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, it will only have 11 years left at current emissions before it’s too late, the paper says. The world has warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 19th century.
“The CO2 emissions figures show that emissions (corrected for the decline and recovery of COVID19) are now essentially leveled off. That’s the good news, “said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann, who was not part of the report. “The bad news is that that’s not enough. We have to start reducing (emissions). “
Emissions in China were 7% higher in 2021 compared to 2019, according to the study. In comparison, India’s emissions were only 3% higher. In contrast, the United States, the European Union, and the rest of the world caused less pollution this year than they did in 2019.
LeQuere said China’s jump was mainly due to the burning of coal and natural gas and part of a massive economic stimulus to recover from the lockdown. In addition, she said, China’s lockdown ended much earlier than the rest of the world, giving the country longer time to recover economically and to pump more carbon into the air.
The “green recovery” that many nations have spoken of in their stimulus packages is taking longer to translate into emissions reductions as recovering economies first use the energy mix they already had, LeQuere said.
The numbers are based on government data on electricity usage, travel, industrial production, and other factors. That year, an average of 115 tons of carbon dioxide was released into the air every second.
The Breakthrough Institute’s climate director, Zeke Hausfather, who was not involved in the study, predicts that “the chances are good that 2022 will set a new record for global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels”.
___
Further information on AP climate protection: https://apnews.com/hub/climate.
___
Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter: @borenbears.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
[ad_1]
