Scientists may have been overestimating China’s emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving global warming, by more than 10 percent, because of inaccurate assumptions about the country’s coal-burning, according to a study published on Wednesday.
The study’s finding, published in the journal Nature, does not mean that the total level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is any lower than scientists had thought. That accumulation is measured independently.
Rather, the finding may affect discussions of how much responsibility China bears for global warming, compared with other nations.
“This doesn’t change the fact that China is still the largest emitter in the world,” said Dabo Guan (關達博), a professor of climate-change economics at the University of East Anglia in England who is one of the paper’s two dozen authors, in a telephone interview from Beijing. “But it shows we need to know a more accurate base line for emissions, not only for China, but also for the other emissions giants.”
The study looked in detail at the coal used as fuel in China and found that it is generally less rich in carbon and is burned less efficiently than scientists had assumed. That means that each tonne of burned coal yields less carbon dioxide than had been thought (as well as less energy, and more ash).
China’s proposed commitments to curtail its emissions of greenhouse gases are crucial to a new international agreement on global warming, which governments hope to reach in Paris late this year. Climate change is also expected to figure in talks between US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), when Xi visits the US next month.
Xi last year promised that China’s emissions of carbon dioxide would stop growing by about 2030. Yet uncertainty surrounds just how much of the gas is billowing now from China’s power plants, boilers, motor vehicles and industrial plants.
The scientists behind the new study said they analyzed more detailed information about China’s coal quality, combustion performance across industries and total energy consumption than had previously been used.
“We measured thousands of samples of coal from mines across China and found that the carbon content of the coal being burned in China is actually much lower than what has been assumed in previous estimates of emissions,” Steven Davis, a greenhouse gas scientist at the University of California, Irvine, and one of the authors, said in e-mailed answers to questions.
Estimating a country’s carbon dioxide emissions entails some scientific detective work. Researchers start with information about fossil fuel consumption, and then assess how much carbon is contained in those fuels and what fraction of that carbon is actually combusted and ends up in the atmosphere.
China does not publish official data on annual greenhouse-gas emissions, so “international organizations have to make larger assumptions” than are required for other major countries, said another author of the study, Center for International Climate and Environmental Research-Oslo senior researcher Glen Peters.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in