Scientists surprised by decline in global carbon emission

“That shouldn’t tell us we don’t need to do anything, but that shows there is action”, Janos Pasztor, the United Nations Assistant Secretary General for climate change, told The Associated Press at the Paris climate talks.

A new study at UM has found that global plant growth hasn’t increased much as scientists formerly predicted.

The projected dip of 0.6 percent over 2014 levels, if confirmed, marks the first decline in heat-trapping pollutants in a year when the world economy was not in recession, a new analysis shows.

“Reaching zero emissions will require long-term commitments from countries attending the climate meeting in Paris this week and beyond”, Jackson said.

The average annual growth in emissions over the last 15 years has been about 2 or 3 percent, the head of the study said in a statement. The earth has already passed the 1 C hotter mark, according to United Kingdom researchers who released new data last month. It is well within the possibilities that growth in coal emissions in China will not resume any time soon, and certainly not at the fast pace of the previous decade.

But China’s consumption of coal grew by nearly threefold from 2000 to 2013, and it now consumes about half the coal used worldwide.

A release from European Parliament on Tuesday echoed those by the environmental groups, saying “the Paris climate change agreement should not leave out aviation and shipping, two sectors whose emissions are rocketing and, if left unregulated, could account for up to 40% of all global emissions by 2050”.

Scientific calculations based on these factors from June to October estimate that this year the world’s atmosphere will receive 0.6 per cent less carbon than in 2014.

However, in this new study, this slowdown of emissions can be linked to a recent decrease of coal usage in China which is a nation responsible for 27 percent of global carbon emissions. Corinne Le Quere of the University of East Anglia, the lead author of the study, said the carbon emissions have stalled, and they could even decline slightly.

China’s emissions have been called into question lately due to difficulties in interpreting its data.

Since decades, the burning of fossil fuels by humans is the largest source of carbon dioxide (CO2) emission. Scientists believe that if these man made carbon emissions will be cut dramatically, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere will drop even before temperatures go beyond the 2 degrees Celsius tipping point.

The difference between China then and India now is that renewable technology costs have plunged and climate change has become a more urgent issue globally.

Those efforts are aimed at coal because “coal is the criminal for that and they are reducing lots of coal consumption in the urban areas where most of the industry is based”, he said.

Fewer than one in four of the companies surveyed said their research and development (R&D) departments have sufficient expertise to respond to climate change, while almost two thirds dedicate 5 per cent or less of their R&D budget to decarbonisation.