The Futility Of Emissions Controls

A cyclist rides past a China Huaneng Group power plant in Beijing
Photograph: China Newsphoto/Reuters

China's Three Biggest Power Firms Emit More Carbon Than Britain, Says Report -- The Guardian

Greenpeace report names top three polluters and calls for tax on coal to improve efficiency and encourage switch to renewables

China's three biggest power firms produced more greenhouse gas emissions last year than the whole of Britain, according to a Greenpeace report published today.

The group warned that inefficient plants and the country's heavy reliance on coal are hindering efforts to tackle climate change. While China's emissions per capita remain far below those of developed countries, the country as a whole has surpassed the United States to become the world's largest emitter.

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The Man Who Discovered Greenhouse Gases

Image: John Tyndall’s discovery that gases could trap heat provided the first hints of the mechanism behind climate change (Image: 1873, The Graphic)

From New Scientist:

As an antidote to this year's Darwin-mania, we celebrate a piece of science from 1859 that wasn't remotely controversial at the time, but which underpins the hottest political potato of our era: climate change. In May 1859, six months before the publication of On the Origin of Species, Irish physicist John Tyndall proved that some gases have a remarkable capacity to hang onto heat, so demonstrating the physical basis of the greenhouse effect. Charles Darwin had journeyed round the world and ruminated for 20 years before presenting his inflammatory ideas on evolution. Tyndall spent just a few weeks experimenting in a windowless basement lab in London.

"THE scene was one of the most wonderful I had ever witnessed. Along the entire slope of the Glacier des Bois, the ice was cleft and riven into the most striking and fantastic forms. It had not yet suffered much from the warming influence of the summer weather, but its towers and minarets sprang from the general mass with clean chiselled outlines." John Tyndall was entranced by the Alps, in particular the great glaciers that creaked and groaned as they crept down the mountains. He found the Mer de Glace especially captivating: the largest glacier in France was a deep river of ice that stretched down the north slope of Mont Blanc and spilled out into the Chamonix valley near the hamlet of Les Bois.

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Greenhouse Gases Continue To Climb Despite Economic Slump

Anthropogenic atmospheric carbon dioxide, fossil fuel emissions, world gross domestic product (GDP), and world population for the past century. Carbon dioxide data from Antarctic ice cores (green points), Mauna Loa Observatory (red curve), and the global network (blue dots). (Credit: NOAA)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2009) — Two of the most important climate change gases increased last year, according to a preliminary analysis for NOAA’s annual greenhouse gas index, which tracks data from 60 sites around the world.

Researchers measured an additional 16.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) — a byproduct of fossil fuel burning — and 12.2 million tons of methane in the atmosphere at the end of December 2008. This increase is despite the global economic downturn, with its decrease in a wide range of activities that depend on fossil fuel use.

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