Cheating CO2 statistics

[watervole]

Monbiot can be annoying on occasion, but this time, he confirms what I'd suspected for a while.

Recent cuts in UK CO2 emissions have been achieved by exporting pollution.  If we include the CO2 emissions of goods we import rather than make ourselves, our emissions have risen.

Not only that, but they're allowing as much as they want to be offset by carbon trading schemes - many of which are deeply flawed and hardly any actually result in the actual removal of CO2 from the atmosphere.

In other words, we can increase our carbon footprint, while still claiming as a country that we are reducing our CO2 emissions.

There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Comments

[del-c.livejournal.com]

The other thing Gordon Brown is doing (besides assisting Nigeria to pump oil faster) is arranging to extract the last drops of North Sea oil faster. These are sensible energy security measures if you like, in that they lower the cost of fossil fuels to us, but they're in direct conflict with any measure of reducing actual CO2 taken from the ground and put in the air.

There is no substitute for simply resolving not to empty a ground reservoir of carbon; if we can't persuade another country to sit on theirs, our contribution should at least be to put a lid on our own. That's the true measure of global warming reduction, not "emissions", and international treaties should be written to the former standard, not the latter. Merely adding carbon-neutral megawatts does (literally, mathematically, exactly) zero to reduce global CO2 emissions if the only result is to lower the price of carbon until someone else buys it who otherwise would not have.

This is why shouts of "nuclear, you hippy!" are pointless. That's what you do, if you want, after the carbon is out of bounds, not before. As long as it's available, nuclear does nothing to slow climate change. The same is true of all merely carbon-neutral energy sources.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I'm with you all the way. Keeping carbon locked up in the ground (or in rainforests and bogs) is the only real measure of anything.

In addition, from an economic point of view, I would be hanging onto our British oil for when things get far worse than they are now. Oil is a valuable raw material and should be saved for when we need that raw material for far more important uses than burning it.

[johnrw.livejournal.com]

There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

True, but don't necessarily believe all Monbiot says either - caught him out making exaggerated claims to bolster one of his arguments Go back to original sources (that's how I found out!)

No one is disinterested in this debate, test and weigh your words asnd opinions carefully.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I too think he indulges in hyperbole on occasion, but I'm pretty sure he's right about exporting pollution. I'd check the government document he quotes, but my shoulder's painful right now.