Sunday Morning

Good morning! Wow, what a beautiful day for biking. I slept in a bit late for my slow cooker could finish, so I missed Jupiter this morning. But it's a beautiful day in the Dallas area. Not so much for South America where they are having a brutal winter. Algore needs to take a jet trip to Peru. The BBC, generally considered a pretty trustworthy news outlet, is reporting:

The Peruvian government has extended to nine more regions a state of emergency called to cope with unusually cold weather and heavy snowfall.

At least two people have died and 33,000 others have been affected by the cold spell, local officials say.

But folks are still worried about global warming. The New York Times is reporting a silver lining in China's smog:

China has been the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide from fuel use since about 2006, when it passed the United States. In 2009, the Chinese government introduced a policy to reduce the carbon dioxide emitted in the production of each unit of economic activity by 40 to 45 percent by 2020, compared with levels in 2005. That means emissions grow along with China’s economy, but at a slower rate than if there were no improvements.

Even with such efforts, China’s size and feverish growth have pushed its emissions well past those of the United States. By 2011, China’s carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels accounted for 28 percent of the global total, and the United States’ for 16 percent, according to the Global Carbon Project, a consortium of researchers. The International Energy Agency estimates that China’s emissions grew by another 3.8 percent in 2012.

It's a feel-good story, a pie-in-the-sky story.  The article quotes a Chinese official saying that China, unlike the US, will not risk its economy over concerns of global warming (which has now paused for at least 17 years, which even the UN has noted). It's a feel-good story, a pie-in-the-sky story because nowhere in the article, unless I missed it, does the writer provide the number of coal-fired plants the country has today, and now many more China has on the drawing board. I believe, for round numbers, China as about 400 new coal-fired plants on the drawing board.

You know, now that I reflect on the headline and the story, and knowing the New York Times is pretty much broke, one wonders if the entire story was simply a press release put out by the Chinese government. Re-read the article in that light. It's interesting. The NYT editor could have simply put in some editorial comment, sort of like a blog.

The Times inconveniently forgot to mention just how low CO2 emissions are in the US -- how far they fell in 2012. Even The Huffington Post, a blog, did better:

In a surprising turnaround, the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the U.S. has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years, and government officials say the biggest reason is that cheap and plentiful natural gas has led many power plant operators to switch from dirtier-burning coal.

Many of the world's leading climate scientists didn't see the drop coming, in large part because it happened as a result of market forces rather than direct government action against carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere.

In a little-noticed technical report, the U.S. Energy Information Agency, a part of the Energy Department, said this month that energy related U.S. CO2 emissions for the first four months of this year fell to about 1992 levels. Energy emissions make up about 98 percent of the total. The Associated Press contacted environmental experts, scientists and utility companies and learned that virtually everyone believes the shift could have major long-term implications for U.S. energy policy.

It was only a "little-noticed report" because mainstream media did not want to report it.