Apeman

To note the recent death of Paul Ehrlich, it seemed appropriate to reference Apeman, a song from The Kinks 1970 album Lola Versus Powerman and the Money Go Round, Part One (for my ridiculously compulsive exploration of a little known period in The Kinks discography read Kinkdom).  It was the lyrics in the first two verses that made me think of Ehrlich and gave me an excuse to show the band playing the entire song.

I think I'm sophisticated
'Cause I'm living my life
Like a good homo sapiens
But all around me
Everybody's multiplying
And they're walking round like flies, man
So I'm no better than the animals
Sitting in the cages in the zoo, man
'Cause compared to the flowers
And the birds and the trees
I am an apeman

 

I think I'm so educated
And I'm so civilized
'Cause I'm a strict vegetarian
And with the over population
And inflation and starvation
And the crazy politicians
I don't feel safe in this world no more
I don't want to die in a nuclear war
I want to sail away to a distant shore
And make like an apeman

 

The Population Bomb, Ehrlich's enormous best seller, was published in 1968, a book in which he predicted mass famine by the end of the 1970s and global environmental deterioration.  He had a distinguished academic career at Stanford University and received countless awards and recognition over the decades for his work.

 

The problem is that Ehrlich was wrong, incredibly wrong, but it never seemed to impair his academic credibility.  I read The Population Bomb during my freshman year of college (1969-70) and, in my naivete, was impressed with his thesis, though even at the time, found some of his language overwrought.  By the end of the 70s it was clear to me Ehrlich was wrong and became baffled by the continuing respect accorded him and those who adopted his views.

 

The most dramatic evidence of Ehrlich's wrongness was his 1980 bet with economist Julian Simon, summarized by Wikipedia:

The economist Julian Simon argued in 1980 that overpopulation is not a problem as such and that humanity will adapt to changing conditions. Simon argued that eventually human creativity will improve living standards, and that most resources were replaceable.^[50] Simon stated that over hundreds of years, the prices of virtually all commodities had decreased significantly and persistently.^[51] Ehrlich termed Simon the proponent of a "space-age cargo cult" of economists convinced that human creativity and ingenuity would create substitutes for scarce resources and reasserted the idea that population growth was outstripping the Earth's supplies of food, fresh water and minerals.^[8]

This exchange resulted in the Simon–Ehrlich wager, a bet about the trend of prices for resources during a ten-year period that was made with Simon in 1980.^[8] Ehrlich was allowed to choose ten commodities that he predicted would become scarce and thus increase in price. Ehrlich chose mostly metals, and lost the bet, as their average price decreased by about 30% in the next 10 years.

Ehrlich's prognostication failings reminds me of the quote attributed to Nobel Prize winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli after reviewing the paper of a young physicist, "That is not only not right, it is not even wrong". 

I never met Ehrlich but did have the opportunity to sit with one of his acolytes (they'd co-authored papers and was involved in setting up the Ehrlich-Simon bet), Paul Holdren, at a small dinner in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2008.  Like his mentor, Holdren has had a distinguished academic career with positions at Harvard and Berkeley and receiving a MacArthur Foundation "genius" Fellowship.  In 2009, President Obama appointed Holdren as his chief science advisor and director of the White House's Office of Science & Technology, a role he served in both of Obama's administrations.

While I don't remember most of the details of the dinner discussion, my overall impression was Holdren fit the pattern found in Harvard academics in encounters during my twelve years working in Cambridge and, for a decade after, being a frequent visitor; they tended to be close-minded, provincial, and intolerant of dissenting opinions, not something I would have predicted when I began working in the city in 1980. Most found it incomprehensible that anyone would disagree with their political opinions or general thoughts on the world out of anything other than ignorance and/or bigotry, and automatically devalued the views of anyone lacking the "right" credentials.  

In the wake of Ehrlich's death I came across a tweet he'd sent on January 3, 2023 after a 60 Minutes appearance, which explains how he and Holdren maintained their academic reputations. It is quite an indictment of academia:

"60 Minutes extinction story has brought the usual right-wing out in force. If I'm always wrong so is science, since my work is always peer-reviewed, including the POPULATION BOMB and I've gotten virtually every scientific honor." 

Notice one of the tactics he, and many other academics, employs is to call any criticism "right-wing" thus casting those criticizing him into the outer darkness where the substance of the criticism can be completely disregarded.  The funny thing is I came across the quote in a tweet from Roger Pielke Jr, a traditional liberal and critic of Ehrlich.  Pielke wrote a longer piece, Gravediggers of Science, on Ehrlich in his substack, relating his encounter with Ehrlich in 2010, in which Ehrlich and the scurrilous climate scientist Michael Mann engaged in their favorite smearing tactic and making completely false allegations.

Ehrlich and others employ these tactics because in the circles they swim in it works.  There is no price to pay for being wrong or for trying to destroy others with false innuendo and worse.  In fact, they are rewarded for doing so. 

Rereading The Population Bomb and some of Ehrlich's other work one is struck by what a miserable and misanthropic view of humanity he holds.(1)  It probably explains his desire of widespread sterilization and a powerful world government to enforce his views.

I'll give the last word to this summary from The Free Press.  They are unfortunately correct that his worldview has infected society:

Imagine getting almost everything wrong and still transforming the world with your ideas. That, more or less, is what happened to economist and professional eco-pessimist Paul Ehrlich, who died this week at 93. Ehrlich shot to fame in 1968 with his bestseller The Population Bomb. It predicted an explosion in humankind, draining the planet’s resources and triggering a near apocalypse.

Thankfully, Ehrlich would be proven wrong—stunningly wrong—by events. But even if Ehrlich lost the argument, his Malthusian mindset still won him award after award and, in many ways, became conventional wisdom.

Today, we’re bringing you two pieces on Ehrlich’s ideas and why they matter.

Up first, the British science writer Matt Ridley details the callous policy proposals Ehrlich’s thinking led him to support—including forced sterilization programs that Ehrlich called “coercion in a good cause”—and the policymakers who listened to him.

Up next, Larissa Phillips. She was born to parents beholden to Ehrlich’s theories. In fact, she says, she almost wasn’t born because of them: Her parents were trying to model their own family planning on his prescription for zero population growth. Thankfully, they didn’t quite get it right. Ehrlich’s death caused Larissa to contemplate not just the impact of his ideas on her family but also where the line falls—where idealism becomes pretentious, or pessimistic, or harmful.

----------------------------------------------------

(1)  In that regard, Ehrlich reminds me of the leaders of the AI crowd.  Though Ehrlich preached scarcity and the AI dudes abundance, at heart they are all anti-humanists.  If AI can perform better than humans, of what use are people?  The AI leaders have clearly said this and don't care about the implications.  In February 2025 I summarized Elon Musk's worldview but it can be said for all of the AI proponents:

Musk and a small group of "creatives" run society, with robots operating our factories, and AI, using Musk-designed algorithms, running everything else.  Enough wealth is created to fund a Universal Basic Income for the rest of Americans, who live in a ketamine and cannabis induced haze. 

Why America Can't Build

Interesting article from the online magazine Palladium, Why America Can't Build.  The author is Brian Balkus who has experience in the large project management field.  It poses the question of why do large infrastructure projects take longer to build and cost considerably more per unit than similar projects, not just in Asia, but in Western Europe where just about everything else costs more than in America.

The subject is actually broader than large projects and has become in recent years the subject of much study, often referred to as The Cost Disease; why does the cost of certain things, like electronics/computers, go down, while others, like healthcare/construction, go up?

In the case of large projects, Balkus starts with a Los Angeles freeway expansion that the company he worked for at the time, Kiewit, was managing and then extends the discussion to other examples like the fiasco of California's proposed high speed rail line, which California voters approved in 2008 and which now, fourteen years later, is $44 billion over budget, with very line actual work done.

The reasons specific to large projects identified by Balkus include:

- Environmental review requirements, including the use of litigation by opponents to slow projects down.  As Balkus notes:

The NEPA/CEQA process incentivizes the public agencies to seek what is often termed a “bulletproof” environmental compliance document to head off future legal challenges. This takes time, with the average EIS taking 4.5 years to complete. Some have taken longer than a decade. A cottage industry of consultants is devoted to completing these documents, earning themselves millions in fees.

- The lack of in house expertise at the agencies overseeing these projects, forcing reliance on outside contractors who often have interests other than speeding along a project.  Balkus writes:

These consultants were well paid, with the primary consultant compensation for HSR at $427,000 per engineer, compared with the Authority’s in-house cost of $131,000 per engineer. This structure creates a principal-agent problem where they are incentivized to maximize their billable hours. As a California State Auditor assessment of the project noted, consultants “may not always have the state’s best interest as their primary motivation.”

- Unionization, or more specifically how unions operate in the U.S., since as Balkus points out all of the European countries that do public projects at less cost also have unions working on the projects:

The fundamental problem isn’t unions per se, but rather the way that unions operate within parts of the U.S. system. The Netherlands has strong unions, but the Port of Rotterdam has been automated to an extent that has proven impossible in the U.S. due to union resistance . . . There are too many layers of permission needed to innovate, including groups whose interests run counter to innovation.

The result is that innovation is inhibited by both labor resistance and a decentralized government bureaucracy that has neither the incentives nor the capability of driving real change. Perhaps it should not be shocking that U.S. construction productivity has fallen by half since the 1960s . . .

According to Balkus, things are posed to get even worse:

President Biden has signed executive orders strengthening construction unions and increasing the stringency of NEPA requirements. 

As a counterexample, the author writes of Madrid's successful project to expand its subway system, which it did for a fraction of the per mile cost of similar projects in the U.S.  He also points out to exceptions in the U.S., including my home state of Arizona.

However, not every building environment in the U.S. is the same. Roughly 40 percent of U.S. megaprojects are in New York, California, or Texas. While megaprojects run into issues everywhere, the Texas projects have a significantly better track record than either of its coastal peers.

Other states have learned from their example. Arizona explicitly studied lessons learned from Texas when building the largest public works project in its history, the $1.7 billion Loop 202 South Mountain Freeway Project. By using a non-standard project delivery approach, this project was completed in 2019 in fewer than 1,000 days, an estimated three years earlier than what would normally be expected. Early coordination between the contractor and engineer ensured that the design issues that appeared on Sepulveda or HSR were avoided, saving the project an estimated $100 million.

Maybe that's why so much of America's new industrial capacity is being built in those two states. 

One objection to this type of critical review is that it is a legitimate choice to favor environmental and regulatory process concerns, and to preserve high paying union jobs.  I agree.  But those who do favor that approach also seem to be constantly harping on our need to improve infrastructure without any seeming awareness of the difficulties in undertaking such projects and why they cost so much.  It's a choice.  You can't have both.  Decide what your priorities are.

A few years ago I wrote a post about a video Rachel Maddow and Spike Lee did at the Hoover Dam about the need to do big projects like that in America, funded by the government, without any awareness of why it is so difficult to do projects like this in 21st century America.  The Hoover Dam project was approved by Congress in 1928, construction started in 1931 and was completed in 1936.  How many decades would it take to do this same project if it started now?  What are the odds it would even be approved?

Deciding on priorities will become even more important as we look to greatly expand solar, wind, and batteries over the coming decades.  The amount of metals and rare earths required for these technologies is staggering.  Unless we want to become dependent upon China for our future, this will require legal and regulatory changes to facilitate enormous increases in mining and metal processes.

It's not just mega projects that are subject to extended times.  Regarding just the regulatory review process, in the 1990s, at the company I worked for, we conducted a comparative study of how long it would take to get a new production line approved by environmental regulators at our plants in the U.S., France, and Australia.  All these countries were heavily regulated and the pollution control requirements very similar yet it took twice as long (several months) to get approval in the U.S.

Renewable Energy Increases Greenhouse Gases

It may be years late, but the New York Times finally features an article admitting "How Renewable Energy Is Blowing Climate Change Efforts Off Course", something that has been clear for quite some time for anyone acquainted with the technological and economic aspects of renewables and other sources of energy, regardless of your views about the science around climate change.  For more on the basic math of global greenhouse emissions read this THC post, including the embedded link.

What's happened is that government subsidies for solar and wind power have created a perfect trifecta; (1) significantly increasing electricity costs for consumers; (2) pushing the main source of zero-carbon baseline electricity supply, nuclear power, into uneconomic operation and (3) causing instability in the electrical grid because of the power surges from its variable power generation.

The article quotes an analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, estimating that in the United States:

nuclear reactors that produce 56 percent of the country’s nuclear power would be unprofitable over the next three years. If they were all to go under and be replaced with gas-fired generators, an additional 200 million tons of carbon dioxide would be spewed into the atmosphere every year.

The article goes on to note that "In Germany, where renewables have mostly replaced nuclear power, carbon emissions are rising, even as Germans pay the most expensive electricity rates in Europe."

You can also learn about the "duck curve" which explains the long term problem places like California are creating for themselves with high renewable mandates.  You can read a detailed description here.

Climate Scorecard

Yet another Climate Summit is about to occur, this time in Paris.   Thousands will jet from all over the world to attend.  Undoubtedly it will end with announcements of significant "commitments" by the participants.  To determine whether these are photo op announcements or something meaningful  keep an eye out on whether anyone makes an enforceable commitment on actual CO2 reductions and look at the timing.  An announcement that  X country will start making reductions in 2030 means nothing.

Climate change is not one of THC's top tier issues but if it is for you here is the basic data to keep in mind when assessing the success of the summit.  Do any of the announced agreements or commitments make a significant dent in the current emissions and emissions trends?  THC is using 1997 as the baseline since that is the year the Kyoto Protocol was signed.  Keep in mind that something in the range of a 50% reduction globally from 2005 levels by 2050 is required to have a meaningful impact on temperature if you accept the validity of the IPCC calculations.  Anything less is meaningless hand-waving.  The chart shows the top 4 CO2 emitters and the rest of the world.

	1997	2005	2010	2014
U.S.	5.6	5.9	5.5	5.3
E.U.	4.1	4.2	3.9	3.4
China	3.5	7.4	9.1	10.6
India	1.0	1.3	1.8	2.3
Rest of World	10.3	11.4	13.3	14.1
Total	24.5	30.2	33.6	35.7

Unit:  Billion Tons CO2

 Source:  Trends in Global CO2 Emissions: 2015 Report, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency & European Commission Joint Research Centre

For more background on the data read this.

Controlling The Narrative: Climate Change

 

It’s always interesting to watch how the media tailor news to support their favored agenda, and The Washington Post provided an excellent example just last week. Written by Chris Mooney, “Alaska’s scorched summer” carried the subtitle “A state already affected by climate change has seen 5 million acres – an area larger than Connecticut – burned by wildfires.” The article continued on to the last page of the front section, where it took up the entire page.

Mooney is an environment and energy reporter for the Post. He is also author of the best-selling The Republican War on Science, writes frequently on the importance of the proper framing for narratives in support of his views on environmental issues, and is a prime example of what Instapundit refers to as “Democratic operatives with bylines.” He is a man with a mission to convince you to take action.

My views on politics and environmental issues have been shaped by my experience in the field since the mid-1970s. It’s pretty simple actually: no one has a monopoly on “the war on science” and partisans across the political spectrum mold their approach to specific scientific issues to fit their political starting points (and don’t get me started on the difference between regulatory science and actual science).

I’ve followed Alaska temperature trends over the years, so I read Mooney’s article to see how he would fit the story of large-scale fires in Alaska into his larger narrative that human actions are leading to catastrophic climate change; that is, how he would transform a story about weather into one about climate. I didn’t have to look far:

Alaska has already warmed by more than three degrees in the past half-century, much more than the continental United States.

Throughout the story, Mooney provides statements and quotes that link the fires to climate change, but his thesis hinges on the claims in that sentence. It’s both accurate and – at the same time — misleading. Let’s look at two charts from the Alaska Climate Research Center (ACRC), which is a part of the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

This chart shows temperatures from 1949 through 2014 and — if one takes a look at 1965 (a half-century ago) — average temperatures across the state have clearly increased by at least 3° F as Mooney asserts. However, if you look more closely, you’ll notice that the entire gain is attributable to changes between 1976 and 1978. The ACRC explains what happened at that time:

The stepwise shift appearing in the temperature data in 1976 corresponds to a phase shift of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation from a negative phase to a positive phase. Synoptic conditions with the positive phase tend to consist of increased southerly flow and warm air advection into Alaska during the winter, resulting in positive temperature anomalies.

This second chart shows what’s happened in Alaska in the 37 years since the phase shift of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation: annual temperatures have decreased by 0.1° F. There is a slight summer temperature increase of 0.4°, but that is largely attributable to summer and fall increases at Point Barrow which is above the Arctic Circle, well north of the fires.

As we can see, Mooney’s statement might pass a fact-checker but is completely misleading in context. His entire article is cleverly structured so that the individual facts are correct but are used collectively to serve a narrative that is not actually supported by those facts.

Mooney might respond that the ACRC itself states that 2014 was an unusually warm year with the average temperature 3° F above the post-1976 baseline, but the ACRC also points out that 2012 was 2.9° below that same baseline. Mooney’s problem is that he can’t argue that the warming in Alaska is indicative of “climate” unless he wants to allow that unusually snowy and cold winters in New England are harbingers of global cooling: either they’re both climate or they’re both weather. If the Alaska trend were to continue for several more years, it might support the thesis of longer-term climatic changes, but it’s premature to conclude that right now.

Indeed, Mooney misleads his readers regarding this distinction between weather and climate, implying that the most recent fires are part of a long-term trend:

Three of Alaska’s top-five wildfire seasons have occurred since the year 2004, with 16 million acres burned between them (2004, 2005, and 2015). 

But if you look at the first chart I provided, you’ll see that while temperatures increased in 2004 and 2005 they had been on a decreasing trend between 2006 and 2013. Once again, Mooney’s individual facts are correct but assembled in such a way as to give a misleading picture.

I have one observation of my own regarding the ACRC data. On the second chart, notice that Barrow — which lies on the Arctic Ocean, much further north than the other Alaska weather stations — has noticeably warmed since 1976 in contrast to the rest of the state. Carbon dioxide greenhouse gas warming theory predicts that the greatest temperature increases will initially be seen in the Arctic and Antarctic, so the Barrow data is intriguing. I’m not familiar with temperature trends in other areas of the Arctic, so can’t tell you whether this change is due to a local anomaly or is part of a broader trend. However, in the Antarctic there is no warming trend, with the exception of the Antarctic peninsula which extends farther north than the rest of the continent. It’s something I’d like to know more about but won’t trust anything Mooney might write about it.

Climate Change: CO2 Emissions Trends

Your faithful bloggist would like to take this opportunity to acquaint his readers with the information on trends about greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.  This post is not about the underlying science as to whether human activities are having, or likely to have in the future, significant impact on global temperatures.  The emissions trend data is important because it bears on any potential policy responses to climate change.

Prompted by some projects at work before THC retired he began following annual data on global, regional and country-specific GHG emissions. Three primary sources of that data are the International Energy Agency, U.S. Energy Information Administration and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. While there are differences in methodology, the numbers are roughly similar and the trends identical. For purposes of the discussion below, except where otherwise noted, we'll use the Netherlands data (see also Footnote A, below).

1. Here are the actual GHG emissions from fuel combustion and cement production for major countries and regions since 1990. Units: 5.0 = 5,000 million tons CO2.

	U.S.	EU	China	Global
1990	5.0	4.3	2.5	22.7
1995	5.3	4.1	3.5	23.6
2000	5.9	4.1	3.6	25.4
2005	5.9	4.2	5.9	29.4
2010	5.5	3.9	8.7	33.0
2013	5.3	3.7	10.3	35.3

Comments:

U.S emissions over this period have increased by about 6% but are 10% lower than they were in 2000.  The U.S. share of global emissions has shrunk from about 22% to 15%.

In 2013 US & EU emissions combined are lower than than they were in 1990 even as global emissions increased by more than 50%.  The US & EU accounted for 41% of global emissions in 1990 but less than 26% in 2013.

China’s emissions, which were only 60% of those of the U.S. in 2000, are today greater than those of the U.S. and EU combined with China accounting for about 60% of the growth in global emissions since 1990.  China now accounts for 29% of global emissions.

If THC had included the 2008 data you’d see that during the GW Bush years the U.S. and EU trended the same despite the latter being a signatory to Kyoto.

U.S GHG emissions plummeted in 2009 demonstrating that there is nothing like a massive recession to help reduce your emissions.  American reductions in the past few years are also driven by switches from coal to gas and the success of fracking.

The announced GHG reduction goal of the Obama administration is 28% by 2025 from a 2005 baseline which would require additional U.S. reductions of about 1,000 million metric tons. Under a business as usual case in which global emissions increased by 2% a year (substantially less than trend), the U.S. reductions would amount to less than 2.5% of what the projected global total would be in 2025 and by less than 1.5% if all GHG emissions are taken into account (see footnote A below).

According to climatologist Judith Curry, based upon the UN IPCC’s own modeling, if the U.S met the 28% goal it would reduce projected temperatures by only 0.03 degrees C in the year 2100. Further, if the U.S. reduced its emissions by 80% by 2050 temperatures would be lowered by 0.11 degrees C by 2100.

It is the world outside of the US and EU that will determine if total global emissions are reduced and, in particular, what China does.

2.  For all the recent talk of emissions reductions the single biggest factor in the largest GHG reductions in the past half-century is the work of the United States, and specifically of Ronald Reagan and allies like Margaret Thatcher, in bringing down the Soviet Union.

In 1990, GHG emissions from the Soviet Union, were 4,000 million tons or almost 18% of the global total. With the falling apart of the Soviet state the full wastage of its economic base was exposed – as we learned, in some instance, the value of the raw materials going into its products were actually higher than the value of the final products (not to mention that life expectancy was falling) ! Soviet production philosophies allowed for pollution of the environment on a scale not seen in the U.S. even at its worst. By 1998, GHG emissions from Russia and the former Soviet states were only 2,400 million tons, a reduction of 40% or 1,600 million tons (about a 6% global reduction), by far the biggest reduction ever (even in 2013 they were still only about 2,700 million tons).

It was the “hot air” produced by this collapse and the ability to sell it as carbon credits that enticed Russia to become a Kyoto signatory, putting that pact into legal effect. The related collapse of the East Germany’s industry and its subsequent absorption into a reunited Germany, reduced that country’s overall GHG emissions enough that it made compliance with the Kyoto goals relatively easy. It is no accident that Kyoto’s baseline was 1990 before the industrial collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

3. One of the other major changes in emissions profiles helping the EU meet its goals was Margaret Thatcher’s initiative to reduce coal mining in the U.K. and switch its economy to newly discovered natural gas found in the North Sea. U.K. emissions today are lower than they were in 1979, the year Ms Thatcher became Prime Minister. For that effort she was excoriated by the Left in Britain who lamented the closing of the coal pits. In the years since, the British film business has developed a cottage industry making movies glorifying the coal miners and denouncing Thatcherism (see, for instance, Billy Elliott) while at the same time demanding greenhouse gas reductions.

UPDATE (6/30/15):  This morning THC was watching BBC (yes, he actually does that occasionally) and one of their big stories was billed as China's dramatic announcement committing to reducing GHG emissions.  Many numbers were thrown around rather carelessly in the report so THC thought it would be a good opportunity to see how emissions data is used, misused and easily misunderstood.

The substance of the announcement was that China pledged to cap its emissions by 2030 and would make a 60-65% reduction in GHG intensity, essentially an efficiency measure, by that time (from a baseline in 2005), though THC noticed that the header running under the report characterized this as a 60-65% decrease in emissions, which it is not.

The piece featured an interview with BBC's Environmental Analyst, Roger Harribin, who stressed the significance of this commitment and also commented that until now the U.S. has resisted making commitments on the grounds that China was refusing to do so.

1.  The commitment is the same commitment made by China last November as reported at the time by The Washington Post.  It is not new news.

2.  At the same meeting last November, President Obama announced the U.S. reduction commitment, as discussed in the original post above.

3.  What does it mean for China to agree to cap its emissions by 2030?  From 2000 to 2013, China's GHG emissions grew at an average annual rate of a little more than 8% a year, though growth has slowed some in recent years.  If China were to reduce its average GHG growth rate to 2% annually its emissions would grow from 10,300 million tons to 14,500 million tons by 2030, the equivalent of adding more than the EU's 2013 emissions to the global total.

4.  But, you might protest, China emissions must surely go down in this period given they have pledged to reduce intensity by 60-65%?  Not necessarily.  Intensity is a relative measure which necessitates having a denominator.  In this case, China has said its denominator is GDP so the critical matter is the amount of GHGs emitted per unit of GDP.  So far in the 21st century, China's GDP has grown by 7-11% every year.

Let's assume that China's growth slows down through 2030 and is only 5% a year, well below the recent trend line.  If China's GHG emissions remain the same in 2030 as they were in 2013 the country would have reduced intensity by 60% from the 2005 baseline!  If China's growth remains at the low end of the recent trend (7%) emissions can increase and still hit the intensity target.



(Footnote A) A simplifying assumption has been used by THC as these numbers are only from fuel combustion and cement production. There are additional significant GHG emissions from other non-CO2 industrial gases, agriculture and forestry.  In some countries, such as Brazil and Indonesia, these sources are double those from fuel and cement.  In the U.S. and E.U. these sources add something like 20-25% to the figures about while in China they add perhaps 40%.

Things Do Get Better: Air Pollution Edition

(Source: US Environmental Protection Agency)

THC always scratches his head when someone complains about how bad pollution is and how it's getting worse.  The chart above from USEPA shows what's happened in air pollution in America since the Clean Air Act and Amendments were enacted in the 1970s.

Bottom line is emissions decreased by 62% even as population grew, the economy got bigger and we used more energy.

The decrease in emissions meant huge improvements in air quality.  From EPA these are the improvements in air quality from 1980 through 2013 for the six air pollutants targeted by the Clean Air Act:

Carbon Monoxide      84%
Ozone                        33%
Lead                          92%
Nitrogen Dioxide       58%
Particulates               34%
Sulfur Dioxide           81%

The reductions have occurred on a continuing basis; from 2000 to 2013:

Carbon Monoxide     59%
Ozone                       18%
Lead                          60%
Nitrogen Dioxide       40%
Particulates               30%
Sulfur Dioxide           62% 

In addition, emissions of Volatile Organic Chemicals (think solvents) were reduced by 54% and emissions of Air Toxics declined by 62% in just 18 years from 1990 to 2008. 

Something to remember the next time you see an article claiming that some type of illness is on the increase because of air pollution.