Well according to this story from the BBC based upon a to be paper published the Journal of Environment Economics and Management, anyway, China overtook the USA as the biggest polluter around about 2005 or 2006.
Although how a compound that has been part of the earths atmosphere since creation can be classed as pollution strikes me as an absurdity. But then politics and politicians are generally absurd and the political convenience of lambasting carbon based energy sources as a mechanism for gaining control over peoples lives and the creation of phantom products (carbon credits) is too good an opportunity for the power hungry to ignore.
Incidentally it is now 10 years since "the warmest year on record" which was according to the methodology of the alarmists 1998. That 1998 was the warmest year on record is a matter of some dispute since the records and methodology for defining how warm a year is or was has not been consistent "since records have been kept". There is good reason to believe that using the current methods and definitions that the "warmest year since records have been kept" actually occurred sometime during the nineteen thirties but that is an "inconvenient truth".
Whatever, now we have the much heralded free trade agreement with China we can help them get even further ahead in the race to become the biggest carbon emitter by selling them more of our West Coast Coal to fuel the industries that produce the products we will buy in exchange.
And the global warming industry will continue to flourish by morphing into the climate change industry as the predictions of the IPCC fail to come to fruition.
Yeah.
And while NZ Govt is once again trying to lead the World and penalize it own companies and citizenry with it's CO2 emissions regime.
China is building around 200 new coal fired power stations and they build around 8 new steel mills a year apparently.
Plus India is in the process of building the World's largest Coal Fired Power station!
So all our socalled CO2 emission reductions aren't going to do diddly squat!
Posted by: Acid Comments | April 15, 2008 at 04:06 PM
Worth repeating myself at this point.
ALL THE PLANETS IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM ARE EXPERIENCING HUGE CHANGE ACCORDING TO NASA AND UNDISPUTED 3RD PARTY DATA*.
I just offer that as a data point. Make up your own mind.
The highlights?
Sun: More activity since 1940 than in previous 1150 years, combined
Mercury: Unexpected polar ice discovered, along with a surprisingly strong intrinsic magnetic field … for a supposedly “dead” planet
Venus: 2500% increase in auroral brightness, and substantive global atmospheric changes in less than 30 years
Earth: Substantial and obvious world-wide weather and geophysical changes
Mars: huge storms, disappearance of polar icecaps
Jupiter: Over 200% increase in brightness of surrounding plasma clouds
Saturn: Major decrease in equatorial jet stream velocities in only ~20 years, accompanied by surprising surge of X-rays from equator
Uranus: “Really big, big changes” in brightness, increased global cloud activity
Neptune: 40% increase in atmospheric brightness
Pluto: 300% increase in atmospheric pressure, even as Pluto recedes farther from the Sun
* Since the late 1970s, the amount of solar radiation the sun emits, during times of quiet sunspot activity, has increased by nearly .05 percent per decade, according to a NASA funded study.
"This trend is important because, if sustained over many decades, it could cause significant climate change," said Richard Wilson, a researcher affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University's Earth Institute, New York.”
* …according to Michael Lockwood and colleagues at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in England… Analyzing instrument measurements taken since 1868, they conclude that the sun's exterior magnetic field has increased by 230 percent since 1901 and by 40 percent since 1964.”
*Measurements to record the nightglow of Venus were carried out with the Keck telescope just before sunrise on November 20, 1999. Analysis of the resultant spectrum at the position of the oxygen green line showed strong emission from the terrestrial atmosphere and a comparable signal from Venus, with an intensity some 25 times (2500%) greater
* “Accompanying the Science paper by Slanger, et al, is a commentary by Dr. David Crisp from the NASA/Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"I certainly trust those data," stated Dr. Crisp. "Something weird is going on in the upper atmosphere of Venus."
The first bottom line is that we just don't know what's going on.”
* astronomers for the first time this century have detected clouds in the Northern Hemisphere of Uranus. The snapshots show banded structure and multiple clouds…The clouds can be seen along the planet's right edge [the bright dots]. Another cloud [faint white dot] is barely visible near the bottom of the blue band. The clouds are almost as large as continents on Earth
(and so on)
Read, learn, draw YOUR OWN conculsions.
Do not trust the media to provide anything resembling "facts".
Posted by: belt | April 15, 2008 at 07:27 PM
"Worth repeating myself at this point.
ALL THE PLANETS IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM ARE EXPERIENCING HUGE CHANGE ACCORDING TO NASA AND UNDISPUTED 3RD PARTY DATA*."
Exactly and that's another very 'Inconvenient Truth.'
Posted by: Acid Comments | April 15, 2008 at 08:44 PM
What they are NOT telling you is about stellar core and corona-photo-spheric dynamics. Which are topics that even remotely understood by nuclear physicists, nor plasma researchers.
Now, before the Sun, Sol, moves off the 'main sequence' it goes through transluminance phases where the effective photospheric emissions vary.
remember that the Plasma temp is about 6 K - however the Coronsphere has a temp of around 2 million K.
Now, this variance, and the fact that we have no sunspots at the moment - makes things interesting.
Although solar output will increase - and we are all going to get incinerated, we are at present going into a COOLING phase.
Enjoy!
Posted by: IncompetencePlus | April 27, 2008 at 11:21 PM