H. Sterling Burnett
Latest posts by H. Sterling Burnett (see all)
- Climate Delusion Pushers Are the Real Halloween Monsters - November 1, 2019
- Surveys Show Many Support Climate Action, But Only If It’s Really Cheap - October 22, 2019
- Save the Planet: Reform the Endangered Species Act - October 22, 2019
Earth melting into water
Here’s something you never hear in the heat of the battle of the climate wars: If the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is right, its developing countries, not industrialized countries that are responsible for most of the warming in the 20th century.
Are you surprised, because I certainly was?
A post on Energy Matters shows the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has known for some time that developing countries account for the majority of greenhouse gas emissions.
A little-publicized 2007 analysis, the Modelling and Assessment of Contributions to Climate Change (MATCH) study, conducted at the behest of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, concluded greenhouse gas emissions from developed countries caused less than half of the global warming experienced through 2000.
MATCH’s analysis examined greenhouse gas emissions (CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide) from various countries and regions, including emissions from wood-burning, deforestation, and agriculture, and found emissions from developed countries contributed to 41 percent of the global temperature increase between 1890 and 2000. Fifty-nine percent of humanity’s share of Earth’s warming was caused by emissions from developing countries.
The MATCH report states:
This paper finds that the relative contributions of different nations to global climate change- attributing only emissions of long-lived greenhouse gases-are robust, despite the varying model complexity and differences in calculated absolute changes. For the default calculations, the average calculated contributions to the global mean surface temperature increase in 2000 are about 40% from OECD90, 14% from Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union, 24% from Asia and 22% from Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.
While there are no solid data on total greenhouse gas emissions by country since 2000, data on carbon dioxide emissions alone indicate the gap between developing and developed countries has grown since 2000. Not counting carbon dioxide emissions from wood burning or deforestation, British Petroleum’s 2016 Statistical Review shows emissions from developed countries declined between 2000 and 2015 while developing countries’ carbon dioxide emissions, driven largely by China, increased by 80 percent. If MATCH were to update its results to 2015, it would likely discover developing countries have caused more than 60 percent of the warming since 1890.
Maybe we should set up a Green Climate Fund to reimburse developed countries for the climate harms imposed on them by he developing world? Just Kidding! … or am I.
