Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement will rise around 1.1% in 2025, reaching a record 38.1bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to the latest figures from the Global Carbon Project.
Despite the adoption of the Paris Agreement ten years ago, fossil CO2 emissions continue to rise, pushing atmospheric CO2 levels to 423 ppm in 2024 and driving human-induced warming to 1.36°C, within years of breaching the 1.5°C limit 1,2. Accurate reporting of anthropogenic and natural CO2 sources and sinks is a prerequisite to tracking the effectiveness of climate policy and detecting carbon sink responses to climate change. Yet notable mismatches between reported emissions and sinks have so far prevented confident interpretation of their trends and drivers 1. Here, we present and integrate recent advances in observations and process understanding to address some long-standing issues in the global carbon budget estimates. We show that the magnitude of the natural land sink is substantially smaller than previously estimated, while net emissions from anthropogenic land-use change are revised upwards 1. The ocean sink is 15% larger than the land sink, consistent with new evidence from oceanic and atmospheric observations 3,4. Climate change reduces the efficiency of the sinks, particularly on land, contributing 8.3 ± 1.4 ppm to the atmospheric CO2 increase since 1960. The combined effects of climate change and deforestation turn Southeast Asian and large parts of South American tropical forests from CO2 sinks to sources. This underscores the need to halt deforestation and limit warming to prevent further loss of carbon stored on land. Improved confidence in assessments of CO2 sources and sinks is fundamental for effective climate policy.
I really do not understand what they are trying to do here (Libs and the Nats). Oh if we get to net zero it’s a pleasant surprise and we still want to maybe if it happens…. WTF is that!! You either want to get there or you don’t. Get your foot out of both camps and bloody pick a lane and die on that hill FFS.
They had 2 choices in my mind. Keep Net zero and say ALP are stupid they are doing this all wrong, look at your power bills. The independent experts said your prices would go down $275 which Albo then quoted. We can get there a better and cheaper way and go and do the work and sell that message.
Or
You go full the other way and drop Paris say we only do 1% of carbon anyway so who cares, we will not lift a finger to help on this until we see the rest of the big guys like China and India doing it so coal all the way baby cheap power.
Now no matter which side you think is right or wrong…. not actually picking one of those and trying to be in the middle is just arsenene. You got a foot in both camps all right and both of them are covered in **** You can’t have your cake and eat it too guys.
Well, HM points out the clever shell game of the ALP, exporting bulk coal for others to burn, while extolling Paris and Net Zero before 20xx etc and seeming to be exemplars of those on the planet fighting climate change.
However, they are the best we have got with their solar and wind initiatives, so I let the federal libs know I will not be voting for them.
As to grid stability, its important and we should also be progressively implementing more pumped storage systems sited near load centres and solar farms.
Pumped hydro doesn’t get financial payments for the grid stability function it performs, only the generation. That means the assets just don’t stack up financially against batteries with short durations.
Maybe I’m being lazy and ignorant, (wouldn’t be the first time) but I feel like I don’t know what either major party* thinks our energy looks like in twenty years.
Everything seems so ad hoc.
Just every year…oh, we’re gonna do this now…
China’s emissions have been stable or declined the last three years running, I think. They are doing considerably better than us on that account, and they will likely become the renewable superpower that we should have been if we’d had remotely competent governments over the last decade and a half.. That particular excuse is running rapidly out of steam, though of course I expect the usual suspects to switch to India as their new justification for inertia soon.
Problem as I see it with any energy plan is the fight between aspirational and realistic.
Net Zero is a feel nice concept which does not go far enough. Balancing CO2 produced with CO2 absorbed, may have this nett zero effect but it hardly addresses that baseline CO2 level is still high.
Liberal energy policy is totally economic, Labour is a mixture of economic and environmental sanity, while Greens is environmentally valid but economically unsustainable.
Labor energy policy does project to 2050 and beyond with the emphasis on renewables, except it has underlying weakness in the attempt to save and secure jobs in current coal energy locations. I have argued that you cannot have both, unless you take full control and force corporations to create alternative employment in these regions. I see no real sign of this and incentives are just monetary handouts that give a short term profit boost.
The system fails because longterm aspirations in a three year election cycle is a recipe for failure. The Governments real solution is to takeover all energy production including mining, which in a capitalist democracy is electoral disaster.
That’s the frustrating thing about the previous talk that ‘China aren’t doing it so why should we bother’.
Blind Freddy could tell that when they put effort into something, they do it quicker than anyone else around the world. Their economy is geared towards being capable of doing it.
Shanghai’s transformation since 2000 is one example. Their high speed train network across China is another example from just the one line about twenty years ago. Any regional area’s growth in the last 15 years is another example. There are plenty of examples. And yes, I understand they have certain beneficial circumstances (cheap labour) but none the less, they have the capability.
Unfortunately, what they do doesn’t reach the common person’s news feed. And anything that does, is met with, you can’t believe what you see from there.
I think China will lead the way with renewables. They are setting themselves up to be able to handle either market, but then make the full transition and profit well off it. That opportunity was there for every country over the last 40 years. They just needed to get their ■■■■ into gear for it.
The transition to cleaner energy is inevitable. It’s just a matter of whether it is done in time before we fark something up majorly. We could say we’re already there, but I doubt people are more worried about our path to renewables than how much money is their pocket due to rising costs. And I’ll bet that the Americans (regardless of who is president) will lead the way in recognising what that ‘fark up’ is and what affect it has on populations.
As we get used to using more renewable energy, it’ll be met with a lot of resistance. There was the talk that renewables will reduce costs. It definitely can if you eliminate greed from the equation. But once you add greed, you see people willing to pay $X for gas, so they will also be willing to pay about the same for the greener alternative (and with the added inflation across time). So it’ll never ‘cost less’ in the eyes of the common person. Because anything will always be cheaper when we paid for it 10 years ago, than it is now. And unfortunately, that’s all the common person will think towards it. And anything that does price match will be of worse quality and not last as long because that’s how the economy has functioned over time.
Unfortunately, the discussion points of the last 5 years have stuck. Electric cars are useless because the battery won’t last and costs too much to replace. Even though they replace their car every 5 years as it is now. It’s also useless because you can’t drive to NSW border without re-charging even though they have never driven that far. Windmills are useless because the blades are dumped and cannot be reused. Even though it’s more cost effective to maintain a wind farm than a whole power plant across its lifetime.
I’m sure I can go on. By the time the discussion points have run their course, China would be well on their way to the transition we’ll be playing catchup with the rest of the world wondering why we didn’t take more advantage of the opportunity.
Liberal energy policy is economic insanity, they’re literally talking about government-subsidised coal ffs. they’re choosing the most expensive possible forms of energy and subsidising it to compete with renewables. Their problem is that they’re now entirely staffed by the people who were stupid enough to fall for coal industry propaganda in the 90s.
Labor energy policy is entirely short-term political pragmatism. They’re trying to avoid frightening the mining company or CFMEU horses too much, and to keep exporting polluting fuels hand over fist forever - or at least until everyone else stops buying it and the whole ponzi scheme collapses. It’s about appearing better than the Libs policy (but the bar is set REAL low there and is rapidly headed to the centre of the earth), but anyone who actually looks into it closely realises that ALPs net zero policies are fundamentally underpinned by CC&S and offset policies that provably don’t work. The ALP views climate as a political issue to be negated, not a genuine problem to be solved.
The Greens have some issues with the rubber-meets-the-road implementation of their policies, but they’re the only ones who actually recognise the scope of the problem, and that further delaying or corrupting emissions reduction with short-term claims of ‘economic sanity’ will only lead to worse economic impacts from climate disaster down the track.
People need to give up on any Australian government to lead the way on this, they they are BOTH too in the pocket of mining and fossil fuel companies. Their actual function is prolonging the inevitable (renewable technology gets so cheap and efficient that it’s undeniably the universal standard) long enough that these companies can maximise their profitability for another decade or two.
it doesn’t matter that much tbh, the market and the tech is moving at warp speed past these ■■■■■ anyway.
