Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise in China
by Richard Harris
All Things Considered, March 14, 2008 · China's carbon dioxide emissions are growing much faster than anticipated and are on pace to double during this decade. Forecasts of global warming don't take this growth into account, so scientists may be underestimating how fast the planet will heat up.
When scientists last tried to project China's contribution to global warming, it was the late 1990s. Asia was in a recession and China's emissions weren't growing particularly fast.
But Maximilian Auffhammer of the University of California, Berkeley, says things have changed radically since then. Since 2000, carbon dioxide emissions have been "off the charts," he says.
For example, in 2004, emissions from China grew by 14 percent — or the equivalent of an additional Germany or England.
Auffhammer and a colleague have used detailed information from within China to estimate what emissions will be like through the end of the decade. His forecast is being published in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. more...
Read the research behind this story in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management
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