Date published: 2005/03/22
The BBC says:
Britain's emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, rose by 2.2% in the year 2002-2003, according to new government data just released.
Environmental groups have accused ministers of failing to control greenhouse gas emissions.
Carbon dioxide emissions in 2003 were higher than when Labour came to power.
But the output of other greenhouse gases is falling, meaning that Britain is still on course to meet its Kyoto Protocol targets - just.
One reason behind the rise in emissions was the changing cost of basic fuels; the price of coal fell by 8% during the year, while gas rose by roughly the same amount.
But data also show that emissions from certain sectors - notably housing and transport - have been steadily rising for years.
...
The various greenhouse gases vary widely in their "global warming potential" - the relative amount of warming produced by a given amount of the gas.Comparing the volume of various gases would be meaningless; instead, scientists combine the volume with the global warming potential and express it in units called MtC - million tonnes of carbon equivalent.
Between 1997, when Labour came to power, and 2003, Britain's output of the three most important greenhouse gases has been:
- Carbon dioxide - up from 153.9 to 156.1 MtC
- Methane - down from 16.6 to 11.1 MtC
- Nitrous Oxide - down from 16.6 to 11.0 MtC
Emissions of greenhouse gases in total are now 13.4% below 1990 levels, the baseline against which Kyoto Protocol targets are measured; Britain's target is 12.5%.
But carbon dioxide emissions have fallen by only 5.6%. The government admits it will fail to meet a unilateral target, contained in Labour's manifesto for the 1997 election, of reducing CO2 by 20% from 1990 levels by the year 2010.
According to Friends of the Earth (FoE) UK, efforts to tackle climate change are "a disaster".
Of course the so-called environmentalists claim everything and anything is a "disaster" because they have to justify their existence by always claiming that the world is at an end. (Some of them also want us all to go back to living in caves.) Up to switches in fuel source (e.g. from coal to gas, as the UK has done, hence the drop since 1990), emissions are highly correlated with economic growth, something which the ruling elite often refuse to recognise (indeed, some claim the opposite).
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