Climate Links: March 2018

Canada's climate gap twice as big as claimed - 59 million tonne carbon snafu. Barry Saxifrage, National Observer. March 27, 2018.

Canada’s proposed climate plan doesn’t even get halfway to its goal because of problems buying offsets from the U.S.. In fact, the gap between proposed policy and Canada’s Paris commitment is twice as big as advertised. 

The Trudeau government says its proposed climate policies will get Canada to within 66 million tonnes of our 2030 climate target. That's already a big gap, but the federal accounting also assumes we can subtract a huge chunk of Canada's emissions and pay to add them to the U.S. ledger through carbon credits — something the Americans haven’t agreed to do. 

Canada obviously can't assign our emissions to an unwilling nation. The Paris Accord is clear on this. Without this unapproved transfer of our emissions to the United States, Canada's climate gap nearly doubles.

How could global warming accelerate if CO2 is 'logarithmic'? DPiepgrass, Skeptical Scienc. March 28 2018.

Pollution Sources Have Increased More Than 50% In Last 8 Years, China’s Environment Ministry Reports. James Ayre, CleanTechnica. March 31, 2018.

Considering that such a large figure makes for bad PR, it’s interesting that the ministry has publicly reported as much — which makes one wonder to a degree whether actual figures could be somewhat higher. 

It should be realized, though, that the ministry in question is an entirely new one — the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) — so perhaps the figures are actually accurate.

Permafrost slowly exhales methane. Elizabeth M. Herndon, Nature Climate Change. March 19, 2018.

Permafrost soils store vast quantities of organic matter that are vulnerable to decomposition under a warming climate. Recent research finds that methane release from thawing permafrost may outpace carbon dioxide as a major contributor to global warming over the next century.