Unfortunately, there is no accounting for the carbon released through forest fires or other "natural" events within a nation. The fires in Australia, Brazil, the USA, or Russia do not get put on anyone's balance sheet. When carbon is not measured, it is not a part of the data for modeling and projecting future climate change.
Unfortunately, there is no accounting for the carbon released through forest fires or other "natural" events within a nation. The fires in Australia, Brazil, the USA, or Russia do not get put on anyone's balance sheet. When carbon is not measured, it is not a part of the data for modeling and projecting future climate change.
Military emissions are also absent. The US armed forces are the highest emitter for the government, and not accountable for their emissions. Other nations are less transparent than the US.
The situation is made worse by political rhetoric--why should we lower our carbon when China, India, and other major emitters do not? The argument should be to cover all the unmeasured and unaccounted emissions that we put into the atmosphere. Each nation that can, should exceed their minimums by as much as is technically possible, as there will be future "unforeseen" emissions, and nations unable to ever balance their emissions due to a lack of resources. Tonga is not going to ever be able to balance emissions from their recent volcano, nor is it likely that Chile ever can.
It remains amazing to me that this elephant herd is ignored as though it never has existed, nor ever will. There is a general hand-waving dismissal as these factors cannot be understood nor their measure known. That is not likely true at all. We have enough statistical and enough computing power to readily arrive at reasonable estimates for projection purposes, and it would help move us towards greater efforts at carbon reduction if we did do this.
Why? Because then nations like Australia and the US would be motivated to greater efforts at reducing carbon from known carbon sources to remain leaders in the planet wide effort. These nations, and many others like them, could do so much more. Instead they ask for what will be a passing grade--not what would be relevant to future generations.
Such efforts might stimulate the science and engineering of fire reduction. Instead of doing a minimal amount to reducing fires in the western states, the US might be motivated towards an exceptional effort to mitigate forest fires, practice water conservation, and generally improve the ecology--as opposed to the minimal efforts to day to slow the degradation of the same resources.
Unfortunately, there is no accounting for the carbon released through forest fires or other "natural" events within a nation. The fires in Australia, Brazil, the USA, or Russia do not get put on anyone's balance sheet. When carbon is not measured, it is not a part of the data for modeling and projecting future climate change.
Military emissions are also absent. The US armed forces are the highest emitter for the government, and not accountable for their emissions. Other nations are less transparent than the US.
The situation is made worse by political rhetoric--why should we lower our carbon when China, India, and other major emitters do not? The argument should be to cover all the unmeasured and unaccounted emissions that we put into the atmosphere. Each nation that can, should exceed their minimums by as much as is technically possible, as there will be future "unforeseen" emissions, and nations unable to ever balance their emissions due to a lack of resources. Tonga is not going to ever be able to balance emissions from their recent volcano, nor is it likely that Chile ever can.
It remains amazing to me that this elephant herd is ignored as though it never has existed, nor ever will. There is a general hand-waving dismissal as these factors cannot be understood nor their measure known. That is not likely true at all. We have enough statistical and enough computing power to readily arrive at reasonable estimates for projection purposes, and it would help move us towards greater efforts at carbon reduction if we did do this.
Why? Because then nations like Australia and the US would be motivated to greater efforts at reducing carbon from known carbon sources to remain leaders in the planet wide effort. These nations, and many others like them, could do so much more. Instead they ask for what will be a passing grade--not what would be relevant to future generations.
Such efforts might stimulate the science and engineering of fire reduction. Instead of doing a minimal amount to reducing fires in the western states, the US might be motivated towards an exceptional effort to mitigate forest fires, practice water conservation, and generally improve the ecology--as opposed to the minimal efforts to day to slow the degradation of the same resources.