Things just got a bit interesting - from Forbes:
In Historic Turn, CO2 Emissions Flatline in 2014, Even as Global Economy Grows
A key stumbling block in the effort to combat global warming has been the intimate link between greenhouse gas emissions and economic growth. When times are good and industries are thriving, global energy use traditionally increases and energy-related carbon dioxide emissions also go up. Only when economies stumble and businesses shutter — as during the most recent financial crisis — does energy use typically decline, in turn bringing down planet-warming emissions.
But for the first time in nearly half a century, that synchrony between economic growth and energy-related emissions seems to have been broken, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, prompting its chief economist to wonder if an important new pivot point has been reached — one that decouples economic vigor and carbon pollution.
The IEA pegged carbon dioxide emissions for 2014 at 32.3 billion metric tons — essentially the same volume as 2013, even as the global economy grew at a rate of about 3 percent.
“This gives me even more hope that humankind will be able to work together to combat climate change, the most important threat facing us today,” the IEA’s lead economist, Fatih Birol, said in a statement accompanying the findings.
People are paying way too much attention to this trace gas. The initial theory was that there would be runaway positive feedback but that has been debunked several times in the last 20 years. Our climate is driven by our Sun, not our industries, we have had CO2 concentrations as high as 9,000ppm (they are around 420ppm now) and without carbon dioxide, this would be a lifeless ball of mud. If anything, our sun seems to be entering a cooler cycle much like the Maunder minimum or little ice age - we need to be concerned about this and not some fatuous gas.
If the greenies really want to cut out CO2 emissions, they need to back Thorium reactors - the fuel is incredibly plentiful, the waste products only need to be sequestered for 300 years or so and they can completely burn up the waste from conventional pressurized water reactors - the stuff that needs to be sequestered for 10,000 years.
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