World CO2 emissions may be peaking - I'm sure I'll catch a lot of flak for posting this

[progree]

9. Their statement is true (a slight decline) only for March 1 thru April 30

Last edited Sun Jul 28, 2024, 02:13 PM - Edit history (1)

Excerpt from the article (see OP)

"total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same period in 2023"

The amount of CO2 MT difference between 2023 and 2024 (February 29 not included) is:

Jan +49.03 (meaning Jan 2024 had 49.03 more CO2 MT than Jan 2023)
Feb +28.88 (excludes Feb 29, 2024)
Mar -20.21
Apr - 4.59
May +81.78

So only March and April were negative. There's no way to "expand the range" and still have a negative total for the range. .

The OP statement is correct if it is interpreted as (and using a minimal words change):

"total global climate pollution released between THE END OF February and THE BEGINNING OF May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same period in 2023"

That's a pretty absurd stretch of the original statement, but oh well.

I'll fix the OP after posting this.

So far, the only mistakes or questionable writing comes from Yale Climate Connections,

(#1#) Saying "global climate pollution" declined when it is only CO2, not all greenhouse gasses

(#2#) The misleading statement "total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same period in 2023" is true (based on CarbonMonitor.org data) only with the most stretched interpretation of that period. Its actually true only for the period March 1 - April 30 (and only for CO2).

I haven't found any errors in any carbonmonitor.org's statements yet.

Thanks for taking the time and catching this.

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: I've downloaded and sorted them; the 1.6%/year global increase is there, but it includes Feb 29th. The totals for 'WORLD' for Jan 1st to May 31st 2023 are 14991; for Jan 1st to May 31st 2024 including Feb 29th are 15235. But that's 151 days in 2023, and 152 in 2024. So per day, that works out at a 0.96% increase from 2023 to 2024.

In the OP I wrote this about carbonmonitor.org

Click on the Variation button. It shows "January 1st -> May 31st, 2024 vs. January 1st -> May 30th 2023" Then hover the mouse over WLD (which is World). It says "All sectors" have increased +1.6%.

I get the same numbers as you (14991 and 15235), and it came to a 1.6% same as you and carbonmonitor.org say (includes Feb 29). So at least on this one everyone is on the same page.

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The top of the carbonmonitor.org page says "Global CO2 emissions for 2023 increased by only 0.1% relative to 2022 (following increases of 5.4% and 1.9% in 2021 and 2022, respectively)"

I'll be looking at the 0.1% part of the statement. I'll have to download again, it turns out what I saved from last time around was Jan 1 - May 31, 2023 followed by Jan 1 - May 31, 2024. I thought I had saved 3 years worth. Not.

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I used the DSUM function in what I did. I did check carefully for smaller sets of data to make sure the sums it came up matched highlighting the relevant data and looking at the status line for the sum.

The big difficulty was, that the dates are text strings like 31/05/2024 for the last day of May 2024 for example. Database criteria fields like
< =5/31/2024 and variations of that like < =31/05/2024 don't understand it. (I put a space between the < and the = because DU software doesn't like those 2 characerters together). And I couldn't figure out how to make "31/05/2024" be seen as dates by Excel, not easily. So I added a column of dates using this formula on each row, where column B has the original troublesome dates, and using row 200 as an example.:

=DATEVALUE(MID(B200,4,2)&"/"&LEFT(B200,2)&RIGHT(B200,5))

It changes "31/05/2024" into "05/31/2024", and then applies the Datevalue function to it to make it a date rather than a text string, and then I formatted it with the *m/dd/yyyy" format for human readability.

Just so you know there is this extra work in case you decide to fiddle with it some more (and don't know any better way).