Parametrization of intensive global climate change indicators on a level of sovereign states and governments
- PDF / 908,910 Bytes
- 8 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 32 Downloads / 183 Views
REVIEW Parametrization of intensive global climate change indicators on a level of sovereign states and governments
Micha Tomkiewicz, Department of Physics, Brooklyn College of CUNY, Brooklyn, New York 11210, USA; Ph.D Program in Physics and the Ph.D Program in Chemistry, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, New York, New York 10016, USA Address all correspondence to Micha Tomkiewicz at [email protected] (Received 28 September 2018; accepted 22 April 2019)
ABSTRACT This article will show that within well-defined error margins, carbon intensities and energy intensities are independent of the population and GDP of countries and thus can serve as a convenient parametrization of humanity on a sovereign level. The IPCC, in its fifth international report, states that the two leading contributions to changes in annual CO2 emissions by decade are the changes in population and changes in GDP/capita, which reflect changes in standard of living. This article will show that within well-defined error margins, carbon intensities, and energy intensities (both with respect to GDP) are independent of the population and GDP of countries and thus can serve as a convenient parametrization of humanity. With some imagination, these parameters can serve as input and output indicators that connect the physical environment with the human environment. The article will show that both indicators fit lognormal distribution well without any outliers. The data are based on the World Bank database. Comparing the global distribution with individual world-bank indicators of world-bank country grouping based on socioeconomic conditions quantifies the contributions of global income distribution.
DISCUSSION POINTS • How is this article relevant to the continuing discussion of the apparent conflict between economic development and sustainability? • How should climate change be reflected in environmental impact statements? • Is the social cost of carbon relevant to material scientists?
Background—global changes in a fast changing world One of the three discussion points in my previous publication in this journal1 was focused on the efforts of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), an interdisciplinary body of scientists and humanists working under the umbrella of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (branch of Geology) that was tasked with developing proposals for the formal ratification of the Anthropocene as an official epoch amending the Geological Time Scale. Since then, a group of 26 scientists reported on reaching their conclusions and submitted their recommendations to the Working Group at the 35th International Geological Congress in Cape Town, South Africa, in August 2016.2 The majority of the committee favors the mid 20th
century to be the dividing line between the Holocene and the Anthropocene with the radioactive nuclei that result from the first nuclear testing to serve as a long lasting markers for the boundary. More recently, the IPCC in its latest report3 (http:// IPCC.ch/reports/SR15) decided t
Data Loading...
