Turning point

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By Paul Voosen, Science. 

Excerpt: Global greenhouse emissions will soon flatten or decline—a historic moment driven by China’s surge in renewable energy. In July, a team of scientists assembled...to study an anomalous wobble in a data curve. ...it was a surprising decline in a quantity that has grown relentlessly throughout the Industrial Age: the amount of planet-warming greenhouse gases dumped by humanity into the atmosphere each year. The researchers were members of Climate TRACE, a collaboration of academics, environmental think tanks, and companies that tracks how much coal, oil, and natural gas the world is burning—and where—using a mix of energy statistics, satellite observations, and artificial intelligence (AI). As the group began to push out monthly estimates for January, February, and March, it was unmistakable that levels were lower than at the same time last year. ...overall emissions have crept up by some 1% each year. Although Europe and the United States reached peak carbon years ago, ...China has buoyed the curve: It is responsible for roughly 90% of the global growth in greenhouse gases since the signing of the Paris agreement in 2015, says Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. “In that sense, when China peaks, it’s likely the world will at least plateau.”... 

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