BAKU, Azerbaijan — Cities in Asia and the United States emit the most heat-trapping gas fueling climate change, and Shanghai is the most polluting, according to new data combining observations and artificial intelligence.
Seven states or provinces emit more than 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases, all in China except for Texas, which ranks sixth, according to new data released Friday by an organization founded by former US Vice President Al Gore. United Nations Organization climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Nations in conversation they are trying to set new targets to reduce these emissions, and guess what how much will rich nations pay to help the world in this task.
Using satellite and ground-based observations, supplemented with artificial intelligence to fill in the gaps, Climate Trace sought to quantify carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, as well as traditional air pollutants worldwide, covering more than 9,000 cities for the first time. the fields
The Earth’s total carbon dioxide and methane pollution rose 0.7% to 61.2 billion metric tons, while short-lived but highly potent methane rose 0.2%. The numbers are higher than other data sets because “we have very broad coverage and we’ve seen more emissions in more sectors than are typically available,” said Gavin McCormick, co-founder of Climate Trace.
Shanghai’s 256 million tons of greenhouse gases topped all cities and exceeded those of the nations of Colombia or Norway. Tokyo’s 250 million tons would rank in the top 40 of nations if it were a country, while New York’s 160 million tons and Houston’s 150 million tons would be in the top 50 of the country’s emissions. Seoul, South Korea ranks fifth among cities with 142 million metric tons.
“One of the areas in the Permian Basin in Texas is by far the worst polluting area in the world,” Gore said. “And maybe that shouldn’t surprise me, but I think about how dirty some of these sites are in Russia, China and so on. But the Permian Basin is being overshadowed.”
China, India, Iran, Indonesia and Russia had the largest increases in emissions from 2022 to 2023, while Venezuela, Japan, Germany, the UK and United States had the greatest drop in pollution.
The dataset, maintained by scientists and analysts from various groups, also looked at traditional pollutants such as carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, ammonia, sulfur dioxide and other chemicals associated with dirty air. Burning fossil fuels releases two types of pollution, Gore said.
This “represents humanity’s greatest health threat,” Gore said.
Gore criticized Azerbaijan, an oil nation and site of the world’s first oil fields, and the United Arab Emirates, known as COP.
“It is unfortunate that the fossil fuel industry and petro-states have taken control of the COP process to an unhealthy degree,” Gore said. “Next year in Brazil, we will see a change in that model. But, you know, it’s not good for the world community to give the world’s No. 1 polluting industry so much control over the whole process.”
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has called for more to be done on climate change and has sought to slow deforestation since returning to the presidency for a third term. But Brazil produced more oil last year than Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates, he said US Energy Information Administration.
At a press conference held by the Alliance of Small Island States, the president of the Alliance of Small Island States, Cedric Schuster, said the negotiating bloc felt the need to remind everyone why the talks matter.
“We’re here to defend the Paris agreement,” Schuster said, referring to the 2015 climate agreement to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit). “We are concerned that countries are forgetting that protecting the world’s most vulnerable is at the core of this framework.” ___
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