Talk:Emission intensity

Intensity targets

You put this on my page:

You wrote: "The U.S. Clear Skies Act, plans to cut carbon intensity by 18% by 2012. This has been criticised by enviromentalists as it can be achieved by increasing the GDP as well as by reducing Carbon output." Can you please clarify what that means and provide citation for the criticism? --Treekids (talk) 06:31, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

This sentance is the left overs from a pruning session I did on the article. It referes to carbon intensity as the ratio of Carbon to GDP. As this is a single number this means that it can reduced by reducing the denominator (1/3 is less than 2/3) or increasing the numerator (2/4 is less than 2/3). I think it makes sense within the context of the rest of the article (sepecially the sentance afterwards. Feel free to correct it if you find it confusing. Mike Young (talk) 15:01, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think carbon intensity is a very good measure for placing countries in the scale, nor is it as 'cross-cutting' as per capita emissions.
For example, in some impoverished third world country, USD 1000 would be worth more than in the US. Therefore, to generate USD 1000 worth of GDP, you'll have to work more and do more in the third world country than in US, therefore generate more CO2 for every 1000USD than US.
So while you may be getting more done in the 3rdworldcuntry per every ton of co2 released, it won't show in the GDP since USD1000 can get you more in that country.
In another example, due to inflation, while prices of goods and services go up, USD1000 will get you lesser and lesser. You have to do lesser and lesser to produce USD1000, which means even releasing less co2 per USD1000 made.
Therefore, carbon intensity can be brought down without reducing emissions or increasing real earnings simply due to inflation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SysZero (talk • contribs) 13:10, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Economists have standard tools for removing the effect of inflation, such as constant dollars. --Teratornis (talk) 08:16, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

World map

I take issue with the world map on this page. It shows carbon intensity as a function of GDP. I think a more sensible measure would be carbon intensity per capita. As it is, it is essentially just a map that highlights the poorest countries in the world. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.114.141.83 (talk) 00:14, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia has: List of countries by greenhouse gas emissions per capita. That's a different measure than greenhouse gas intensity. The most sensible measure of greenhouse gas emissions depends on the goals of the person using the measure. If the goal is to prevent dangerous climate change, then the only measure that matters is the total amount of emissions. The climate doesn't care how much money a person made by emitting, or whether emissions are unequal between countries and individuals. If instead the goal is to decide who will cut their emissions and by how much, then people can use various measures that highlight the disproportionate emissions between countries or between individuals and organizations within a country. Emission intensity is an interesting measure because almost everybody would like more wealth (i.e. greed is universal), and everybody who burns fossil fuels seems to make the argument that burning them is essential to generating wealth. If some countries burn far less fossil fuel to generate a unit of wealth than other countries, that puts pressure on the high emitters to explain why they have to burn more fuel to do the same job. --Teratornis (talk) 08:12, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Merge with Emission factor

Resolved

 – Emission factor is a redirect to Emission intensity

I propose merging carbon intensity with emission factor because both are short and cover essentially the same topic, i.e. a factor indicating the average emission rate of carbon dioxide or equivalents relative to the intensity of a specific activity. "Emission factor," "carbon intensity," or "emissions intensity" are all just different words for the same thing, and may apply to an electrical power plant, (g(CO2)/kWh,) a car, (g(CO2)/km,) a furnace, (g(CO2)/BTU,) the economy, (g(CO2)/$GDP,) or any other activity.--Yannick (talk) 03:00, 6 May 2009 (UTC)