First sign that humanity is slowing its carbon surge

"The three biggest emitters – China, the US and the European Union – which account for more than half of global emissions, all show this decoupling effect."

China's GDP numbers are pretty famously shaky, and a number of alternate indices have been proposed. For the US, a prolonged depression with some recovery, but largely in FIRE industries, would tend to create the appearance of growth. The EU is another mixed bag, though I haven't looked as closely at it. In all I find the premise highly suspect.

On the positive side: fuel switching (essentially anything but coal), and efficiency improvements (China's $GDP/bbl is less than half the US's, though Europe's overall economic output per unit energy is very high), might actually be starting to show an impact. Though you've got to be very careful for how you account for both the GDP and emissions sides of the equation here.

The coupling of energy utilization to GDP is so strong, and persists over such a long period of time (Gail Tverberg has used the Angus Maddison historical economic dataset to trace it back 2000 years, and I find she's also looked at the decoupling story), and recent research has shown that the "decoupling" touted in many "advanced" economies can be shown to actually be a shifting of fundamental inputs to exporting nations.

I've shown that the the growth in the economies of China and India are very strongly linked to growth in energy use from 1980 - 2010: https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/LyQx...

You can see the plots yourself using Wolfram Alpha:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=china++GDP+%2F+%28total...

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=india++GDP+%2F+%28total...

Additional references:

The Long-Term Tie Between Energy Supply, Population, and the Economy

Gail Tverberg, August 29, 2012

http://ourfiniteworld.com/2012/08/29/the-long-term-tie-betwe...

When a person looks back over history, the impression one gets is that the economy is a system that transforms resources, especially energy, into food and other goods that people need. As these goods become available, population grows. The more energy is consumed, the more the economy grows, and the faster world population grows. When little energy is added, economic growth proceeds slowly, and population growth is low.

Is It Really Possible to Decouple GDP Growth from Energy Growth?

Gail Tverberg, November 21, 2011

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8615

Prior to 2000, world real GDP (based on USDA Economic Research Institute data) was indeed growing faster than energy use, as measured by BP Statistical Data. Between 1980 and 2000, world real GDP growth averaged a little under 3% per year, and world energy growth averaged a little under 2% per year, so GDP growth increased about 1% more per year than energy use. Since 2000, energy use has grown approximately as fast as world real GDP–increases for both have averaged about 2.5% per year growth. This is not what we have been told to expect.

Study reveals 'true' material cost of development say researchers

Matt McGrath, 2 September 2013

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23931590

Current methods of measuring the full material cost of imported goods are highly inaccurate say researchers. In a new study, they found that three times as many raw materials are used to process and export traded goods than are used in their manufacture. Richer countries who believe they have succeeded in developing sustainably are mistaken say the authors.

On China's GDP data, two views:

How Reliable Are China's Economic Statistics?

Thomas Orlik, Jul 20, 2011

http://www.ftpress.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1732874&seqNu...

With so much attention on developments in the Chinese economy, the reliability of China's economic indicators has been the subject of some controversy. In the popular imagination, the production of China's economic data is regarded as a crude political farce: the controlling hand of the Communist Party intervening arbitrarily to direct the level of key indicators before they are published. In the past, that image was not too far from the reality.

Orlik concludes "The system is not perfect. Some data points are more reliable than others. But neither is it a farce."

FRB research suggests that Chinese data are at least "systematically related" to alternative indicators, though the norming is based on Chinese government statistics themselves:

On the Reliability of Chinese Output Figures

http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic...

Conclusion: We found that reported Chinese output data are systematically related to alternative indicators of Chinese economic activity. These include alternative indicator indexes of Chinese activity composed of variables that are less susceptible to official manipulation, as well as externally reported trade volume measures. Importantly, these models suggest that Chinese growth has been in the ballpark of what official data have reported. We find no evidence that recently reported Chinese GDP figures are less reliable than usual.

What we need is to eventually have net zero emissions, after a period of having emissions low enough to be taken in by oceanic uptake and reforestation. So obviously we are far, far away from that goal. And there is very broad scientific consensus that we need to get there.

Negative second derivative is good, since it implies we won't have exponential runaway in CO2 concentration. But it is just the first step on the way there.

There's lot of wishful thinking in the idea that emissions can be decoupled from GDP - in the same way that we can all return to ever-increasing house prices to boost personal wealth, without creating bubbles. There has to be a huge increase in efficiency and a huge decrease in demand for just about everything to bring this under some degree of control. The latter is probably unthinkable for most politicians, economists and pundits. It is just possible we can innovate a way out of this but that's going to need a whole lot of change in the next 30 years - not impossible but not easy either.

The modelling is so variable, incomplete and inconclusive from what I can see, it's almost down to whoever manages the most statistically significant mistake to come up with these numbers.

It is good news, I suppose, but we really should have been at this stage a long time ago. And emissions are still growing, just not as fast. We need to reduce emissions.

Decoupling emissions from economic growth sounds great, but it's only slightly decoupled. We still need to get rid of coal as soon as possible.

And the big economies need to have better energy solutions ready so the up-and-coming economies can use those, instead of their rapid growth sending coal use through the roof.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/06/greenhouse-gas-emis...