On Climate Recently

Elasticity is a thing. 

We can get a spike in prices long after supply has caught up with demand.

We can see unemployment drop even after the economy starts to go south.

Etc

So 45* can crow about how US carbon emissions have been nice and low - surprising everybody by saying something that's more or less true - even as his "cabinet" and "policies-makers" are busily pulling shit on us that all but ensure a worse-than-normal outcome down the road.

And that down-the-road thing can come up pretty fast - there's always a Snap-Back.

Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis, WaPo:

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions rose an estimated 3.4 percent in 2018, according to new research — a jarring increase that comes as scientists say the world needs to be aggressively cutting its emissions to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change.

The findings, published Tuesday by the independent economic research firm Rhodium Group, mean that the United States now has a diminishing chance of meeting its pledge under the 2015 Paris climate agreement to dramatically reduce its emissions by 2025.

The findings also underscore how the world’s second-largest emitter, once a global leader in pushing for climate action, has all but abandoned efforts to mitigate the effects of a warming world. President Trump has said he plans to officially withdraw the nation from the Paris climate agreement in 2020 and in the meantime has rolled back Obama-era regulations aimed at reducing the country’s carbon emissions.

“We have lost momentum. There’s no question,” Rob Jackson, a Stanford University professor who studies emissions trends, said of both U.S. and global efforts to steer the world toward a more sustainable future.

The sharp emissions rise was fueled primarily by a booming economy, researchers found. But the increase, which could prove to be the second-largest in the past 20 years, probably would not have been as stark withoutTrump administration rollbacks, said Trevor Houser, a partner at Rhodium.

“I don’t think you would have seen the same increase,” Houser said, referring to the electric power sector in particular.