Greenhouse gas emissionsGreenhouse gas emissions (abbreviated as GHG emissions) from human activities strengthen the greenhouse effect, contributing to climate change. Carbon dioxide (), from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas, is one of the most important factors in causing climate change. The largest emitters are China followed by the US, although the United States has higher emissions per capita. The main producers fueling the emissions globally are large oil and gas companies.
Carbon footprintThe carbon footprint (or greenhouse gas footprint) serves as an indicator to compare the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted from an activity, product, company or country. Carbon footprints are usually reported in tons of emissions (CO2-equivalent) per unit of comparison; such as per year, person, kg protein, km travelled and alike. For a product, its carbon footprint includes the emissions for the entire life cycle from the production along the supply chain to its final consumption and disposal.
Greenhouse gas inventoryGreenhouse gas inventories are emission inventories of greenhouse gas emissions that are developed for a variety of reasons. Scientists use inventories of natural and anthropogenic (human-caused) emissions as tools when developing atmospheric models. Policy makers use inventories to develop strategies and policies for emissions reductions and to track the progress of those policies. Regulatory agencies and corporations also rely on inventories to establish compliance records with allowable emission rates.
Carbon taxA carbon tax is a tax levied on the carbon emissions required to produce goods and services. Carbon taxes are intended to make visible the "hidden" social costs of carbon emissions, which are otherwise felt only in indirect ways like more severe weather events. In this way, they are designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by increasing prices of the fossil fuels that emit them when burned. This both decreases demand for goods and services that produce high emissions and incentivizes making them less carbon-intensive.
Greenhouse gas emissions from agricultureThe amount of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture is significant: The agriculture, forestry and land use sector contribute between 13% and 21% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture contributes towards climate change through direct greenhouse gas emissions and by the conversion of non-agricultural land such as forests into agricultural land. Emissions of nitrous oxide, methane make up over half of total greenhouse gas emission from agriculture. Animal husbandry is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions.
Carbon accountingCarbon accounting (or greenhouse gas accounting) is a framework of methods to measure and track how much greenhouse gas (GHG) an organization emits. It can also be used to track projects or actions to reduce emissions in sectors such as forestry or renewable energy. Corporations, cities and other groups use these techniques to help limit climate change. Organizations will often set an emissions baseline, create targets for reducing emissions, and track progress towards them.
Politics of climate changeThe politics of climate change results from different perspectives on how to respond to climate change. Global warming is driven largely by the emissions of greenhouse gases due to human economic activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels, certain industries like cement and steel production, and land use for agriculture and forestry. Since the Industrial Revolution, fossil fuels have provided the main source of energy for economic and technological development.
Distribution (economics)In economics, distribution is the way total output, income, or wealth is distributed among individuals or among the factors of production (such as labour, land, and capital). In general theory and in for example the U.S. National Income and Product Accounts, each unit of output corresponds to a unit of income. One use of national accounts is for classifying factor incomes and measuring their respective shares, as in national Income. But, where focus is on income of persons or households, adjustments to the national accounts or other data sources are frequently used.
Economic analysis of climate changeThe economic analysis of climate change explains how economic thinking, tools and techniques are applied to calculate the magnitude and distribution of damage caused by climate change. It also informs the policies and approaches for mitigation and adaptation to climate change from global to household scales. This topic is also inclusive of alternative economic approaches, including ecological economics and degrowth. Economic analysis of climate change is considered challenging as it is a long-term problem and has substantial distributional issues within and across countries.
Carbon fee and dividendA carbon fee and dividend or climate income is a system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change. The system imposes a carbon tax on the sale of fossil fuels, and then distributes the revenue of this tax over the entire population (equally, on a per-person basis) as a monthly income or regular payment. Since the adoption of the system in Canada and Switzerland, it has gained increased interest worldwide as a cross-sector and socially just approach to reducing emissions and tackling climate change.
Pareto distributionThe Pareto distribution, named after the Italian civil engineer, economist, and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto, is a power-law probability distribution that is used in description of social, quality control, scientific, geophysical, actuarial, and many other types of observable phenomena; the principle originally applied to describing the distribution of wealth in a society, fitting the trend that a large portion of wealth is held by a small fraction of the population.
Normal distributionIn statistics, a normal distribution or Gaussian distribution is a type of continuous probability distribution for a real-valued random variable. The general form of its probability density function is The parameter is the mean or expectation of the distribution (and also its median and mode), while the parameter is its standard deviation. The variance of the distribution is . A random variable with a Gaussian distribution is said to be normally distributed, and is called a normal deviate.
Binomial distributionIn probability theory and statistics, the binomial distribution with parameters n and p is the discrete probability distribution of the number of successes in a sequence of n independent experiments, each asking a yes–no question, and each with its own Boolean-valued outcome: success (with probability p) or failure (with probability ). A single success/failure experiment is also called a Bernoulli trial or Bernoulli experiment, and a sequence of outcomes is called a Bernoulli process; for a single trial, i.
Ratio distributionA ratio distribution (also known as a quotient distribution) is a probability distribution constructed as the distribution of the ratio of random variables having two other known distributions. Given two (usually independent) random variables X and Y, the distribution of the random variable Z that is formed as the ratio Z = X/Y is a ratio distribution. An example is the Cauchy distribution (also called the normal ratio distribution), which comes about as the ratio of two normally distributed variables with zero mean.
Environmental effects of aviationAircraft engines produce gases, noise, and particulates from fossil fuel combustion, raising environmental concerns over their global effects and their effects on local air quality. Jet airliners contribute to climate change by emitting carbon dioxide (), the best understood greenhouse gas, and, with less scientific understanding, nitrogen oxides, contrails and particulates. Their radiative forcing is estimated at 1.3–1.4 that of alone, excluding induced cirrus cloud with a very low level of scientific understanding.
Government budget balanceThe government budget balance, also referred to as the general government balance, public budget balance, or public fiscal balance, is the difference between government revenues and spending. For a government that uses accrual accounting (rather than cash accounting) the budget balance is calculated using only spending on current operations, with expenditure on new capital assets excluded. A positive balance is called a government budget surplus, and a negative balance is a government budget deficit.
Probability distributionIn probability theory and statistics, a probability distribution is the mathematical function that gives the probabilities of occurrence of different possible outcomes for an experiment. It is a mathematical description of a random phenomenon in terms of its sample space and the probabilities of events (subsets of the sample space). For instance, if X is used to denote the outcome of a coin toss ("the experiment"), then the probability distribution of X would take the value 0.5 (1 in 2 or 1/2) for X = heads, and 0.
Rank–size distributionRank–size distribution is the distribution of size by rank, in decreasing order of size. For example, if a data set consists of items of sizes 5, 100, 5, and 8, the rank-size distribution is 100, 8, 5, 5 (ranks 1 through 4). This is also known as the rank–frequency distribution, when the source data are from a frequency distribution. These are particularly of interest when the data vary significantly in scales, such as city size or word frequency.
Life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of energy sourcesGreenhouse gas emissions are one of the environmental impacts of electricity generation. Measurement of life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions involves calculating the global warming potential of energy sources through life-cycle assessment. These are usually sources of only electrical energy but sometimes sources of heat are evaluated. The findings are presented in units of global warming potential per unit of electrical energy generated by that source.
Balanced budgetA balanced budget (particularly that of a government) is a budget in which revenues are equal to expenditures. Thus, neither a budget deficit nor a budget surplus exists (the accounts "balance"). More generally, it is a budget that has no budget deficit, but could possibly have a budget surplus. A cyclically balanced budget is a budget that is not necessarily balanced year-to-year but is balanced over the economic cycle, running a surplus in boom years and running a deficit in lean years, with these offsetting over time.
