Is the difference between emissions and emission that the former is noun and the latter a verb? I’m having one of those say it over and over and over again moments where the distinction has become blurred.
The government imposed restrictions on carbon emissions.
The government imposed restrictions on carbon emission.
Global greenhouse gas emissions rose last year.
Global greenhouse gas emission rose last year.
The program offers help to prospective emissions reduction projects.
The program offers help to prospective emission reduction projects.
The factory reduced its overall carbon emissions by 10 percent.
The factory reduced its overall carbon emission by 10 percent.
Noun or verb, don’t these sentences communicate the same thing?
It’s just standard pluralisation. Emmissions can come from many sources. If you wish to refer to a specific source then you say “emmission”, if you wish to refer to all sources you say emissions. Just like any other process noun.
Compare it to the word “investigation”.
“The government imposed restrictions on investigation.”. Restricts invetsigation only of the specific subject under consideration
“The DA’s department reduced its overall investigation by 10 percent”. Only the investigation pertaining to the topic at hand was reduced.
“The DA’s department reduced its overall invetsigations by 10 percent.” All investigations were reduced.
Where you’ve puralised the subject (project/s) or made the subject universal (global) either is acceptable because your specific is general or vice versa.
In short you would normally expect to see “carbon emission” for specific subjects and “carbon emissions” as a blanket term .
For example
“A restriction on carbon emission from the Detroit plant will be used to offset projected emmisions increase form other sectors”.
Or
“Carbon emission from the experimental plant is 0.01 T/yr compared to emissions in the range of 2T/year from competing technologies”.
Where you have some ambiguity about whether you are referring to a specifc time and event or multiple times and events then the terms are approximately interchangable as with any other process noun.