This is the sort of political image of CO2 emissions that you usually see presented. The Big Bad USA and Australia get most of the blame for CO2 emissions.
Image above from myclimatechange.net. Note that the artist could not have picked a worse image to portray the message since CO2 is heavier than air and in the real world, none of those balloons would float. Most people learn this in grade school. Even so, lighter than air CO2 balloons seem to be a recurring theme in warmland.
I ran across this interesting tidbit on CO2 emissions per capita which I found interesting. While many warmist organizations concentrate on pushing lifestyle changes related to CO2 emissions, we usually see that framed in reference to total CO2 emissions per country. When you look at the per capita values, an entirely different picture emerges.
LIST OF COUNTRIES RANKED BY 2006 TOTAL CO2 EMISSIONS FROM FOSSIL-FUEL
DATA : Marland, G., T.A. Boden, and R. J. Andres. 2008. Global, Regional, and National CO2 Emissions.
In Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/overview.html
(UNIT : Tons of CO2 per capita)
COUNTRY TONS OF CO2 PER CAPITA
Qatar 49.26
Kuwait 34.22
United-Arab-Emirates 32.94
Bahrain 28.62
Luxembourg 23.89
USA 18.95
Australia 17.93
Canada 16.65
Oman 16.03
Saudi-Arabia 16.03
Estonia 13.02
Finland 12.62
Kazakhstan 12.62
Singapore 12.51
Taiwan 11.93
Czech-Republic 11.16
Russia 10.94
Ireland 10.32
Netherlands 10.28
Japan 10.24
Belgium 10.17
Greenland 9.99
Israel 9.99
Denmark 9.91
South-Korea 9.8
Germany 9.77
Nor-ssb 9.59
United-Kingdom 9.04
South-Africa 8.74
Austria 8.67
Greece 8.63
Norway 8.6
Libya 8.27
Spain 7.97
Italy 7.72
New-Zealand 7.28
Iceland 7.24
Bosnia 7.13
Belarus 7.06
Malaysia 7.02
Slovakia 6.91
Ukraine 6.8
Iran 6.62
Venezuela 6.33
Bulgaria 6.22
France 6.18
Hungary 5.7
Portugal 5.67
Sweden 5.59
Switzerland 5.56
Croatia 5.3
Macedonia 5.3
China 4.64
Romania 4.53
Argentina 4.42
Uzbekistan 4.28
Lithuania 4.17
Thailand 4.17
Azerbaijan 4.13
Mexico 4.13
Lebanon 3.76
Jordan 3.69
Turkey 3.69
Chile 3.66
Mongolia 3.66
Syria 3.66
North-Korea 3.58
Latvia 3.25
Iraq 3.22
Botswana 2.78
Belize 2.67
Cuba 2.63
Egypt 2.26
Tunisia 2.26
Moldova 2.19
Uruguay 2.04
Brazil 1.86
Indonesia 1.5
Morocco 1.5
Namibia 1.39
Peru 1.39
Armenia 1.35
Columbia 1.35
India 1.35
Georgia 1.24
Vietnam 1.24
Bolivia 1.17
Kyrgyzstan 1.06
Yemen 1.02
Honduras 0.98
Guatemala 0.91
Pakistan 0.91
Angola 0.87
Swaziland 0.87
Western-Sahara 0.87
Zimbabwe 0.84
Palestine 0.76
Polen 0.76
Phillippines 0.76
Nigeria 0.69
Paraguay 0.65
Bhutan 0.58
Sri-Lanka 0.58
Congo 0.4
Ghana 0.4
Senegal 0.4
Benin 0.36
Kenya 0.32
Bangladesh 0.29
Cambodia 0.29
Sudan 0.29
Laos 0.25
Liberia 0.21
Zambia 0.21
Cameroon 0.18
Madagascar 0.14
Tanganyika 0.14
Tanzania 0.14
Eritrea 0.1
Mozambique 0.1
Nepal 0.1
Burkina-Faso 0.07
Ethiopia 0.07
Faroe-Islands 0.07
Rwanda 0.07
Burundi 0.03
Chad 0.03
Mali 0.03
(DATA : Marland, G., T.A. Boden, and R. J. Andres. 2008. Global, Regional, and National CO2 Emissions.
In Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/overview.html)
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Anthony, “The Big Bad USA and the UK get most of the blame for CO2 emissions.”
Actually I think you will see that Australia is villain number two – there is a white star on the balloon!
Regards
REPLY: Correct you are, didn’t notice that star. Fixed, thanks for pointing it out. – A
Considering the amount of hot air you put on this, I’m sure the updraft will let them go up. It’s that similar question to occasionally show up: How come CO2 gets to the stratosphere when it’s heavier than the other gases? Further, you do not know how warm the CO2 in the balloons is. It’s all about the ratios of displacement. Lastly, are these balloon held on a rope or on a stick ;?
REPLY:Rob, It’s called atmospheric mixing. CFC’s are also much heavier that air, and eventually migrate into the upper atmosphere.
Even if the balloon was filled with heated CO2, it won’t have any significant effect on buoyancy. It will still stay earthbound. If the atmosphere was made of sulfur hexaflouride, a CO2 filled balloon would indeed float.
As for your other comments, they are irrelevant and mostly just to satisfy your need to poke silly jabs. Talk about “hot air”.- Anthony
Per Capita is a false metric and is useless in determining CO2 emissions or reductions. Here is why.
If canda wanted a 85% reduction in CO2 Emissions we could simple immigrate 300 Million Chinese and Indian subsistence farmers and give them the same conditions that they have now. No power, little aid and only small bit of land to live off of.
Nothing would need to be different for anyone else, and our per Capita number would be one of the lowest and China and India’s would hardly register the change.
If a country has 60% of its population in subsistence living conditions they could effectively pollute 10 times worse than an industrialized country like Canada with the 12th largest economy and only 33 Million people on the 2nd largest area. Without regional factors such as cooling and heating requirements due to climate (actual natural climate), travel distances, HDI ranking, percentage of poverty and Economic output and trade activity factored in the per capita number is useless and misleading.
I am sorry but this metric has always driven me up the wall, it is such a ridiculous way to look at the real world.
We should just make everyone happy and live like they do in Mali. We’re such awful people for wanting to live longer than 33 years.
Of course C02 is lighter than air! You can see the filthy, evil, dangerous stuff pouring out of smokestacks and out of car tailpipes rising up into the atmosphere. Sarc/off
All things are possible in warmland. The laws of physics do not apply there. Nor do little things like truth, honesty or integrity.
I think someone needs to add an ‘n’ or take out an ‘e’ in the word ‘tones’ in the graph.
Unless they got the noise pollution graph crossed up with the CO2 graph. Easy to do.
Probably because if they go over there to protest, they’d be tossed in one of their nasty, not so nice, prisons.
What the hell is “equivalent carbon”? Some major games are being played here.
My question though is…what is the difference between the above list and another list linked on the same page? Maybe I’m stupid, but why the big difference?
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/top2006.tot
Ranking of the world’s countries by 2006 total CO2 emissions
from fossil-fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring.
Emissions (CO2_TOT) are expressed in thousand metric tons of
carbon (not CO2).
Source: Tom Boden, Gregg Marland, and Bob Andres
Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
RANK NATION CO2_TOT
1 CHINA (MAINLAND) 1664589
2 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 1568806
3 RUSSIAN FEDERATION 426728
4 INDIA 411914
5 JAPAN 352748
6 GERMANY 219570
7 UNITED KINGDOM 155051
8 CANADA 148549
9 REPUBLIC OF KOREA 129613
10 ITALY (INCLUDING SAN MARINO) 129313
11 ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN 127357
12 MEXICO 118950
13 SOUTH AFRICA 113086
14 FRANCE (INCLUDING MONACO) 104495
15 SAUDI ARABIA 104063
16 AUSTRALIA 101458
17 BRAZIL 96143
18 SPAIN 96064
19 INDONESIA 90950
20 UKRAINE 87043
I’ve had this exact argument with various Green Euro Trash types.
Show us the Tons CO2 versus GDP.
Admittedly that’s going to vary strongly over time with the value of the currency in which the output is measured, but the real issue for Greens SHOULD be the EFFICIENCY of the use of fossil fuels.
The fact that it isn’t is proof of their Malthusian prejudices.
To borrow a little from George Orwell, Two Legs Bad.
Oh, and I found the per capita list interesting, too.
Now if only the U.S. could be more like Burundi, Chad, and Mali, all at 0.03… yeah, right.
The image is also deceptive, because the balloons are three-dimensional objects with volume proportional to the cube of height. This makes the US “tons per capita” look much, much bigger relative to the other nations than it actually is. Also the balloons start at the “1” mark rather than at the “0” mark, which makes the difference even more disproportionate.
For example, eyeballing the heights, the US is 6.6 and Belgium is 4.3, which means that Americans use about 1 and a half times as much as Belgians. But going by the balloons as objects with volume which start at the “1” mark, the US is (5.6)^3 (about 176), and Belgium is (3.3)^3 (about 36). The ratio of these is about 5, making it look as though Americans are using 5 times as much as Belgians.
So the graphic, deliberately or not, effectively lies, turning a ratio of 1.5 into a ratio of 5.
No wonder China and India have said they’ll only join in on a per capita basis.
By the way, that’s the Australian flag right beside the U.S. in the per country balloon cartoon, not the UK.
Actually, the most disingenuous part of this graph is they that are using ‘balloons’ to indicate amount
– this subjectively give a larger impression for increasing values – since volume depends R^3 (radius cubed)
– so that although the USA balloon is (about) 6x taller than India’s, it’s value is actually about 216 times
– so it *seems* much larger than the numbers actually indicate…..
If the volumes of the balloons were proportional to the volume of CO2 emitted, then the USA balloon would be about 80% taller than Indias (6^0.3)
Where do I get my balloon from ?
Can we see it listed as CO2 per unit of economic output? Say CO2 divided by GDP? I think when measured in that way, the US has a pretty efficient economy. Energy use is directly related of GDP. You can not produce something without expending energy to do it. If you double your apple production, you have to make twice as many runs to cold storage. If you add a second shift at your plant, you need to run your machines longer.
Energy consumption is generally directly proportional to GDP so all this diagram really shows is per capita GDP with a multiplier for energy efficiency.
In fact, Anthony had a graph here a few days ago that showed CO2 emissions dropping with the economic slump. The connection is very well known and was first written about, that I saw, in the 1970’s. I can’t remember who wrote it but basically the notion was that simply per capita energy consumption is not a valid comparison for efficiency. If a person is more productive, they must use more energy. The correct measurement is energy consumption per unit of economic output. The lower that number, the more efficient an economy is in its energy use,
Re: Sekerob’s comments.
Are you for real? How come?
Not got the idea yet? Only the West can be guilty of all the heinous crimes in the world, while everyone else is entirely innocent. That’s just the way things are, self-hatred is so de rigueur.
The lesson for next week is the adoption of the ritual abasement of Ashura:
http://www.factsofisrael.com/en/images/articles/lebanon-muslims.jpg
Just keep lashing until you are truly sorry for being guilty – not for anything in particular, but for everything.
This is Original Sin MkII, a key foundation of every religion. You cannot be controlled unless you are guilty (sinners) and in a state of abject contrition – only then can the great deity intervene and save you (control you).
.
Also, this notion of comparison is extremely dangerous. It implies that it would be a good idea to get a country’s per capita consumption down. That means they believe that it is a good idea to deflate the economies of certain countries and inflate the economies of others. Basically they are using CO2 emissions, again, to justify a global “redistribution of wealth” by hamstringing economic expansion in some places while placing no such limits on others.
Yes, if we plowed fields with water buffalo, took crops to market with donkey and ox carts, and had an automobile adoption rate like that of Burma, our per capita CO2 would be lower. But at the same time, our production would be minimal and a good number of people in this world would starve as a result.
>>>I think someone needs to add an ‘n’ or take out an ‘e’
>>>in the word ‘tones’ in the graph.
European spelling, chum. We speak proper ‘ere, Yankee-boy, especially with all those Froggy influences.
.
Bruce Cobb:
Hot gases rise, and diffuse into the surrounding gas volume. Thus, the hot CO2 and water vapor from an exhaust stack on a power plant do indeed rise.
Plume modeling of gases is a well-known activity. Temperature of the exhaust stack is one key variable, also exit velocity, composition of the exhaust, height of the stack above ground, wind direction and velocity, and perhaps a few others.
This graph is in my eys not rellevant to the debate. It’s not the amount that matters but the effect. And i place my questionmarks at the effect of Co2. Considering the argument that Co2 is good for food.
This is a classic lying with statistics image. As Constant points out the ballon icon is 3 or 2-dimensonal and the relative sizes should be adjusted accordingly or the image should be changed to a bar or line. It is also an essentially meaningless graph if the idea is to show that we are in some sense wasteful in our production of Carbon. For example, if we had the same Hydro-electric resources and population concentration as Sweden what would our C production be? Australia looks particularly bad because they have little Hydro capacity and a relatively low population density compared to most developed countries. Now Belgium, home of all those Eurocrats, looks like a great C sinner!
Mark (09:41:25) : Per capita. As in, divide those numbers by the number of people. So the US for instance, divide by 300 million. And China, divide by something like 1.5 billion.
What would be much more informative is the ratios of emissions to GDP. Considering our productivity, our high emissions make sense.
This is, of course, the goal of One Worlders, like Obama and Blair. In order to institute a One World Government, the rich countries have to be brought down to the economic level of the poorer nations.
It sounds like a pipe-dream, and it probably is, but in order to get there they will have to make you, me and our children MUCH poorer. Sorry, I don’t subscribe to that philosophy.
Take your pick, there are lots of books out there on this topic.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0978252659
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/COURSES/GENS4008/book.html
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