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)
Here we go, CO2 to GDP:
The US is more efficient than Sweden or Iceland. In fact, the US is way down the list.
(((((((America))))))))
Bugger! we’re 36th!!!! come on new zealand, start pulling yah A game, we can do better than that! We cant let Australia beat us at this!
If the UN gets their way, everybody will have equitable global per-capita CO2 emissions by 2100.
A problem with GDP is that it is based on even dodgier maths than climate science.
On the ‘tone’ thing- I go with tonne for the metric version although I’d prefer a tun as in 3 firkins.
When will Greenpeace lead the way by adopting the lifestyle in Mali?
Sheesh! Here we go again!
When does the U.S. get credit for allowing so much of our land to grow fallow and revert to forests? Near as I can remember (based on a Science article, IIRC), the total amount of carbon sequesteration into our forests equals about 25-40% of our total anthropogenic carbon generation. Whether we do it by intent or not, we deserve that credit since our decision to leave land fallow is an American cultural decision. So, knock down our net carbon generation by 37,000 to 64,000 thousand metric tons per year (thanks to Oak Ridge on the numbers). (As an aside, based on this metric, could Canada approach carbon-neutral status today? As an American, just wondering if our northern neighbors have factored this into their calcs). Anyway, that puts our per capita net carbon production at 11.2-14.2 tons per capita. So, China, starting to sweat over your 4.64 tons per capita rate which is rapidly increasing relative to the West? Particularly since your carbon growth is on the order of 10% greater than ours on a per capita basis since 2006.
crosspatch (10:32:22) :
uhhh… I think you may be reading that chart backwards, patch. The chart shows dollars produced per ton, not tons produced per dollar. I think it shows Sweden and Iceland to be much more efficient than the U.S. – the U.S. is producing less GDP per ton than all the countries above it.
Looks to me like about 50 – 60 China balloons could fit inside that big American balloon, maybe more. This is another version of a Mann hockey stick.
China’s population is a little over four times that of the U.S. — and China’s gross CO2 emissions are already significantly higher than America’s. So you can see the graphic is pure propaganda [in addition to the plain fact that CO2 is beneficial plant food, and otherwise completely benign].
The per capita argument is also bunkum. There is only one atmosphere, so the only honest way to show emissions is by a per country comparison.
‘Per capita’ has nothing to do with atmospheric emissions; it is a statistical trick. A poor country won’t have any pollution abatement controls on its wood and charcoal cooking fires that millions burn multiple times every day of the year. So on the whole, the poor country emits massive amounts of per capita particulates compared with developed countries.
Keep in mind that there is only one atmosphere. Countries are run by national governments. Those governments could reduce their atmospheric emissions. But there is no way that China, India, Russia, and a hundred smaller parasitic UN countries are going to reduce their CO2 emissions. Privately, they are screaming with laughter at the fools in the U.S. who believe that CO2 is a problem, as they watch treacherous climate alarmists within try to cause as much industrial self-destruction as possible, based on the deluded notion that carbon dioxide is anything but beneficial.
And it should also be kept in mind that a large part of the U.S.’s emissions are a direct result of international demand for U.S. products. The U.S. is an exporting country. When a company in another country orders, for example, a CNC lathe from a U.S. company, or a shipload of wheat from U.S. farms, all of the emissions resulting from building or growing that export item are blamed on the U.S., even though the demand came from over seas.
It is really getting tedious listening to the anti-U.S. propaganda constantly being emitted by the loathsome Left in this country.
This CO2 first world stupidity is really wearysome. Let´s pledge God to freeze all GWrs. in the next winter and bury them for ever under a mile of ice!
Constant (09:49:09) : re: graphic lies
Does make me wonder if the folks doing these things use Huff’s “How to Lie with Statistics” as a reference.
Here is one that’s even better. Income vs. CO2 emissions … The life expectancy vs. CO2 emissions is also interesting.
http://tinyurl.com/l2skkc
Per Capita… What a meaningless metric………. This is a better way of stating the facts of CO2…. The higher the life expectancy and the better the standard of living the more CO2 a caring country produces…….. See, CO2 means longer life!!!
crosspatch (10:32:22) : Thanks. Chad is really bizarre. That’s insane “efficiency” right there. A GDP to Emissions ratio of 35.368? Holy moly!
crosspatch (10:32:22) :
You’ve inverted the results. Its GDP / emissions, making the US less efficient than Europe. Switzerland is the most efficient industrialized country, maybe due to its heavy weighting in financials rather than manufacturing. My country, Canada, is way down the list.
Its interesting that so many of the oil producing Middle East nations are way down the list. Why don’t the CAGW alarmists target those nations? Rhetorical question.
MikeE (10:43:53) :
Relax, Kiwi… you’re 3.093 beats the Aussies’ 1.957 hands down. Heck, you guys could easily build a bunch of coal fired plants and still be ahead!
It is interesting to note that both Sweden and France rank higher in the chart crosspatch referenced, indicating a greater ratio of GDP produced per ton of emissions, and both those countries have a much greater percentage of their power produced by nuclear plants (42% for Sweden, 76.2% for France) than does the United States (19.7%).
ref: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/nshare.html
All of the comparisons we’ve seen comparing CO2 to ________ (fill in your choice) are inadequate because they are partial pictures and in a sense compare apples to pineapples. Some countries, like Chad, have a high GDP to CO2 production ratio because they have a very low GDP and an even smaller CO2 production rate. Chad isn’t “efficient”… it is simply poor. God save us from Chadian levels of CO2 efficiency.
Hilarious, Qatar is top because it has a tiny population yet has the highest economic activity on the planet putting in facilities to keep the Gulf and half the world in energy for the next 50 years with its gas reserves. Is there no limit to warmist stupidity apart from CO2 balloons? Any ideas why Australia is so high supplying the world with natural resources as it does.
Constant (09:49:09) : — re misleading 3 dimensional figure.
That trick of using 3 dimensional figures is an old trick. The first time I saw a discussion of that was in the 1954 book “How to Lie with Statistics”.
2 times the linear dimension means 8 times the volume. So it makes a doubling subconsciously look like multiplying by a factor of 8.
Use of such a figure should set off alarm bells of potential bias.
oakgeo (11:25:51) : France is interesting too, surely due in part to their extensive use of nuclear power.
Bernie (10:26:48)
We, Sweden, has a lot of nuclear too, I believe it’s about as much as hydro.
Can anyone tell me where to find that country Italia?
Uhm, yeah, looks like I did.
Still, we are more efficient than Canada, Russia, China, Mexico, Turkey, South Korea, And if went massively nuclear like France and Japan, we could do much better.
Does everyone in Mali have a “green job”?
As well as all the other caveats mentioned above, the question of climate is also important. Canada is only habitable because we have the ability to heat our houses, our shops, our workplaces and our cars.
BTW, how do the compilers of these statistics take into account the burning of animal dung in Mongolia (et al) to provide winter heat? Do they count the pieces? Is it turty tree and a turd (french Canadian answer to 100 divided by 3).
alaskabill:
Perhaps so. Or, possibly, nobody has a job. Yup, that sounds like Van Jones’ game plan.