Anybody who has watched the march of jobs overseas already knows this, but it is nice to see science has finally caught up with what we already knew years ago. Look for more of this if a Cap and Trade bill passes in the U.S.. Senator Kerry says it has a “short fuse”. I don’t think it means what he thinks it does. – Anthony
Carbon emissions ‘outsourced’ to developing countries
Palo Alto, CA— A new study by scientists at the Carnegie Institution finds that over a third of carbon dioxide emissions associated with consumption of goods and services in many developed countries are actually emitted outside their borders. Some countries, such as Switzerland, “outsource” over half of their carbon dioxide emissions, primarily to developing countries. The study finds that, per person, about 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide are consumed in the U.S. but produced somewhere else. For Europeans, the figure can exceed four tons per person. Most of these emissions are outsourced to developing countries, especially China.
“Instead of looking at carbon dioxide emissions only in terms of what is released inside our borders, we also looked at the amount of carbon dioxide released during the production of the things that we consume,” says co-author Ken Caldeira, a researcher in the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology.
Caldeira and lead author Steven Davis, also at Carnegie, used published trade data from 2004 to create a global model of the flow of products across 57 industry sectors and 113 countries or regions. By allocating carbon emissions to particular products and sources, the researchers were able to calculate the net emissions “imported” or “exported” by specific countries.
“Just like the electricity that you use in your home probably causes CO2 emissions at a coal-burning power plant somewhere else, we found that the products imported by the developed countries of western Europe, Japan, and the United States cause substantial emissions in other countries, especially China,” says Davis. “On the flip side, nearly a quarter of the emissions produced in China are ultimately exported.”
Over a third of the carbon dioxide emissions linked to good and services consumed in many European countries actually occurred elsewhere, the researchers found. In Switzerland and several other small countries, outsourced emissions exceeded the amount of carbon dioxide emitted within national borders.
The United States is both a major importer and a major exporter of emissions embodied in trade. The net result is that the U.S. outsources about 11% of total consumption-based emissions, primarily to the developing world.
The researchers point out that regional climate policy needs to take into account emissions embodied in trade, not just domestic emissions.
“Our analysis of the carbon dioxide emissions associated with consumption in each country just states the facts,” says Caldeira. “This could be taken into consideration when developing emissions targets for these countries, but that’s a decision for policy-makers. One implication of emissions outsourcing is that a lot of the consumer products that we think of as being relatively carbon-free may in fact be associated with significant carbon dioxide emissions.”
“Where CO2 emissions occur doesn’t matter to the climate system,” adds Davis. “Effective policy must have global scope. To the extent that constraints on developing countries’ emissions are the major impediment to effective international climate policy, allocating responsibility for some portion of these emissions to final consumers elsewhere may represent an opportunity for compromise.”
The report is published online in the March 1, 2010 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Convincing China to rein in their economic growth is a pretty big ‘ask’ and probably impossible.
China is delighted to be part of an organisation that is hell-bent on destroying Western economies but when it comes time for their turn we’ll be unsurprised to see their reluctance, as evidenced by their objection at Copenhagen to independent inspection of carbon credit sites.
In Norway’s plan to meet it’s aggressive co2 emission cut goals, more use of first generation imported biofuels is an important element. The plan explicitly states that co2 emissions due to production will be charged to the production country’s co2 account. So the plan is to export both emissions and possibly famine to the third world – from a country rich on fossil fuel. It’s a crazy and cruel world 🙁
This counting of where exactly CO2 is produced looks to me like a bizarre ritual of the AGW religion, of course. The AGW juggernaut will next talk about introducing import tariffs. As usual, the law of unintended consequences will strike again and they’ll unintentionally wreck some economies even more. It will be rather painful to watch.
New Zealand is one of the few countries outside of Europe that has an emissions trading scheme. Yet we mine coal and export most of it.
The biggest markets are Japan at 41% and India at 23%
To my knowledge, neither of these countries has an emissions trading scheme
http://www.coalnz.com/index.cfm/1,144,0,0,html/International-Markets
Coal NZ spent a lot of money relocating a rare species of snail that was threatened by a coal operation
http://www.coalnz.com/index.cfm/1,250,0,49,html/Snail-the-Movie
While I don’t have a problem with this per se, this contradiction of our domestic policies and our willingness to export fossil fuels has always puzzled me.
This has been pretty obvious for a while. I think the statistics is something like a quarter of US manufacturing went abroad at a time when there was an “unexplained” drop in energy usage by about 25% over what you would have expected.
And some politicians had the gall to suggest they were responsible for keeping carbon emissions (balony) under control! … Which I suppose was true in a way given their attitude to UK engineering and manufacturing!
Nice to see that India is carbon neutral.
Pachauri must be proud!
” “Where CO2 emissions occur doesn’t matter to the climate system,” adds Davis.” LOL – How true 😀
“Levin said he would also seek another postponement … if a border adjustment plan had not been fully implemented that would add tariffs for carbon-intensive goods imported from developing countries without adequate climate policies of their own.”
Looks like they are indeed thinking about CO2 export taxes. Maybe I should become a carbon smuggler.
Not only manufacturing jobs to China, but service jobs to India. I have been a mainframe apps programer for 30 years and noticed this pattern accelerate since the millenium. It is a given that most mainframe projects are outsourced to India, but not so many people realise that there are a lot of PC or client based projects going out there as well.
What really surprised me though, was when a colleague told me that now real estate conveyancing is being outsourced to India (for non Brits, that comprises the land and deed searches an attorney’s firm performs for home buyers). So you have a PC in India doing UK land bureau searches via the internet and emailing the report back to the attorney’s office in the UK.
When manufacturing jobs were offshored, they told us we were now a service economy. When service jobs are offshored what kind of economy does that make us then?
“Andy Scrase (00:39:58) :
New Zealand is one of the few countries outside of Europe that has an emissions trading scheme. Yet we mine coal and export most of it.”
And in Australia, we do export massive volumes of coal too (And LNG at stupid prices to China, I think about AU$4 a tonne!!!!). What the ETS means is that “developing” countries will be paid to emit CO2 by “developed” countries via their ETS systems.
Wealth redistribution (After being “filtered” by Govn’ts, crooks and Al Gore types. Oh did I use Govn’ts, Al Gore and crooks in the same sentence? Bugger!).
“Vincent (01:14:17) : ”
I hear ya. Outsourcing happened in Australia before Y2K, circa 1998, with a marjor bank, branches closed etc. Of cource it looked great for the bottom line, but customers gave them the finger and moved. Bank helpdesks not based in Australia didn’t bode well with the Australian public and still don’t.
“China is by far the largest “exporter” of carbon dioxide emissions”
The logic is unclear here (and true, the arrows on the Carnegie picture don’t clarify). The text says:
Most of these emissions are outsourced to developing countries, especially China.
Andy Scrase (00:39:58) says
‘New Zealand is one of the few countries outside of Europe that has an emissions trading scheme. Yet we mine coal and export most of it.
While I don’t have a problem with this per se, this contradiction of our domestic policies and our willingness to export fossil fuels has always puzzled me.’
Well that is an understatement. It is hypocritical and demonstrates a cynical contempt of the intelligence of New Zealanders for not being able to see through it. Either that or they don’t really subscribe to CAGW and are only interested in the potential tax take. As for the MSM here, it’s a non event – they are more interested in lagging behind Australia’s economy or the cricket.
Doug.
The following particularly interesting peer reviewed paper appeared recently. It deals with the climate model of Roe & Baker and shows up some of its serious shortcomings. I’m not a climate specialist; I’m only a humble nuclear physicist. However, if the Roe & Baker model underpins important aspects of the AR4 then it may well be worth your taking a look. If Zallapin is right then the climate model in question represents yet another serious ‘mistake’.
Roe, G. H. and Baker, M. B.: Why is climate sensitivity so unpredictable?
Science, 318, Issue: 5850, 629–632, 2007.
Another Look at Climate Sensitivity
Manuscript prepared for Nonlin. Processes Geophys.
with version 1.3 of the LATEX class copernicus.cls.
Date: 1 March 2010
arXiv:1003.0253v1 [physics.ao-ph] 1 Mar 2010
Ilya Zaliapin1 and Michael Ghil2
1Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Nevada, Reno, USA. E-mail: zal@unr.edu.
2Geosciences Department and Laboratoire de M´et´eorologie Dynamique (CNRS and IPSL), Ecole Normale Sup´erieure, Paris,
FRANCE, and Department of Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences and Institute of Geophysics & Planetary Physics, University
of California, Los Angeles, USA. E-mail: ghil@atmos.ucla.edu.
Abstract. We revisit a recent claim that the Earth’s climate
system is characterized by sensitive dependence to parameters;
in particular, that the system exhibits an asymmetric,
large-amplitude response to normally distributed feedback
forcing. Such a response would imply irreducible uncertainty
in climate change predictions and thus have notable
implications for climate science and climate-related policy
making. We show that equilibrium climate sensitivity in
all generality does not support such an intrinsic indeterminacy;
the latter appears only in essentially linear systems.
The main flaw in the analysis that led to this claim is inappropriate
linearization of an intrinsically nonlinear model;
there is no room for physical interpretations or policy conclusions
based on this mathematical error. Sensitive dependence
nonetheless does exist in the climate system, as well
as in climate models— albeit in a very different sense from
the one claimed in the linear work under scrutiny— and we
illustrate it using a classical energy balance model (EBM)
with nonlinear feedbacks. EBMs exhibit two saddle-node bifurcations,
more recently called “tipping points,” which give
rise to three distinct steady-state climates, two of which are
stable. Such bistable behavior is, furthermore, supported by
results from more realistic, nonequilibrium climate models.
In a truly nonlinear setting, indeterminacy in the size of the
response is observed only in the vicinity of tipping points.
We show, in fact, that small disturbances cannot result in
a large-amplitude response, unless the system is at or near
such a point. We discuss briefly how the distance to the bifurcation
may be related to the strength of Earth’s ice-albedo feedback.
Correspondence to: Ilya Zaliapin (zal@unr.edu)
The truth for New Zealand’s economy, if we were to properly address co2 emissions, is that we should close down our pastoral industries and our tourist industries because they are the greatest source of GHG emissions in NZ. This would just about close the county down – so we would be reduced to subsistence standard of living.
Doug
Nothing surprises me in this post.
OT, I have just received this morning an outcome from my UK Government complaint on its “Act on CO2” ad campaign screened on UK tv & in cinemas, etc.
As I said in a previous post, the “outcome” was completely & utterly predictable & no breeches of standards were made by the advertisers or Government. All the usual suspects were quoted by the Department for Energy and Climate Change, the UN, the IPCC, WMO, UNEPP, local energy suppliers. In summary, wash, white, carpet, under, & sweep, spring to mind. Intersting phrasiology in one para & I quote …..”They said the IPCC report considered that, based on current trends, summer heat events such as 2003 (which led to 2,000 additional deaths in the UK and more than 35,000 across Europe) were expected to be considered normal by the 2040s and cool by the 2060s.” Presumably it’s going to be “cool” for thousands to die in heat related events or something I suppose?
Full disclosure will be placed on the Advertising Standards Authority site on 17th March 2010.
Re: Vincent (Mar 11 01:14),
I think the technical term is Richard Cranium economy RCE
‘Looks like they are indeed thinking about CO2 export taxes. Maybe I should become a carbon smuggler.’
I don’t know how much tax you can avoid by holding your breath as you cross the border.
On the radio and TV news today (ABC network are notorious AGW believers) –
news item – high ranking Chinese politician claims that AGW is real – only fringe sceptics would deny it – you can see it happening every day – floods in the south – drought in the north, huricanes – the lot.
BUT China will do nothing to stop it happening. The west have been pumping CO2 in the air for 200 years -it’s our responsibility to fix it alone. Strange – until he said that, I thought he was serious, if deluded – but now I realise he is just being a politican.
On a seperate but related note – the chairman of the ABC network, in a local newspaper, has just decried the fact that his network is so biased on AGW reporting. The ABC is government owned and the Board must adopt a hands off role as far as programming is concerned.
The ABC management are beginning to take Tony Abbott seriously (he’s the new conservative party leader and is giving the government much trouble at the moment – not too hard to find things to criticise them for either). But the AGW seems to be a step too far – the ABC would never criticse that or even give skeptics a fair hearing, not until we all freeze over.
All good fun.
Who needs Kerry?
Watch what the new green giant smiley face does about it.
Wal-Mart is making its suppliers do “the dirty work” of reducing the carbon footprint of the company’s supply chain.
Does anyone else sometimes hear Richard Nixon laughing, besides me?
This all presumes that CO2 has a lot to do with global warming. As we know, it is at best a secondary forcing function at current levels. But it does demonstrate the damage that the gorebats could do to the US economy.
It gets more Byzantine by the minute.
Vincent: “When manufacturing jobs were offshored, they told us we were now a service economy. When service jobs are offshored what kind of economy does that make us then?”
A basketcase?
The lie we in the UK have been told for decades by our politicians (and that engineer hater supreme: the BBC) is that it was inevitable that manufacturing would disappear because they weren’t part of the future … that was “high tech”.
But then along came wind which couldn’t be dismissed as the “past” and was clearly going to grow (not so clear now! He He!) It was supposed to be the future, but when I got involved early on I quickly realised (correctly) that there was not a hope in hell of the UK ever having a wind industry because of the way the money was being syphoned off into useless research and being targeted (by lobbyist-led politicians) to market sectors where the UK hadn’t a hope of ever being competitive.
And remember that here in Scotland we live in the windiest and “waviest” place in Europe, with a history of engineers like Watt, we even had precisely the kind of heavy-manufacturing base in shipbuilding that was needed for wind, we even had the UK’s only >1kW successful wind-turbine manufacturer.
Scotland had everything going for it, and it should have been literally like organising an orgy in a brothel – except the overwhelmingly pathetic political system, and the stifling anti-engineering/manufacturing bias in the UK over-rode every positive advantages!
The egg is well and truly scrambled. I am beginning to wonder how the juggernaut can ever be stopped. I feel confident that the hypothesis of AGW is debunked but the trade in carbon is becoming the reality. The answer is to provide Mr and Mrs Joe Public, not with the science, with the cost they will have to bear because their government sold them a lie. Higher fuel bills, reduced standard of living and fewer jobs.
It has been oft repeated that it’s all about politics so the fight will have to be won in the legislatures of the US, UK, EU and smaller fish like Australia.
OT but interesting.
Just when you thought you were all ‘Gated’ out, we now have ASA-Gate
The final adjudication on the 939 complaints against the UK Government Propaganda campaign ‘Act on CO2’ has just been issued by the Advertising Standards Agency.
It finds that ‘ The TV ad did not breach the Code in any respect’.
It relies heavily on the discredited IPCC reports for it’s findings and the ad’s included such gems as 40% of co2 is produced by the way we heat and light our homes.
So just another whitewash from the Government. The Chairman of the ASA is Lord Smith of Finsbury, a well known alarmist who believes we should all have carbon passports.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/carbon/6527970/Everyone-in-Britain-could-be-given-a-personal-carbon-allowance.html
It is going to take a generation to remove all these zealots from important non Govermental positions.
The full report is to be published on the asa.org.uk website on the 17th March.
I now look at the Carbon scam as a mechanism to hasten the west’s inevitable demise.
I laugh when I hear Britain described as a ‘Rich’ country,for instance.
Britain’s standard of living can only be maintained with cheap imports of goods and food(mainly from China)Paid for with borrowed money, mainly from China.
That situation can not go on forever, whatever the weather (Pardon the pun).
When these cheap imports have Carbon Credits (Taxes) added, they ain’t so cheap anymore.
We all may soon have to get used to a standard of living only our Grandparents would recognize.
Out of curiosity, why doesn’t this also take into account the ‘export’ of fossil fuels as well. Aren’t the countries that ship oil to the US ‘exporting’ CO2 emissions as well?
I’ve always believed that the countries that look down their noses at the US for producing so much ‘greenhouse gas’ are hypocritical in the extreme as they are happily pumping ‘greenhouse’ gas based product (oil/gas) out of their ground and shipping it to the US. If they REALLY wanted to do something about ‘greenhouse gas’ issues they’d leave that stuff in the ground. But then States like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia (and to some extent Canada) would lose most of the revenue their shaky economies depend on to function.
Mike Haseler (03:14:00) :
There is turbine technology being surpressed that is 18 times more powerful and could replace 18 wind or hydro electric turbines.
Markets don’t want this technology and have ignored it’s existance because it would permenantly lower electricity prices. Who get the taxes on electricity?
What manufacturer would sacrifice the sale of 18 turbines and accompaning equipment for one?
In Canada, we are rich in resources which is our only salvation. Free trade came in and the industries moved to the U.S. and Mexico.
Then the companies in the U.S. moved to India or China for manufacturing.
So where are the “new” companies going to come from? What are they going to produce competitively?
With so much debt and unemployment the Cities, States and government have to lay off huge amounts of people which is going to increase the problem.
This is a classic BFO (Blinding Flash of the Obvious). It’s the reason why any climate treaty is doomed to failure.
@Alan the Brit (02:06:25) :
”They said the IPCC report considered that, based on current trends, summer heat events such as 2003 (which led to 2,000 additional deaths in the UK and more than 35,000 across Europe) were expected to be considered normal by the 2040s and cool by the 2060s.”
I pointed out to them that, if a heatwave in 2003 was evidence of climate change, how come the severe winters 2008/9 and 2009/10 (which will have killed far more) is “only weather”.
Answer came there none.
Attempting to control CO2 emissions WILL FAIL for two very simple reasons. China and India are growing economic tigers who don’t NEED the USA or the EU and the internet has cast massive doubt on AGW which gives China and India lots more leg room.
@ Martin Brumby (05:03:45): I’m curious, where in the IPCC reports did it forecast ‘severe winters’ in 2008/9 and 2009/10? (AFAIK, the latest IPCC report was 2007.) And who at the IPCC did you write to?
@ Joe
@ Mike Haseler
Speaking of wind turbine efficiency…..
Here’s an interesting read
http://nov55.com/wdm.html
“To the extent that constraints on developing countries’ emissions are the major impediment to effective international climate policy, allocating responsibility for some portion of these emissions to final consumers elsewhere may represent an opportunity for compromise.”
Compromise? A policy of “We get the jobs and you pay the bills” is what this whole controversy has always been about. It’s called “transfer of wealth’ and it is the one-world-socialists’ wet dream. Let’s get real and quit dancing around why AGW is such an attractive theory to so many.
The big numbers are in steel. To make a ton of steel one emits about a ton of C02.
China’s coal consumption is roughly evenly divided between steel and electricity.
I think the Chinese and Indian officials know AGW is crap, but they see it as a chance for their businesses to milk us by selling indulgences. If we in the West will oblige, why not?
Absent Obama pulling a successful Mugabe, I don’t see the USA going along with this. People here are not brainwashed the way they are in Europe-yet. Cap and Trade here is a vote loser.
Anthony, have you ever heard of Edwin T. Jaynes? In particular his paper on the Mind Projection Fallacy? Since the entire edifice of AGW/Climate Change argument is founded on Probability you might find this of interest.
” Once one has grasped the idea, one sees the Mind Projection Fallacy everywhere; what we have been taught as deep wisdom, is stripped of its pretensions and seen to be instead a foolish non sequitur. The error occurs in two complementary forms, which we might indicate thus:
(A) (My own imagination) —> (Real property of Nature)
(B) (My own ignorance) —> (Nature is indeterminate)”
“Probability as Logic”: http://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/prob.as.logic.pdf
“Doug in Dunedin (01:51:42) :
As for the MSM here, it’s a non event – they are more interested in lagging behind Australia’s economy or the cricket.
Doug.”
Like Aussies, it’s just the crukut or any other sport, Olympics and blah blah blah sport blah blah blah, roads falling apart at home, no worries, winter (non) gold for Aussies.
Yay! Thank you Aussie “sports people”….my tax dollars (Not) well spent!
I posted a comment regarding the “More on sun-climate relations” story on the “Realclimate.org” website. Reading the article, it’s obvious the author is bathing in AGW sanctified water. The gist of my post was that humans are indeed responsible for AGW because it’s 100% humans fault for manipulating, fudging, correcting, not peer reviewing, hiding, faulty coding climate data while refusing to dignify anything that contradicts their AGW viewpoint. My comment was NOT posted. The sites states that “discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science.” Really? Are they telling me the very next story called “A mistaken message from IoP” is solely about science? From the story:
”'”The irony of this affair is that the IoP will not disclose who were responsible for the original statement, thus not living up to the standards they set for others.
Furthermore, it’s a paradox that the IoP based the statement on stolen private e-mail exchanges, while putting disclaimers about confidentiality, especially as it asks people to delete any e-mail before they go astray:
This email (and attachments) are confidential and intended for the addressee(s) only. If you are not the intended recipient please notify the sender, delete any copies and do not take action in reliance on it…””’
So, it seems Realclimate is angered not by the contents of the Climategate emails but because the emails were supposed to be private. Realclimate says the IoP is not “living up to the standards they set for others” but doesn’t Realclimate realize the dangers of spitting into the wind.
Using the same argument, back in the days when we were a major exporter, we aren’t as responsible for our CO2 emissions.
Steel, Harry? As in Tata Steel, founders of TERI? Next you’ll be telling us that the major cause of melting glaciers is aerosol pollution from the Indian coal industry (as used in steel plants). Pachauri is like Baron Samedi on the front of the train in Live and Let Die.
***************************
Lawrie Ayres (03:30:59) :
The egg is well and truly scrambled. I am beginning to wonder how the juggernaut can ever be stopped. I feel confident that the hypothesis of AGW is debunked but the trade in carbon is becoming the reality. The answer is to provide Mr and Mrs Joe Public, not with the science, with the cost they will have to bear because their government sold them a lie. Higher fuel bills, reduced standard of living and fewer jobs.
It has been oft repeated that it’s all about politics so the fight will have to be won in the legislatures of the US, UK, EU and smaller fish like Australia.
***************************
I think you are right about that. The total cost per person for each “carbon control” scenario needs to be calculated and widely advertised.
Vincent (01:14:17)
A couple of years ago the multinational I was working for opened a new software development centre in Beijing.
From the UK perspective, it was rather funny to hear the reactions of the comparatively overpaid developers in India who thought there jobs were to be outsourced!
The thing is, when one realizes that CO2 is NOT the evil pollutant it is hyped up to be, all this carbon talk becomes just so stupid, just hot air and wasted time.
If it weren’t for the incredible amount of my and your money going down rat holes it might even be funny.
Re: Vincent (Mar 11 01:14),
When manufacturing jobs were offshored, they told us we were now a service economy. When service jobs are offshored what kind of economy does that make us then?
Feudal? Slave economy?
Lords over serfs, no middle class. Slaves produce locally and ships bring in the goods from abroad.
Is anybody else here fond of the fantasy world of Cordwainer Smith? Alpha Ralpha Bulevard” etc. The “Instrumentality” controlling the worlds with lords and ladies? Prophetic if this is the way we go.
China gets no oil from the Middle East to sustain it’s economy? How do we in the West pull that off?
Hats off to Australia, India, and Brazil
It won’t be stopped. They are one heatwave in the US/EU/Canada from going on overdrive. They wait patiently.
Scheduling a global warming smack down in the middle of a blizzard in Copenhagen…. they are still kicking themselves.
All of this noise and discussion over something which is good for us and our food supply. CO2 is plant food!
CO2 cannot and does not drive the climate. We have not warmed for 15 years and cooled for the last 8 years. The 17 years from 1978 to 1995 is called an alarming warming trend, but, in the extreme El Nino of 1998, we did not even reach the temperature of 1953 when it was cooling from the 1938 high. But, 15 years of not warming is considered incidental. They cannot honestly and arbitrarily decide one period is climate and the other a weather event.
Beer’s Law, CO2’s absorption spectra, Henry’s Law, CO2’s thermodynamic interction with water vapor (elaborated by Miskolczi and Zagoni), and CO2’s actual 5-6 year half-life in the atmosphere (not the 200-1000 yeras of the IPCC and AGW crowd) all point to the fact that CO2 is a follower and not a leader or cause of climate.
Worry about real pollutants of the air, water, and soil, but leave CO2 alone. We need the enhanced food production it affords as we cool for the next 2-3 decades. Yes, that is COOL, making the cooling period 3 times the length of the terrifying warming.
Plants do not do well below 45 deg F. Cooling is what we should fear. We can always find warm-loving plants, but nothing grows outside if it gets too cold.
Has anyone noticed that, during the holocene, the warm peaks have been getting cooler in a downward trend. The long term looks bleak. We should be celebrating warmth; these are the times when all major civilizations have thrived, not during cold periods.
Of course, emissions controls are all about crippling the world’s economy and huge shifts in power and wealth. It is a political scam that has nothing to do with saving the planet or controlling the climate. They want to control an energy source that we cannot not use.
They built the crisis on junk science and insist loudly that it is solid, proven science, but they are lying, lying, lying. There is not one piece of defendable science behind the AGW hypothesis.
I have spent years investigating all of their claims and, entirely in keeping with Climategate and the reports of bad work by the IPCC, found all of it to be untrue or to be purposely misinterpreted or fabricated data to achieve their political goals.
How can any of their claims about the real world effects be true when it has not been warming during the time period which they are reporting. It simply cannot be.
off track completely, but, if any one is interested, i’ve found a idea on Jupitersdance.com. Anthony: Don’t mean to rustle any of your sheep. They will come back.
‘…….Research shows that large earthquakes occur at low sunspot frequencies. A sample of global earthquakes greater than Magnitude 6 for the period 1973-2005 (USGS) compared to smoothed monthly sunspot figures (SIDC) show that 71% of earthquake energy is released and 59% of earthquake events occur at lower than average sunspot activity…..’ Jupitersdance.com
I think this story needs to be filed under the “Well, duh!” category.
Carbon dioxide trading schemes have resulted in the perfect economic bubble, because we are trading, literally, bubbles. It’s a new and improved economic bubble, though, brought to you by Climate Change Science. You think human beings would learn, but they don’t.
Agree,
I think every carbon based legislation should also include an “Economic Impact Report” stating just how much the proposed legislation will cost the economy per capita
Reminds me of the story of the Xhosa, who on the strength of a vision destroyed all their cattle, their whole livelihood. It was discussed here last summer:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/20/historic-parallels-in-our-time-the-killing-of-of-cattle-vs-carbon/#more-8702
Our current obsession with ‘carbon’ (CO2) is frighteningly similar, both in its irrational basis and in its possible consequences.
It has to be pointed out, at every step and at every level, that ‘carbon’ is NOT a problem!. CO2 is NOT a pollutant, does NOT cause the climate to change, and does NOT need to be controlled.
This of course flies in the face of the moneyed elite, who have visions of ‘carbon’ trading dancing in their heads.
It needs to be shouted from the rooftops: Carbon dioxide is not only harmless, it is good for plants, good for the planet, and good for you!
/Mr Lynn (Cooking the Planet? Or Cooking the Books? New Climate Realist Store: http://www.zazzle.com/climaterealist )
That’s ‘forgotten’, not ‘forgot’ (even nit-pickers make mistakes!). /Mr L
Did a Kiwi mention cricket?he he.
I don’t mind my tax dollars paying for sport.
I do mind my tax dollars being wasted on green schemes that benefits nobody,and even leaves some people scared to live in their own house.
Our papers are full of articles about how the government has wasted the stimulus money on solar and insulation schemes,not so much about the cricket.Not much crowing going on,I really thought the Kiwis would give the Aussies a run for their money at home,but they just couldn’t manage it.
Actually Patrick the roads in Tassie are quite good,some bad ones,but a lot has been spent on highways in Tasmania.
Could be why Victorian roads are bad,they’re just too obsessed with the footy(sarcasm).
I’m going to a family gathering on Saturday.There will be roughly 20 people there, of that 20,only 4 doubt AGW.
We will discuss the cricket,but we will spend more time discussing AGW and politics.
China plays the role of factory of the world in the UN plans for a Global Tyranny.
Looking at the map, they are right on schedule!
We can end this process at the next elections.
All we have to do is stop the pigs from flying!
(That is stop the immense amounts of tax payers money that subsidize this madness)
http://green-agenda.com
renminbi (05:45:14) :
I think the Chinese and Indian officials know AGW is crap, but they see it as a chance for their businesses to milk us by selling indulgences. If we in the West will oblige, why not?
Absent Obama pulling a successful Mugabe, I don’t see the USA going along with this. People here are not brainwashed the way they are in Europe-yet. Cap and Trade here is a vote loser.
The Chinese haven’t had a civilization-in various permutations- for roughly
7000 years with out learning about business and human nature. As we
speak, we, in NE oregon are getting every square inch of available land area
covered by wind generators. In the name of the Green Goddess and her Profit.
They are made in China and Vietnam, shipped over to the inland NW, by
truck and train, yet they power company is building a NG plant near
Boise, ID to cover when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine…
We (USA,UK,Austrailia,and EU) do not win-and all this will unwind…
China just laughs at our foolishness….
“Split Atoms, not Birds”
The UK economic miracle that is Gordon Brown delivered a major speech in the City yesterday. In it’s forty minute duration AGW/CC was never mentioned once, not even in a far ranging section dedicated to global cooperation.
With an election coming up and warming of any sort in UK a distant autumnal memory, this was perhaps wise, but there was still a need for surreptitious airing of the “C” word.
And here we have it! “Low carbon economy” was the new buzz phrase that enabled the nonsensical, uneconomical, hairbrained schemes that it encapsulates, to be trotted out with impunity in front of London’s best financial minds.
Our burgeoning trade gap deficit announced at that very moment ensures that this posting is bang on topic and perhaps indicates the method by which Gordon will achieve his low carbon economy.
Kerry is not as smart as a 5th grader. It takes 5 tons coal to make a ton of steel. It takes 200 tons of steel to make a wind turbine tower. We are exporting re bar and cement to China.
Actually they are buying a lot of OSB wood from us. Do not trust city slicker economists to make correct estimates. We are also exporting grain and food to feed billions. Ag products are also large consumers of petrol.
Lewt me see if I can get the thrust of this announcement.
China are making stuff that represent carbon emissions in order to develop their economy – and gaining all the economic benefits of doing that.
We buy that stuff and they get the money – which they use to buy more cards and coal-fired power stations etc.
And it’s our fault?
I’m confused as to the supposed moral problems and sense of guilt we are supposed to be feeling here in the west. I really am.
Yes, this is a huge problem for the USA. Corporations are exporting our high paying jobs to lower cost regions like China and India where there is no EPA to regulate pollution (I don’t include CO2 in that), OSHA to provide for a safe working environment, or any of the other higher costs associated with our more complex society. This is the reason why the USA is in a deep recession right now. Housing and other cost factors rose while the ability of American workers to pay for them fell as jobs were lost and wages reduced.
The environmentally concious thing to do is to return manufacturing to the U.S. where pollution is tightly regulated. We all breath the same air, and sending manufacturing to China where they burn coal unscrubbed and the rivers run foul with toxins hurts all of us much worse than burning it here with scrubbers. The enviro-nuts just can’t seem to understand this, and are hell bent on killing our economy with far worse consequences for the world wide environment.
OT – though related.
A businessman has been jailed for three years for masterminding a scam which saw tens of millions of battery hen eggs sold as free-range or organic.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/8562434.stm
Funny thing is… nobody could actually tell the difference.
LOL
Biofuels, solar and wind are unsustainable sources of energy. They can only survive with government funding. Its ridiculous to even consider them as long term energy independence solutions.
“To the extent that constraints on developing countries’ emissions are the major impediment to effective international climate policy, allocating responsibility for some portion of these emissions to final consumers elsewhere may represent an opportunity for compromise.”——————Reads like global wealth redistribution to me…………
“The United States is both a major importer and a major exporter of emissions embodied in trade. The net result is that the U.S. outsources about 11% of total consumption-based emissions, primarily to the developing world.”……I’m angered by that statement, not because I don’t believe the statement(I think its pretty close.) nor by fact that the U.S. not only emits but causes others to emit CO2, but by the inequity of the statement. If the U.S. or any other national economy wants to recover from recent economic falterings, we need to emit more CO2 than to cause being emitted. Of course, we could simplify it by stating there is a trade imbalance and CO2 emissions = economic growth.
Policy Maker == Tyrant
The point of this diagram is: when the West produces anything for anyone, it’s responsible for the carbon emissions, and when the rest of the world produces anything that the West buys, the West is also responsible. Fancy that.
HereticFringe: “Corporations are exporting our high paying jobs to lower cost regions … This is the reason why the USA is in a deep recession right now.”
That is the long-term reason why the US is in terminal economic decline, but the short-term reason for the current recession, is that the US like the UK, used a borrow-to-boom economics to create a temporary rise in GDP by injecting money into the economy from outside by encouraging personal & company debt.
But the banking crisis put a temporary halt to increasing debt levels so that debt-boost to the US/UK GDP ceased aka a recession.
This really is the economics of the madhouse. It is borrowing in order to boost consumption, which boosts the “debteconomy” of the US/UK, transferring real wealth to China, who then has a surplus of money which guess what? They lend to the US/UK consumers through our banking system, in order that we can borrow it, to spend on importing more Chinese goods.
And as everyone knows, loan sharks are the most pleasant people when you borrow from them, but when you find you don’t have any employment to pay them back, they will take far more than their economic pound of flesh.
In a real sense, the greed of the US/UK politician/public and their addiction to more debt will succeed in destroying the capitalist west in the 21st century in a way that could the communist East was unable to achieve in the 20th century.
Or as confusion says: the way to destroy capitalism, is to set the market forces of capitalism to devour its capital … and to help it along make them feel guilty about the manufacturing output that is the bedrock of any real economy by convincing them an innocuous gas called CO2 is bad
It’s all a bunch of B. S., smoke and mirrors.
And, you know who takes it in the shorts at the end?
Everyday Americans.
Al Gore?
He’ll be living in his energy intensive mansion, riding in limousines, and flying in private jets.
Democrats are betraying the blue-collar workers they supposedly claim to represent. They don’t.
Interesting. Many times I have tried to understand the ‘agenda’ behind AGW. At least for me it wasn’t climate change. I guess I’m too old and had seen our media cry Ice Age! before. But one thing seems to always hold true throughout history – Follow the Money.
Global trade is huge and the developed countries have been losing manufacturing jobs since WWII. ( Review the EMPLOYMENT section at this link – http://economicedge.blogspot.com/2009/12/state-of-union-in-charts.html ) Directly the developed countries do not want a trade war. Everyone loses. But how to level the playing field? Tracking carbon dioxide emissions to the source is not about AGW. It is about leveling the economic playing field, indirectly. The Carnegie Institution study is the embodiment of the political/economic agenda.
…..”They said the IPCC report considered that, based on current trends, summer heat events such as 2003 (which led to 2,000 additional deaths in the UK and more than 35,000 across Europe) were expected to be considered normal by the 2040s….”
Ya’ think an increasing world population and/or an increasing fraction of unprotected people susceptible to “heat” effects in particular countries – such as “the elderly” in a country with even a stable population number – might mean that “heat related” deaths would increase regardless of any increase in temperatures or duration of summer heat events”? Naw.
Most large scale industrial production today is done by computer controlled machinery. The biggest costs in the process is where the machinery sits, the taxes paid on the spot of ground the factory is built on. And the USA has the biggest tax bill of them all. And soon with our new Oppressive leaders, the highest energy costs of them all — Hey maybe that is why we are making monuments of all our natural resources.
And so what the USA loss is, isn’t the 20 cent an hour manufacturing jobs, it’s the $50 an hour engineering jobs that it takes to design, build and maintain the computers and robot machinery that do the work. The manual labor needed is very small, unless you use slaves for everything ^_^.
Have you seen a modern automobile manufacturing facility lately?
J.Peden: summer heat events such as 2003 (which led to 2,000 additional deaths in the UK and more than 35,000 across Europe) were expected to be considered normal by the 2040s….”
And Age Concern say that 23,000 people die each year from the cold, and I believe the figure this last winter was estimated to be 40,000. And … Note, the yearly number of deaths, due to cold, is 10x the one single summer of warmth. And the increase is deaths (17,000) is again an order of magnitude more than that due to any imagined warming.
Yet when I went to read up on the “scientific” literature, of the 100 or so papers I read, not one mentioned reductions in winter deaths, whilst I think a majority mentioned the deaths from heat.
This is how we know all the papers on suggested effects of warming are just propaganda dressed up as science.
It could be even more sinister than purely economics.
When the Western economies collapse, they will not be able to defend themselves so readily. World conquest aspirations then become manifest.
Europe will never see it coming. They never do.
Some of the financial and policy follies of AGW are well chronicled by Richard North at
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com
His recent story about the Welsh suggested that they keep all their cattle indoors to “capture methane emissions” really takes the biscuit.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/03/they-are-serious.html
Frequently, in the worlds of pure science and political and military power things get complicated and very confusing. About the complicated and very confusing aspects of pure science I’m a dunce. About the other, I think I can help –
Political and military power can be simplified by looking at and considering three things: population, technology, and money.
The only Superpower in the world today (There Can Be Only One;-) is China. The West has sold itself into slavery for the sake of it’s pathetic wanton lifestyle(s) and wasteful ways, and the Third World has been forced along into bondage with us for want of any means to really object.
The Carbon Credits Scheme was/is the iceing on the cake giving the Chinese the whole kit and kabudle. Welcome to the new World Order. Remember being told that Freedom never was and never will be free? Just like everything else in life?
It really does matter who the top dog in the kennel is, doesn’t it?
Douglas DC (06:58:30) :
We (USA,UK,Austrailia,and EU) do not win-and all this will unwind…
China just laughs at our foolishness….
I agree wholeheartedly with your entire post here. The whole ‘Angloshpere’ plus the EU are smitten with this insane mindset – i.e. the politicians, the MSM and the sheepies. The logical end to this madness is the destruction of ‘our’ economies. For what? An unproven idea that co2 emissions will cause CAGW. Cor blimey!
Doug
“Jaye (07:14:29) :
Biofuels, solar and wind are unsustainable sources of energy. They can only survive with government funding. Its ridiculous to even consider them as long term energy independence solutions.”
Jaye: The whole idea of Cap & Trade is to tax fossil burning power plants in order to make wind and solar and geothermal economically feasible. Current wind and solar power is heavily subsidized, but they exist because the most US States require a minimum fraction of the utility’s power to be “renewable”. This cleverly excludes nuclear, because “breeding” fuel does not meet the government definition of “renewable”. Obama’s next year budget includes $360 Billion tax income from carbon dioxide emitters, mostly power plants.
Also, the manufacture of hydrogen using current technology emits about 3 tons of CO2 for every ton of hydrogen produced. There’s no such thing as a hydrogen mine. Does anybody have more accurate numbers?
Mike Haseler (08:11:39) :
Or as confusion says: the way to destroy capitalism, is to set the market forces of capitalism to devour its capital … and to help it along make them feel guilty about the manufacturing output that is the bedrock of any real economy by convincing them an innocuous gas called CO2 is bad …..
Well this (your post) just about sums up the whole situation. Governments have forgotten who they represent. Since rampant globalisation has taken hold, business people need have no allegiance to any state – the world is their oyster. The collapse of the banking system since the last vestiges and fetters of the ‘Glass Steagall’ were removed demonstrates that mindset in both governance and business. National interest has to be acknowledged and enforced by governance.
Doug
‘“Where CO2 emissions occur doesn’t matter to the climate system,” adds Davis.’
And more to the point: CO2 emissions, period, do not matter much at all!
So the location discussion is only a distraction from this key point:
As Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT, said, “One of the things the scientific community is pretty agreed on is those things [i.e. CO2 limits…we might ad, ‘period, regardless of location’] will have virtually no impact on climate no matter what the models say. So the question is do you spend trillions of dollars to have no impact? And that seems like a no brainer.”
Dan in California (11:22:46) :
“There’s no such thing as a hydrogen mine.”
Exactly! And there is no such thing as a methanol mine either.
So every time someone talks about hydrogen or methanol driven cars, ask them where the stuff comes from.
By the way, there is no such thing as “LiPo’s battery” mines either.
Ask; How much (of what) does it cost to produce it?
This piece from Carnegie Insitution is what is called a trial balloon.
We’re all familiar with the usual pathetic attempts by politicians in many countries to rein in CO₂ emissions through various programs — carbon trading, cap-and-trade, and on and on.
This suggests carrying carbon punishment a step farther. How to solve the problem of outsourced carbon production? Just tax it when it enters the country. Think Smoot-Hawley Tariff. What a wonderful idea! Now, instead of a single country engaged in self-immolation, we can all get onboard a world-wide carbon tax and in one swell foop destroy the entire world economy. Brilliant.
And then Paul “always wrong” Ehrlich’s prophesies will become true.
Factories in many industrialized nations closed as a result of increased global competition and the Kyoto Treaty. Factories in China (and elsewhere in Asia) took their place. Increased carbon emissions are a by-product of ramped-up production and the factories in China were usually less energy efficient and emitted more pollutants than the factories that were closed.
The jobs “went to China” as well.
I think my fellow kiwis have missed the local implications of the idea of exported carbon. Most of our carbon emissions come from pastural industries (belching cows). But most the product of these industries are exported. So under the logic of the article these are not OUR carbon emissions. We get to blame these carbon emissions on someone else.
Voila – New Zealand meets its ambitious carbon emissions target at the stroke of a pen!
Unfortunately the flip side of this logic is that the countries that import our goods may start to slap carbon taxes on it. In fact the French are probably reaching for their pens right now.
Bummer!
Silly me, but does it work in reverse also?
If they outlawed all fossil fueled production and transport today, the shortages, starvation and panic would begin in Europe, who are obviously living far beyond their means.
Something about a 100 mile theory?
Leon Brozyna wrote: “This piece from Carnegie Insitution is what is called a trial balloon…… Think Smoot-Hawley Tariff. …”
That’s what I was thinking but tariffs are a WTO issue. Circumvent WTO agreements with a carbon emissions tax. The ideal tax level is virtually equivalent to the delta between product production cost in a carbon importer country and a carbon exporter country.
” over a third of carbon dioxide emissions associated with consumption of goods and services in many developed countries are actually emitted outside their borders”
Yea, we just lower our emissions over 33%.
Can we have our coal back and drill now?
Vincent (01:14:17) :
“….When manufacturing jobs were offshored, they told us we were now a service economy. When service jobs are offshored what kind of economy does that make us then?”
It makes you a fourth world economy so strangled in regulations you can not make it up to third world status.
Before WTO one could consider a carbon import tax (no to concede the point that there is no need to reduce carbon emissions). But a national based carbon cap without such an import tax would just be an invitation of whats left of the manufacturing base in the US to flee.
It’s insanity, unless that is the purpose.
That may be. Don’t laugh, this is going to get heavy, but there were some who publicly expressed a desire to de-industrialize the US as early as the early 1970’s, and to industrialize Asia. It was called the trilateralization of the global economy, with the West becoming more of Info-tech service based economy to replace manufacturing.
In fact, AGW fits into this strategy as carbon cap and trade is simply the foundation for an additional economic, financial and monetary system, requiring it’s own specialized accountants, bankers, tax collectors, auditors, investment bankers, environmental police, etc . More jobs to create absolutely nothing, but that allows folks to continue to purchase goods made elsewhere.
Carbon credits, like most money credit today, is simply a fictitous currency existing as bits and bytes on a hard drive. For each credit, there must be a corresponding debt paying interest to balance the books. Credits are never created to pay the interest on the debt, so you have another mechanism for huge booms and busts in the economic cycle which benefit those at the top of the economic pyramid.
Back in the 60’s, given productivity gains in manufacturing, it was envisioned that the average worker would only need to work 2-3 days a week at full employment, since we could produce more than we and the world could consume. This was unacceptable, imagine the herd having so much free time, not to mention reduced profits by holding back on production, so some intellectuals embarked on the current strategy of producing goods in low wage countries while providing easy credit and jobs that produce nothing to pay for them, and this has been ongoing for 40 years now. But it is not sustainable, so we need carbon cap and trade to supplement the current model.
Heh I should have finished my PhD on this issue a decade or two ago … might have been highly referenced by now. I was looking at the embodied energy trade in Australia, which is, of course, a massive net energy exporter in both direct and indirect (embodied) forms.
I would echo what has been said… any policy on CO2 that is not global is meaningless. It would simply lead to carbon leakage to countries without CO2 legislation … common sense really. Countries like Australia have the most to lose from enacting cap-n-trade.
I even had a sexy title (by PhD standards) “Australia’s Invisible Energy Trade.” Hot stuff… but the intarwebs came along and I got a tad distracted >.>
I should have a look at this paper and see to what level they disaggregated the trade data. If the analysis is at a high level it can lead to erroneous results. For instance, if one uses an energy intensity approach and looks at Australian trade at the 2-digit SITC level for Australia, the manufatured goods trade would seem to indicate that Australia is a net importer of enbodied energy (and hence CO2). Disagggregate the data to the 3-digit SITC level and the truth becomes apparent that Australia is a massive energy exporter. The devil is in the detail. If they used a detailed input-output analysis approach they should have decent results.
I voted for a short fuse, before I voted against it.
Dave E (05:26:34) :
@ Joe
@ Mike Haseler
Speaking of wind turbine efficiency ..
Heres an interesting read
http://nov55.com/wdm.html
Thanks.
I have not seen this before and it is from a NASA scientist.
He’s going by weight to efficiency and number of blades possible.
I was going by splitting energy and and twisting it slightly to angles of deflection to harness the maximum energy to work together to create the greatest amount of torque.
This makes “For every action, there is an equal opposite reaction” work at 78% efficiency at actual energy being taken out of a flow stream.
Called “Inverting a Turbine”
I trust that when the alarmists calculate the ‘carbon debt’ the West owes the developing world they intend to fully discount it by the number of jobs they (politicians) have exported also.
In Australia the manufacturing sector has been virtually destroyed. I’d say any ‘carbon debt’ has already been fully paid for by the relative poverty that has been inflicted on the many Australian workers who have lost secure manufacturing jobs over the last few decades to countries such as China and Indonesia. And I’d say that even if I believed in the AGW myth.
Climate change challenges dwarf funding promises – economist
The annual $100 billion rich countries have agreed to mobilise by 2020 to help developing nations address climate change is “a very modest sum”, according to a top academic who is a member of a high-level panel that will work out how to raise the money.
The pledge “is a small sum in relation to the type of challenges we are talking about,” Nicholas Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics, told a conference of development experts in London this week.
http://www.alertnet.org/db/an_art/20316/2010/02/12-163026-1.htm
“Leon Brozyna (13:55:05) :
[…]
And then Paul “always wrong” Ehrlich’s prophesies will become true”
I am slightly amused by all the dystopian economic visions here. But your line demonstrates clearly that they will in the end not come true.
The reason?
Paul Ehrlich would be right, then. And that would violate every fundamental law of the universe. 😉
Oh BTW, all you economy-dystopians beware you don’t fall into the same trap the environmentalists and AGW scientists are in. People fall in love with their favorite dystopian vision… you should all read Julian Simon and Björn Lomborg.
brent (10:09:50) :
“Climate change challenges dwarf funding promises – economist
The annual $100 billion rich countries have agreed to mobilise by 2020 to help developing nations address climate change is “a very modest sum”….”
It is not a modest sum when one’s president signed a treaty to export all your countries business and jobs overseas – Clinton and WTO in 1995- and then further wrecked the economy beyond repair on November 2 ,1999 with the repeal of Glass-Stegall which tore down the wall between investment banks and S&Ls.
Statistics showed in 1990, before WTO was ratified and the repeal of Glass-Stegall , Foreign ownership of U.S. assets amounted to 33% of U.S. GDP. By 2002 this had increased to over 70% of U.S. GDP. http://www.fame.org/HTM/greg%20Pickup%201%2010%2003%20report.htm
“…Of mergers and acquisitions each costing $1 million or more, there were just 10 in 1970; in 1980, there were 94; in 1986, there were 346. The 1980’s also saw a wave of giant leveraged buyouts. Mergers, acquisitions and L.B.O.’s, which had accounted for less than 5 percent of the profits of Wall Street brokerage houses in 1978, ballooned into an estimated 50 percent of profits by 1988… THROUGH ALL THIS, THE HISTORIC RELATIONSHIP between product and paper has been turned upside down…. THERE ARE SIGNS THAT A VICIOUS spiral has begun…” January 29, 1989 http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/29/magazine/leveraged-buyouts-american-pays-the-price.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all New York Times
Stewart Dougherty, a specialist in inferential analysis, agrees. It is now “statistically impossible for the United States to pay its obligations”. http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/08.09/metastasis.html
Essentially the USA is bankrupt.
The annual Gross Domestic Product, the amount assigned to the value of all the goods and services sold, is about $14 trillion dollars. Congress has just voted to raise the “debt ceiling” to about $14 trillion dollars. We no longer have the jobs or the industry to produce the taxes to come up with that modest $100 billion. The bankers are taking all our tax money instead. Grace Commission report notes that 100% of personal income tax goes to pay interest on the national debt, the lion’s share of which goes to the banking cartel that we know as the Federal Reserve. http://www.bloggernews.net/17032
It would be very amusing to see a similar chart showing the SOURCE of the carbon so emitted… So just follow it on back to the OPEC oil and the coal mines of the world…
Believe it or not, China has signed up for 20 year range coal contracts from the USA to help meet their demand. So we ship them coal and dollars, then they send us Happy Meal toys… What a deal… And we’re not the only ones. They buy, literally boatloads of coal from Australia and around the world.
So if we ship all the coal and money to China this helps reduce CO2 how? And it helps build a stable economy and political structure in countries other than China how? And it mitigates environmental damage how? And it …
Sometimes you just want to cry…
Yep Australia exported over 47 million tonnes of coal to China last year worth over A$5.5 billion (approximately US$5 billiion). As E.M.Smith pointed out, we have been signing massive coal export contracts with China in the last year. This demand ain’t going away any time soon.