As first highlighted by World Climate Report and later by WUWT last week: Now its your electric ice maker in your fridge that’s killing the planet, meanwhile CO2 emissions fall significantly in the USA …this Financial Times story citing the same EIA report is getting some widespread press. It’s all in the headline I suppose.
U.S. Greenhouse Gases Drop to 15-Year Low
Here’s the most eye opening point. World Climate Report took the EIA data for total CO2 emissions from the USA, and graphed it against the CO2 emission data for the same period from China:
Figure 1. Annual carbon dioxide emissions from the United States (blue) and China (red), 1990-2009 (data source, EIA).
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Matthew Kennard
April 19, 2011
Greenhouse gas emissions in the US dropped to their lowest level in 15 years in 2009 as the impact of the financial crisis led to decreases in fuel and electricity consumption, according to newly published figures.
In 2009, the US saw its emissions of the six main greenhouses gases drop 6 per cent year-on-year to 6,633m metric tonnes, the lowest total since 1995. Despite that annual fall, emissions rose by more than 7.3 per cent between 1990 and 2009.
The figures, released by the Environmental Protection Agency, are likely to be seized upon by Republicans as evidence that there is no need for further regulation of carbon emissions. The GOP has embarked on a campaign in recent months to strip the EPA of its ability to regulate hydrocarbons as well as other pollutants.
A Republican-sponsored bill recently passed by the House has been viewed as a wide-ranging attack on the EPA. The proposed legislation argues that carbon dioxide was not mentioned in the Clean Air Act which gave the EPA legal authority to regulate air pollutants.
Full article here h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard
Also, this graph of income versus CO2 tells a powerful story.
Why are we still seeing demands from the EPA for cuts in the USA? Looks like a “Powershift” to me. Let that socialist network and NASA’s Dr. James Hansen go protest CO2 emissions in China. Dr. Hansen has some experience with being arrested in such protests, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind trying out the Chinese legal system to broaden his CV.
Just for fun, WUWT readers should post links to the FT story or the (March2011) report from the US Energy Information Administration (PDF) on the usual agenda driven climate blogs out there and see how many can tolerate it.
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Considering how much of the stuff we buy in the US comes from China, we probably still “consume” more CO2 than China does.
Also, folks here should be the first to be skeptical of CO2 vs economic activity correlations. The stronger correlation is between fuel prices and miles traveled. Unsurprisingly, CO2 emissions decrease when carbon fuel prices increase.
This is completely consistant with AGW. The temperature drop PRECEEDS the CO2 drop as it has for thousands of years. Oh wait, CO2 is still rising in China. Is the temp still rising over there? Never mind, guess they can’t tie it to AGW after all. Darn – I bet ALaGOREc is really bummed out now. Keep up the great work Anthony!!!
Now take that figure 12 graph and add a GDP index. You’ll find the 2009 GDP Index would be about 250. This means we accomplished 2.5 times the economic output while only increasing CO2 by 30%. This doesn’t mean we can do better. But we have already found the low hanging fruit.
This also includes US Greenhouse gas emissions in war zones all over the world.
The USA has a growing population compared to most European countries where population growth is often negative or stagnant. As a result the per capita carbon usage has probably dropped more significantly in the USA than Europe.
The important thing to remember is that USA did not sign the Kyoto treaty, therefore bad country and naughty people. China DID sign the treaty, therefore good country and good people. Never mind the actual CO2 emissions in China are rising far faster than in the USA, what matters is who signed and who did not.
/sarc
Anthony – a juxtaposition with income per capita for the USA and China over the same period might be informative.
Of course. We hear time after time from this White House how great the Chinese are and how bad America is. Infrastructure development is fine for China. A curse in America.
Can’t be….
All of the cold and snow this past winter was caused by CO2 making it warmer……../snark
So a massive increase in China’s CO2 emissions encouraged by EU policies which have effected a migration of industry from the relatively clean power stations in the west to the dirty and inefficient power plants in the east.
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/thisweek/2008/03/17_chinacarbonemission.asp
You’d think the greenies would be rather concerned but no not a bit – they think we’re ‘doomed by democracy’ and are rather envious of China because “it’s not a democracy”!!!
Listen to BBC radio 4’s programme “Doomed by Democracy”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sfwtc
Douglas DC @11.27
. . . .and if the Chinese have a sense of humour the bigger rocks would be coal.
The existence of a “greenhouse” gas is an urban legend – unless you’re suggesting each molecule of gas is enclosed in a little glass house.
In most cases, the proponents of “greenhouse” gases are simply clueless on how a real “greenhouse” works on Earth – and usually confuse the small increase heat capacity of the gas (with CO2 it’s the wagging in and out of the plane of the molecule at 10 microns) with the “greenhouse” effect.
Just for jollies, compare the graph of the CO2 levels for 2000 – 2009 to a graph of the CO2 levels during the Great Depression.
Surely, the learned Science Czar has done so, and knows that de-industrializing the United States is also the path to fundamentally changing the country.
“All this does not matter//Obama just wants control over all.”
I’ve no idea what he “wants” but what he does is dictated by the greater powers that decided to let him be president, like those on the receiving end of the 100bn bail-out payments, if anyone can find out who that was.
I haven’t read the full article ( behind the paywall) but I would like to know what the comparitive electricity consumption figures and similarly fuel consumption figures are before saying it was due to a downturn in the US economy. (ie it could simply be dropping due to the temp. drop or leveling over the past decade). The other question I’d ask is –how are these emissions figures derived / measured.
“”””” Dan in California says:
April 19, 2011 at 1:32 pm
The important thing to remember is that USA did not sign the Kyoto treaty, therefore bad country and naughty people. China DID sign the treaty, therefore good country and good people. Never mind the actual CO2 emissions in China are rising far faster than in the USA, what matters is who signed and who did not. “””””
Well I believe that history actually records, that the USA DID sign the Kyoto treaty; a chap named Albert Gore, who was then the VP of the USA, in fact signed the Kyoto accords.
BUT the United States Senate; who alone can RATIFY treaties on behalf of the USA, in a 95 to zero vote expressing the “Sense” of the Senate declined to Ratify it. Subsequently the evil George W. Bush was elected to be President of the United States of America, following William Jefferson Clinton; under whose Administration Albert Gore served as VP, and President pro-tem of the Senate.
Ah yes; we should of course expect that newly elected President George W. Bush should rush to promote the Kyoto treaty and the USA’s acceptance of it, knowing full well that the US Senate, had declined to ratify it by a vote of 95 to zero. I believe the other five were either absent or abstentions.
That evil George W. Bush has been reviled ever since for not promoting the Kyoto Treaty, that the entire Senate had already rejected; Yes he clearly had the sense of the feelings of the majority sentiment of the people of the USA, as already expressed by their Senators.
ZT says:
April 19, 2011 at 12:30 pm
I guess the obvious conclusion is that CO2 drives not only climate but also per capita income, right?
You’re not supposed to mention that, but it is true. See this graph from the Gapminder site
http://tinyurl.com/4y39hjt
They have a really great database and you can run per cap CO2 against a wide assortment of metrics of human well being. There is almost always a strong positive correlation.
CO2 emissions don’t say anything anout climate change but they do great as a proxy for
prosperity. We soon reach the poverty level.
The graph of US and China emissions show where both are headed:
The US is headed for irrelevance while China is clearly in the drivers seat.
We gave China ‘most favored nation’ status.
We now have earned the dubious honor of ‘most gullible nation’ status.
so the US has already almost complied with the Kyoto Treaty without actually being a party to it? Nice. how are countries that are signatories doing with their CO2 emissions?
Just in case any visiting “straw clutchers” want to attribute the static or falling temperatures of the last 13 1/2 years to these figures; the drop in USA levels are not reflected in the world wide accumulated CO2 figures (as I am sure no-one would expect them to be so quickly).
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
(or on WUWT’s Atmosphere page if you prefer)
CO2 continues to rise. Temperatures don’t. Travesty.
R. de Haan says:
April 19, 2011 at 3:59 pm
CO2 emissions don’t say anything anout climate change but they do great as a proxy for
prosperity. We soon reach the poverty level.
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I’ve been saying that for years. Worse, when this nation has no money, the first things that go are our altruistic ventures elsewhere. Purposeful?
Speaking of our evil ice makers:
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2011/apr/feds-will-regulate-ice-makers-save-climate
(When I posted this, I had to use a cached version to read the page. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2011/apr/feds-will-regulate-ice-makers-save-climate&hl=en&rlz=1B3GGLL_en___US384&strip=1 )
You can’t make this stuff up. When someone believes CO2 and those who have the audacity to make life better are somehow worse than Satan, nothing is too far-fetched. Is it too much to ask people to stop and see if something makes sense? I guess it is.
Gavin? Are you there? Gavin? GAVIN!?
Mike? Phil? Keith? Anybody?
Mad Dhog? Anybody there? It’s OK – you can breathe in now. We didn’t mean it. CO2’s OK. Really…..
No question, CO2 emissions and standard of living are closely correlated.
The “stars” of emission reductions are economies that have crashed – Eastern Europe is doing very well by Kyoto standards. The fact that the economies collapsed and the people were suffering was irrelevant and did not factor into the equation.
It is also clear that regulations that drive production and jobs offshore make US statistics look good, but actually increase CO2 emissions by transfering the production to China where the energy efficiency is lower. We then compound the problem by paying the energy cost of shipping these products back to the US.
“Environmentalists” seem to think that this makes sense!