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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Take a look at Table 2.1 in http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/environment/emissions/carbon/ . Transport, residential and commercial sectors were flat, it is the industrial sector that declined from 35 Trillion BTU’s to approx 28 T BTU’s.
The engine of the US economy declined, now that is a worry.
Given that global temperatures have failed to rise for a decade, and have actually fallen slightly, would it be reasonable to interpret the graph of US & China emissions (above) as finally proving what the AGWers have been saying – namely:
– cutting emissions really can stop temperatures rising, and the temperatures can even anticipate the cut and stop rising before it happens.
– CO2 emissions from developing countries have no effect, only developed countries’ emissions affect climate.
Eureka, I found it. (As a native Californian I feel that I am entitled to say that.) Forget about CO2 sequestration. I say recycle it. Use the energy from solar farms and wind farms to breakdown the CO2 into C and O2. Recycle the O2 into medical O and compress the C to form carbon crystals and market them through DeBeers to pay for the the whole enterprise. Voila, problem solved.
Interesting to note the comments on this blog are showing an increasing awareness of the background of the AGW hype. It is not about climate, it is about power and control, total control.
The upper echelons of the world governments are currently in dispute over who will take on the mantle of world president. /sarc
In BC we have a large “Carbon ” tax on our gas. That means we in the rural areas can drive to work less, causing less pollution. Soon that tax is going up so we can drive to work even less than before. I try hard to make a larger contribution by standing very still and exhaling as little as possible.
Keith Minto says:
April 19, 2011 at 6:57 pm
“it is the industrial sector that declined from 35 Trillion BTU’s to approx 28 T BTU’s.
The engine of the US economy declined, now that is a worry.”
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Not all of that decline in BTU’s is due to our economic situation. American industry has been focused for years on efficiency. It is efficiency and productivity that has driven our economy. People who don’t believe we are already doing a lot with less fuel are just wrong.
Although not stated in the report,it would be fair to assume that the numbers for CO2 are based on carbon fuels used.It has always struck me as strange that vast dissertations are made on multi-temperature readings around the World [including assumed values] we still depend on a single reading at Mauna Loa, a volcano in the middle of the Pacific.
If Beck et Al were even partially correct, it seem to me that we should be measuring in more than one place and certainly at more than one altitude.Has this single value found to be typical of the whole planet? I would be interested in why this has not been addressed more. It would seem logical that the CO2 balance varies considerably over jungles, oceans,deserts, ice caps etc.
Tom Eyre – I’m sure you will be pleased to hear that CO2 is in fact measured at a number of places around the globe, from the Arctic to the South Pole.
See eg. http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/data/data.html
From the time that I have spent examining the figures, it seems that CO2 mixes well across the planet within something like 6-9 months, so the Mauna Loa figures are reasonably representative of global CO2 for most purposes.
I would also say that the influence of the oceans on global CO2 appears to be greater than is often recognised. During the PDO-driven warming of the late 20thC, the oceans absorbed about half of all fossil fuel emissions of CO2, yet the warmer parts of the oceans were still significant net emitters of CO2. Now that the PDO is in a cooling phase again, I am expecting the rate of increase of atmospheric CO2 to start dropping, regardless of fossil fuel use.
Tom Eyre 20 April @ur momisugly 1:12,
There are other readings that show a similar pattern.In the Southern Hemisphere, Cape Grim on the west coast of Tasmania is an example. http://www.cmar.csiro.au/research/images/cg_CO2.png
RayG says: April 19, 2011 at 11:15 pm
Eureka, I found it. (As a native Californian I feel that I am entitled to say that.) Forget about CO2 sequestration. I say recycle it. Use the energy from solar farms and wind farms to breakdown the CO2 into C and O2. Recycle the O2 into medical O and compress the C to form carbon crystals and market them through DeBeers to pay for the the whole enterprise. Voila, problem solved.”
Ray, I don’t know if you were being sarcastic, but it’s really, really, hard to dissociate CO2 into C and O2. Nuclear submarines that have a lot of power separate CO2 from air using thermal differential absorbtion with monoethanol amine as a carrier. They then compress the CO2 and eject it overboard. Replacement O2 is made by electrolyzing sea water. The ISS space station does a similar thing with molecular sieve material. Replacement O2 is lifted from the ground or electrolyzed from H2O (The Space Shuttle has lots of spare water).
NASA has put a lot of money into developing a closed loop CO2 system for long term space travel, and it’s still nowhere near feasible. The two processes studied are Bosch and Sabatier. Look them up online if you’re interested. I myself worked on an idea to add a chemical to liquid CO2 that would make it sufficiently ionic to be amenable to electrolysis into CO and O2. No luck on that either.
As for your comment about compressing hexagonal carbon (coal and graphite) into tetrahedral carbon (diamonds), I assume that was a joke. Yes, it can be done, but at a cost not much less than buying them from DeBeers.