Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
In the run-up to the next-to-last big meeting of the UNFCCC (United Nations Frequent Climate Change Carnival) held in Copenhagen in 2009, I showed the following graph under the title “Why Copenhagen Will Achieve Nothing”
Figure 1. Carbon Emissions 1970-2006 by Region, and Global (red).
At that time it was clear that if the entire industrialized world cut back to 1980 emission levels, the climbing global emissions would scarcely change.
We are now coming up on the 17th UN Climate Change Carnival … so many clowns … so few circuses. This Carnival will be held in Durban, South Africa. How have CO2 emissions evolved since the Copenhagen Carnival? The latest figures are just in. Many electrons are being sacrificed in anguish about the numbers. “Record High 2010 Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Fossil-Fuel Combustion and Cement Manufacture Posted on CDIAC Site” shouts the headline from … well, that’s actually the self-referential headline on the CDIAC page itself. The CDIAC site says that the CDIAC site says that the CDIAC site says that a record …
Our friends at the UK Guardian newspaper enthuse that “Greenhouse gases rise by record amount.” Elsewhere the hype rises roughly proportionally with the distance from understanding what the numbers actually mean.
So how did we set this new record for carbon emissions? Figure 2 shows the information from the CDIAC site.
Figure 2. Changes in emissions from 2008 to 2010.
Hmmm …
In interpreting these numbers, it is useful to remember that carbon emissions measure what is generally called “development” —access to all of the good things that energy brings to the citizens of the country. Medicine, and food, and shelter from the sun, and heat when its cold, and transportation, and communications, and refrigeration, and farm tractors … the list is long. It’s development, and it runs on and is synonymous with energy.
So when the developed world asks India and China and Brazil and Indonesia to cut back on carbon emissions, we’re asking them to cut back on developing their country’s health and well-being and infrastructure and manufacturing … good luck selling them that line of what my step-grandpa used to call “bull-dust” …
Remember that the Kyoto Protocol expires soon. The dream of the carbon alarmists is to extend Kyoto. They want to see a new set of global binding restrictions on the increase in carbon emissions. That is to say, they want to see binding restrictions on the increase in energy use in the developing world.
Me, I think that is one of the most inhumane proposals ever floated. The great masses of India and China and Brazil and the rest are finally clawing their way out of abject poverty, and the carbon alarmists want to put binding restrictions on their access to energy?!? Get real! The good news is, they will never, never agree to that. That carbon is what is fueling, quite literally, their rise out of the mire.
In addition, consider that agreements like Kyoto keep energy use from increasing. That approach sounds reasonable, at first blush. And for the developed countries, that’s not much problem, our use is plenty high already. But for China and India and the like? It means we’re saying they can’t ever catch up with us. I can assure you that they see the rank hypocrisy in that approach.
So if Kyoto is thankfully dead in a global sense, what does that leave? Well, I hate to be crass and crude about it but the bad news is that just leaves …
Money. Euros. Greenbacks. Simoleons. Follow the Benjamins.
What will happen in Durban is that the developing countries will pull out all of the stops to convince the developed world to give them money. We’ll hear endless heart-wrenching stories of climate refugees and dying reefs and ecological zones being uprooted and moved polewards without so much as a by-your-leave. And not forgetting, people in polar bear suits. Can’t have a UN Climate Change Carnival without polar bears.
And if history is any guide, in all probability, the carbon activists and quiche-eaters and Eurotrash we have representing the developed world will be unable to bear the guilt of actually being developed, and they will cave in to the demands and promise some money some time down the line … and then, thankfully, most countries likely won’t honor the promises, leading to diplomatic complaints and strongly worded protests.
(As an aside … Dear US Congress-Persons … can we stop funding the IPCC? They’re giving away the taxpayers’ money and getting nothing in return. That’s supposed to be your job, could you at least get rid of the competition? — TIA, willis.)
I leave it to the reader to consider further implications of these numbers. The sun is shining. I’m going outside to build something.
w.
And, IMHO, this same plea should be circulated to all other IPCC-enabling governments. Readers might be interested in my latest take on the IPCC (and its relationship to the UNFCCC) … To my mind, in playing its dutiful role in (what you quite rightly call) The Durban Game, the IPCC has reduced itself to the role of sausage manufacturer (which is decidedly lacking in quality control!)
The IPCC’s new, improved “virtual certainty” flavoured
sausagereportThe weather usually shows up at these COP things.
Spate of record minimum temps. for Durban??
Willis @ur momisugly 1:40:
“In general, the CDIAC figures are in tonnes of carbon (C) rather than carbon dioxide (CO2).”
OK, but it is still based on CO2 emissions, right? IOW, take CO2 emissions and then subtract out the O2 (roughly)? Or are the figures looking at some other form of “carbon” emissions besides CO2?
TomB says:
November 8, 2011 at 2:07 pm
Am I reading that right? Did the US cut its carbon emissions by more than the next 3 combined?
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Tom, now start at the bottom and look at India, China, Brazil, and South Africa…….the three worst and all considered “developing”…………
….looks like they are pretty damn well developed to me
Willis,
The idea of everybody working together for a common, global good is just so seductive that it doesn’t matter whether Kyoto works or not. These people are interested in utopian ideals, not in real people. Don’t forget — limiting the emissions of developing countries won’t hurt them, it hurts somebody else.
Results don’t matter. The USA lowered it’s emissions without signing Kyoto. (BTW: Did you know Barack Obama never signed the Kyoto Protocol Treaty?) but gets no credit. Ask yourself why and once you understand the answer, you’ll understand how these things work.
.
As I have always said – Green taxes INCREASE global emissions output.
All we are doing is making Western industry uneconomic, so it is relocated to China, where they don’t give a flying fig about emissions. Hence the total world emissions INCREASE.
Oh, and at the same time, we kill more workers too. China manages to kill between 2,000 and 6,000 coal miners a year – which takes some doing – just to provide cheap electricity and so cheap goods to sell in the West. You know that red packaging they so love on the boxes of Chinese goods? Its not ink, its the blood of Chinese coal miners….
.
.
>> Monroe says: November 8, 2011 at 1:25 pm
>> I’m going outside too.
Are you ‘going to be some time’?
Don’t do it, Monroe, its not worth it. The truth shall win out in the end…. 😉
.
Have I got this right, Willis? For years, the warmists have been talking of ‘carbon’ when they really meant Co2. We, the sceptics, have been constantly correcting them and telling everybody that what they mean is CO2.
So now, when the CDIAC produce a chart of ‘Carbon emissions’, they admit it really is carbon – but the warmist disciples will continue to read it as CO2 (because we have been telling them that it is). So we are fooled twice…(shame on them).
Or maybe I missed something here.
The carbon atom is only 3/11 of the CO2 molecule,
so do those carbon giga-tonnes have to be multipled by 3.666
to get actual CO2 emissions?
What is all this anyway?
Are they too lazy to pronounce the extra syllables in ‘dioxide’?
I don’t think anyone is actually measuring emissions. The inventory is based on the measured amount of fuel being burned or the amount of cement being produced. Even these figures are often estimates. It would be foolish to stop burning fossil fuels to save the world from an anticipated global average temperature rise of one or two degrees. We would destroy civilzation in the process.
The CDIAC estimates being what they are, just why in the hell is Australia now suffering under Julia’s “carbon tax,” anyway?
[SNIP: Somewhat over the top, don’t you think? -REP]
In the recent past, we have an illustration of an attempt at reverting to a simpler and less complex society, Cambodia. Pol Pot imposed his Paris inspired ideal of an agrarian society living in harmony with nature, 18th Century Voltaire if you will, upon an impoverished and already rural agrarian society. Today’s warmists also wish to impose a carbonless footprint society upon impoverished developing nations. The means to both ends is the same: “Killing Fields.” I can imagine no greater crime than the suppression of peoples to an energy limited society.
As an aside … Dear US Congress-Persons … can we stop funding the IPCC? They’re giving away the taxpayers’ money and getting nothing in return. That’s supposed to be your job, could you at least get rid of the competition? — TIA, willis.)
———-
and exactly what money is the IPCC giving away and how much?
CDIAC post this as though it has meaning (even for AGW acolytes). Like anybody is measuring the amount of wood/trees being burned across the globe…
Figure 2 would be more interesting if the carbon changes were presented as a percentage of emissions rather than the absolute tons.
Dr. Muller lays it out…
The US could cut emissions to ZERO, and China would take up all the slack
Don’t remember anyone pointing this out:
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/foia-reveals-nasas-hansen-was-paid-witness
While the energy reduction in developed countries is just an illusion. A large number of energy intensive industries like steel, aluminum, copper smelting and even spare parts for cars and machineries consumed or used in developed countries are manufactured in developing countries primarily China, India, Brazil and southeast Asia. So this exercise results to more global carbon dioxide emissions because ores mined in Australia are shipped to China and from China to Europe and US instead of the most direct route to the point of consumption. China has agreed to a target to reduce its energy intensity. Another illusion, as certainly China will meet its target of lower energy intensity as the amount of carbon dioxide emission continues to increase in absolute terms but at a rate lower than the increase in the divisor which the GDP especially if the divisor is denominated in US dollar. The Yuan have appreciated some 20 per cent compared to the US dollar in recent years and if the carbon dioxide emission have increased by 9 per cent, then the energy intensity in terms of tons of coal equivalent per 1000 US $ has declined by 10 per cent. It is all accounting.
Why do all the bubbles originate from the bottom of a champagne flute glass full of fizzy wine? These bubbles are CO2 right, but why do they always form at the bottom and rise to the top?
Just curious. Wouldn’t those initial curves also reflect the increase in carbon consumption by the world’s flora? I don’t seem to be struggling for oxygen in some kind of perverted atmosphere, so I would have to assert that the plants are doing a pretty good job of removing the carbon di-oxide if nothing else.
You say “Me, I think that is one of the most inhumane proposals ever floated. The great masses of India and China and Brazil and the rest are finally clawing their way out of abject poverty, and the carbon alarmists want to put binding restrictions on their access to energy?!?”
Well I was a kid in New Zealand in the 1950s. Were we living in abject poverty then? I don’t think so. The majority of energy is used to quite literally produce rubbish. There are many measures that could reduce that. I don’t buy your emotional argument at all.
Latitude says:
November 8, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Thanks, Latitude. I haven’t had time yet to even understand what JAXA says, much less how it differs from the other satellite measuring CO2.
w.
Thank you Willis, for yet another good article.
Eric Anderson says:
November 8, 2011 at 2:42 pm
As far as I know, it is the weight of the C in the CO2 emissions, which is 12/44 of the CO2 weight.
w.
“Well I was a kid in New Zealand in the 1950s. Were we living in abject poverty then?”
People in India still cook their meals over dung fires. Did you do that in the 1950s?
LazyTeenager says:
November 8, 2011 at 3:56 pm
Since you are apparently far too lazy to look it up … I guess you may never know. Because I’m not going to do your homework for you … however, to speed your search, here’s a clue:
The IPCC has never produced anything of value.
So the real answer to “what money is the IPCC giving away” is “all of it” …
w.