A graphical look at worldwide CO2 numbers

I’d like to see another pie chart showing total atmospheric CO2 and ’emitted’ CO2.

Can everybody now see that lumping India with China regarding CO2 totally is misleading? It is lazy propaganda: measured facts count not mental projections.

The majority of living expenses correspond to relatively physical goods: houses or apartments, food, fuel, electricity, etc. Most of those tend to have CO2 emitted in their production in practice today. Although less per capita so far since relative to their large population, China’s strongly rising CO2 emissions provide a striking demonstration of their true and rising economic power. (And they aren’t communist anymore in the stereotypical meaning, by now combining a government which is less purely service-sector than Western governments in emphasis with a corporate income tax rate actually much lower than that of the Europe and the U.S.; in tax rate terms, they are significantly more capitalistic than Europe).
In contrast, much of the components of GDP counted from services and government are often skewed to misleading at best. For instance, as a thought experiment, if I were pay my neighbor $100 to mow my lawn, and he paid me $100 to mow his lawn, GDP would go up by the corresponding amount with our rise in incomes (despite our rise in expenses as well) compared to if we each mowed our own lawn, yet really that is just an illusion with regard to real prosperity (not like more physical production). As another example, when women moved into the workforce after the 1960s, not all but a portion of the gain in GDP in official statistics was overstated when, for example, a daycare worker’s services are counted in GDP but a mother raising a kid directly was not. Government spending counts as adding to GDP even if, for instance, supporting very extreme numbers of individuals studying some of the less-useful humanities subjects in college, despite how some majors are of no greater efficiency relative to practical applications than spending time studying computer games by playing them. In fact, the definition of and emphasis on GDP as a common metric seems to reflect the biases of macroeconomists being primarily employed by governments and universities (not entirely unlike the bias in climatology).
The root of prosperity is how much physical production is produced per capita. Even such as a large magnitude of international trade between large countries depends primarily on physical items going both ways in the end, even if temporarily large amounts of borrowing and debt financing have been possible. The U.S. has the advantage so far of the legacy of the past, prior infrastructure built up over decades, yet in new production is not so impressive compared to China.
However, the boom in fracking and U.S. fuel production recently is one of the few major net increases to U.S. physical production per capita recently, so preventing the CAGW movement from crippling it will be particularly important — for as much as they may assume GDP from other sources like extra lawyers, bureaucrats, and so on in a so-called “postindustrial” economy is substitutable, actually it isn’t, not for real economic prosperity.

Ok we have a hockey-stick again but this time of Chinese origin. Let’s just do what Mike the Mann did with the upside-down Tiljander stuff to ‘prove’ AGW.
Let’s just invert what happened at Tiananmen Square to rigourously rebut ‘false’ claims that the ‘West is still the best!’
PS- Gotta admit that I think the Chinese are doing exactly the right thing by increasing their nations energy output. Good on you guys and gals. Just wish that our leaders were as clever as yours!

If I am reading the total CO2 released chart correctly, then there is about 1.13% of CO2 attributed to humans. 34,000,000,000 / 3.0 x 10^12 That probably does not count the exhale of 8 billion souls and the exhale of all the meat they raise to eat before they eat it. Then there is all the water vapor we exhale, and “Blazing Saddles.”

Henry Clark says:
November 23, 2012 at 5:14 pm
“Although less per capita so far since relative to their large population, China’s strongly rising CO2 emissions provide a striking demonstration of their true and rising economic power.”
Yes, all while the west plays the guilt game..shame on us for being successful and…oh we must save the planet. The Chinese invented capitalism. We choke it.
“The U.S. has the advantage so far of the legacy of the past, prior infrastructure built up over decades, yet in new production is not so impressive compared to China. ”
The Chinese are not burdened with the EPA and other hostile agencies that stymy their economy and inflate costs to the point of not being competitive.

When a tree takes CO2 out of the atmosphere, much of the carbon is transformed by the tree into wood (cellulose). When that wood is used to make furniture, or used in home construction, then that same carbon continues to be “imprisoned” (sequestered).
For me, this simple process raises a lot of questions: How much carbon imprisonment is going on “right under our noses”? Who is investigating furniture hoarding?
And, I didn’t even mention the carbon being hidden in landfills.
FREE the CARBON!!!!

If 0.35% of the ice in the world was melted, it would absorb all the CO2 emitted in 2011. As at least half of it already disappears down various rabbit holes, it would take 0.175% to sop up the rest That also means that if the current rate were to continue (which is impossible as the resources do not exist to do so) it would take 570 years to emit more CO2 that would be absorbed by melting ice. If the catastrophists are correct and all the ice melted, the CO2 level would not rise higher than the present 392 ppm even if we continue to emit 33.6 billion tons per year for the next half-millenium. Hmm… Maybe water plays a more important role in stabilising the CO2 level that has been thought.

One very important CO2 graph seems to be missing. You can find it here:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/01/50-years-of-co2-time-for-a-vision-test/

Nick Stokes says:
November 23, 2012 at 7:16 pm
clipe says: November 23, 2012 at 4:54 pm
“CN might be China,Hong Kong S.A.R.?”
No, I checked from the BP data. They have added HK etc into China. The 2011 emission fig for JP+RU+CN is the total for Japan + SU + Canada.
=======================
Glad that is cleared up.
Does this, in any way, relieve one of the onus of CFL bulbs ?
It is a burden.

Bob Diaz says:
November 23, 2012 at 4:24 pm
“ . . . the UN seems to hold a double standard . . .”
Some months ago on P. Gosselin’s NoTricksZone there was a post about the writing of the Kyoto treaty (I can’t at the moment find it). There are indications that the German “Greens” incorporate a lot of politics from the former East Germany and that much of the treaty text was written by these folks. One of the ideas was to have a treaty that would constrain most “western” countries (read USA) and make them pay and transfer wealth and technology to less-well-off societies. Not being able to find the post I wanted, I found a short related comment. Here:
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/german_kyoto_protocol_hoax.htm
As the UN is not a person, one should not give it attributes of a person. Find the people responsible and see who benefits (follow the money). You might also look at UN Agenda 21. Some folks do not like liberty and free people – they want control.
Here is a scary thought. On E. M. Smith’s site a comment included
My theory is, your opinion of your govt and its minions will never be higher than it is today. [John Robertson]
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/bill-nye-the-science-fruit-loop/

Note the sharp decline in Russian CO2 emissions after 1991. What declined at an even faster rate was aerosol emissions as heavily polluting Soviet era industry was shut down and, in part, replaced with modern much less polluting replacements.

This graph is perhaps a good proxy for economic success.