Some numbers that you may find interesting, graphed by Ed Hoskins from France.
Here’s more:
Another way of looking at the same data:
Comparison 1
Comparison 2
Growth of CO2 emissions
China is the biggest emitter now.
The data supporting this was all published by BP up from 1965 till 2011:
http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle800.do?categoryId=9037130&contentId=7068669
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If I didn’t have to breathe the associated pollution, China would be where I’d grow tomatoes.
So?
Development needs energy, energy produces CO2. CO2 is not a pollutant! CO2 does not drive climate!!
Look at where the annual natural production of CO2 is- the southern hemisphere not the northern, and the natural producers far outweigh the paltry CO2 we emit.
Get real!
I found this picture on nasa’s earth observatory site:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/images/carbon_cycle.jpg
“This diagram of the fast carbon cycle shows the movement of carbon between land, atmosphere, and oceans in billions of tons of carbon per year. Yellow numbers are natural fluxes, red are human contributions in billions of tons of carbon per year. White numbers indicate stored carbon.”
The diagram is from a March 2008 DOE report, but I don’t know what year the numbers represent:
https://public.ornl.gov/site/gallery/detail.cfm?id=445&topic=&citation=&general=carbon&restsection=BERPublic
It has human emissions at 9 gigatons per year. Are the graphs in this post supposed to be metric gigatonnes? I ask because, in the first graph in this post, the blue, red and cyan lines have all been around 5 gigatonnes for decades for a total of 15 and the other 4 lines have been above 1 for decades for a total of 19 gigatonnes. I know there are conversion differences, but 19 tonnes is about 20.9 short tons and 18.7 long tons. The 9 is not close to the 19, so I don’t think the discrepancy is due to a conversion error.
Whose numbers do you believe?
John M Reynolds
Bob Diaz says:
November 23, 2012 at 4:24 pm
Humor me on this one ….
…This suggests that controlling total CO2 emissions is NOT the main objective of the UN with so called “climate change”.
Coming soon: Bob’s next comment, asking us to humour him on the suggestion that the Pope is Catholic.
The German emissions story is fascinating. Isn’t the Russian story similar on at least one count? They started off with ‘Soviet era’ coal fired technologies and have been upgrading them ever since. The efficiency gain is large.
I agree the GDP number is misleading because a more efficient economy is rated as shrinking. In like vein the ‘standard of living’ number is a poor measure of moral education and ethical conduct. It is rather like a dipstick in the engine of the economy. Knowing how much oil is in the engine does not tell us where the car is going, no matter how precisely we measure it. The measure of the usefulness of an engine is not determined by knowing the quantity of its life-blood.
I find it hard to trust the data in this area of science because of it’s terrible track record. But!!
Looks like we have a healthy but small concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, It will only be there for a approximately 80 years, lets hope the planet finds away to replenish it again as it gets removed by all the hungry plants and animals that want to grow up healthy and strong to produce little baby plants and animals, and all the other various sinks such as the likely possibility of the oceans once again going through the cycle of cooling down.
Less CO2 is a really really bad thing that is never ever talked about or explained properly climate change alarmist (otherwise know as the local village idiot), Who only nag everyone by pointing to only one half of the cycle that suits their point and being dishonest and irresponsible by ignoring the other half. When you remove CO2 it starves plants and animals that depend on it, If CO2 was lower in the past, wouldn’t the biospheres growth have been stunted? and wouldn’t there have been more frequent famines and less people that could have been sustained by less productive Biosphere? The answer is Yes. Simples!
As far as I can tell, the titles on some of the graphs are wrong.
The first graph “CO2 emissions growth 1965 – 2011: BP dataset ‘000,000 tonnes” implies that China’s emissions grew by 9,000,000,000 tonnes in 2011. That’s not true. China’s annual emissions in 2011 were about 9 billion tonnes. That’s what they were, that’s not how much they grew.
The graph titled: “Cumulative CO2 emissions compared 1965 – 2011: Developed – Developing Worlds: ‘000,000 tonnes” implies that the USofA has emitted zero CO2 for a long time because the width of its bar hasn’t increased. On the other hand, the line for China actually looks like it could be its cumulative emissions. AARGH!
I thought we were going to see some graphs other than the Mauna Loa CO2 record. Where else has CO2 ppm been monitored? Are there graphs to see on this in the southern hemisphere?
Sorry to complain but i don’t like that last 3D angled pie chart “CO2 Emissions 2011: 000,000 tons”.
Sizes of slices do not accurately reflect percentage values, I have come to expect better from WUWT. Please consider replacing with a true sized image. Thank you.
Also is there a graph (over the years) which shows how much CO2 is man made compared to how much CO2 is natural?
Reading threads like this, I am reminded that it has been said (by you Americans) that war is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.
Looks like the task has been taken over by Global Warming/Cooling…
Is CO2 a proxy for economic activity? Much more of a case for a real hockey stick. Good to see the second and third worlds starting to come into their own.
Now let’s do an overlay of CO2 emissions and economic growth and then find the point where both diminished enough to cause social unrest …
I’d like to see one more pie chart. Take the last pie graph and have it be a blow-out of the overall CO2 emissions (including natural sources) so we can see how those individual countries fit into the larger nature+man picture. It’ll have to be a blow-out/up because it will all but disappear in an overall pie.
Duncan says:
November 23, 2012 at 4:29 pm
I always wonder how these charts of CO2 emissions correlates with atmospheric CO2 concentrations, like from the mauna loa record.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
BP’s numbers are rough guesses, at best. I suspect a lot of the numbers are backfit produce a clean line and match other records, like the CO2 concentration record.
The BP (and official figures) are based on sales of fossil fuels, which are more or less accurately known from sales taxes. Maybe somewhat underestimated (especially in China). The increase of the CO2 level follows the emissions at a quite constant ratio, the “airborne fraction” is between 50-55% of the human emissions over the past 100+ years (without taking into account land use changes). See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_emiss_increase.jpg
and
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1900_2004.jpg
J. Philip Peterson says:
November 24, 2012 at 5:06 am
I thought we were going to see some graphs other than the Mauna Loa CO2 record. Where else has CO2 ppm been monitored? Are there graphs to see on this in the southern hemisphere?
There are some 10 “baseline” stations in the oceans and coastal, plus the South Pole, where CO2 is continuous monitored by NOAA + some 70 others at pristine areas monitored by other organisations and countries:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/iadv/
Here a few NH and SH combined:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_trends.jpg
Also is there a graph (over the years) which shows how much CO2 is man made compared to how much CO2 is natural?
Not accumulated over the years, but the year by year contribution of nature over the past 50+ years is negative: more sink than source:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em.jpg
Thus while the natural emissions in a given year are far larger than the human emissions, the natural sinks are larger than the natural emissions and nature didn’t add any net CO2 to the total CO2 mass in the atmosphere, to the contrary, it absorbed about halve of the extra injected CO2 (in mass, but not necessary from human origin).
I am intrigued as to why the official CDIAC data still only goes up to 2009. Are they afraid to show how much China’s emissions have gone up?
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/meth_reg.html
highflight56433 says:
November 23, 2012 at 5:29 pm
“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.””
Interesting…several years back, I asked the same question, viz, what is the relative contrbution from human activity to total CO2…I was referred to a table in the AR4 report (I did not save the link—DRAT!), but the math showed that anthropogenic CO2 constituted only 2.9% of the total.
So, we are now at roughly less than one half of that amount. Given that these data are estimates, the bottom line is that humans contribute a truly insignificant amount of CO2 in terms of whatever this gas might do as a “greenhouse gas.”
Bob W in NC says:
November 24, 2012 at 10:04 am
but the math showed that anthropogenic CO2 constituted only 2.9% of the total.
Bob (and others…), your math is right and wrong: indeed human emissions of CO2 are some 3% of the natural emissions (97%) per year, but you forget the other side of the equation: natural sinks are 98.5% of the combined emissions, while human sinks are near unexistent. As a result, there is some 1.5% of increase in the atmosphere.
Natural emissions and sinks are simply a cycle: partly continuous between equator and poles and partly seasonal over summer and winter. At the end of the year, the net result is a net sink of CO2, in quantity about halve of the current human emissions… Thus humans are fully responsible for the increase (with a minor part from warmer sea surface temperatures since the LIA).
J Martin says:
November 23, 2012 at 3:44 pm
Chinese co2 per head is not far off that of the EU now, so I wonder if we might start to see a reduction in that impressive rate of co2 emissions growth.
I do not expect that. It will still take some time to get to the same productivity. Expect it to increase to about double the pro head production or more.
Thanks Ferdinand Engelbeen for the links. I knew other charts must exist, This is one thing I most like about WUWT.
Heres a poser.I am an engineer who often works in areas that require me to wear gas meters for safety reasons.These meters measure oxygen in% and co2 in ppm and are calibrated every 6 months.Now I have only ever seen these meters indicate Oxygen at between 19% AND 21% and CO2 at 0ppm unless breathed on with cupped hands.Any explanation?Are these global CO2 readings actually taken inside this volcano in Hawaii.
MDH says:
November 24, 2012 at 1:45 pm
CO2 at 0 ppm unless breathed on with cupped hands.Any explanation? Are these global CO2 readings actually taken inside this volcano in Hawaii.
Depends of the sensitivity of the CO2 cell. That kind of safety equipment is meant to detect unsafe inside levels of CO2, which starts somewhere above 2%, or 20,000 ppmv. Your breath contains about that level of CO2. The outside ambient 400 ppmv may be below the detection level.
The measurements nowadays used for ambient “background” CO2 levels are sensitive for differences of less than 0.2 ppmv around 400 ppmv and calibrated automatically every hour with three calibration gases. See:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/about/co2_measurements.html
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
In your post at November 24, 2012 at 11:32 am you assert
You know your final sentence is a non sequitor so I am surprised that you spoilt your post by adding it.
In the existing absence of adequate understanding of the carbon cycle, it cannot be known what difference – if any – there would be in the increase to atmospheric CO2 concentration if the anthropogenic emission were absent.
(ref. Rorsch A, Courtney RS & Thoenes D, ‘The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle’ E&E v16no2 (2005) )
Richard
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
“…Thus humans are fully responsible for the increase (with a minor part from warmer sea surface temperatures since the LIA).”
First of all, thank you for your response. But, question: You say that 98.5% of each year’s emissions are taken out by natural sinks. OK, no argument there. But since the sinks would not make a distinction between CO2 of natural and human origin (CO2 is CO2), wouldn’t that mean that the sinks available remove the relative amount of CO2 emitted by each source? Thus, 98.5% of the 97% from natural sources = 1.455% remaining from natural sources and 0.045% remaining from human sources, total = 1.5%. Consequently, humans would not be responsible for more than a trace percent of the increase in CO2 each year.