Ed suggested this would be a good addition to the new WUWT CO2 reference page, and I agree, but thought it should get front page attention first. It is a condensed version of an essay published earlier this year. – Anthony
Guest essay by Ed Hoskins
The following calculations and graphics are based on information on national CO2 emission levels worldwide published by BP[1]in June 2014 for the period from 1965 up until 2013. The data is well corroborated by previous similar datasets published by the CDIAC, Guardian [2] and Google up until 2009 [3]. These notes and figures provide a short commentary on that CO2 emissions history.
The contrast between the developed and developing worlds is stark in terms of their history of CO2 emissions and the likely prognosis for their future CO2 output.
Since 1980 CO2 emissions from the developed world have shown virtually no increase, whereas the developing world has had a fourfold increase since 1980: that increase is accelerating.
Similarly the CO2 output per head is declining in the developed world whereas it is accelerating the developing world.
These notes divide the world nations into seven logical groups with distinct attitudes to CO2 control:
developed
§ United States of America, attempting CO2 emissions control under Obama’s EPA.
§ The European Union, (including the UK), currently believers in action to combat Global Warming.
§ Japan, the former Soviet Union, Canada and Australia are developed nations, rejecting controls on CO2 emissions.
developing
§ South Korea, Iran, South Africa, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Indonesia and Taiwan: more advanced developing nations, still developing rapidly, (KR IR ZA MX SA BR ID TW).
§ China and Hong Kong: developing very rapidly.
§ India: developing rapidly from a low base.
§ Rest of World (~160 Nations): developing rapidly from a low base.
In summary the current CO2 emission and emissions per head position in 2013 was as follows:
These graphs of total CO2 emission history show that up until 2013:
§ There is stabilisation or reduction of emissions from developed economies since 1980.
§ The USA, simply by exploiting shale gas for electricity generation, has already reduced its CO2 emissions by some 9.5% since 2005[4]. That alone has already had more CO2 emission reduction effect than the entire Kyoto protocol[5] [6].
§ CO2 emissions from the developed economies rejecting action on CO2 have hardly grown since 2005.
§ The European Union (27) has reduced its CO2 emissions by ~14% since 2005.
§ CO2 emissions from the developing world as a whole overtook the developed world in 2007 and are now a third larger than the developed world’s CO2 emissions.
§ there has been a very rapid escalation of Chinese CO2 emissions since the year 2000[7].
§ China overtook the USA CO2 emissions in 2006, and Chinese emissions are now ~62% greater than the USA, the escalation in Chinese CO2 emissions continues. Chinese emissions have grown by +75% since 2005 and China continues to build coal fired powerstations to supply the bulk of its electricity as demand grows.
§ India has accelerating emissions[8], growing from a low base by +63% since 2005. India too is building coal fired powerstations to increase the supply of electricity as 25% of its population still has no access to electric power.
§ there is inexorable emissions growth from the Rest of the World economies, from a low base, they have grown by +30% since 2005.
So any CO2 emissions reduction achieved by the Developed Nations will be entirely negated by the increases in CO2 emissions from Developing Nations.
Probably more significant than the total CO2 emissions output is the comparison of the emissions/head for the various nation groups.
§ The EU(27) even with active legal measures have maintained a fairly level CO2 emission rate but have managed to reduce their CO2 emissions/head by ~16% since 2005. Much of the recent downward trend is largely attributed to their declining economies.
§ The USA has already reduced its CO2 emissions/head by ~22% since in 2005, mainly arising from the use of shale gas for electricity generation. And now Mr Putin is actively involved in backing anti-fracking campaigns in Europe so as to protect his large Gasprom market and to have an energy stranglehold on the West, as he has demonstrated recently in the Ukraine[9].
§ Russia, Japan, Canada and Australia have only grown their emissions/head by ~1% since 2005.
§ China’s CO2 emissions/head have increased ~11 fold since 1965. China overtook the world-wide average in 2003 and surpassed the rapidly developing nations in 2006. China’s emissions / head at 7.0 tonnes / head are now approaching the level of the EU(27) nations.
§ India’s CO2 emissions have grown by 4.7 times over the period and are now showing recent modest acceleration. That increasing rate is likely to grow substantially with increased use of coal for electricity generation[10].
§ The eight rapidly developing nations have shown consistent growth from a low base in 1965 at 5.6 times. They exceeded the world average CO2 emissions level in 1997.
§ The Rest of the World (~160 Nations), 36% of world population, have grown CO2 emissions consistently but only by 2.6 times since 1965, this group will be the likely origin of major future emissions growth as they strive for better standards of living.
§ Overall average world-wide emissions/head have remained relatively steady but with early growth in the decade from 1965. It amounts to 1.6 times since 1965.
When the participating nations particularly EU(27) are compared with Chinese CO2 emissions/head, an interesting picture arises:
§ Chinese CO2 emissions at 7.01mt/head for its 1.3 billion population are already ~43% greater than the worldwide average. Those emissions are still growing fast.
§ At 5.5mt/head, France, with ~80% nuclear electricity generation, has the lowest CO2 emission rates in the developed world and is at only ~12% above the world-wide average.
§ China’s CO2 emissions/head exceeded France’s CO2 emissions/head in 2009 and are now 22% higher.
§ China’s emissions per head are now very close to the UK and are rapidly approaching the EU(27) average.
§ The UK at 7.2mt/head is now only ~48% higher than the world-wide average and only about ~3% higher than China. So China is likely to overtake the UK in the near future.
§ Germany, one of the largest CO2 emitters in Europe, has emissions/head ~100% higher than the worldwide average and is still ~49% higher than China. Germany’s emissions/head have increased recently because they are now burning much larger quantities of brown coal to compensate them for the “possibly irrational” closure of their nuclear generating capacity.
This must question the logic of Green attitudes in opposing Nuclear power. Following the Fukushima disaster, the German government position of rapidly eliminating nuclear power in a country with no earthquake risk and no chance of tsunamis should not be tenable.
If CO2 emissions really were a concern to arrest Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming / Man-made Climate Change, these results particularly from France show starkly the very real advantage of using Nuclear power for electricity generation.
The underdeveloped nations are bound to become progressively more industrialised and more intensive users of fossil fuels to power their development and widen their distribution of electricity.
This point is re-emphasised above, by cross comparing the annual growth in emissions from China and India with the full annual emissions from key European countries. Chinese CO2 emissions growth in some years can exceed the total UK and French emissions level and even approach the German level on occasions.
REFERENCES:
[1] http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/about-bp/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html
[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/31/world-carbon-dioxide-emissions-country-data-co2#data
[3] https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AonYZs4MzlZbdFF1QW00ckYzOkZqcUhnNDVlSWc&hl=en#gid=1
[4] http://www.c3headlines.com/2013/07/a-fracking-revolution-us-now-leads-world-in-co2-emission-reductions-.html
[5]http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/project_syndicate/2012/09/thanks_to_fracking_u_s_carbon_emissions_are_at_the_lowest_levels_in_20_years_.html
[6] http://www.oilandgasonline.com/doc/u-s-fracking-has-carbon-more-whole-world-s-wind-solar-0001
[7] http://www.pbl.nl/en/news/pressreleases/2011/steep-increase-in-global-co2-emissions-despite-reductions-by-industrialised-countries
[8] http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-06-10/global-warming/29642669_1_kyoto-protocol-second-commitment-period-
[9] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/fracking/10911942/Russia-in-secret-plot-against-fracking-Nato-chief-says.html
[10] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/India-invokes-right-to-grow-to-tell-rich-nations-of-its-stand-on-future-climate-change-negotiations/articleshow/36724848.cms
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China has real industrial emission problems. CO2 will not make the air turn brown.
Gary Meyers says:
August 3, 2014 at 9:17 am
“Anyone know about thorium as nuclear fuel?”
Wikipedia is actually good for some things, like looking this up. If we could speed up the timetable for Gen IV reactors in general, it would go a long way to making the planet cleaner, even if CO2 generation is not genuinely a concern.
mpainter says:
August 3, 2014 at 10:30 am
I sympathize with your concerns. While I think the Fukushima accident is actually heartening – it was a Gen II design, and it held up pretty well, considering the 9.0 earthquake and ensuing tsunami – the thing that worries me most is nuclear waste which could be used in improvised dirty weapons, or more powerful weapons by rogue states which would be able to get access to the waste.
But, if the money being poured into solar and wind power, two sources which do not have the energy density to satisfy the world’s appetite on any practical level, were to be poured into Gen IV, these concerns could be substantially mitigated.
Peter Taylor says:
August 3, 2014 at 7:33 am
Yes, the developed world has not so much mitigated its industrial pollution problem, as outsourced it. The pell mell rush to “green” is doing little but sending production of nasty byproducts to places where there are fewer controls. A classic example of doing more harm than good by giving into panic, and the OCD neurosis for “green” it has engendered.
Gary Meyers:
Nuclear power will not mitigate concerns about safety but will instead exacerbate them.As far as your claim of a cleaner world, how clean is Chernobyl 26 years later?
mpainter says:
Gary Meyers:
Nuclear power will not mitigate concerns about safety but will instead exacerbate them.As far as your claim of a cleaner world, how clean is Chernobyl 26 years later?
My claim of a cleaner world? Where did you get that? I brought up thorium reactors as a point for discussion, that’s all. BTW, Chernobyl was not a thorium reactor. A thorium reactor would not self destruct as did the Chernobyl reactor.
Steve Oregon said
By everything I have read the atmospheric water column has not and is not cooperating.
From my layperson perspective that appears to be what should be an an iron clad end to the CO2 hysteria.
Increased CO2 is simply not doing what the team supposed it was doing. At all.
The CO2 hysteria should have ended many years ago, for many reasons. To the warmists, facts are nothing but irrelevant irritants that tend to get in their way.
Gary Meyers says:August 3, 2014 at 9:17 am
“Anyone know about thorium as nuclear fuel?”
You’re new here, right?
Bart says:
August 3, 2014 at 11:31 am
A triple melt-down equates to “…held up pretty well”? Nothing like ‘the ol’ college try’ when it comes to nuclear reactors, I guess.
The enthusiasm for Thorium reactors is not shared by all:
My bold
http://nuclearfreeplanet.org/thorium-not-green-not-viable-and-not-likely-oliver-tickell-june-2012-.html
It sounds as though,from this article anyway, that thorium reactors have some serious considerations to take into account. As technology improves and research into solving these problems goes ahead, maybe thorium reactors will become viable. We certainly need an alternative source of safe and cheap(relatively) energy going forward as fossil fuels are finite and won’t last forever.
This article should be rewritten taking in to account the out sourcing of heavy industry to developing countries that also have less stringent or non existent environmental controls.
There are serious pollution and health problems in many of these developing countries that are manufacturing goods and products for consumers in the developed world.
A far more informative and honest appraisal would be per capita/C02 emissions that take into account the total CO2 produced manufacturing and transporting goods and services to developed countries and their consumers. The picture would be very different.
Mike McMillan says:
August 3, 2014 at 12:27 pm
Gary Meyers says:August 3, 2014 at 9:17 am
“Anyone know about thorium as nuclear fuel?”
You’re new here, right?
If by your above comment above you are saying that this has been previously hashed out here, I must have been sick that day and stayed home. No, I am not new here. I mostly lurk and only post now and then. Thanks for asking. :- )
Gary Meyers says:
August 3, 2014 at 12:51 pm
Yes, nothing lasts forever, but by many estimates, we’ve got reserves of coal and other fossil fuels in such great abundance that there is no danger of any shortage for perhaps hundreds of years.
Because the CAGW conjecture is bust, there is no reason to limit our CO2 emissions, demonize carbon, nor penalize coal. In any event, as the article shows, our misguided efforts to limit carbon dioxide emissions will have little impact on overall totals because of growth elsewhere.
In regards to the 4th graph from the top that shows China’s CO2 emissions taking off around 2002-2003, Clinton and congress (majority Republicans) granted China PNTR in Oct of 2000 which lead to an exodus of US jobs to China. It’s cost us a third of our manufacturing base, the largest ever loss of US manufacturing jobs on record.
The following graph clearly shows the loss of US manufacturing jobs after PNTR:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?s%5B1%5D%5Bid%5D=MANEMP
I imagine that China is employing many more women now which means they will be more busy and hence, have less time for having children. In a sense, development could be a way to reduce population.
Maybe that’s why so much of climate change has to do with redistributing wealth from the rich nation to the poor nations? Just a thought…
Here is the message for those who come to hawk their thorium and G this and that nuclear power reactors: we are skeptics and not so easily taken in by your slick touts.
Steve P.
I completely agree about the CAGW bust and no need to limit CO2 emissions. CO2 is GOOD!
An abundant source of clean cheap energy would do the economies of the world a great big favor.
I reject the conclusion that human beings are the source of any of the CO2 in the atmosphere. The source of the carbon in man’s CO2 is fossil fuels. The source of the carbon in fossil fuels was prehistoric plant matter, and the source of the carbon in prehistoric plant matter was the atmosphere. Man burning fossil fuels is but a very small part of the age old natural carbon cycle. Man is simply facilitating getting the CO2 back into the atmosphere, whence it came.
Russell Klier,
That sounds OK by me. The earth conveniently tucked away all of that CO2 in the form of fossil fuels and calcium carbonate (cement), for man to use as energy and building material to replenish the life giving CO2 in the atmosphere for plants to consume and flourish.
To quote something from the Micro$oft web site when looking up a bug in their product:
“This behavior is by design”….
Where is the surprise in this?
Maurice Strong is a major driver in all this. He’s run off to China (along with his money). The Warmunists have loads of “investments” in ‘green’ tech, a lot of it in China. Well connected Democrats, like Warren Buffet (who makes a load of money via shipping USA coal to China on his rail road) make a boat load of money out of China investments.
(Full Disclosure: I am a ‘Class A’ share holder in Berkshire Hathaway – the major investment vehicle of Warren Buffet. He has made me a ‘boat load’ of money over the years. But ‘the truth just is. -E.M.Smith’; so while I make money off the insider scams, I don’t have to like them… or endorse them.)
The bottom line is that this is the desired outcome. To move jobs, industry, and most importantly, profit, to “developing nations” where the controls are less and the profits higher. Along with money and profit goes CO2 generations, since the two are ‘joined at the hip’.
I am conflicted on this. On the one hand, it makes me money. But on the other hand, it really is ‘just wrong’. It is the lying part that I can’t swallow. Just say up front that it is more profitable to bring in guys from India on an H1B visa than to hire Americans to do computer stuff. Just say up front that you can buy off a Chinese ‘indulgence’ for less than the cost of operation in the USA or EU. Profit is a good thing….
Sure, a few toys from China will have lead paint. Sure, you can’t really understand the ‘support guy’ from India… (not like it matters…. computer jargon being worse than Greek to most folks anyway…) and never mind that those windmills made in China are only harvesting Subsidy Payments from gullible governments…. as long as profits are higher…
Look, as long as you can get the Rubes to buy into the idea that CO2 matters, and so they shut down the competition in the “Developed World”, and especially if you make them think that they ought to attach some kind of charge or tax on CO2 there, that does not exist in India or China, well, nor your fault they are stupid, right? Just make sure you have your investments in place in China and India first, then get the “protocol” signed to they get a free ride while the competition gets a load of taxes and ‘remediations’ and ‘government oversight’….
Sigh.
Like I said, I’m conflicted on this. It makes me money via my coat tails ride on BRKA… but I don’t like the slime of it….
Forgive me for my venturing away form the CO2 topic but the more I research the more curious I get.
Essentially this is how the AGW Team pitches their CO2 emissions=warming theory.
“Increased CO2 triggers feedback processes. When it gets warmer, there are more water vapor in the atmosphere, which in turn increases temperatures, which in turn release more carbon dioxide from the oceans.”
OK so CO2 has to first cause warming which then increases water vapor etc.
Scouring the internet there is much of this sort of thing which tries hard to support the pitch.
http://www.lmd.ens.fr/wavacs/Lectures/Randel-3.pdf
But in that powerpoint are Trenberth water vapor graphs ending in 2002.
They are not very supportive so some handy massaging follows in the powerpoint.
Other assertions from that 2009 presentation are made about more hefty rainfall events, more severe droughts etc.
However, this is 2014 and from what I can tell much of that massaging and those assertions are now complete bunk and the atmospheric water vapor in the last 12 years has cooperated even less by declining.
The entire pitch relying on water vapor is simply not happening.
As I ponder this I wonder if Trenberth et al are getting increasingly nervous about this particular angle of their adventure because it may very well expose their notion of the “hidden heat” being impossible because there has not been sufficient water vapor to have caused any heat in the first place.
Meaning that which could not have occurred and does not exist cannot be hidden.
I see evidence of their worry within their many mentions of how tough it is to confidently measure atmospheric water vapor. When it’s convenient they don’t know much and can’t be too sure. .
So, you’re saying it would be really foolish and futile for the US to double our power costs in an effort to reduce global CO2 emissions?
Would someone please tell the President.
“I should hope that WUWT does not become a blog where nuclear power generation is advocated as a means to curb anthropogenic CO2.”
Nuclear power generation is a continually improving, safe, clean, reliable and economically competitive form of energy production. The fact that it produces no CO2 is a benefit of interest only to Warmistas, who are also frequently the same people who believe that it makes us all glow in the dark.
WUWT does a superb job of running a free science debate forum.
Could we have a chart showing what % of total CO2 emissions has occurred since which dates ie emissions since 1950 are x% of all CO2 emissions, since 1960 its y%, etc etc. Particularly interested in the figure for post 2000, which eyeballing the total missions chart must be a fairly high number, as thats the stat I want to throw at people I’m arguing with about AGW – a large % of all CO2 ever emitted is post 2000, and yet temperatures have cooled since then.
Steve P says:
August 3, 2014 at 12:29 pm
‘A triple melt-down equates to “…held up pretty well”?’
Unquestionably. The partial meltdowns which occurred were relatively minor, especially given the circumstances. Have you ever been in a 9.0 earthquake? The most I have experienced is 6.7, and let me tell you, I thought the entire city could not fail to slide off into the ocean. And, the Fukushima reactor was only Gen II. Modern Gen III reactors would have held up much better. Gen IV reactors would have no problem at all.
As the designs for Gen IV are a work in progress, finding any potential weak points is a process to be encouraged, and should not be considered a final pronouncement on how they will eventually pan out. Particularly not when the criticism is being leveled by something called “nuclearfreeplanet.org”. The name alone should tip you off that the criticisms they might offer are rather likely to be biased and unrealistic.
Bart says:
August 3, 2014 at 3:56 pm
Ah so. These are not the meltdowns we need to fear; they were only partial and relatively minor.
Not according to Japan’s Nuclear Emergency Response HQ, which stated in June 2011 that reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced “a full meltdown.”
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/06/06/japan.nuclear.meltdown/
But that’s not the end of it. Not only have the cores melted down, but even worse, they’ve melted through the containment vessels:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8565020/Nuclear-fuel-has-melted-through-base-of-Fukushima-plant.html
Finally, I must tell you that attacking the source is not a worthy enterprise. All issues must be judged on their own merits, irrespective of the source where they appear.
Bart:
Let us hear from you again when they have Gen XLVII type reactors up and running. In the meantime go look in the mirror and repeat 20 times “I must get the facts straight..
I must get the facts straight..”