U.S. overall energy related emissions are 12% below 2005 levels, and electricity generated related emissions are that of 1993.
Guest essay by Larry Hamlin
EIA data and analysis shows that U.S. CO2 emissions peaked in the years 2005 and 2007 at about 6 billion metric tons per year and have steadily declined since then with 2015 CO2 emissions being 12% below ((http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=26152&src=email#)) emission levels of 2005.
EIA identifies that the increased use of natural gas for U.S. electricity generation has resulted in 2015 CO2 emissions for the electric power sector being the lowest since 1993 (http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=26232).
Furthermore EIA data shows that in 2016 lower CO2 emissions natural gas fuel use will surpass coal fuel use for the first time in the generation of U.S. electricity (http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=25392) with further CO2 emissions reductions occurring in the future.
Additionally EIA has just released its latest International Energy Outlook report for 2016 (http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/) which provides global energy and emissions most recent results and forecast data through the year 2040.
The report shows global CO2 emissions climbing steadily from 2012 levels of about 32 billion metric tons per year to more than 43 billion metric tons per year in 2040 (http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/pdf/ieotab_10.pdf) while U.S. CO2 emissions remain flat at about 5.5 billion metric tons per year through out this period which is about 1/2 billion metrics tons per year below its peak emissions years of 2005 and 2007.
This latest EIA data shows that virtually all future growth in global CO2 emissions comes from the worlds developing nations (http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=26252) while the developed nations including the U.S., Europe, and parts of Asia and other regions have largely flat future CO2 emission levels.
EIA forecasts future global energy use to climb by 48% by 2040 (http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=26212) with more than 78% of global energy provided then by fossil fuels, 8% from hydro, 6% from nuclear, 5% from wind and solar and 3% from geothermal and biomass.
These latest EIA reports data and analysis clearly shows that the U.S. is not a contributor to increasing future global CO2 emission levels, has taken advantage of energy market price driven lower cost natural gas to replace use of coal fuel thus reducing both energy costs and lowering CO2 emissions and that despite worldwide government mandated massive renewable energy subsidizes (http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2015/12/02/energy-subsidies-2-real-numbers/#718355df7067) fossil fuels will remain the primary driver of global energy production for many decades
The U.S. does not need to pursue Obama’s ill-conceived government war on coal schemes which will needlessly cost our citizens hundreds of billions of dollars in unnecessary expenditures (http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/energy/item/11160-sky-high-electric-bills-courtesy-of-obama-epa’s-war-on-coal). The U.S. already reduced CO2 emissions since the peak levels of 2005 and 2007 and has future CO2 emissions growth stabilized at lower levels because of the extraordinary benefits brought about by natural gas fracking which has increased gas production and lowered natural gas costs thereby allowing for the economically beneficial replacement of coal fuel with the additional benefit of reduced CO2 emissions.
Why is this remarkable success story not being presented to the public by the media? Is this just another example of climate alarmist media bias?
Thanks for flagging this important data! Always nice to see good news.
The graph of global CO2 emissions history and forecast to 2040. It would be useful t compare that with RCP8.5 to see if we’re on track for the dark scenario (at least in this respect — the assumptions about tech stagnation and rapid population growth remain unlikely).
It is well below, based on the documentation on RCP8.5 itself. The current CO2 path is slightly below RCP6, and roughly corresponds to AR4’s A1B scenario.
ristvan,
Thanks, that’s helpful as usual! Where do you get the emissions data for the various scenarios?
I’ve seen the data, but didn’t record the location (foolishly).
There are both IPCC reports and peer reviewed commentaries available on line. I use a review that calculated what the RCPs imply out to 2100. Van Vuuren et.al, The represenative concentration pathways: an overview, Climate Change (2011) 109: 5-31. See figure 6 for GtC, figure 9 for CO2ppm, both figures showing all 4 RCPs.
Well it is well known that North America; and basically the United States, is the only large land area on earth that is a NET CARBON SINK. That is primarily a result of our extensive agriculture including extensive tree farming.
Canada of course could in principle also be a large carbon sink, but being that far north, and despite the vast forest acreage up there, the active growing season is very short, so all those Yukon trees are basically not pulling their own weight. But it does tend to keep Canada at least fairly carbon neutral.
Just think, if it warmed up a little, then Canada, with its agriculture including trees could also be a carbon sink.
So don’t look to us NAers. we are NOT the problem; excuse me, there really isn’t a problem anyhow, and if there was it isn’t US or CA. I suspect the Latin part of NA is also not a significant carbon source.
NZ is also a carbon sink for the same reason US, is but being so small, they don’t weigh in much on world terms.
Old growth forests on the other hand, for all the other reasons to preserve them, they tend to be carbon neutral, with every phase of a birth/growth/death/recycle steady state nothingness.
G
george e. smith – you say “Well it is well known that North America; and basically the United States, is the only large land area on earth that is a NET CARBON SINK“.
Please see Figures 2 and 3 in Willis Eschenbach’s article The Revenge of the Climate Reparations:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/05/the-revenge-of-the-climate-reparations/
By Willis’ analysis, the top national carbon sinks – ie. the countries that are the largest net absorbers of CO2 – are Argentina, Brazil, Australia and Canada. The largest net emitters are China, USA and India. The two net-absorbing continents are South America and Australia.
Well I have nothing to do all day but just make up stuff for people who don’t read any scientific journals.
So Mike, you can believe Willis’s essay if you choose to.
But the peer reviewed literature would seem to suggest otherwise.
And I don’t offer that as an authoritative source; just a source.
G
george, Willis only used Ibuki satellite. You just can’t trust satellite data. 😉
Well so Willis used Ibuki satellite data, says Lee.
I’ll buy that; Willis is good at getting data from here and there, no complaint.
But I’m betting that Ibuki satellite has no capability whatsoever at measuring CO2 take up FROM the atmosphere, however effective it is at mapping globally the previously thought to be ” well mixed ” global CO2 data. Which we now know is ANYTHING but well mixed globally.
So willis got data on CO2 emissions from global local spots; fair enough.
The SCIENCE paper which I READ years ago takes in the uptake of atmospheric CO2 from the atmosphere by this and that process including intensive agriculture including tree farming, which the USA, Canada, and New Zealand are very good at. it used to be that New Zealand had the largest purely man made forest on earth.
I’m guessing that is the Waipoua State Forest; but I don’t know that for sure.
In any case they grow largely Oregon Pine, which is a Kiwi Fruit name for Douglas Fir.
I know when they started that project (yes I was a kid at the time) I know they researched two species that were Pinus Radiata, and Pinus Insignis .
I have no idea what those are commonly called but I’m of the opinion that one of them is some sort of Monterey Pine. In any case I know that neither one of them looks anything like Douglas Fir, and I used to climb all of them, when I was a kid.
One piece of movie trivia, is that when they filmed the Colonial Adventure film, ” The Seekers ” in New Zealand, way back when, there was a royal rumpus in the shaky isles, because instead of picking one of the very many available beautiful Maori Maidens to play the main squeeze part in the movie, they used some Indonesian Hussey by the name of Laya Raki or close to that, who didn’t look even remotely Polynesian; plus she was a total doofus, and in one scene in the movie she was supposed to handle a rainbow trout, and when they shot that scene, she shrieked when they handed her the slimy rainbow trout, and she dropped the thing in the Waikato River or some such place (near Huka Falls.
Well it was a dumb scene in the first place, because the only rainbow trout within 6,000 miles of New Zealand were all in the Russian River in California, learning how to become Steelhead. They were never introduced to NZ to displace the nice big fat fresh water river eels that we used to have, in Colonial times.
But anyhow, while shooting that Huka falls area scene, some “Continuity” personage, who was supposed to make sure that things didn’t change in the middle of a scene when it was shot in bits and pieces on different days and spliced together, happened to notice, that the place in the forest where they were shooting happened to have some Pinus R (or I ) growing there and there being no such thing in NZ in Colonial Times, they had to move the scene to some place else.
So the Continuity geek makes sure that if an actor ties his tie with a left hand knot on one day, and ties it with a right hand knot another day, and maybe flips it several times, or changes to a different tie, that when they splice it together into a scene, you don’t get a crazy dancing tie in the scene.
So that is what continuity is all about.
So no Pinus anything back in the day, but I’ve climbed plenty of them since, and smallish Doug Firs.
So forest farming is very CO2 uptaking, as it is all converted into wood, and removed from the biological scene for a very long time.
Yes I know that eventually house will rot away, and return the CO2 to the atmosphere, but at the time they are growing, they are scooping it out of the air by the ton.
And no Kibuki satellite is watching that happen.
G
George E and Others
South Africa had virtually no trees. A house I was repairing in Umtata back in the day had oak beams imported from the UK.
My point is that all the forests save the Knysna were planted. Huge acreages are now covered in trees for building materials, mine props and paper pulp. Very large areas are also covered in black wattle now, after they got away. Blue gum too, mostly for poles and looking at though the wattle is good for small building poles. It is many thousands of sq km that used to be bare grassland. In fact the Zulu/SiSwati word for the Highveld means ‘the treeless place’.
george, ” The rest of the world’s land surface is poorly constrained, with a mean source of 0.2+/-0.9 Pg C year.’
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/282/5388/442
So we’ll only look at North America.
So Lee, I don’t get your point. So you cite some excerpts from the abstract to the very paper that I referenced; but did you READ THAT paper.
I READ that actual paper WHEN it was published, because way back then, I was actually a subscriber to SCIENCE since I needed that for my work (AKA job).
so OK I can’t remember the whole paper verbatim, so I just remembered (forever) their conclusion.
So READ the paper.
G
Fabius
“Thanks for flagging this important data! Always nice to see good news.”
What good news? CO2 is not a major problem and all this information means is that our wonderful government has managed to drive even more industry from our shores, isn’t socialism great, go team!
“Why is this remarkable success story not being presented to the public by the media? Is this just another example of climate alarmist media bias?”
srsly? not only do i not care- i perceive anybody caring about co2 as a dupe and a tool.
a success story would be ‘people who are concerned with co2 emissions stop breathing and stfu.
It would make no knowable difference if the world were on the RCP8.5 pathway. There’s no reason to think that RCP8.5 CO2 emissions through to 2100 would cause any noticeable climate warming.
There is plenty of reason to think, though, that RCP8.5 would vastly benefit farming productivity and the global ecology generally (with minimal impact of marine surface pH).
Don’t know why this vanished but it was in the post before I hit send.
G
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/282/5388/442.abstract.
Try that.
G
george, large error bars and large uncertainties.
‘Although the inversion results indicate that the North American terrestrial uptake is large enough to be detected with current data and model constraints. its magnitude remains uncertain and its cause unknown. Thus, the immediate implication of our results is the need for additional constraints of four kinds: (i) intensive atmospheric sampling and ecological field studies to identify the location and cause of North America (ii) terrestrial CO2 uptake: (ii) new atmospheric measurements to constrain estimates for Eurasia, South America, Africa, and Australia; (iii) studies to better characterize oceanic CO2 uptake; particularly in the Southern Hemisphere; and (iv) reduced uncertainty in atmospheric transport modeling.’
‘Renewables’ have surpassed hydro? That is truly sad!
Interestingly, none of the statistics cited mention price.
Meanwhile in Britain, we are within spitting distance of cutting GHG by 40% from the 1990 levels.
This is the EU Paris pledge for 2030
Yet John Gummer’s Committee on Climate Change wants the UK to commit to a cut of 57% by 2030, at huge expense.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/04/28/uk-greenhouse-gas-trends/
Because the EU target of 40% is a joint one, ie individual countries don’t all have to cut 40%, all our higher cuts will achieve is to let other countries get away with less than 40%.
EU emissions won’t be affected one jot, but our leaders will be able to preen themselves in the knowledge they have helped to save the planet!
Breathtaking foolishness. Bet that changes after UK first resulting major blackout.
Let’s simplify this. No worky, no spendy, no drivey. Driving in Houston traffic over the years, I can tell you that congestion has dropped.
But presently there is so much road construction one almost will not see the contrast.
Pidgin wit nailed it.
Dead on
I believe the green response to these cheering reductions in CO2 emissions is that the decrease in CO2 is offset by an increase in atmospheric methane linked to natural gas production, transport, and use. Anyone know anything about this, particularly a comparison of methane released by coal and natural gas production?
The new EPA stuff is mostly bunk reducing an already small number to an even smaller number. Methane leaks would be hazardous, and gas companies want to sell themstuff not waste it There probably is a little ‘leakage’ in the Bakken because of using trains to transport the extral light, extra volatile crude. Because no pipeline yet. The methane that froths out when Bakken crude is first produced is flared, again because no pipeline. But would still be some dissolved in the oil at ambient pressure that would get ‘shaken out’ later.
Most atmospheric methane comes from agriculture and plant matter decomposition (e.g. Summer tundra suface melt), both thanks to Archaea methanogens.
Emissions in the US are dominated by super emitters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qviFI6gVZhI
http://cen.acs.org/articles/94/web/2016/04/Search-finds-super-emitters-methane.html
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-09/documents/mansfield.pdf
http://www.sej.org/headlines/super-emitters-responsible-40-methane-leaks-study
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2016/04/03/theres-good-news-and-bad-news-about-americas-leaking-methane/#26a8b46695b2
Its an 80/20 rule.
Fix the top 20% and you have solved 90% of the problem.
Mosher, I agree completely. Chasing the dog’s tail everywhere makes no sense. But then little the EPA does these days does. They apparently never heard of the law of diminishing returns.
Which CO2 comes right out of the atmosphere to begin with, so not a real factor.
G
Thanks, very useful information. How about anything on the amount of methane released by coal or CBM production–should be included in the calculation of emissions for coal.
“Chasing the dog’s tail everywhere makes no sense.”
“Liberals have many tails and they chase them all.”
—H.L. Mencken
Also note the change in the EIA forecast. A year or two they predicting a massive rise in coal use. Now they see it flattening. What will their next forecast predict?
From the 30 March 2015 Wall Street Journal: the EIA 2014 or 2015 forecast:
Here is the EIA’s 2016 forecast.
All the EIA stuff has to be scrutinized in detail before using. Their Bahzenov oil shale TRR was off by an order of magnitude. Their LCOI for wind is low by a factor of 2.5x compared to ‘correct’ CCGT. See guest post True Cost of Wind at CE for the mistakes and corrections.
Natural gas price reduction data including data showing price reductions from 2014 levels of $4.5 per million Btu to 2015 levels of $2.61 per million Btu at Henry Hub is shown at (http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=24412). This data is referenced in (http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=26232) which is noted in the article above.
Unlike tight oil, which does not solve the looming global production peak about 2025, shale gas is a true revolution. The US is blessed. Largest gas shale resources in the world by both area and thickness. Recovery factors running 12-15%. Good for many decades.
A comparison. The oil window portion of Bakken shale is half the area of the gas window portion of the Marcellus. In the window, the Bakken averages about 40 meters thick, of which only about 18 meters (Middle Bakken carbonate) is the drilling target. In the window, Marcellus varies but the thickest portions are over 90 meters and all drilling target. Bakken recovery factor about 1.5% of OIP; Marcellus recovery factors about 15% of GIP. Bakken lasts for another decade. Marcellus lasts for a century.
CCGT is net 58% at 40% and net 61% at 100% full load energy efficient. Average coal is 34% and the US’ only USC, Turk in Arkansas, is 41% thermal efficiency. The switch to gas CCGT for all new generation is a no brainer. Less capital, built faster, more flexible, more fuel efficient. And based on averge age at rerirement since 1995, about 1/3 of US coal capacity is due to be retired in the next decade imdependent of EPA CPP resolution. That could accelerate just based on economics.
This is short-sighted. With LNG coming on line, domestic gas prices will move up substantially toward world prices. Meanwhile, the coal industry has been taken out and shot on the basis of deeply flawed AGW mumbo-jumbo. Power costs slowly escalate while more and more industry moves to places that understand what nonsense AGW is. Does anybody think the Chinese would be building islands in the China sea if they really believed in AGW? We are being played for fools!
So the message from the economic illiterates is we need more deep global recessions with financial crisis, more extended jobless recoveries, more lost decades for growth, and more diversions and excuses from growth policy in the EU, U.S., and other major countries. The one dimensional view of commodity markets never really says anything about the future. Growth policies change, leaders and parties change, and cycles continue for the most part. Oh I forgot, cycles are still banned in climate science and energy policy.
If these people have there way they will exterminate 95% of us and have the rest living in tents and eating bugs of the ground!
The greenies have no intentions of living in tents and eating bugs. They will be jetting around like always and telling us how great bugs are while they eat caviar.
Spot on!
“EIA data and analysis shows that U.S. CO2 emissions peaked in the years 2005 and 2007 … and have steadily declined since then with 2015 CO2 emissions being 12% below … emission levels of 2005.”
Those figures almost directly correspond to the recession and housing bubble burst that began in earnest in late 2007. And, thanks to the policies of the most cerebral president in history (yeah), the economy has still, almost 8 long, agonizing years later, not improved.
This part time employment; low labor participation rate; borderline negative interest rate savings returns; stagnant wages; collapsed small business startups; debt burdened, underemployed college grads; and outsourced, job anxiety, and insecurity producing economy appears to be just the ticket for carbon mitigation. Forge ahead progressives!
Tom Judd, you may enjoy Progressivism is Hostile to Humanism
The fact that this reduction has not been received as good news by those who are clamoring for reductions shows that their demands were not honest in the first place. This reduction does nothing to advance their socialistic agenda. The only news worth mentioning by climate advocates is news that helps them impose bigger government and to reduce our prosperity. That is their real goal, no matter how much those liars deny it.
Hmm, I wonder that their assumptions on increasing energy efficiency are? I read the summary, but didn’t see this mentioned. They do mention that the EPA’s report will differ due to the impacts of new regulations predicted in their report.
By 2040, they say, fossil fuels will still account for 75% of the total energy consumption. That sounds about right. Renewable likely won’t peak until they hit around 20% (sometime after 2040). I still expect Nuclear to experience a new golden age by 2040, so its growth is probably underestimated.
Thanks for the info!
Not to worry, the envirowhacos are in full gear trying to force as many Zero CO2 producing nuclear power plants as possible. Predictions are in th range of twenty shut down by 2020. T h at will help their push for more unreliables.
Gee, What A Surprise ! Who would have thought 2005 and 2007 were the peak of US Emissions ? After all they were only the peak years of post 9/11 economic boom prior to the US economic collapse in the fall of 2007 ! The fact that US emissions have not risen since then simply mirrors the stagnation of the US economy since then.
True only in part. 2007 iswhen shale gas started coming on big. CCGT became much more attractive for new generating capacity. By 2012 the gas price had crashed from oversupply and even switching existing boilers from pwdered coal to natural gas became viable. The switch from coal to gas has a large influence also.
I’m a utility engineer. The transformation does not happen overnight. The process takes years to convert coal or oil fired generation to burn natural gas. New plants also take years to build. Said transformation is not nearly enough to account for the stagnation of CO2 emissions since the global recession.
Oil and gas have been propping up our economy pretty much since.
As a skeptic, I find these types of articles embarrassing, because they have the same misuse of statistics and poor analysis that CAGW articles have. If someone truly believes that CO2 is a pollutant that is threatening the world, then a fair goal would be for the US to at least reduce their per capita pollution to below the world average. Currently compared to the world, the US population is around 5% and CO2 emissions around 15%. That is 3 times the average. This whole analysis of INCREASING global CO2 emissions is in my opinion misleading.
The real point is CO2 is NOT pollution and is not a problem to be solved at all. This type of article just gives ammunition to CAGW alarmist that skeptics are missing the big picture and being dishonest.
If someone truly believes that CO2 is a pollutant….developing countries…the vast majority…would not get a free ride
Spot on, Dan!
Does this mean I don’t have to change to those dim curly light bulbs? /sarc
+1000
U.S. CO2 emissions could be zero and global emissions would still climb by over 5 billion metric tons per year by 2040. Good luck with trying to sell the economic chaos here with the great achievement of zero per capita emissions.
Obama’s war on coal program is misguided and failed totally to consider the benefits of natural gas fracking which will lower costs and emissions without government mandated “solutions” that costs hundreds of billions in unecessay expenditures.
A case of Concern Trolling done badly. It is not mathematically possible for all countries to reduce themselves to having below the average level of emissions for the world. The US alone produces over 16% of the world’s new final goods every year, so actually we’re at about where you’d expect us to be mathematically, below there even.
That is terrible news. We need to do better in helping to increase life-giving CO2. For our planet, and people too.
CO2 emissions are also a proxy for economic growth:
http://cdn.tradingeconomics.com/charts/united-states-gdp-growth.png?s=gdp+cqoq&v=201605091029n&type=line
US GDP Growth Rate.
Well, to my mind, mainly the increase in CO2 levels is due to huge deforestation efforts by the businesses and related industries which in turn most of the time do not invest in reforestation and keep eroding the land and introduce farms to those deforested areas. One huge example of this – take a look at the Amazonian “Lungs of the Planet”… The rest is just mass media brainwashing and manipulation of publicly available information and agenda spinning.
Do correct me if I am wrong.
You may want to read The Pristine Myth, William Denevan’s reconstruction of the ecologies and landscapes of the pre-Columbian Americas. They had been heavily transformed by the indigenous well-organized societies.
Forests and landscapes recovered much of their primordial extent between 1650 and 1750 after old world diseases had removed nearly 90% of the indigenous new world population. The idea of a pristine pre-Columbian landscape is an invention of Europeans who moved into these recovered and emptied (i.e., depopulated) lands during the 19th century.
Here are the last three paragraphs of Denevan’s essay, which provide a good summary (and correction): “It is possible to conclude not only that “the virgin forest was not encountered in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; [but that] it was invented in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries” (Pyne 1982, 46). However, “paradoxical as it may seem, there was undoubtedly much more ‘forest primeval’ in1850 than in 1650” (Rostlund 1957, 409). Thus the “invention” of an earlier wilderness is in part understandable and is not simply a deliberate creation which ennobled the American enterprise, as suggested by Bowden (1992 ‘ 2023). In any event, while pre-European landscape alteration has been demonstrated previously including by several geographers, the case has mainly been made for vegetation and mainly for eastern North America. As shown here, the argument is also applicable to most of the rest of the New World, including the humid tropics, and involves much more than vegetation.
“The human impact on environment is not simply a process of increasing change or degradation in response to linear population growth and economic expansion. It is instead interrupted by periods of reversal and ecological rehabilitation as cultures collapse, populations decline, wars occur, and habitats are abandoned. Impacts may be constructive, benign, or degenerative (all subjective concepts), but change is continual at variable rates and in different directions. Even mild impact s and slow changes are cumulative, and the long-term effects can be dramatic. Is it possible that the thousands of years of human activity before Columbus created more change in the visible landscape than has occurred subsequently with European settlement and resource exploitation? The answer is probably yes for most regions for the next 250 years or so, and for some regions right up to the present time. American flora, fauna, and landscape were slowly Europeanized after 1492, but before that they had already been Indianized. “It is upon this imprint that the more familiar Euro-American landscape was grafted, rather than created anew” (Butzer 1990, 28). What does all this mean for protectionist tendencies today? Much of what is protected or proposed to be protected from human disturbance had native people present, and environmental modification occurred accordingly and in part is still detectable.
“The pristine image of 1492 seems to be a myth, then, an image more applicable to 1750, following Indian decline, although recovery had only been partial by that date. There is some substance to this argument, and it should hold up under the scrutiny of further investigation of the considerable evidence available, both written and in the ground.“
Come on, get a grip, Gaia hasn’t and will never let her latest uppity tenants know how long their lease is!
As as pointed out that America is the largest NET CARBON SINK on the planet, By the way, the bio-sequestration is not any part of these EIA reports, They only reveal reported emissions and the mighty Oak and the vast grasslands and corn and wheat fields that consume CO2 and make food and oxygen, are never reported and subtracted.
America produces BELOW ZERO CO2 emissions. Our job is done. The dumbels don’t know i,t and think we are a great polluter. Baloney.
I suspect that is true. Do you have any references to back up the claim?
Larry wrote: “These latest EIA reports data and analysis clearly shows that the U.S. is not a contributor to increasing future global CO2 emission levels…”
Is this what is important? Some data.
US per capita GDP: $53,100/y. India: $1500/y. (3% of US)
US per capita energy use: 81,800 kWh/y. India: 7141 kWh/y (9% of US)
US cost of energy: 11% GDP/capita. India: 36% GDP/cap (3.3X US)
Anyone who expects India and other developing nations not to increase emissions dramatically over the next few decades is expecting continuing economic disaster in the developing world. Anyone who expects these countries to invest in higher cost low-carbon energy – when they already spend 1/3 of their income on energy – is dreaming. Focusing only on the US is missing the big picture.
these lower correlations correspond with the series of “warmest” month claims
just goes to show that the correlation between cumulative values that is used to relate fossil fuel emissions to warming is indeed spurious.
The Spuriousness of Correlations between Cumulative Values
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2725743
Two reasons. 1: The increase in gas is a direct result of “fracking” and they do not want to produce anything that might show ANY benefit of fracking whatsoever. 2: It’s ephemeral. We have a lot less gas than we have coal. The gas will be used up in my grandchildren’s lifetime. We have less than 100 years of gas, and have probably something like a 300 year supply of coal.
U.S.A. is not number one?
@ george w smith
“New Zealand had the largest purely man made forest on earth.
I’m guessing that is the Waipoua State Forest; but I don’t know that for sure.
In any case they grow largely Oregon Pine, which is a Kiwi Fruit name for Douglas Fir.
I know when they started that project (yes I was a kid at the time) I know they researched two species that were Pinus Radiata, and Pinus Insignis”
Almost right 🙂
The forest is Kaingaroa (3000 sq km) planted predominantly in Pinus radiata (Monterey pine, originating in California) . Established during the depression (1930) to give work to the unemployed. Has now come through several rotations what with radiata maturing in 25 years. Good framing timber but needs treatment. Much is exported to China and Korea as logs. Chile now grows a goodly amount
Kaingaroa is an elevated volcanic plateau with young pumice soils
Cheers
M .
“The U.S. does not need to pursue Obama’s ill-conceived government war on coal schemes which will needlessly cost our citizens hundreds of billions of dollars in unnecessary expenditures (http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/energy/item/11160-sky-high-electric-bills-courtesy-of-obama-epa’s-war-on-coal).”
The article in The New American was written in May 2012, 4 years ago. From the article; “If Congress doesn’t act to rein in the EPA’s all-out war on coal, we will all be paying much higher electrical rates — and higher prices for just about everything else, since virtually everything we eat, drink, wear, and use requires energy for production and transportation.”
An increase of .68 cents/kWhr over a 4 year period is “much higher”? That’s how much electricity prices in the US have gone up since 2012, from 9.7 cents/kWhr to 10.38 in Feb 2015. That’s an annual increase of 1.75%, which is about the rate of inflation: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a
Oh, and the part of the quote that says that these increases will cost our citizens 100s of billions of dollars? The revenues from all utilities was $400B in 2014 – another example of hyperbole.
Can someone correct me if I am wrong but I don’t believe the current administration has issue a single new oil/gas exploration license on federal land in the last eight years. The rise in NG over coal is purely a private industry initiative with new fracked gas production coming out of private leases. The “good news” has nothing to do with government policies other than strangling coal generated power
What carbon dioxide does is actually irrelevant to climate because demonstrably it has never caused any warming as long as observations exist.
The simplest way to convince yourself of this is to juxtapose the global temperature curve by NOAA and the Keeling curve (including its extensions). What you will see is a smooth increase of CO2 with time, unmatched by any temperature history.
The temperature curve that parallels it goes up and down willy-nilly and even stands still at times. One particularly prominent warming period goes from 1910 to 1940, without any corresponding upturn of the Keeling curve.
If you wonder what this has to do with warning, remember that according to the global warming theory which gave us Copenhagen and Paris imbecilities, this is needed to turn on the the greenhouse effect that supposedly caused the warming. Physics tells us that if it exists the temperature increase is proportional to the amount CO2 gas added to the atmosphere. Since none was added when the warming started it cannot possibly be greenhouse warming.
Another important observation is the fact that this warming stops abruptly and is followed by a severe temperature drop that ushered in the Second World War. If it really was greenhouse warming such an abrupt stoppage is quite impossible. That is because in order to stop greenhouse warming you must remove every single absorbing CO2 molecule from the air which is an impossibility.
This applies of course to all other claimed greenhouse occurrences too. These two factors together make it absolutely certain that it is quite impossible for this early century warming to be greenhouse warming.
With that, the claim that global warming started with the beginning of the industrial era dies. I note that IPCC now claims that the human influence on climate becomes first observable in the fifties and sixties in an apparent withdrawal from previous claims. It does not help to explain away total absence of the early century greenhouse effect.
They try to wiggle out of this by illegal and unethical means which I exposed in a comment to PATRICK J. MICHAELS and David E. Wojick artickle in May 19th WUWT entitled “Climate science appears to be obsessively focused on modeling – Billions of research dollars are being spent in this single minded process.” It complements the current view.
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Current CO2 balance sheet for the US might be sort of interesting. We may be a net CO2 fixer rather than emitter.
Yes you do need to keep reducing your emmissions because the USA is still putting out 4 times the per capita CO2 emmissions than the average global citizen. Further americans cumulatively have contribute so much to the CO2 above the ground already if you had any conscience at all you would not put one gram of fossil fuel out of the ground ever again. The author is a disgrace.
I suggest Al that you focus your efforts on addressing the global counties that will increase world emissions by over 11 billion metric tons per year, more than twice the total U.S. present emissions level, of additional CO2 by 2040. None of that will come from the U.S.
More importantly I suggest you that you spend some time learning that global CO2 emissions do not drive global temperatures as proven by the colossal failure of climate models which have demonstrated that they grossly exaggerate and overstate the impact of atmospheric CO2 levels on global temperatures, that natural climate drivers particularly El Nino’s have played a major role in driving increasing global temperatures and temperature trends in the last several decades and that despite three decades of climate alarmists claiming that coastal sea level rise is accelerating the latest NOAA tide gauge data shows no coastal sea level rise accelerating anywhere around the U.S.
Additionally the use of fracking for natural gas has increased production, lowered the price of gas and allowed the cost effective replacement of coal fuel with reduced CO2 emissions. These events driven by free energy market drivers have overtaken and illiminated the need for President Obama’s costly and heavy handed government mandates for a war on coal.
I really don’t think these assessments represent a “disgrace”. I think they represent an objective assessment of the significant events that are important to understand regarding global climate issues.