Wasn’t the U.S. Supposed to Be the Villain Here?
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24 responses to “Wasn’t the U.S. Supposed to Be the Villain Here?”
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Interesting, but meaningless unless the starting point was level for all the categories measured. That chart just measures change, not actual output. The US might have started out the highest per capita and stayed the highest per capita with that chart still being accurate….it probably reflects the fact that we spent the whole year holding our breath (and exhaling less CO2) waiting to see what Trump would say or do next.
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Sure, U.S. CO2 levels per unit of GDP are higher than Europe’s. I’m not saying we’re more virtuous. But we’re moving in the right direction and Europe isn’t.
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Europe is not moving in the right direction? From one chart?
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Yup.
Maybe 2018 will look better for Europe.
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Here is a better look at the data:
“China Emits More Carbon Dioxide Than The U.S. and EU Combined-
The U.S. was historically the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitter, but China now emits more than the U.S. and EU combined.”http://www.rrapier.com/2018/07/6019/
See CO2 graphic in middle of article.
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Ok – yeah, that makes the point I think Jim was getting at. It also shows US has peaked and is trending down. Of course next will be somebody complaining the data if from BP and thus must be false (Larry or Peter, that’s your cue.)
We just need to get the world back to how poor it was around 1945 or so….poor but great air!
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I’m a little skeptical , yes, especially when you consider how much people in the US drive their cars….compared to other countries where car ownership is much lower and commuting 50 miles from your job in a car where gasoline costs $7 a gallon is insane. People in Europe and China typically live in much smaller homes than us and they often do not heat or cool the whole house. Many in Europe use on-demand water heaters because the cost of electricity is so high.
So I’d guess I’d like to see a break-down of the sources of the emissions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita
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You are so predictable 🙂
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Larry – many our ancestors generally came to the United States, the British Colonies or even places like New Netherlands, to get away from Europe (and now from other continents) and its/their way of life. They came at different times and circumstances but all did (and many people still do) because they didn’t want to live where they were living. We can always move back – maybe, if their immigration laws permit.
I support renewable energy use and think we need to be very careful about what we emit into the atmosphere, including CO2, but beyond that we know darn little about climate. I also think that, as with most political issues, this has a lot to do with rent seekers and lust for political power.
I read an article this week that stone tools were found in China that are estimated to be 2.1 million years old. That makes me feel quite small and, hopefully, a bit more humble. If only the science-based rent-seekers were a bit more humble too.
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Those on-demand water heaters used in Europe are almost invariably gas.
The electrical load of an electric on-demand water heater capable of a 60F temp rise at 2GPM would overload many US electrical services, let alone smaller European-sized ones. It’s about 75 amps @240V.
There really isn’t much savings comparing an electric on-demand with an electric tank. The electric tanks are very well insulated and have very low standby loss.
It’s a different story for gas–gas tanks cannot be completely insulated, not nearly as well as an electric tank.
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Hilarious, Steve!
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Well, the other real solution could be borrowed from Jonathan Swift. Malthus was just thinking too much about food and not enough about trash, pollution and waste heat.
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Bring on the Andromeda Strain! With CDC and WHO cuts being what they are, we probably wouldn’t recognize it anyway.
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It’s a bit amusing to be honest to hear – sometimes – the denials of GW and that it’s a conspiracy and not real and then later… discussion of CO2 emissions, etc.
Seems like if one debunks the idea of GW .. then why worry about CO2 emissions at all?
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I’m sure someone will chime in here with detail or to correct me, but I think the biggest culprit in Europe is they are moving away from zero emissions nuclear. Renewables are growing at a significant rate, but they need to burn lignite coal when renewables can’t cover demand.
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Agree, that “culprit” is a contributing factor, driven by politics and the oversold promise of high-percentage reliance on renewables; but my understanding is, they are selling a lot of that lignite to the Chinese and seeking to buy Russian gas instead. Just as we are selling huge amounts of coal to the Chinese and fracking away at the midwest.
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It’s true about the move away from Nuclear – both Europe and Japan but in general, people in Europe and Asia have a smaller energy footprint. Many do not own cars and the ones that do , drive them less because fuel is twice or 3 times what it is here and they tend to live in much smaller homes … heat/cool only the occupied spaces … use on-demand water heaters rather than tanks kept heated, etc.
So, one proxy might be energy use per capita
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita
the top three are Iceland, Canada and the US. The UK and Germany is 1/2 of us. Iceland is a bit of an outlier because it gets it’s energy from geothermal.
We do look a little bit better on electricity use per capita but we’re still in the top 10. But if you look at per capita gasoline use – we are tops in the world – higher than even the OPEC countries and 3 times as much as other industrialized nations.
so, yes, we have managed to cut our use but in overall terms of use – we typically use about twice as much overall energy per capita as the other industrialized nations. Even if we got ALL of our electricity from nukes and wind/solar – because of our gasoline consumption – we’d still be tops.
So this is about what some folks want to believe – the prism they want to view the world through – rather than the actual facts and reality – so they pick the appropriate chart and graph to try to reflect their perspective but it’s a false one.
And again – for those who do not believe in GW – then why this infatuation with CO2 emissions…?
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Good question, Larry. CO2 is required by plants for photosynthesis, and harmless to animals unless it starts to crowd out the oxygen in our air.
I think Jim should have acknowledged the distortion (or lack) of context displayed in the graphic he posted, which suggests the US is a paragon of GW virtue when, in fact, we simply continued a decline in CO2 output that goes back decades. It was from a pro-Trump blog that extracted a couple of stats from an EIA graphic comparing 2017 to 2016 data; I went back and read what EIA said about it (quoted here in full):
“Declines were led by the US (-0.5%). This is the ninth time in this century that the US has had the largest decline in emissions in the world. This also was the third consecutive year that emissions in the US declined, though the fall was the smallest over the last three years.”
“Carbon emissions from energy use from the US are the lowest since 1992, the year that the UNFCCC came into existence. The next largest decline was in Ukraine (-10.1%).”
“The largest increase in carbon emissions in 2017 came from China (1.6%), a reversal from the past three years when the largest increases in emissions came from India. China’s emissions in 2017 were 0.3% higher than the previous peak in 2014. China has had the world’s largest increments in carbon emission every year this century except in four years – 2000 and between 2014-16.”
“The next highest increment came from India where emissions rose by 4.4%, though lower than its 10-year average (6% p.a.).”
“Together, China and India accounted for nearly half of the increase in global carbon emissions. EU emissions were also up (1.5%) with just Spain accounting for 44% of the increase in EU emissions. Among other EU members, UK and Denmark reported the lowest carbon emissions in their history.”
If you want to see the longer range trends and get a sense of the scale of each country’s CO2 contribution overall, go to Tbill’s chart, which is far more informative. If you weighted the CO2 emission according to the gross energy consumption in each country, the US contribution looks even more significant — but I haven’t put my finger on such a chart recently.
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Further on point: consider what Jim said just yesterday on the subject of providing appropriate “context”:
“It is a legitimate exercise in journalism to report the lobbying expenditures of the state’s largest investor-owned utility . . . . But it’s not legitimate to strip the story of highly relevant context such as… oh, I don’t know… maybe, how much other stakeholders spent on lobbying, advertising, education and outreach.”
So, how are other countries doing on CO2 reductions relative to their contributions to the problem overall? What is the relative base, or starting point, for that one-year change you have charted? Given the volatility of one year changes, what are the longer range trends? Cf. TBill.
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I suppose you got me there. The chart was devoid of any context.
But it’s not like I was doing any reporting here. I just threw out the chart to get a conversation going.
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Well it sorta depends on whether folks got the wrong impression about the presented context-lacking “facts”.
What was the intent? To actually present a biased view?
Just throw stuff up that seems to point a certain way and then tell the reader – it’s up to them to ascertain the veracity?
Seems like you have in the past and just recently jumped on an AP writer for “biased” reporting because he did not add enough “context”.
This kind of thing seems to be a lot of the Ying and Yang of our politics these days… cries of “bias”.. “cherry-picking”, etc.
And you got this from a pro-Trump source? SHAME! SHAME!
but again – why do folks who proclaim to be avowed skeptics of GW even care at all about carbon emissions in the first place?
bias in “reporting” these days , especially in some Blogs is rampant. I’ve always held up BR as not in that herd to this point…. but I’m watching close now…
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Natural gas growth has slowed globally.
Right now the projection is 2040 is when natural gas will catch up to coal as the second leading energy source (I presume oil is No. 1). -
We also need to understand that environmental groups don’t truly want a solution to CO2 emissions, renewable energy or the “climate” problem because a solution would make their existence unnecessary, at least in their current form. In this regard, they are no different from Dominion, which also works to maintain its existence.
While we do have far to march towards a nation of inexpensive, reliable, renewable energy, progress lessens the likelihood of the “horrible of horribles” and weakens fundraising.
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I would probably cite different rationale/motives/politics at play in the USA, but I come out at a similar place.
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