If Carbon Matters — Don’t Ignore China

Anthropogenic carbon dioxide statistics tell an interesting story.  The world is changing and changing rapidly, but the rhetoric has been slow to adjust.  Climate politics continues to focus on the USA and Western Europe, and that is a mistake.

We in the USA have a large carbon footprint.  We use lots of coal in power generation, manufacture lots of stuff, heat and air condition our homes, and drive large vehicles.  The US per capita production of carbon dioxide peaked in 1973 at about 22.3 metric tons per capita.  We now (2008) stand at about 17.5.

Yes, we peaked almost 40 years ago.  I was not expecting that data.  Big houses, big cars….lots of electrical use.  Surprising!  And we continue to improve.  Our population grew at 9.8% in the first 10 years of the 21st century, and our carbon production as a country went down.

2012 will likely be a very good year on the carbon front in the USA.  We had a mild winter, used more natural gas in power generation (which means less coal), and our gasoline consumption is down.  It went down during the recession, and has continued down into 2012 as we have begun to see the benefits of fuel efficient vehicles.  Two offsets, the USA is now a net exporter  of gasoline  (which counts as US use in the statistics) and we are using more in manufacturing.

Qatar is the largest per capita user, the USA (using 2008 data) is 12th, just behind Australia and just ahead of Saudi Arabia.  We still have a long way to go, but we are improving. China has been doing the opposite.   A Reuters article dated June 8, 2011, reported China’s carbon output increased 10% in 2010 and was 25% of the worldwide total, number one in the world by a wide margin. The US, still second  has fallen to about 18% of the total.  We were 30% just 13 years ago.

China’s rise has been spectacular as the chart below demonstrates:

Chinese Carbon Dioxide Emissions

The Chinese economy is the rock star of 21st century economics.   A small player 20 years ago is now the second largest economy in the world.  Perhaps that is why Al Gore, James Hansen and so many global warming activists have been quick to blame the US and have been slow to recognize the problem that is China emissions.

China is overwhelming  the data.  In 1999 they were less than half the US total, In 2006 they passed us.  The recession slowed carbon production in the western world, but not in China.    Soon, (maybe 2013) China will  produce more than the USA and Western Europe combined.    China really matters.

If carbon dioxide production is a problem…and I said IF, then the solution to the problem lies East of the USA…..way East.  We in the USA could reduce our production to zero, and we’d still fail to meet UN goals for the world….because of China.

Cover Art Tells a Story — But Is it True

I’m a fan of irony.  I was in a video store recently, when I wondered by the documentary section…and there it was, Al Gore’s DVD cover, dripping with irony.

The cover says it all.  Smokestacks galore billowing smoke ….and then the smoke morphs into a hurricane.  An Inconvenient Truth, catchy title.

Carbon dioxide, the villain in Mr. Gore’s film is nearly odorless and colorless.  Factories billowing smoke on the cover and throughout the film are mostly billowing water vapor and/or air pollution depending on the source.  Some carbon dioxide is present, but since it is colorless it is not visible. All throughout the film carbon dioxide and air pollution are equated to each other, a factual error, emphasized by the cover.

The film is full of dirty polluting factories.  Factories can pollute…but if the pollution is visible, it is the more traditional air pollution we all love to hate.  Carbon dioxide is a green house gas, visible air pollution usually is not a green house gas. Most visible air pollution cools the planet.

Visible air pollution by definition is not colorless.  The visible haze block some light. This causes more of the suns energy to be reflected back to space without ever reaching the earth’s surface.  Just about everybody …including Mr. Gore’s friends at the IPCC, acknowledge that this form of pollution is a cooling event.

Air pollution looks bad….and marketing is all about appearance.  Never let facts get in the way of a good story.  All throughout the film, we see polluting factories and then the subject of carbon dioxide appears…it is a classic bait and switch..they really are two very different subjects.

I spent another post discussing the Katrina Hurricane.  It was a monumental mess.  Many politicians made mistakes.  Poor human behavior deserves credit for the mess that was New Orleans in 2005.  A category 3 storm adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico.  Sounds like normal weather to me if we can classify the last 100 years or so as normal.  Mother Nature  being Mother Nature.

In its 2007 Synopses, the IPCC said that there was not enough evidence to draw conclusions about global warming and hurricanes.    And they like to draw conclusions.

The inconvenient truth about science is this, truths are rare indeed.  Science is a process and in that process the facts of the day change with knowledge.  The title of  the film is catchy and successful, but is it truthful?

Remember, we are talking about long range world wide weather forecasting  combined with assumptions about energy use.  These predictions go 100 years into the future.  How well would you have done in 1890, predicting energy use for the year 2000.

Giddy-up!

When the UN wrote their first climate report in 1990, they were beginning a process that predicted the climate in 2100, two years later.  Who knows what our energy mix will be a hundred years from now.   Not you, not me and  not Al Gore.  Nobody knows!

I’m sorry….truth is just the wrong word.

The business of climate science is one giant scientific wild ass guess.  Mr. Gore appears to think anybody that doubts is being fooled or foolish.  Maybe, but I’d take the other side of that bet, anytime.  With so many variables, and so many unknowns, success is far from assured.  Doubt is the smart play!

In the film Al Gore uses a quotation from Mark Twain to discredit his opponents.

What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know; it’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so”

The title of the piece, firmly puts Mr. Gore in the we know for sure camp.   Maybe it just ain’t so.