Sep 14 2009
Who’s Got The Biggest Carbon Footprint? Not America!
One of the most intriguing things about scientific ‘band wagons’, where fads pop up and money flows, is the feedback that occurs challenging the band wagon itself once the new army of studies kick off and start producing results.
One such endeavor that came out of the Global Warming mythology was a space mission to measure the green house gas emissions, so that there would be no doubt who the biggest polluters are. In fact, on of the biggest unsubstantiated claims out right now is that America is the largest, per capita, greenhouse gas polluter in the world. This is all based on models and analyses trying to prove preconceptions. But I am certain that the people behind the new space mission were confident that their instruments would show America a hot spot of green house gases.
They were wrong! Let me borrow from WUWT and their post on the matter:
GOSAT Worldwide Methane – Methane (column averaged dry air mole fraction) initial analysis (April 20-28 observation data)- click for larger image Source: JAXA
GOSAT Worldwide CO2 – Carbon dioxide (column averaged dry air mole fraction) initial analysis (April 20-28 observation data) – click for larger image Source: JAXA
For a complete description of how GOSAT works, please read their summary here (PDF)
It is surprising GOSAT decided to release this preliminary data, which destroys the myth America is the culprit in green house gas production (though CO2 is NOT a pollutant – despite the Chicken Littles in Congress and the UN IPCC). It is clear that America is at the lower end of methane and CO2 production. Topping the list (not surprisingly) is China and India. Also not surprising is the Arabian and Mideast states (lots of gas and oil production). Africa was a surprise.
We Americans have very small carbon footprints. Which means there is NO REASON to try and curtail our CO2 production, given how much the rest of the world is producing in comparison.
The results may change a bit as more data comes out – but I doubt it. No one would risk their reputations on putting out this kind of controversial results (don’t look to America to solve the excess CO2 problems, not their fault) if this was not going to be the basic picture. This data is from April. We know they have been looking at the data collected since then and up to today. I don’t think there will be huge changes in the general results.
This mission to finally prove who the culprits are in the global warming mythology has just turned the entire issue on its head. It seems the Americas are quite environmentally friendly. Between this data and the fact there has been no warming of the Earth for over a decades, we here in the US of A can safely conclude we don’t need a climate tax on energy!
[…] I’ve got two quick environmental links for you today. The first has to do with pollution. You know that I’ve said at this blog all along that cap-and-trade is stupid, not only because it will destroy America’s economy, but because the really big up-and-coming polluters are China and India. Turns out I was wrong: they’re not up-and-coming; they’re here and now, as are Africa and the Gulf countries. America is a pollution piker. […]
Wow! What an amazing post, AJ. I’m still trying analyse and absorb all the info in that report.
I am really not surprised by this finding. Our use of carbon based fuels (oil, coal, natural gas), while huge, is done very efficiently. One only has to look at the heat rates for stationary sources (principally electric generation plants) to see we use fossil fuels very efficiently, meaning we burn less (and emit less) to get more of what we need.
Here in California, there are several issues to consider: 1) we have a lot of people in the state, so what we do and how we use our fuels imacts the whole country; 2) we moved away from liquid fuels for electric generation and switched to clean burning and more efficient natural gas; 3) unfortunately for Californians, we moved away from being a manufacturing state and became a service based economy; thus consuming less fuels (our per capita use is very low relative to the rest of the U.S.).
Except for public policy, which is driving out business (and thereby reducing our carbon footprint), the main driver for lower CO2 emissions is capitalism. Fuels are very expensive, so the companies that are more efficient in their fuel use, emit less CO2, and wind up making more money.
Unfortunately for all U.S. citizens, our political masters seem to prefer the European model, i.e. tax the hell out of fuels and make manufacturing uncompetitive (vis-a-vis China & India) all to achieve a lower carbon footprint. Hello, we are already there!
Obviously, China and India aren’t going to shoot themselves in the foot, but our political masters seem ready, willing, and able to do so. Thank goodness we have a media that is willing to expose the truth. Oh I forgot, they’re not.
[…] Who’s Got The Biggest Carbon Footprint? Not America! […]
[…] Michael Barone takes on Tom Friedman’s ridiculous assertion that the Chinese autocracy is a good thing, at least in the same limited sense that Mussolini got the trains to run on time. What’s funny is that we now know that Friedman’s swooning about the Chinese government’s environmental push is sheer idiocy. […]
I really hope that California will keep restricting energy use and driving business out of state. Here in Texas we’ve still got a surplus of energy and you can guarantee nobody is going to slap any of those anti-energy rules on anyone here.
So come on over! Texas is glad to have any business that wants to pull up stakes and head over here!
Oh, and besides lower energy costs, taxes are a lot lower too! And so is cost of living in general. Funny how all those things just kind of go together, must be one of them weird coincidences nobody can figure out.
As stated by my betters “It doesn’t fit the Narrative” therefor it will be ignored and forgotten…
[…] a new space mission, designed to show exactly were the green house gas producers are on Earth, that America is not a massive green house gas producer after all! Nothing we do here will offset the large producers of green house gas in Europe, Asian, the […]
[…] Finally, if that was not enough to completely destroy the global warming, man-made CO2 canard, a Japanese spacecraft was recently launched to measure where the man-made CO2 generation was the highest. Of course the myth goes that Americans are the worst producers of CO2 (a needed natural chemical compound). The results were probably a huge shock to the alarmists: […]
[…] Worldwide there are dozens of satellites monitoring the Earth – all being ignored by the global warming alarmists who dismiss their data since it runs counter to the liberal mythology and religion that is man made, CO2 driven global warming. We don’t need more of them, we need to recognize their superior capabilities and the results they produce. […]
[…] 6 months. First were results from a Japanese space mission to measure Green House Gasses (GHGs), which showed America has an extremely low ‘carbon footprint’ compared to the rest of the world. We actually DO NOT produce  very much of the world’s GHGs […]
[…] 6 months. First were results from a Japanese space mission to measure Green House Gasses (GHGs), which showed America has an extremely low ‘carbon footprint’ compared to the rest of the world. We actually DO NOT produce  very much of the world’s GHGs at […]
Terrific post!
Linked at Bread upon the Waters.