World carbon emissions, by country: can the Copenhagen climate summit bring these down?

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World carbon emissions, by country: can the Copenhagen climate summit bring these down?

The Copenhagen climate change summit has started. Now, the US is no longer number one emitter of carbon dioxide, having been overtaken by China in these latest figures. But when did it happen?
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Copenhagen summit: Carbon emissions around the world. Click image for bigger picture. Scroll down page for pdf

The Csummit is finally here - and Copenhagen is likely to be a historic moment, whatever the result.

The background to the Copnehagen summit is the amount of carbon we're pumping out into the atmosphere. These are the figures, and the latest visualisation we've produced.

Which country is number one in carbon emissions? Up until very recently, it was the US - now, it is indisputedly China, as shown by this data.

These are the latest figures - up to 2007 - from the respected US Energy Information Administration. This has (literally) every country in the world on it and its emissions going back to 1980 — plus we've put on some handy percentage change data and ranking information.

The curious thing is, we've been here before. Last year we reported that China had overtaken the US in 2006. But if you look at the figures below, the change now appears to have happened in 2007. What's going on?

We asked the EIA and this is what they said:

Each year we review the underlying consumption data for petroleum, natural gas, and coal and the flaring data for natural gas and make any necessary revisions. These, in turn, affect our CO2 emissions estimates. I think that most of the change for China was due to revisions to our coal consumption data. Coal consumption is a calculated value based on production, imports, exports, and stock change and when measured in Btus is also affected by the types of coal consumed (i.e. anthracite, bituminous, and lignite). Data for the most recent year are often preliminary and most subject to revision but data for earlier years are also often revised.

Of course, these aren't all emissions - just consumption of engergy, which accounts for 60% of the total. But they give a good picture of what is going on.

Because of the interest, the EIA are going to come up with 2008 figures at the end of this year or early 2010. Then we will see exactly how fast China has grown. In the meantime, as we countdown to Copenhagen, these figures will become even more important.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2009/dec/07/copenhagen-climate-change-summit-carbon-emissions-data-country-world

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PRECIS:

World Carbon Emission, by country: can the Copenhagen climate summit bring these down?

The questioning title asks the viewer for personal opinions that will be trashed with a following pre-set answer. This makes the reader believe he/she can build their own opinion upon the following discussion, although the conclusion is already set. The Copenhagen summit concentrates on carbon emissions all around the world. Whatever the result is, the result will be a “historic moment,” making this event seem incredibly important to all participants and listeners all around the world. For a long time the US has been the number one CO₂ pumper in the world, however recently China has overset them. The focus upon the long regime of the US carbon dioxide emission is underlined showing that America was in control and was the main driver of everything; even the negative carbon dioxide emissions. Now that China has taken over the first place, the US seems much smaller in contrast and less important for future plans on how to reduce CO₂ emissions in contrast to China. Showing a large jpeg picture, statistics of carbon dioxide emissions of different countries are shown in different sizes depending on the emission. These statistics add to the visual of the article, as well as the coercion of the reader that might only concentrate on the data picture, and thus will not try to find an explanation behind the emissions. Coal production exports from China have led to a great increase in carbon dioxide emissions, and jargon is used in words such as “anthracite, bituminous, and lignite.” This jargon makes the different types seem more “special.” Energy making already produces 60% of carbon dioxide emissions, and cannot be dropped drastically in the near future. The Copenhagen summit will discuss this topic in greater depths.