Jennifer Marohasy

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Carbon Emissions Scaling Record Peaks

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A new report by a research consortium called the Global Carbon Project has confirmed that China leapfrogged the United States in 2006 as the world’s biggest carbon emitter and India is heading for third place.  The report also claims global greenhouse gas levels are “scaling record peaks”. Read more here.

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  1. Tim Curtin says

    The so-called Global Carbon project is yet another largely CSIRO-inspired ramp, led by notorious data manipulators like Pep Canadell and Mike Raupach, and their cheer leader, Barry Brook (of the infamous bravenewclimate blog). Brook’s puff for the egregious GCP’s latest (currently inaccessible, presumably because of the collapse of the solar wind?) ends by citing GCP’s claim that “Emissions from the combustion of fossil fuel and land use change reached the mark of 10 billion tonnes of carbon [GtC] in 2007. Natural CO2 sinks are growing, but more slowly than atmospheric CO2, which has been growing at 2 ppm per year since 2000”. Let’s analyse this more closely. Ever unhelpful, Brook chooses not to explain that 2ppm equate to 4.25 GtC (i.e. 2.12 GTC = 1 ppm) . So what we had in 2007, on the Brook/GCP data rendered more transparent, is 10 GtC of emissions, and 4.25 GtC of atmospheric increase, leaving no less than 5.75 GtC (57.5%) taken up by the “slow growing” natural sinks, above the average of 56% since 1958. I look forward to James Haughton’s account of why this arithmetic is incorrect, as that is manifestly beyond the competence of Barry Brook and the GCP’s Canadell.
    BTW, not the least of the many deceptions in the work of the GCP is the claim that emissions from land-use change have stabilised at 1.5 GtC since 1990. Whatever happened to rising deforestation? If that was happening, it would by the carbon budget imply even larger Uptakes than the 5.75 GtC computed above. But then as a mere economist whom am I to query the accounting techniques of Nobel Prize winners like Canadell, who thinks that the rise in atmospheric CO2 since 1958, from 315 ppm to 384 ppn at end –2007, reveals an annual growth rate of 1.59 % pa. (this fictitious rate is what underpins the Garnaut Draft Report). Again, James H., what is your take on the growth rate implied by increase from 315 ppm to 384 ppm over 49 years?
    Finaally, Brook assures us that “450ppm CO2 commits us to >2 degrees C global warming and all the disastrous consequences this sets in train”. Whatever happened to CO2e, which as Garnaut states, is already at 455 ppm? These disastrous consequences should already be apparent. Perhaps the meltdown on Wall Street is caused by CO2e emissions? Hooray, Henry!

  3. Louis Hissink says

    CO2 is scaling record heights but the global temperatures seem to going in the other direction – record lows.

    I wonder what it will take for the useful idiots to realise this.

  4. Gordon Robertson says

    A small increase of nothing is still essentially nothing. The figures again:

    380 ppmv = 38 molecules of CO2 per 100,000 molecules of air. That refers to total CO2 in the atmosphere, of which anthropogenic CO2 is less than 3%.

    Anthropogenic CO2 increases approx. 0.6% per annum and 0.6% of 38 molecules is 0.228 molecules per annum, meaning human contribution is about 1 molecule of CO2 to 100,000 molecules of air every 5 years.

    Alternately, here’s the mean mass of the atmosphere from NCAR (Trenberth):

    http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/abstracts/files/kevin2003_6.html

    which is 5.148 e18 Kg. Check my math…my brain is hurting. 1 Kg = 2.2 lbs, so mean mass = 2.2 lb/kg (5.148 e18 kg) = 10.296 e18 lbs.

    1 ton is 2.0 e3 lbs. Divide that into above to get tons (ie. 10.296 e18 lbs/2.0 e3 lbs = 5.148 e15 tons.

    1 gigaton = 1.0 e9 tons Divide that into tons above to get 5.148 e15 tons/1.0 e9 tons/gigaton = 5.148 e6 gigatons.

    We’re comparing 3 gigatons (or somewhere around that) of anthropogenic CO2 per year to millions of gigatons of air.

  5. Geoff Brown says

    Putting 315 (ppm) into an excel spreadsheet and using 1.89 as an annual multiplier gives us 774 ppm at the end of 2006, whilst using 0.6 as an annual multiplier gives us 420 ppm at the end of 2006.

    What is the current figure? 385 ppm?

  6. Tim Curtin says

    Geoff Brown: You are right in principle, however James Haughton has found that Canadell’s et al’s 1.89 was really the 2nd derivative, ie rate of change of rate of change (despite actual heading in Canadell’s Table 10). Maybe, yet Canadell’s very own CSIRO projects as much as 550 ppm by 2050 and 750 ppm by 2100 (v. Guano’s commissioned paper from CSIRO on wheat production in Oz and CO2). The implied growth rates of atmos. CO2 are wholly implausible given the actual rate of 0.41% p.a. since 1958 (which yields just 60 ppm from 1958 to 2007), but Guano in his former incarnation was known as Dr Goebbels, “the bigger the lie, the more it is believed”.