How U.S. States GHG Emissions Compare Internationally U.S. emissions are greater than Great Britain, Canada, Russia, India, Brazil & South Korea combined. This map shows how emissions add up. October 2, 2006 When it comes to climate change, states make a difference -- even when compared internationally. If states were ranked individually, six states -- Texas, California, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Florida -- would rank among the top 30 emitters internationally. This map, featured in Science magazine, shows how regions within the U.S. compare to major emitters. The lower 48 states are approximately equivalent to China, Brazil and the United Kingdom combined: or the United Kingdom, Brazil, Russia, India, South Korea and Canada. Region/country equivalencies are approximations intended for illustrative purposes. Source: Climate Analysis Indicators Tool, World Resources Institute. How This Map Was Made WRI created this map using state-level GHG emissions from 2001
I found the map above surprising and a little depressing, since I know that ghg are responsible for global climate change. Until this country changes and starts believing in scientific evidence, the planet's pretty screwed.
It s important to know wether this represents the total emission or the emissions per person. It s important since the USA are like 300 million people and for example Canada is only 30 million...
Global Climate Change, new catch phrase, new mission...when we chose to bomb and kill people now we should be taken off balance by protecting seals and polar bears.'' Personally I am more concerned with my dogs and cat's life, which my nation doesn't seem that concerned with when it comes to Chinese imports. What emissions do those planes and bombs cause? Shouldn't we be more focused on life? Human or otherwise? Will new CFL light bulbs save any lives in the middle east, will they keep you children from going to war? If they break in your home will you have to close off rooms of your home and hire expensive contractors to remove their contamination. Will that save the polar bears, while those contractors move their trucks and suction machines, using vehicles that probably submit more hydrocarbons into the atmosphere? I spent a great deal of my life wqrking in greenhouses, I harnessed their solar capturing effects...I never once saw it as a negative until recently. Yet while planes drop bombs and people kill others we are supposed to focus on the evil of greenhouse gases? Your auto is vile and deadly..since when....it get's you where you need to be, is this the new evil like tobacco was? Tobacco made the US. Check your history books tobacco was the biggest cash crop in the US for years it built the US economy. Now our vehicles and our auto industry is the big boogieman, while we bomb and construct new weapons? Why is that? So foreign or off shore countries or companies can supply that need? Who makes our bombs and armaments? Are they national or do they belong to global corporations that only seek to maintain their hold and market? Just where are our bombs and bullets manufacturered? We pay private contractors three times what we do our soldiers in Iraq. It's time to look at where the money is going.
Remember "shock and awe" that had to be great for the environment. How much pollution and greenhouse gasses do you think our government spewed into the environment then? We manufacture hardly anything here in the US today. Our domestic contribution through ordinary life can't be more contaminating. I am not sure what your map means.
I whole-heartedly agree gardner. Why in the world would we spend time, effort and money considering more than one threat to our society? We really should be focusing all of our effort on battling terrorists in Iraq. I mean, granted there weren't any significant number of terrorists there until we invaded the country, but there sure are plenty of them there now. My question is why aren't MORE resources going to this war? Heck, let's just plain cut the funding to the National Institute of Health and National Science Foundation--that's money we could be spending on weaponry for Iraq. Let's get the police off our streets too, and put them in Iraq where there's a threat. All these college kids could be over there defending our country from the terrorists. We need to have have mandetory enrollment in the army. Let's put 5, 10 million of the country's youth over there fighting. I mean, afterall, this is a threat and there's no point considering more than a single threat to the country. For that matter, this country is incredibly rich and that money could be spent in Iraq. We should be taxing much more--80, 90% of the income of most families could be used there. Let's dump everything the country has into addressing this one threat and ignore any other threats to the livelihood or well-being of the people here and elsewhere. That only makes sense right? ...I do hope you all understand the sarcasm/irony above... Chris
Are you joking??? If you have qualms about the IPCC saying that there is at least a 90% liklihood that human activities are causing global warming then you have no understanding of how science works. There are no absolutes in science, ever. Such a thing is an impossibility. It is not possible for science to ever find a 100% liklihood of anything. Science works on probabilities--the probability that one thing is true and that another thing is not. A greater than 90% probablity is as about as close to "proven" as a thing can really be. If you are waiting for absolutes in this world, you are going to die waiting--there will never be any. Chris
The IPCC report is a fraud because it censored all dissenting scientists while including their names in the final report. That's because, as the poster above said, they are a political organization with a political/globalist agenda.
First off, the IPCC is a POLITICAL body, not a scientific one. Second of all, arguing about what it says/doesn't say is technically arguing by authority or arguing by popularity. That's two logical flaws in one. The IPCC reports are generated by scientists, edited by politicals, and sent back to scientists and round about until everybody is sufficiently satisfied to finalize the piece. Generally the IPCC reports have been regarded as extremely rigorous (they have to be with so many people weighing in), but in recent years many lead authors (climatologists) have been increasingly vocal about the censorship and down-playing of the certainty of anthropogenic contributions to global warming and the potential consequences. As recent evidence has shown, the IPCC reports have been too conservative--our realized warming over the last few years is in the upper 10% of the predicted range (much above the mean), the Antarctic has been losing ice much sooner than predicted, and sea level is rising much faster than predicted in the earlier IPCC reports. The IPCC reports have been, as it turns out, too conservative. There is no "probabiliity" that gravity will pull things to the center of the Earth to the tune of 9.8 meters per second per second, unless you want to consider that 100% of the time. Actually, as it turns out Newton's hypotheses on mechanics and universal gravitation weren't quite right. They were good approximations for the sorts of interactions we normally see, but they are not full explanations. As these ideas were developed we came to a cross-roads where quantum mechanics and general relativity both seem to explain interactions yet are at odds with each other. So gravity, the way it is normally explained and taught, is in fact incorrect and the real relation among gravity, matter, and the other fundamental forces is far, far more complex than Newton's hypotheses could have predicted. Again, there are no absolutes, there are only probabilities. The IPCC report is a fraud because it censored all dissenting scientists while including their names in the final report. That's because, as the poster above said, they are a political organization with a political/globalist agenda. See above: the estimates on the rate of global warming, sea level rise, etc. have been, as we have discovered over the last several years, underestimates, not overestimates. The IPCC reports are in fact very conservative predictions. They aren't sensationalized by any stretch of the imagination. Where did you study science, again? Almost forgot... Undergrad at Michigan State, graduate school at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. BS in zoology (and Spanish) at MSU and MS in marine biology at UNCW. Soon to be going for a PhD in oceanography. Chris
That's not the point. Nobody is denying global warming, but the notion that man is behind it. There is absolutely no proof for this whatsoever. None. Because then you would have to explain why the other planets are heating up, too.
There is no proof that human activities are causing global warming??? Let me guess, you also believe in Nessy and you're waiting for Elvis to announce to the world that he's really still alive? As I believe I've mentioned to you before, most of the planets in the solar system HAVE NOT shown any warming. There is some evidence that Mars may be warming, or at least a part of it. Pluto is warming, despite the fact that it is currently moving away from the sun at a prodigious rate. The other planets aren't warming (besides Earth). The underlying assumption of this argument is that the sun is behind the waming here on Earth, but since we have direct measurments of the sun's output since 1978 and there has been no increase, we can conclude that this is categorically NOT the cause of our recent warming. Chris
give them hell chris! im no scientist! in my opinion we are not the cause but a very large exacerbating component to the problem! if you figure all of what we do, like deforestation, coupled with urban sprawl, increacing carbon emissions ect.................... we are definatively changing our enviromnt including our climate! no question in my mind! now chris, if you could help me out and pull together some stats on how mutch we put out as oppossed to natural proccesses sutch as volcanic activity, loss of carbon sinks ect....... you sound like you are well versed in he subject and could find this info easier than me. im intrested in tonage estemations links would be great! peace!!
so what china, us,korea, we are talking about human input! give me figures as to the tonage theat WE! put into the atmospher, coupled with the destruction of the carbon sinks (ie forests) and then lets debate! your saying thet 98% of carbon emmisions ar coming from natural sources? like i said im no scientist! so if you know so mutch lets have the figures! im very curius (and ya i cant spell worth a crapp) pls. dont hold it against me. peace!!
what im trying to find is estimates of natural output as opposed to mans output! ive tryed and its very time consuming, i would like to put together a comprehensive model of all factors involved! ie my erlier posts, to think that any speicies doesnot effect their enviroment is just silly to me! if i remember correctly simple physics says that if i clap my hands it will have an effect on all things no matter how negligable!! still an effect! peace!
That is incorrect. http://www.space.com/scienceastrono...put_030320.html In what could be the simplest explanation for one component of global warming, a new study shows the Sun's radiation has increased by .05 percent per decade since the late 1970s. I'm sorry, you were saying that there has been no increase? This will teach me to check my dates better. Solar radiation peaked and has been declining since 1985, not 1978, as I stated originally. See the latest findings here "There are many interesting palaeoclimate studies that suggest that solar variability had an influence on pre-industrial climate. There are also some detection–attribution studies using global climate models that suggest there was a detectable influence of solar variability in the first half of the twentieth century and that the solar radiative forcing variations were amplified by some mechanism that is, as yet, unknown. However, these findings are not relevant to any debates about modern climate change. Our results show that the observed rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen after 1985 cannot be ascribed to solar variability, whichever of the mechanisms is invoked and no matter how much the solar variation is amplified." The sun likely DID have an influence on the 0.1 C of warming before about 1980--no one argues that it didn't, it very likely WAS the major driver then. Since 1980 solar output has peaked and declined while temperature has shown a steady increase. Obviously solar radiation is NOT driving our current warming. give them hell chris! im no scientist! in my opinion we are not the cause but a very large exacerbating component to the problem! if you figure all of what we do, like deforestation, coupled with urban sprawl, increacing carbon emissions ect.................... we are definatively changing our enviromnt including our climate! no question in my mind! now chris, if you could help me out and pull together some stats on how mutch we put out as oppossed to natural proccesses sutch as volcanic activity, loss of carbon sinks ect....... you sound like you are well versed in he subject and could find this info easier than me. im intrested in tonage estemations links would be great! peace!! Haha, I'll do what I can. Our activities are primarily responsible for the warming, and for many other things that come back to bite us in the buns I'd just google "carbon cycle" or something to that effect and you should be able to find a diagram of relatively recent estimates of fluxes and sinks. I'm a coral reef biologist by trade, and my work focuses primarily on the effects of environmental perturbation on marine organisms (mostly corals). I'm working on ocean acidification now (the lesser known but potentially just as disastrous consequence of increasing CO2) and plan to keep working on this for quite some time--there's a lot than needs to be learned, and quickly! If we removed every car, motorcycle and truck off the face of the earth, CO2 emissions would be reduced by just under 2%. Oh come on now, don't insult our intelligence In the biosphere there are huge fluxes of CO2 between the biota and the atmosphere all the time. A lot goes up through respiration, but a lot comes back down through photosynthetic fixation. The net effect of the biosphere is NO CHANGE in atmospheric CO2. On a seasonal basis, what is released to the atmosphere is sucked back down and fixed into organic forms. This causes a slight ossiclation up and down of a couple ppmv over the course of the year, but there is no trend over time, either increasing or decreasing. So, the effect of the biosphere on atmospheric CO2 is NONE, ZERO, ZILCH. Burning fossil fuels, on the other hand, liberates carbon that was previously in geologic storage (outside of the biosphere-atmosphere system). This means that the CO2 we add is added to the atmosphere, but by an large is not taken back up. Thus we are causing a NET INCREASE in atmospheric CO2. Now, the biosphere has actually sucked up about 1/2 of what we've put into the atmosphere (we'd be at 486 ppmv right now instead of 383 ppmv). Recent finding suggest that the ocean has recently begun to take up CO2 much more slowly than it used to, meaning that our additions to the atmosphere will stay there--they won't be absorbed by the biosphere as extensively. Yes, of course the flux of CO2 to the atmosphere is tiny compared to fluxes from the biosphere, but the fluxes from the atmosphere back to the biosphere is just as large. That tiny flux we cause (at least 1/2 of it) remains in the atmosphere. Hence, atmospheric CO2 is rising at about 1 - 2% per year, and is rapidly increasing, due to our activities. Did you honestly think I was stupid enough or ignorant enough to be swayed by such a ridiculous argument? Chris
