Fracked gas is a boom industry, seen as an environmentally friendly substitute for coal - but there are questions about it's long term financial viability - with some experts suggesting shale gas may become another "toxic asset".
Hydraulic fracturing or fracking is a boom industry. It's a method of extracting gas not accessible by conventional drilling and has been hailed as one of the energy sources of the future, especially in the USA. The technology is controversial, has caused serious environmental damage in some areas and may be releasing enough methane to make it more carbon unfriendly than coal.
Now, a "must read" major investigation by the New York Times raises serious concerns about the financial viability of shale gas production. Over the last 6 months NYT journalists have reviewed hundreds of e-mails from industry insiders, independent geologists, market analysts and energy executives questioning oil industry predictions about the ease of extracting gas from shale.
Powerful independent financial analysts have likened trading in fracked gas fields to “the dot-com boom” and a “ponzi-scheme”, with some commentators suggesting that oil companies may be “intentionally or even illegally overstating the productivity of wells and the size of their reserves”.
Independent geologists dispute predictions of production over a 20 to 60 year span. Many wells show a year on year decline in gas output from year one and some believe projections have been made on the output of the very best wells in an area rather than overall output.
Whilst gas and oil companies present a bullish view of shale gas prospects other commentators are more pessimistic. One geologist said “no well is really economic right now”... … “they are all losing a little bit of money or only making a little bit of money”. There are concerns that a fall in gas prices could cause financial havoc – the 2008 collapse in gas prices has already had serious economic fall out for landowners in the Fort Worth area of Texas.
If they prove to be true, the issues raised by the NYT, investors hoping to reap big dividends from GAG (golden age of gas) won't be amused - but it could be good news for low carbon energy. There are real fears that a gas bonanza will affect the drive for investment in low carbon technology - a collapse of confidence in fracked gas could be a boost for wind and solar.
It's becoming increasingly clear that global warming is starting to affect eco-systems. One of the features that distinguishes greenhouse warming from warming due to increased solar radiation is that greenhouse warming makes polar regions warm faster than regions closer to the equator. Over the last 30 years there has been disproportionate warming in high latitudes and it is having dramatic effects on the Arctic environment and, quite possibly, on weather in northern Europe and the USA.
Ice loss from the ice cap
In order to understand ice loss and it's impacts it's necessary to distinguish between sea ice and ice that is moving off the land from the ice caps.
Sea Ice is frozen salt water, changes to sea ice cover don't impact on sea levels. While the volume of water increases on freezing, the amount of water it displaces is unchanged.
It's ice from the massive ice sheets, accumulated snow lying several kilometers thick over Greenland and the Antarctic that cause sea level rises. Ice from the ice cap is made of fresh water and it affects sea levels in two ways.
One is calving icebergs. When glaciers reach the shore they push ice on to the surface of the water that eventually breaks up into icebergs. An easy way of seeing the difference between sea ice and glacial ice is is to make a Gin and Tonic with an ice cube in it representing the sea ice. Mark the level of the liquid then let the ice cube melt -levels will remain the same. Now add a few more ice cubes - that's a glacier calving.
The delicious cocktail will have been displaced up the glass - a fair analogy of the impact of calving icebergs. Always remember to drink the G&T as soon as the experiment is concluded or the melting ice will spoil the drink. It is important to replicate experiments in science so this is a really useful way of expanding knowledge and having a fun evening.
The other is melt water runoff. If summer melt and winter rain are in equilibrium this process will not affect sea levels - but if summer melt exceeds precipitation there will be an overall decrease in ice mass and an increase in sea levels.
Their data shows that the total loss of mass from the ice sheet since 1840 equates to a 25 mm addition to global sea level . It also shows mass loss has accelerated over the last few decades - with the largest ice loss rates since 1840 occurred in the most recent decade and the mass loss in 2012 setting a new record.
Satellite measurements showing chilling figures for ice mass loss in Greenland:
in the period 1992-2000 the ice sheet lost 51 Gigatonnes per year, adding 1.4 mm to global sea level per decade.
From 2005-2010 263 Gigatonnes per year were lost - equivalent to 0.73 mm per year of sea level rise
From 2008-2012 the average annual mass loss has increased to 367 Gt (1.0 mm sea level rise per year).
The diagram offers an explanation of how ice sheets may destabilise more rapidly than expected
Ice loss from the sea
The loss of sea ice presents a separate set of issues. Summer cover has declined dramatically over the last 30 years. This US National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration video shows record breaking ice loss in the year 2012
This Jeff Masters Blog goes into detail about the way sea ice loss contributes to increased warming in the polar regions, which in turn can displace the jet stream - driving Atlantic lows and very cold Arctic air masses further south than in the past. This 15/02/2014 news report from the BBC explains how these changes could be contributing to the recent severe weather being experienced in Europe and in the USA.
Ice loss in the mountains
The cyrosphere embraces high altitudes as well as high latitudes and another indication of climate change is the loss of mountain glaciers. Stunning images in the Himalayas show the mountains today shot from the same positions as their earliest known images - some going back as far as the 19th C. At first glance it would seem the retreat of mountain glaciers, though another indicator of warming, is less of a concern than loss of sea ice and mass from ice caps - but glaciers form an important source of water for some of the world's great rivers - including rivers flowing into the Indian subcontinent that provide water for over a billion people.
The Everest Glaciers have shrunk by 13% in the last 50 years - and while some argue that reduced glacial water flow would be replaced by increased monsoonal rain - the melt water guarantees all year round water in a country that has little infrastructure to store and use water efficiently. In India the hottest driest weather is in March, April and May, immediately before the monsoons.
There are similar concerns in the USA where the Rockies have seen a 20% loss of ice cover in the last 3 decades - Runoff from the Rocky Mountain snows accounts for 60 to 80% of the annual water supply for more than 70 million people in the western US. The timing of snowmelt affects the levels of water available for crop irrigation and hydro-electric power (reported in countercurrents blog)
It seems that although, rising sea levels, the "traditional" fears of polar warming, are happening, it will be some time before the impacts really begin to be felt. The loss of sea ice appears to be having a mre immediate disruptive effect on our climate and may well be the underlying cause of the severe weather experienced in the UK this year, while ice loss from the mountains has the potential to affect the water supply of billions of people.
As if this isn't bad enough, warming at the poles raises the spectre of another amplifying feedback being set in motion, Permafrost holds a vast store of carbon locked into semi decomposed vegetation and deposits of methane clathrates lie on the sea bed in cold Arctic waters. As the polar regions warm methane - a 30 times more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 - will be released in as yet unknown quantities.
Marine Acidification
"Oceans cover 70% of the planet's surface, because they're deep, they actually contain 99% of the living space for animals on our planet. So they contain a large proportion of global biodiversity"
(Dr Ceri Lewis- Futurelearn video)
I've been aware of the issue for a while but hadn't quite appreciated the fact that it represented so much of the world's inhabitable space, and it makes the story of rising acidity in the sea, the "hidden side" of carbon pollution, even more daunting.
The sea is the main reasons why atmospheric CO2 concentrations have not risen proportionately to emissions. Carbon Dioxide is soluble in water, forming Carbonic Acid - and around about a third of all anthropogenic emissions have been absorbed by the sea. In terms of ppm of CO2 this is a good thing - but the increased acidity of the sea has potentially profound implications for the future of 250,000 plus marine species.
I'm not going to go into the detail of the chemistry - there's a really good account of this in the Ocean Acidification Wiki. It's enough to know that dissolved CO2 has caused an increase in the sea's acidity of around 30% since 1750.
This is a serious cause for concern as many marine species form calcium carbonate shells that can become soluble in acid conditions. There's a quick guide to some of the ramifications of rising acidity from the Marine conservation and Biology Institute here. Effects include the obvious like coral bleaching and dieback, but it's perhaps the effects at the tiniest level that are most worrying.
Rockpool in Brittany - 10 different large marine species in this image
The majority of marine life reproduce by releasing eggs and sperm into the water - to form embryonic versions of their parents. These are incredibly sensitive to acidity - and as part of their development, many need to form lime shells or skeletal structure. Clearly an acid environment compromises their development. The effects on plankton are an even greater worry . Plankton are at the base of the marine food chain and help produce a third of the world's oxygen supply.
A quick trawl through google asking the question, "effects of marine acidification on phytoplankton?" comes up with a host of links" - none of them very positive. These examplesgive a flavour of the kind of issues acidification will create:
I want to share this link too - it's a great resource for teachers and the site goes into detail on many other climate change issues too
Reflections
I was very stimulated by the discussion thread this week. I've really noticed that most comments tend to interpret the problems of climate change in human terms.
I tend think in terms of "catastrophic loss of biodiversity - we are part of a system and, in biological terms , not a particularly important part at that, just numerous. I'm inclined to feel marine acidification is a far greater threat to the complex system that maintains our current biosphere than rising sea levels - which will just make life difficult for humans.
Acidity is rising most rapidly in the polar regions nutrient rich seas. The phytoplankton that bloom in these waters each year are at the base of the marine food chain - with hundreds of larger life forms depending on them for survival. Phytoplankton's are also a major contributor to the third of the world's oxygen that comes from our oceans. Phytoplankton is potentially very vulnerable to rapid pH changes. Potentially, this could pose huge problems for the entire marine ecosystem. It's too soon to say exactly how marine acidification will affect the sea but it's highly probably it will be a big big problem, because, in terms of pH, the damage has already been done, and can't be stopped.
A number of people were saying "it will be OK" or offering opinion along the line of, "well - marine organisms can migrate to less acid, more suitable areas". I try not to let it happen, but the phrase "is it me" occassionally springs to mind unbidden. Anyone following that line of reasoning might just reflect that a lot of marine life is sessile and exist in specific depth ranges, so can't cross deep oceans. A lot of species can only survive in specific temperature ranges and many mobile species depend on a community of non-mobile organisms to provide a suitable habitat. Oh - and eventually sea water mixes - so higher acidity will be universal.
We were asked this week - what did we think posed a bigger threat to humanity, sea level rise or marine acidification - personally I find marine acidification far scarier than global warming in it's entirety. Sea Level rises we can survive - but acidification is utterly unquantifiable. I try and avoid Armageddon scenarios - but at it's worse - if acidification causes massive disruption to the marine eco-system, I believe we could be looking at such profound changes to the earth's global environment, that life as we know it could be largely wiped out. I've stared climate change in the face for 30 odd years and always tried to remain positive - marine acidification terrifies me.
I've been looking at "the climate sceptic" phenomenon for a few years now - in fact the main reason I'm doing the course is to make sure my self-taught understanding of climate science is accurate.
One of the things I've learnt is that it's really important to understand where the sceptical arguments come from. They are not scientific arguments - though many pose as being so. They are almost all ultimately funded by the US energy industry - who are following on from the lead of the US tobacco industry.
Their reaction, when faced with overwhelming evidence of the health risks of their products, was to embark on a campaign of "muddying the waters " - creating smokescreens and fake science to bamboozle the public and politicians that successfully delayed action on tobacco for 30 years. The energy industry very consciously adopted the same tactics - and took them far further. It may seem a arrogant to dismiss such well publicised doubts about such a crucial issue - but there is a wealth of evidence that say the "climate denial case" is an utter fabrication.
When is "science" science?
Science needs well researched data, proper analysis of evidence and publication and peer review - that's to say - it has to be accessible to other scientist working in the same fields complete with a description of the techniques used to run the experiment, the data, the methods used to analyse etc. If it's not published and critiqued in this way it's not science!
Denial tends to be largely based on opinion - so much so that Reddit recently banned denial posts - Nathen Allan - a Reddit moderator and PhD chemist, writing about the ban, said,
(the deniers) "had no idea that the smart-sounding talking points from their preferred climate blog were, even to a casual climate science observer, plainly wrong. They were completely enamoured by the emotionally charged and rhetoric-based arguments of pundits on talk radio and Fox News".
It's the kind of headline the Daily Mail just love - especially as the group includes,
" renowned space scientists with formal educational and decades career involvement in engineering, physics, chemistry, astrophysics, geophysics, geology and meteorology. Many of these scientists have Ph.Ds"
though notably - no climate scientists... ...and it is just a letter - an opinion - with no peer review and decidedly not a qualified opinion. But that doesn't stop the headlines - another smokescreen deployed - it doesn't matter that it's fiction - most people only read the headlines - so the damage is done.
He who pays the piper...
But why would quite eminent former NASA employees go to all this trouble? Well - it seems like the leader of the group is a former oil executive who runs a blog known to be funded by the fossil energy industry. How he put together this particular group is an open question - but Skeptical Science summarises the end product perfectly,
"This story can be summed up very simply: a group of retired NASA scientists with no climate science research experience listened to a few climate scientists and a few fossil fuel-funded contrarian scientists, read a few climate blogs, asked a few relatively simple questions, decided that those questions cannot be answered (though we will answer them in this post), put together a very rudimentary report, and now expect people to listen to them because they used to work at NASA. It's purely an appeal to authority, except that the participants have no authority or expertise in climate science".
In other words, no research, no peer review, no evidence - no science.
... calls the tune
This is just one tiny example of the widespread network of false front think tanks and lobbying machines funded by the energy industry.
The scale of the denial machine in the USA defies belief. Research published last year by Drexel University details the spending by energy companies on "denier vehicles" - and how recently, overt funding from the likes of Koch and Exxon has disappeared from public view, and is being channelled via anonymous funding organisations.
It's seem inconceivable to liberal Europeans that anyone would fly in the face of overwhelming evidence of the dangers of climate change - but money has always attracted the ruthless and there's no doubt that the likes of the Koch brothers, owners of the world's biggest private energy business are among the most ruthless of all, and are determined to scrape and pump every last drop of oil they can.
In a way it's hardly surprising that the USA should be the powerhouse of faith based denial. While stories like hugely influential right wing "Shock Jock" Ross Limbaugh saying: 'If You Believe In God, Then Intellectually You Cannot Believe In Manmade Global Warming' seem laughable in Europe, in the States, Limbaugh can make or break political careers.
The energy industry drive to suppress climate action goes beyond propaganda. A recent attempt to introduce an amendment stating that climate change conclusively exists in a bill being heard by the House Energy and Commerce Committee was voted down by 24 republican votes. They were cast by members who have collectively received over 9 million dollars in career contributions from the energy sector.
The power of the denial network is not restricted to the USA - the new Australian PM and the PM of Canada both openly scoff at climate change - both lead countries with massive hydrocarbon reserves - and the scepticism spins over into our own government with increasingly climate sceptic noises coming from a number of ministers, including the chancellor.
So next time the BBC give equal air time to a dissenting voice when climate change is discussed or James Delingpole launches one of his famous rants - be very clear - they are not arguing science - they are representing a slick propaganda campaign funded and motivated by the fossil energy industry.
* Greenpeace have produced a report (downloadable as a PDF) called "Dealing in doubt" detailing the way fake science and the denial story have been driven by the energy industry.
Peter Cox presented what may have been one of the best videos to come out of the course so far, taking us on a tour of the Met Offices forecasting centre and explaining the massive amounts of computing power needed to develop climate models. The long term climate models use similar techniques to near future weather forecasting - but factor many more variables into the fantastically complex equations used to make projections of how our climate might change
The acid test for climate models is to run the parameters used for predicting future climate change through the system and see how well results correspond to the historic record. Interestingly, the model works very well up until the 1970's at which point observed warming increases far more rapidly than the model predicts - results for this period only correspond to the climate record when anthropogenic carbon is factored into the equation.
Given the close match between observation and modelling of past climate it's reasonable to suggest that the climate models predictions about future climate will be accurate. There are some unpredictable variables, including how much we are able to reduce emissions, and the ability of the bio-sphere and the world's oceans to absorb emissions that leave questions about exact outcomes.
The problem is can be overcome by creating a range of projections using different scenarios seen in this NASA Earth Observatory chart
It's ironic that perhaps the biggest questions surrounding the IPCC 5th Assessment , who use the kind of modelling Peter Cox describes to produce their reports, is not that it exaggerates the scale of warming but that it is too conservative.
Some critics of the IPCC believe that it is under too much political pressure to tone down statements.
US educational science education site SPARK give the background to the way the IPCC develops it's reports,, saying: "all language included in the reports (needs) support of all representatives before (inclusion)... ...Some participants feel that the reports are somewhat "watered down"... ... any claim even remotely contentious in the eyes of any participant was vetoed, and hence some important and largely agreed-upon aspects of the science were left out."
Former IPCC panelist Professor Michael Mann explains the political difficulties for the IPCC. Mann characterises the process of "hashing out the report with the input of world political leaders" as “a pretty tense negotiation at times". For example, he says,
"in 1995, during the second assessment report, when the IPCC first went on record stating that the impact of humans on climate had been detected, there was a three-day-long debate about what word should be used to describe the level of certainty about civilization’s role in climate change. Several governments, including the government of Saudi Arabia, objected to the strength of the language that was being used and demanded essentially that it be watered down"
technology to the rescue???
Having established that it's almost certain human carbon emissions are affecting climate and gained a clear idea of what those effects will be the second topic was the possibility of using technology to mitigate the effects of climate change or to remove CO2, either by removing carbon dioxide from the system or by increasing the earth's surface albedo to reflect a proportion of solar radiation.
In theory, "removal" of carbon can be achieved by several methods.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) extracts carbon dioxide from exhausts of large plants like power stations and liquefy and store it in suitable geological strata. It's limitations are that it is very energy intensive process, driving up energy cost between 25 and 40%, and the risk of stored gas finding it's way back into the atmosphere. As yet there have been no successful demonstration of CCS in the UK and there are major concerns about liability and risks, described in this British Geological Survey report, which identifies geological instabilities, difficulties in monitoring and difficulties in finding commercial organisations prepared to develop the technology without government guarantees in the event of major failures. It's also interesting that much of the lobbying effort for CCS appears to come from the fossil energy industry.
Mineralisation of Carbon Dioxide, although an energy intensive process (it would take three tons of crushed rock to remove one ton of CO2 from the atmosphere) offers is a possible technique. Mineralisation is the main natural route to carbon sequestration and the end product, carbonate rock, has none of the critical risks of storing liquid CO2. In this article, the work of Cambridge Carbon Capture is described - expanding mineralisation into industrial processes and using it to create commercially viable end products and giving an insight into the ways new technologies and ideas could help to provide climate solutions. As always with new thinking there are questions as to how much of a difference the ideas described would really make and how quickly, if ever, they will cross the bridge from theory to functional large scale plant.
Converting CO2 into fuel feedstocks - there's no such thing as a free lunch but carbon dioxide can be persuaded to form carbon monoxide that can in turn be used as a fuel - for example the University of Delaware has developed a nano-catalyst 3000 times more effective than conventional catalysts - while it doesn't remove CO2 it is a potential way of reducing new emissions. Another obvious way of recycling CO2 is via fuel crops. Bio-fuel and bio-mass are established technologies that use CO2 from the existing carbon cycle - but they have limited value - in the case of extensive palm oil plantations for example, because the fuel crops are grown at the expense of natural rain forest and in the west fuel crops competing for land with food crops - help drive up food prices and also deliver very poor overall energy returns on energy invested (EROEI).
There's also the possibility of sequestering CO2 in biomass and converting this into biochar which can be incorporated into soil, where it not only remains in a relatively stable form but also has good soil enhancement properties. Jim Haywood's presentation also suggested combining bio-mass power generation with CCS as the most "economically viable technique". Theoretically this is a good way of sequestering carbon but I'm not sure I agree with this view. I've already touched on the difficulties associated with this technology and in a country the size of the UK there are also serious questions about the quantity of bio-mass we can produce - David McKay writes in "Sustainability Without the Hot Air" that a minimum of 30% of biomass energy would be lost along the processing route - and that even with absurdly generous estimates of the land that could be made available for biomass it would make only a small contribution to overall energy demands - adding in a 25-40% increased energy cost for CCS would render biomass virtually worthless as a fuel.
Overall none of these technologies are entirely free from side effects and none would make really significant inroads into the huge amounts of new CO2 coming from fossil fuels each year.
The other path - reflecting incoming solar radiation is highly controversial for a number of reasons. Studies of the effects of high altitude particles from volcanoes and the smoke stack trails from shipping have shown that introducing materials into the atmosphere can cut temperatures.The technology involves techniques like seeding clouds to make them more reflective or creating "solar mirrors" in earth orbit to create overall global cooling - but it's a technology fraught with risk. It's known that it can reduce overall warming but no one knows how widespread use might affect specific weather systems - so, for example, if it forced a northward migration of wet zones the Amazon basin could dry out - putting one of the worlds biggest bio-carbon fixers at risk and turning it into a carbon emitter in the event of it dying. There are even greater risks associated with the technology - if it's use suddenly became impracticable the earth's temperature would rise very quickly with catastrophic effects on eco-systems.
In my view, there is a real danger to even pushing the door slightly ajar to climate engineering - it gives the "extract every drop" mob another propaganda get-out route. The stupidity of this technology is that we don't need to switch to a low carbon/renewable energy economy simply because of climate change. Continued investment in a technology and infrastructural model that depends on a finite resource is taking us up an economic dead end - a point well made in the 2010 UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security (ITPOES) report "The Oil Crunch".
There is more than enough energy and existing technologies to accelerate the decarbonisation of electricity generation right now. Given the weaknesses of geo-engineering and CCS it's by far the safest and most cost effective path - Caroline Lucas is one of many calling for the fight against climate change to be put on a war footing - though it's ironic that Greens continue to reject Nuclear Power - one of the lowest carbon energy options available to us.
Indicators of climate change can be found by careful analysis of climate records. With the development of far more widespread monitoring on both land and sea and new technologies ranging from weather balloons to satellites these records have become increasingly rich during the 20th century
Using this 170 year old set of records - making careful adjustments for ways in which different techniques for measurement and localised effects like urbanisation - climate analysts have built a picture of how climate has changed.
The data establishes key indicators
Global mean temperature over sea and land has increased significantly over the 20th century
There's been a steady rise in sea levels due to both thermal expansion and ice melt from glaciers and ice caps
temperatures in the high northern latitudes have risen significantly
there has been a significant increase in the number of extreme weather events
The Met Office have a page of climate maps showing anomalies compared to the 1961-1990 average. In a very unscientific attempt to look at changing climate I looked at the intensity of the colour red on the maps (more red = hotter). It's easy to see that in the 71 years from 1919 to 1990 - taking 1911 as the bottom end of hotness - there's been 7 really hot summers - from 1991 to date there's been 11 significantly hot summers. So significantly hotter than average years one year in ten up until 1990 and more or less one in two since then. 22 years of records is getting close to that 30 year period when we can start to talk about climate rather than weather!
James Hanson predicted that extreme weather events would be a feature of climate change as long ago as 1990. There's a useful Climate Progress piece on extreme weather discussing the drought in the SW of the USA and the mechanisms that drive it. There's now evidence to show the frequency of climate extremes and global warming are linked as this National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration report on Mediterranean Droughts demonstrates. There are numerous links to papers supporting the view that extreme weather events are increasing in this link to the Skeptical Science web site. John Vidal writing in the Guardian catalogues events through 2013 in "2013, a year of increasing extreme weather events" - where, in a catalogue of dangerously high temperatures he describes temperatures in Australia getting so high that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has been forced to add another colour band to it's temperature charts.
The US Geological Society climate visualisation map clearly shows the increases in temperature and clearly shows that the greatest increases are in the far north - but it also shows smaller increases in many areas where human existence is already marginal, including the Mediterranean basin, the Russian Steppes, the US Mid and S. West and Australia. These increases are a major cause for concern as they could tip the balance into an environment that could no longer support agriculture. One illustration of this is that high food prices over the last few years were partially due poor harvests caused by drought and the Russian Steppes - a long term increase in drought intensity in a major world grain supply area would compromise food supplies globally.
Concern about the impacts of climate change is growing in the scientific community - as reflected in this release by the American Geophysical Union - first drafted in 2007 but reaffirmed in 2013 which says "Impacts harmful to society, including increased extremes of heat, precipitation, and coastal high water are currently being experienced, and are projected to increase. Other projected outcomes involve threats to public health, water availability, agricultural productivity (particularly in low‐latitude developing countries), and coastal infrastructure, though some benefits may be seen at some times and places. Biodiversity loss is expected to accelerate due to both climate change and acidification of the oceans, which is a direct result of increasing carbon dioxide levels." and calls for urgent action to reduce anthropogenic carbon emissions.
Video showing spectacular change to CO2 over the last 500 million years
watch the timescale of the left hand graph change as CO2 levels rise
On first glance the increase in carbon emissions seems tiny in the context of global carbon cycles - but while the flows of carbon and carbon stored in the world's oceans and the biosphere are vast they are in a long term equilibrium - it's true that they may change gradually over many thousands of years - but the carbon from human activity has increased concentrations of free carbon dioxide very very quickly - almost doubling in the last 100 years - and it's this rapid increase that represents a major cause for concern. Looking at global emissions on this World Bank interactive emissions graph it's clear there is a huge disparity between emissions in the developed and the developing world and while, for example, India's emissions are rising rapidly per capita emissions a tiny fraction of the average European, who in turn create less than half the CO2 of the average US Citizen. China is the big new boy on the carbon block - and has outstripped even the USA - becoming the world's largest carbon produced in 2005 with total emissions now racing ahead of the rest of the world. It looks like China has taken over from the USA as the world's carbon bogyman - but the underlying realities tell a different story. The Worldwatch Institute say that a third of China's emissions are driven by exports to the west - so the west's claims for a reduced carbon emissions are not as clear cut as we claim. George Monbiot writes - "When the impact of the goods we buy from other nations is counted, our total greenhouse gases did not fall by 19% between 1990 and 2008. They rose by 20%. This is despite the replacement during that period of many of our coal-fired power stations with natural gas, which produces roughly half as much carbon dioxide for every unit of electricity. When our “consumption emissions”, rather than territorial emissions, are taken into account, our proud record turns into a story of dismal failure" The story of China - who's per capita carbon is way below all but the most economic developed nation illustrates both the stranglehold the west has on resources and the huge impact our consumer based economy has on carbon emissions and thus our climate.
