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If china would simply put out all it's underground coal mine fires, that alone could remove 360 million tons of CO2 emissions. (As much as all the cars and light trucks in the US.)

Just pure waste from china is alone responsible for a very large chunk of CO2 emissions.

http://www.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20030215coalenviro...

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Very true, but that's a massive easier-said-than-done:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_seam_fire#Extinguishing_co...

I actually didn't know China had underground coal fires - I learned a little about the topic reading about the underground coal fires in Pennsylvania:

http://www.offroaders.com/album/centralia/centralia.htm

It's expensive and dangerous to put them out as described in Wikipedia, but also the success rate can be fairly low. With our currency technology, you can put out 99% of the fire and have it restart and spread again quickly and undetected. From Wikipedia, italics mine:

> In 2004, the Chinese government claimed success in extinguishing a mine fire at a colliery near Urumqi in China's Xinjiang province that had been burning since 1874. However, a March 2008 Time magazine article quotes researcher Steven Q. Andrews as saying, "I decided to go to see how it was extinguished, and flames were visible and the entire thing was still burning.... They said it was put out, and who is to say otherwise?"

Interesting.

One thing that strikes me is that CO2 is a better asphyxiating agent than nitrogen: it is inert to combustion and it is 47.3% denser than N2, so it will stay put if you can keep it under 147.3% of ambient temperature. And people are looking for places to sequester CO2, anyway. It will asphyxiate animals and people too, though, so you'd better not have any leaks...

You know this is the reason I find myself leaning conservative with respect to environmental issues. All of these environmentalists loudly proclaim that China and the US are the profligate polluters in the neighborhood. I have looked up the numbers, and per capita, Australians release five times more carbon into the atmosphere than we do. Yet I have not once seen or heard an environmentalist take Australia to task for their profligate behavior. Do we pollute more than Australia, yes, only because there are more people here. We have to heat 100 million homes in the winter, right now that necessitates some carbon emissions. We are number one in researching alternative energy technologies to attempt to change this state of affairs, but what would you have us do in the meantime? Freeze?

You bring up China, well I checked the numbers there as well, and Australia releases eleven times more carbon per capita than China. Will China release more carbon in the future, yes, because instead of the 300 million people that currently enjoy little luxuries like heat in the winter, that number will swell to well over 900 million. Incidentally, guess who is number two in researching alternative energy technologies in an attempt to proactively address their future energy needs. China. What would you have them do in the interim? Freeze as well?

Yet China and the US are the "problem".

No, the real reason these 'environmentalists' are anti China and US is because it is politically fashionable to be so. It has very little to do with the actual numbers and the reasons behind them.

Sane and safe programs for the reduction of carbon emissions should have some basis in per capita emissions. And the evidence is more than clear that many nations have much further to go than the US and China in this regard.

All of these environmentalists loudly proclaim that China and the US are the profligate polluters in the neighborhood. I have looked up the numbers, and per capita, Australians release five times more carbon into the atmosphere than we do.

It's not at all clear who "we" refers to in that sentence, but from my cursory glance at the data, it appears that the statement applies to neither the US or China. Please clarify and provide links to relevant data.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dio...

OK, just in case you are Australian, I will use Australian numbers for both carbon emissions and growth rates in carbon emissions per capita. This is because, I agree with the idea, in general, that climate data is so widely variant from source to source as to be extremely suspect. And given recent events, ie-'climategate', I think we should all be careful about using numbers generated by nation A, to illustrate an environmental point with respect to nation B.

Having mentioned all of that, the numbers from CSIRO in Australia can be found in the following report:

http://csiro.au/news/GlobalCarbonProject-PNAS.html

Lead by Dr Mike Raupach

EDIT:

Not really sure if the above was too technical. Just realized you quoted wikipedia. Anyway, what follows are some news stories on Australian carbon emissions. A little less techy.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/18/2745751.htm

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/02/2079513.htm

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e57087d4-3862-11de-9211-00144feabdc0...

Note that even though the Financial Times is a conservative paper, it concedes that Australia has decided to 'delay' setting any carbon emissions limits. I put in links to ABC, to balance FT with a somewhat more liberal perspective.

END EDIT:

In my opinion, the report, puts Australia in a very good light, and even they concede that Australia emits at 4.5 TIMES the global rate. A lot of other little nuggets are in the full report if you care to read it. If not, the link above contains a good summary.

I can share more research with you, if you are working in this field, and would like the information.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to state that I currently do a great deal of research analyzing companies, technologies, and markets for VC investment. One of the fields that a large number of clients are interested in is 'green tech'. The research I have been doing the past couple of years, particularly on markets, has really opened my eyes.

In answer to your other question, I am an American. Extremely so I admit. So by 'we' I meant the US. I will endeavor to speak more precisely in the future.

Incidentally, given incidents like 'climategate' I think we should also be a little hesitant about quoting sources like wikipedia.

EDIT:

It occurs to me that perhaps I should be more explicit in what I am saying. The source data used for the wikipedia article is not data on carbon emissions per capita, rather it is data on carbon emissions per capita . . . PER USD1 GDP. That is, per capita per $1 GDP.

The authors of the wikipedia article either mistook the data to be data on per capita emissions, or really didn't understand the difference. At any rate, that is the reason for the confusion I think.

By the way, here is the source data that the wikipedia article uses:

http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Data.aspx

(As mentioned at other points elsethread.)

The actual data are not presented as "per capita per $1 USD GDP"; this is a (wholly unintentional, I'm sure) misreading of a sentence describing the data in the charts.

Actually examining the source data shows that there is a set of data measured in metric tons per $1 USD, and another, separate set, of data measured in metric tons per capita.

Also a repeat of my reply:

So if we assume that your interpretation of the data is correct, Australia is just as big an emitter as the US, and they emit roughly 4 TIMES as much as China does. If my interpretation was correct, they emit 5 TIMES the US and 11 TIMES China.

My point being that the material point stands in either case. That is, even if we were to all agree to your interpretation, China is still not the problem. Why then, is all of the attention on China and the US? Clearly there are other emitters just as profligate. In fact, in the case of China, most of the other nations are far larger emitters per capita.

I maintain that the negative attention given to China and the US is due to the fact that being anti US and anti China is the height of political fashion. Clearly, the people denigrating China don't take Australia to task for what we have both established as demonstrably far more egregious behavior.

The data that you're using does not support what you're saying. In metric tons of CO2 per capita, Australia has 18.12, China has 4.62 and the US has 18.9944. "Interpretation" doesn't really enter into it.

The reason that most people focus on the US, China (and India) is not fashion, but that they have the bulk of the world's population. Australia only has 20-ish million people, but the US has more like 300 million (FIFTEEN TIMES!), and China has a billion (FIFTY TIMES!). So if their per-capita emissions go up, they're pumping out a lot more CO2.

Have a look into the 'raw' numbers - ie. the absolute emissions - they're the ones that matter. Australia: 372013, the US: 5752289, China: 6103493

Is there some reason that you're repeating yourself umpteen times throughout the article? It's getting pretty annoying reading the same poorly argued piece over and over (5 TIMES! now...)

Your arguing a statistic though. Even if Australia massively slashed their carbon emissions what effect does it have? Very little.

On the other hand if you and China cut a small amount each, well, the roll on impact is huge. :)

That's the statistic that counts here.

Im not sure how accurate this is, but Wikipedia lists the US carbon emmissions per capita as 18.67, Australia as 18.74 and China has 4.57. This seems to correlate with the world bank data as shown on Google for 2005 - http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=en_atm_co...

Maybe it has changed in the last few years, but it is a lot different than your claim of 5 times the US amount or 11 times the Chinese. Where did you get your numbers from?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dio...

See response to @ryanwaggoner, who, in all fairness, asked first.

EDIT:

Just like I mentioned to @ryanwaggoner, I think, given incidents like 'climategate' we should be careful of quoting sources like wikipedia.

For instance, the source data used for the wikipedia article is not carbon emissions per capita, it is data on carbon emissions per capita . . . PER USD1 GDP. That is, per capita per $1 GDP.

The authors of the wikipedia article either mistook the data to be data on per capita emissions, or really didn't understand the difference. At any rate, that is the reason for the confusion I think.

By the way, here is the source data that the wikipedia article uses:

http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Data.aspx

One of the rows of data in that link provides the total carbon emissions (the row titled: "Carbon dioxide emissions (CO2), thousand metric tons of CO2"). Dividing this number by the population of the US and Australia provides a very similar result to the Wikipedia article. The per GDP data is another row entirely. Maybe I'm confused, as I don't look at stuff like this much, and I've only given it a cursory glance ... but this data doesn't look to be backing up your original argument either.

I am going to copy the same response given to @nkurz, EDIT:END EDIT, as you do seem to have a genuine intellectual curiosity. I hope you don't mind. At any rate if you follow this link:

http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Metadata.aspx?IndicatorId=28&...

as @nkurz suggests, then you will come to a page with two 'per capita' data charts on it. Click either, and under the 'Series Detail' section of the resultant page you will see something like the following:

Series Name: Carbon dioxide emissions (CO2), metric tons of CO2 per capita (UNFCCC)

Goal: Goal 7. Ensure environmental sustainability

Target: Target 7.A: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources

----HERE---->> Indicator: Indicator 7.2 Carbon dioxide emissions, total, per capita and per $1 GDP (PPP) <<<----HERE----

As you can see it is per capita per $1 GDP (PPP). By the way, the (PPP), Purchasing Power Parity, makes this data even less useful. But I didn't want to get into ALL of the things that are wrong with this dataset.

Alternatively, here is a direct link to:

Carbon dioxide emissions (CO2), metric tons of CO2 per capita (UNFCCC)

http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/SeriesDetail.aspx?srid=752

Again, check under 'Series Detail' and you will see the above dataset description.

Ah, the infamous "Oxford comma" strikes again!

They appear to be listing the various data elements compiled. As in:

* Total carbon dioxide emissions * Per Capita carbon dioxide emissions * per $1 GDP carbon dioxide emissions

I guessed that this might be the case, but did not pre-conclude it. Instead I downloaded all of their actual data sets and compared the numbers in the charts, and indeed, the numbers for per-capita carbon dioxide emissions, which include no mention of per-GDP calculations, support Wikipedia's numbers to the same effect.

i.e., Australia in 2006 was showing 19 metric tons of CO2 emissions per capita to the United States' 19.7, etc.

(And I swore I was never again going to get involved in a climate "discussion" on HN.)

My point being that the material point stands in either case. That is, even if we were to all agree to your interpretation of the data, nations like China are still not the problem. Why then, is all of the negative attention on China and the US? Clearly there are other emitters just as profligate. In fact, in the case of China, most of the other nations are far more profligate per capita.

interpretation of the data

Come on now, you're having a hard enough time reading the legend, there isn't much interpretation going on.

No, really not. Australia is not being taken to task for several reasons:

1) Unlike China, Australia was a signatory to Kyoto (actually, I'm not 100% sure if China was a signatory or not, but at any rate they didn't have binding targets).

2) Unlike the US, Australia actually met its Kyoto targets.

3) Everyone knows that most of Australia's economic activity is geared towards exports of primary produce to the rest of the world - as already noted, Australia's own population is small, certainly not big enough to consume even a tenth of what is being produced. As such, at Kyoto it was agreed to not heavily limit Australian emissions, as these emissions would more fairly be placed on the books of the consumer countries.

4) Australia was willing and able to play ball in Copenhagen, unlike the Chinese.

5) Australia does not have very much diplomatic clout, so it is not being held accountable for the failure of diplomacy, as the US is.

6) And, finally, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what Australia does per capita, as its population is simply too small to make a difference on a global scale - even if we accept the dodgy figure of Australia emitting 11 times more per capita than the Chinese, that still means that China is emmitting more than 5 times more than Australia. Using more realistic figures, China is emitting about 10 times more than Australia, and the US is emitting nearly 20 times more. And that is why no-one is pointing the finger at Australia.

I think you are mistaken. In my reading, the series has data for both GDP and per capita. Each individual page shows only one or the other. It is not per/per as you imply.

http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Metadata.aspx?IndicatorId=28&...

Follow either of the links to 'Metric tons of CO2 per capita' and you'll find numbers very close to Wikipedia.

(in any case, could you delete one of your responses so that replies aren't scattered?)

Nkurz, if you follow the link in your comment you will come to a page with two 'per capita' data charts on it. Click either, and under the 'Series Detail' section of the resultant page you will see something like the following:

http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/SeriesDetail.aspx?srid=752

Series Name: Carbon dioxide emissions (CO2), metric tons of CO2 per capita (UNFCCC)

Goal: Goal 7. Ensure environmental sustainability

Target: Target 7.A: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources

----HERE---->> Indicator: Indicator 7.2 Carbon dioxide emissions, total, per capita and per $1 GDP (PPP) <<<----HERE----

EDIT: I apologize, I mistook the meaning of your response. END EDIT

Also repeating my reply upthread:

This is a case of an "Oxford comma". The data would be more correctly described as "...emissions, total, per capita, and per $1 GDP". Including or not including the comma is a style choice; journalists tend not to include it, and often don't realize that it can change the meaning of a sentence.

If you examine the data sets themselves, rather than only the one sentence, I think you'll see.

repeat of my reply upthread:

I'd suggest that the attention is on China and the US primarily because they are respectively the number 1 and 2 total emitters of CO2, making up about 40% of the global total. But it's hard to prove why people believe what they do, so I offer this only as opinion.

I'd agree that political fashion likely plays a strong role, but your reluctance to retract your misinterpretation regarding the units of the data makes my unwilling to discuss this with you further. Claiming the the point stands in either case, whether or not this is true, forces me to flip the bozo bit.

Yeah. I'm just one data point, and a pretty unimportant one at that, but to be honest the climate "discussions" have pretty much killed HN for me.

Which is good, actually; I'm getting more done, and HN isn't having to suffer my negative influence. ;-)

Bilbo0s, I am not trying to criticise but your interpretation doesn't pass the sanity test. You are doing something wrong if you are getting the result that Australia produces 5 times the CO2 as the USA. That is just prima facie ridiculous. The total should be maybe 10% of the USA's　production, max, and that's already 50% worse per capita.

We're bad, but we're not THAT bad ...

Well if you look at the original data of total emissions it still holds that US emits much more:

# 1 United States: 5,762,050 # 2 China: 3,473,600 # 3 Russia: 1,540,360

take a look at this :) http://cait.wri.org/figures/USToIntlGHGMap-Regions-thumb.gif

Also, be mindful that your figures, when multiplied by population, add up to almost as much Chinese carbon production as America.

The numbers matter.

Australia has big reserves of Uranium in the ground, but no nuclear power stations. Currently in Australia, it is politically impossible to even talk about the need to look at nuclear power for the future.

The goal is not to punish the most guilty party, the goal is to save the planet. So maybe Australia simply doesn't factor into it as much. I still assume that they will be asked to reduce emissions, too.

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