Is the Western world the main contributor to global warming?

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7 months ago

some stats please?

Adding up the USA, the EU, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Russia, New Zealand and Canada you get approximately 13,000,000 thousand metric tonnes of CO2 emissions per year. The global annual emission is 27,200,000 thousand metric tonnes of CO2.

That comes out at about 47.7% of the global annual emission. However, this doesn%26#039;t take into account population.

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

The %26#039;developing world%26#039; appears to emit the majority of CO2 by a small margin. I estimate that 1.24 billion people live in what I just defined as the western world. That makes just 18.5% of the world%26#039;s total population of 6.67 billion people. This tells a rather different story. 18.5% of the world%26#039;s population is responsible for nearly half of the world%26#039;s CO2 emissions.

I%26#039;m not sure how some fo the other people can answer confidently and blame it all on the developing world without referencing any of these compiled figures when a short analysis per capita shows a totally different story.

But lets not stop there, why don%26#039;t we examine the USA in detail:

303 million people out of 6.67 billion is 4.5% of the world%26#039;s population.

6,049,435 out of 27,245,758 is 22.2% of the world%26#039;s CO2 emissions.

So approximately 5% of the world%26#039;s population is responsible for 22.2% of the world%26#039;s population, kinda of shocking really.

The average CO2 emission per capita is approximately 4 tonnes per year per person.

A chinese (we hear how bad they are) person emits on average emits 3.8 tonnes per annum, yet an american emits on average 20 tonnes of CO2 per annum. The problem in China (obviously) is that there are more of them, should that restict their standard of living and access to cheap energy?

Given that historically, %26#039;we%26#039;, the western world have emitted most of the CO2 most of the rise in CO2 so far can be attributed to us. This may change in the future, but right now we have done the most wrong.

Edit:

The rises in CO2 have had the biggest single contribution to global warming according to the IPCC:

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1...

Hence looking at the origin of CO2 is important. I didn%26#039;t realise this thread was about examining the link between CO2 and climate. If anybody wants to discuss that I suggest you start your own thread denying the link. But it is very hard to deny that the USA has not made a significant contribution to historical man made CO2 emissions, nor do I see why this shoudl cause such aggressive repsonses. References on wikipedia and the primary research contained there as external links

edit - No, it is not the the sun, scientists are not stupid. Solar irradiance over the past century is known and the sun is only a minor contributor to global warming, eg. Meehl, G.A. et al. 2004, Journal of Climate 17, as shown here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en...

more importantly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_... petroleum geologist, phd and other research has involved past climates (ie. it is not me who is an ignorant idiot on this issue)

Yea, lets blame the western world again, must have watched the Inconvenient Lie like a lot of others. I can%26#039;t wait when they start with the Global Cooling B.S. again a few years from now and you all will believe that too.

No. Just the best place to extort money from well meaning people.

Al Gore and is inability to tell the truth, and the kool aid drinkers who believe it are the main contributors.

No, the Sun is

No but we gots the dough re mi... that%26#039;s why the recommendations from the Bali conference essentally state third world countries can pollute because after all it%26#039;s America%26#039;s fault that Earth is so hot hot hot [apologies to Buster Poindexter]

wikiwikiwiki is not a factual source, in actuality wikipedia had a scandal last year regarding %26quot;self-proclaimed%26quot; experts :-)

I%26#039;m going to go with the Sun being the main contributor to any warming we are experiencing, since without it this planet would be dead.

Edit: It shows how much he hates America - if he does, he and anyone like him should get the ___ out of here.

Also we are talking about the contributor to warming and not CO2. But you idiots probably believe it%26#039;s only CO2, when no matter how much CO2 was in the atmosphere, the planet would be cold and dead without the Sun.

No

Of course not. It%26#039;s the third world that is responsible for most of the pollution.

Western civilization spends billions of dollars for pollution controls. For this investment we are treated to better and cleaner air and water every year.

The third world nations are too poor to invest in clean water and air. They just dump their waste where they can while getting poorer every year.

It would be better for the world%26#039;s environment is the western nations ran these poor third world cesspools as clearly they are not able to govern themselves.