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15 April, 2011

Australia the Highest Emitter of Carbon Dioxide?

The Hon. Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister of Australia (and, miserabile dictu, a proven liar), says that Australia is the highest emitter of carbon dioxide, per capita, in the developed world.  See, for instance, “Labor’s Tax Strategy” paper (p. 2):

 

The Hon. Greg Combet, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, echoes Julia Gillard’s claims; he refers those who question his rather silly, deceptive statistics to the “Garnaut Climate Change Review”, which cites the Department of Climate Change as the source:
Only five countries in the world rank higher—Bahrain, Bolivia, Brunei, Kuwait and Qatar. Australia’s per capita emissions are nearly twice the OECD average and more than four times the world average [...].
For the calculation of per capita greenhouse gas emissions illustrated in Figure 7.1, the data source used for Australia was the Department of Climate Change [...].
So, with an economy of effort (which will surely please all environmentalists), and with exemplary circular reasoning (which will assuredly impress proponents of perpetual motion machines, and compulsory renewable-energy targets), the Department of Climate Change uses Garnaut’s biassed Review, which uses figures supplied by the Department of Climate Change, to suggest that the figures from the Department of Climate Change are correct.
What, however, are the UN’s statistics on the highest emitters of carbon dioxide per capita?


CO2 tonnes 
per capita
Aruba    23.02
Australia    19.00
Bahrain    29.58
Brunei Darussalam    19.58
Falkland Islands    19.68
Kuwait    30.21
Luxembourg    24.93
Netherlands Antilles    32.47
Qatar    55.43
Trinidad and Tobago    27.88
United Arab Emirates    31.02
USA     19.74

Now, it’s fair enough that we consider Aruba and the Dutch Antilles outside the developed world for, after all, they constitute only part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, but Luxembourg and the USA?  Aren’t those two countries generally considered to be within the developed world?
Bahrain ranks thirty-ninth, Qatar thirty-eighth, Brunei thirty-seventh, United Arab Emirates thirty-second, and little Luxembourg twenty-fourth on the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI) – 2010 Rankings; they are thereby classified as developed countries.  Julia Gillard and her unprincipled parrots, however, still say Australia is the highest emitter of carbon dioxide, per capita, in the developed world.
So, Julia Gillard, Greg Combet, and other ministers of this egregiously incompetent Government—backed by the predominantly proskynetic lickspittles in the media—are either willfully and unpardonably ignorant of the facts or mischievously, deliberately, wickedly deceiving the people whom they have sworn to serve faithfully.


UPDATE I (28 March, 2012): I see from the site’s statistics that some visitors hither searched for a list of the Member States of the United Nations, which are as follows:
Afghanistan; Albania; Algeria; Andorra; Angola; Antigua and Barbuda; Armenia; Australia; Austria; Azerbaijan; Bahamas; Bahrain; Bangladesh; Barbados; Belarus; Belgium; Benin; Bhutan; Bolivia; Bosnia and Herzegovina; Botswana; Brazil; Brunei Darussalam; Bulgaria; Burkina Faso; Burundi; Cambodia; Cameroon; Canada; Cape Verde; Central African Republic; Chad; Chile; China; Colombia; Comoros; Congo; Democratic Republic of the Congo; Costa Rica; Côte d’Ivoire; Croatia; Cuba; Cyprus; Czech Republic; Denmark; Djibouti; Dominica; Dominican Republic; Ecuador; Egypt; El Salvador; Equatorial Guinea; Eritrea; Estonia; Ethiopia; Fiji; Finland; France; Gabon; Gambia; Georgia; Germany; Ghana; Greece; Grenada; Guatemala; Guinea; Guinea-Bissau; Guyana; Haiti; Honduras; Hungary; Iceland; India; Indonesia; Islamic Republic of Iran; Iraq; Ireland; Israel; Italy; Jamaica; Japan; Jordan; Kazakhstan; Kenya; Kiribati; Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; Republic of Korea; Kuwait; Kyrgyzstan; Lao People's Democratic Republic; Latvia; Lebanon; Lesotho; Liberia; Libya; Liechtenstein; Lithuania; Luxembourg; The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; Madagascar; Malawi; Malaysia; Maldives; Mali; Malta; Marshall Islands; Mauritania; Mauritius; Mexico; Federated States of Micronesia; Republic of Moldova; Monaco; Mongolia; Montenegro; Morocco; Mozambique; Myanmar; Namibia; Nauru; Nepal; Netherlands; New Zealand; Nicaragua; Niger; Nigeria; Norway; Oman; Pakistan; Palau; Panama; Papua New Guinea; Paraguay; Peru; Philippines; Poland; Portugal; Romania; Russian Federation; Rwanda; Saint Kitts and Nevis; Saint Lucia; Saint Vincent and the Grenadines; Samoa; San Marino; Sao Tome and Principe; Saudi Arabia; Senegal; Serbia; Seychelles; Sierra Leone; Singapore; Slovakia; Slovenia; Solomon Islands; Somalia; South Africa; South Sudan; Spain; Sri Lanka; Sudan; Suriname; Swaziland; Sweden; Switzerland; Syrian Arab Republic; Tajikistan; Tanzania; Thailand; Timor-Leste; Togo; Tonga; Trinidad and Tobago; Tunisia; Turkey; Turkmenistan; Tuvalu; Uganda; Ukraine; United Arab Emirates; United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; United States of America; Uruguay; Uzbekistan; Vanuatu; Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela; Viet Nam; Yemen; Zambia; and Zimbabwe.  
UPDATE II (13 November, 2013):  even worse than the demonstrably false claim that Australia is the highest emitter of carbon dioxide “in the developed world” is the lie, repeated by members of the Australian Greens and the ALP in the last few days, that Australia is the highest emitter of carbon dioxide “in the world” (in an hysterical attempt to blame a recent tropical cyclone in Southeast Asia on the new federal government’s intention to repeal the previous government’s silly “carbon tax”).  You know, if the propagandists for CAGW have to lie with such easily disprovable claims, we can tell that they have no real evidence whereon they might support their silly conjecture.

2 comments:

ItsFairComment said...

Biggest Drop in U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions
World Climate Report
"Now, consider that currently China adds to its total CO2 emissions an equivalent of 10% of the U.S. baseline emissions each year. So, if everything went according to plan, as the U.S. worked to reduce its emissions by 20% by 2020, China meanwhile will have increased their total by about quadruple that amount. And the numbers get worse from there.

So you can see the inherent silliness in using “climate change” as a reason for pushing for reductions in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions."

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2011/04/14/biggest-drop-in-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions/

Anonymous said...

should not the list be scaled per capita (persons by monatary percapita) Ie you take the number of people per state and scale that by the average percapita income. Could you not then scale it by the number of carbon neutral assets such as forests and clean rivers and waterways ti off set the true carbon percapita index value?