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| Work Cited From: http://rowdy.mscd.edu/~kschuene/mtr1600/summer/Keeling.xlsx |
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| CO2 Data Was Taken From http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/swe.html |
Research Questions:
1a) Norway seems to have a higher amount of liquid carbon dioxide emissions versus the rest of the emissions types. The only anomaly in the data is that solid contributions seemed to rising steadily until around 1935, then experienced a sharp drop off.
1b) The country starting emitting larger amounts of carbon dioxide around 1960. This spike in the data corresponds with the discovery of oil in the North Sea petroleum reserves, which led to the beginning of oil and gas production in the country.
2a) The Per Capita CO2 Emissions Estimate graph shows a 2.8 metric tons of carbon per person in the country of Norway. When compared to the United States, which is currently at 4.9 metric tons, the average Norwegian emits just 57% compared to a person in the United States. This is largely due to the fact that the total emissions for Norway are nothing compared to those of the United States as a whole (refer to the Total Fossil Fuel Emissions Graph)
2b) Norway is ranked 30th in the list of country's per capita CO2 emissions, while the United States is ranked 12th. As a blogger representing the country of Norway, this makes me happy that even though Norway is a first world country who is also an oil producer, they are much further down on the list then the United States.
3a) Norway is right around the same rank as Kenya, and has much less emissions than the countries of India, China and the United States, though I am surprised that India doesn't have more emissions. I would have thought it would rank closer to the United States or China, especially because they have so many people.
3b) Clearly, the largest emitter of carbon dioxide in 2008 was China, which is not surprising considering the vastness of the country and the amount of people living there.
3c) Although the United States has far less people than China (312 million versus 1.33 billion) I can't help but feel that a United States citizen is more to blame for their emissions than a Chinese citizen. This is mainly because China is a communist country, and most citizens do not have control over what their government does. However in the United States each individual is responsible for the appointed officials that are elected into office. These representatives are responsible for our current climate initiative and the citizens are responsible for electing those people. Also in the United States I feel citizens are made far more aware of their ecological footprint and should be making strides, however small, towards creating less of an environmental impact.
3d) List of Cumulative Contributions to Climate Change (in order of most to least)
1. United States: 91,229,888
2. China: 31,793,558
3. India: 9,151,461
4. Italy: 5,364,817
5. Kenya: 80,124
6. Norway: 538,315
*These values are recorded in thousand metric tons
3e) China's emissions are almost exactly 1/3rd of the amount of the United States, and India's emissions are almost exactly 1/10th of the amount of the United States. This shows that even though India and China are both much larger than the United States and have hundreds of millions more citizens, the United States still emits the largest amount of emissions per capita.
4. Both the Keeling Curve and the Total Fuel Emissions are rising steadily over time. Emissions are different than concentrations because emissions are the amount of carbon dioxide that a country is releasing into the air, while concentrations are the amount of particles currently in the atmosphere. However the two are related in a positive feedback loop because as more emissions are released into the atmosphere, concentrations levels of carbon dioxide will keep increasing as well.
References:
*All information and numbers in this blog were retrieved from one of the following sites
