Talk:List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions per capita/Archive 1

Untitled
I've updated the figures of the French version to the year 2002. Could someone do the same for here ? Helldjinn 11:53, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Not all are countries
There are some territories in here. FYI. Daniel Collins 02:48, 27 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree. For example, the first in the list, United States Virgin Islands, should really be counted as a part of the U.S., and Montserrat, Saint Helena and a couple of others should be considered to be in the U.K... It might just be easier to rename it 'List of countries and independant states by carbon dioxide emissions per capita' or something similar. :P 130.208.137.145 19:26, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Independant states? since when has a territory been independant!? --Lemonade100 (talk) 20:28, 17 March 2009 (GMT)

Two Australias
Why is Australia listed twice in the emissions rankings? It appears in eighth place at 18.3 metric tons per capita. It also appears at number thirty five with 7.8 metric tons. Pretty sure 8th is its correct position but not 100% certain.


 * Corrected. Error was there, because of similarity of country codes (AUS and AUT). --Jklamo 10:52, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

What kind of average?
Does that "world average" weight each country equally, or weight them according to population? The article should probably specify which it is.69.63.62.226 01:29, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Greece is twice in the list
in position 33 and 92. i believe 33 is the correct one Costas Skarlatos

Qatar
Some explanation of why Qatar is an outlier would be useful. 167.206.63.34 18:37, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Natural or man-made
Does this include BOTH natural and man-made sources of CO2? What about agricultural burning such as in Indonesia? User:talk 16:14, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * How is agricultural burning not man-made? I don't know if it's included though. AtikuX (talk) 09:43, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, if you burn down a plantation and cultivate it again, in terms of CO2 emission this has no difference from eating the plantation and burning it inside our bodies, or letting bacteria to do the job... again, this is a "cyclic" emission... --Tiago Rinck Caveden (talk) 12:38, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Some counties show 0 emissions. This implies the exclusion of "natural" emissions, unless there was no significant life there. Also, there are no negative emissions. This implies that CO2 sinks are not subtracted from emissions, unless coincidently there were sereval countries with neutral CO2 balance but no negative ones. Natural CO2 emissions are "over 8 times the amount emitted by humans" (Carbon_dioxide_in_the_Earth's_atmosphere).Darsie from german wiki pedia (talk) 08:39, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Redo the list
There are still at least four more nations that appear redundantly on the list as of this writing. I think the list needs to be redone from scratch with better accuracy.—Tokek 00:15, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The list was redone on Aug 2, 2006. Fufthmin 15:57, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Taiwan is not on the list either as Taiwan or the Republic of China. Hong Kong and Macau both have their own entries. This is a major omission and needs to be rectified. Davidreid 12:16, 26 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree, David, and I would like to include data for Taiwan, but unfortunately Taiwan is not listed in the UN Millenium Development Goals Indicators charts. (This table is based on the UN MDGI tables.)  I am hesitant to combine data from another source with this UN one as they may not be comparable.  I did find some data for Taiwain here.  Any advice on how to continue? Fufthmin 19:56, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

If the table is based on UN MDGI data, why does the introduction to the article say it is based on CDIAC data? Because MDGI gets its data from CDIAC? The MDGI site is down at the moment but I have checked a couple of countries at the CDIAC site and the numbers differ from those shown on the Wiki page.

There's also the page's title, "List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions per capita". This is misleading. The list appears to be restricted to per-capita emissions of CO2 from burning fossil fuels and perhaps from making cement. What isn't included - at least not consistently - is the CO2 from agriculture and "land use change", else Indonesia's numbers would be far higher. (I estimate Indonesia's CO2 emissions including CO2 emitted by drained peat bogs and all forest fires to be about 12 tonnes per person per year - but of course not all the fires are set deliberately.) There really ought to be a prominent note somewhere saying exactly which sources of CO2 are and are not included. Please provide one, Fufthmin. This is an important Wiki page. It probably gets masses of hits. (I know I use it a lot.) Inaccurate or inadequately described data makes the climate debate needlessly difficult - and probably generates a lot of the heat. (By the way, Taiwan is included in the CAIT data I mention below under "different source".) Vinny Burgoo 13:37, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Best Measurement?
Is "Per Capita" the most accurate way to describe this data?


 * The United Nations Millenium Development Goals Indicators website data source refers to "Carbon dioxide emissions (CO2), metric tons of CO2 per capita (CDIAC)." I don't think that we can give different lables to the data, so I guess that that answers the question, huh? --Fufthmin 16:00, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Post 2003 stats
Where can I found 04, 05 and 06 statistics? Virenque 10:37, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

different source
This site has something quite a bit different. http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/indicator.cfm?IndicatorID=199&Year=2003&Country= ~ UBeR 06:12, 23 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The stats at this site are all greenhouse emissions, expressed as a carbon equivalent. It would be incredibly useful if we had a complete table of this kind here on wikipedia.Fiveoldroad 15:14, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

The World Resources Institute's Climate Analysis Indicator Tool (CAIT) includes a table of gross and per-capita emissions of all the major GHGs in CO2-equivalent for 1990, 1995 and 2000. CO2-only tables (and excluding CO2 from "land use change") are available for other years, including 2001-2003. Registration is required. Once logged in, go to CAIT, then Yearly Emissions. I'm new to Wiki-editing else I'd create a page using the CAIT data. Anyone else fancy taking it on? Vinny Burgoo 13:58, 27 August 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vinny Burgoo (talk • contribs)


 * (Dunno what went wrong with that last signature.) Changed me mind. I have created a page called List of countries by greenhouse gas emissions per capita. It's not meant to be the finished article. It's more of a nudge, an attempt to prompt someone more Wiki-qualified to do the job properly. Vinny Burgoo 19:37, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Puerto Rico

 * {|border=1|

Can somebody comment on these numbers, specifically the sudden "drop" at the end? That seems very unlikely. --Bletch 23:43, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
 * 160
 * 3.3
 * 3.1
 * 3.1
 * 2.5
 * 4.4
 * 3.4
 * 2.7
 * 2.8
 * 2.6
 * 2.8
 * 2.6
 * 3.7
 * 3.8
 * 0.54
 * }
 * }

Better question -- why are places like Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Bermuda listed as "countries" while places like England, Scotland, or Wales are NOT? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.131.195.247 (talk) 12:11, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

UNFCCC
Since this is the indicator more commonly used to measure the impact of CO2 emissions rather than the CDIAC figures (whose impact is calculated on the basis of ozone damage), shouldn't these figures be used instead (available from the same data set?) And besides, some of those CDIAC figures strike me as a little odd: e.g. Norway generates 98% of its electricity from hydro, yet somehow is listed as producing the 14th highest amount of CO2 per capita... Cripipper (talk) 12:59, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * UNFCCC figues can be more precise, but unfortunately on unstats they are available for a very limited number of countries only. Feel free to add them to the table, but please not delete CDIAC figures. About Norway, it is also top10 producer of oil and gas, and there are a lot of carbon dioxide emissions while drilling them. --Jklamo (talk) 15:04, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I am still not convinced by CDIAC figures which have Norway doubling its CO2 emissions between 2000 and 2004 (what - they doubled oil and gas output?) while UNFCCC shows a 6% increase over the same period. Cripipper (talk) 17:42, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It is more likely inconsistency of sources, 2004 from CDIAC and years before from UNFCCC. More countries can be affected (like Puerto Rico above). When i was adding 2004 CDIAC figues i did not check all countries 1990-2003 figures. I have no time for that. Feel free to correct it by yourself, link for source (http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Data.aspx) is provided. --Jklamo (talk) 19:08, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * No, I am talking about the CDIAC source data linked to above (not the wiki table) for the period 2000-2004. CDIAC has Norway doubling, while UNFCCC has a 6% increase. Cripipper (talk) 19:29, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Taiwan
On none of these lists have I seen Taiwan, which must be comparatively high. On the maps, Taiwan shows as white, which implies it is very low, but it doesn't show up on the lists at all. If there is no data available (which I find hard to believe), it should be noted and Taiwan represented in gray, rather than in white.

Comments?

218.170.10.33 (talk) 08:52, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry - my sig ludahai 魯大海 (talk) 08:55, 23 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately there is no data in UN database for Taiwan, i think because of more political than technical reasons. Map is very outdated, using figures from year 2000. --Jklamo (talk) 16:12, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Germany and UK
I think Germany should be above the United Kingdom in both its track past record and aphebitcaly. I don't understand why UK was above it in the first place. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bsrboy (talk • contribs) 23:53, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Check source data, precisely UK has 9,7934 and Germany 9,7881. Numbers were rounded for this table. --Jklamo (talk) 16:26, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

ah okay, thanks Bsrboy (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 21:30, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

What are units?
What are the units used here? Are figures in metric tonnes? It would be very useful to include this info. Solwaya (talk) 17:18, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
 * It is explained in the lead of article, i added wikilink. --Jklamo (talk) 10:28, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Bad numbers??? Example: Norway!
Are there multiple sources around? All language versions of Wikipedia refer to the CDIAC source but the figures differs a lot! For instance, for 2002-2004 the figures (15.8 18.0 19.01) are reported for Norway. The Polish and Finnish language versions of Wikipedia on the other hand reports the figures (12.5 9.9) for the years 2002-2003 and the French version reports (12.2) for year 2002. Looking at the color of the image "CO2 emission per capita per year per country" it is quite clear that a figure around 10 has been used for coloring Norway. Someone really has to dig into these numbers and find the correct data, preferrably also for 2005-2007. Then all wikipedia language versions and that image need to be updated!!!

//Johan (85.11.54.57 (talk) 21:59, 8 February 2008 (UTC))


 * I was wondering about that as well. Other wiki pages cite 8% increase for norway 1990 => 2004 (reliable source), while this table shows 150% increase for same period... --212.30.195.50 (talk) 13:03, 14 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I have updated data in the English version. See my comments below. Sverre Aam —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.16.214.109 (talk) 20:09, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Breathing component 0f CO2
No country can have less than a .3 metric ton contribution per capita because that is the CO2 production produced by a living human being in a year. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.200.126.211 (talk) 01:17, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The CO2 you release while breathing is the same quantity of CO2 that the vegetables you directly or indirectly fed yourself with took from the atmosphere to grow. I believe that this kind of "cyclic CO2 emission" should not considered here... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Caveden (talk • contribs) 12:34, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * But with the glutony of western civilization, we need to produce more CO2 to feed crops so we can feed ourselves much much more, you know, "cyclic CO2 emissions". And since we shouldn't mention these "cyclic CO2 emissions" maybe we should deduct that amount from the totals or at least mention it.. but honestly, humans exhale about 2.8 billion metric tons of CO2 each year. And we grow much much more crops than we did 50 years ago. Solution to global warming is more plants! More. Once plants start dying from lack of CO2, we know we're good!24.66.43.14 (talk) 03:43, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The CO2 we exhale while breathing was added to the total? I'm asking because you say we should "deduct" it. I hope it wasn't even added, so nothing needs to be deducted. The "gluttony" doesn't change anything, CO2 exhaled by animals and even bacteria while breathing was previously removed from the atmosphere by vegetables. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Caveden (talk • contribs) 09:23, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Emitting CO2 by making stuff for export
I don't add that myself because I don't exactly what to say without falling under the "OR" or the "NNPOV" rules, but it seems important to mention that some of the countries with very high per-capital emissions have a large export-oriented petrochemical industry. Take Trinidad for instance, one could say "they are bad people, they emit awful amonts of CO2 per capita", but this country is using its natural gas to make lots of methanol and ammonia. This is a CO2-intensive industry. These products are exported to other countries where they're used for fertilizing and plastics. So, in a way, the per capital CO2 figure is biaised : it does not reflect only their consumption, but also that of various other countries. Similarly, Bahrain refines saudi crude, and the products are sold in asia, the Netherlands Antilles refines venezuelian crude and the products are used in the USA. Oil refining is also a CO2-intensive industry. Also, the figure for Luxemburg is meaningless. Thoses emissions are calculated using the fuel sold in the country, and millions of cars and truck from Germany, France and Belgium refuel in luxemburg (lower fuel taxes), creating a huge bias in those statistics --Raminagrobis fr (talk) 21:02, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
 * To some extent you are right. But it opens other debates. Some developing countries (Chinese?) can perhaps argue that their capital investments (steel and cement) are peaking and their future growth will be much less CO2 intensive. Developed countries do not have the same housing backlog. -- Nic Roets (talk) 18:28, 28 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Another chart or expanding this chart with emissions due to consuption would be less biased. That would require adding for each country the emissions embodied in imports and subtracting the emissions that result from exports.  I added one reference as an example in the introduction. It gives data for just one country, China, but at least people will get the point that things are not so simple. In my opinion, emissions due to consumption are most important, especially on a per capita basis.  172.162.77.5 (talk) 19:19, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Updated data
The UN seems to be publishing data at the moment. This might mean updated data will shortly be available for upto 2006. --88.106.184.172 (talk) 09:12, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * New data for 2007 published by the International Energy Agency. --spitzl (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:05, 14 November 2009 (UTC).

New Discussion
A discussion has been started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries/Lists of countries which could affect the inclusion criteria and title of this and other lists of countries. Editors are invited to participate. Pfainuk talk 11:34, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Gibraltar
Since Gibraltar isn't a sovereign state, shouldn't it a) be shown in itallics and b) its position not affect the rank of the countries beneath it?86.1.196.156 (talk) 00:42, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Well i agree that all non sovereign states should be in italics, and to make it more clear the sovereign states should be in bold so the difference is visable. I dont see a problem with the territories being ranked though, this is similar to most of the lists of countries on wikipedia. BritishWatcher (talk) 12:18, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Combining several lists
Having just updated List of countries by greenhouse gas emissions per capita for 2005 (most recent data available from WRI CAIT 6.0), I was looking at some of the related list-of-countries articles. Specifically CO2 per capita, CO2 and GDP to CO2 ratio

It is my intent to create an article titled List of countries by greenhouse gas emissions based on 2005 data. I intend to leave CO2 per capita as a separate article but include the data for co2, co2 per capita, ghg, ghg per capita, gpd, and ghg/gdp (inverse of what the present has, so it's carbon intensity) all in one chart. At that point ghg per capita, CO2 and GDP to CO2 ratio could all be deleted/merged since they would be redundant. Single chart will make all the data sortable so anyone can order the countries by the metric of choice. I intend to make the rank column number by total ghg emission numbers (without land-use.) CO2 per capita would remain as a distinct article since it has data for that metric going back to 1990 which will not be recreated in the article I'm proposing.

It's going to take me some time to generate the new page as I intend to create some software to process and format the data for me so that
 * 1) It will be less work in the future
 * 2) I will be less likely to make a transcription error.

I'll be generating this on my user page before creating the new article, but wanted to give everyone a heads up in case there are concerns or someone is just vehemently opposed to this for some reason. I'm considering leaving in the 2000 data for ghg per capita with & without land-use because land-use data is not available after that year and it gives at least some idea of what impact it has on a nation's numbers even though the most recent data is 9 years out of date.

This hopefully will create a single article in which all of this data is available, comparable and sortable - which I think will be better for the reader. Because of the size it will not be possible to include multiple years. Possible ways to deal with that would be to create one article per year, or to only have the article with the most recent year, or some hybrid of these two.

I'm posting this in all related articles, but it might be valuable to confine the discussion to one place. I propose that we use the List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita talk page to collect the common discussions on. Mishlai (talk) 05:26, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

rank not sorted by emission
I can not order the rank column by sorting by any of the emission columns. Is this a mistake, or where is the rank data from and what does it mean? Darsie from german wiki pedia (talk) 09:10, 1 September 2009 (UTC)


 * The rank column seems to correspond to 2003. Walter Siegmund (talk) 17:46, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Bad numbers??? Example: Norway!
I have updated data for Norway in the English version based on the Norwegian public database "Statistics Norway", SSB (www.ssb.no) with public data for CO2-emissions and population. See http://www.ssb.no/english/subjects/01/klima_luft_en/ Data is for total anthropogenic CO2 emissions excluding land use, land-use change and forestry. I have used population data for January each year. In january 1990 the population was 4.233 million, in 2006 4.640 millon and in 2008 4.737 million. CO2 emission data for 2007 and 2008 are 9.6 and 9.3 respectively. Sverre Aam. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.16.214.109 (talk) 17:17, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Release schedule for 1980-2007 data
Via E-mail from the International Energy Statistics Team U.S. Energy Information Administration, "We hope to release revised and extended data for 1980-2007 in late September or early October at http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=90&pid=44&aid=8&cid=&syid=2002&eyid=2006&unit=MMTCD " Walter Siegmund (talk) 19:49, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * New data for 2007 is out now. CO2 emissions/population are listed on page 90. --spitzl (talk) 04:11, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

South Africa
Unless I cannot read properly South Africa does not appear. Reasons?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.247.89.5 (talk) 13:39, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.5.82.163 (talk) 08:52, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Update with 2007 data
I've updated the numbers with 2007 data, overwriting some of the edits made to individual countries. I figured it's the only way to keep numbers comparable across the timeframe. Bouchecl (talk) 21:30, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

2008 data
2008 data are out. I plan to update list, but working on List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions first. --Jklamo (talk) 21:47, 8 July 2011 (UTC)