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That’s because those statistics are ignoring CO2 from economic activity. A Californian buys a computer manufacturered in Asia and these statistic only count the

That’s because those statistics are ignoring CO2 from economic activity. A Californian buys a computer manufacturered in Asia and these statistic only count the CO2 created to move it from the harbor to their house. All the CO2 from manufacturing, mining, and transporting it across the ocean are ignored.

epistasis 5y ago
So I take it that you agree that transportation dwarfs agriculture? As far as Foreign imports of consumer goods accounting for a huge chunk of our carbon, that claim has never held up when I investigated it. In particular, Our World in Data had some fantastic plots showing that, though I don't have time to locate them at the moment. Could I turn the tables on you and ask for some substantiation of the claim that import of consumer goods is a major source of emissions attributable in the US? Because the amount of carbon that goes into making a computer seems pretty trivial compared to that of making a car, and from burning a gallon+ a day. Also, for evidence of the inherent sustainability of urban areas over suburban areas, check out these maps: https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/maps https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/maps I forget if they account for carbon from imported goods or not, but it's a consumption based inventory, rather than the typical production based inventory.
epistasis 5y ago
I found a bit of time to do some digging. My conclusion: US transportation is about 7x the emissions of the products we import from China. The embodied carbon in Chinese exports peaked in 2008, and has been decreasing, the most recent estimate I found was 1.4Gt in 2015 [1]. This is already less than the US transportation emissions of 1.7Gt in 2015 (from the EPA PDF I linked above). And the US share of that 1.4Gt is only about 18% (409/2273B$ [2]), for about 0.25Gt of CO2 equivalents. [1] Fig 1C https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018GL077915 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201... [2] https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/CHN/Year/2015/Summary https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/CHN/Yea...
- peytn 5y ago
  By your analysis Hong Kong’s share of that 1.4 Gt would be 14.5%, which hardly seems reasonable.
  - epistasis 5y ago
    Cold you say more about that? You seem to be saying that you don't believe that HK is the second largest export market, but that's not my analysis, that's the numbers available from pretty much any source you can find.

epistasis 5y ago

So I take it that you agree that transportation dwarfs agriculture? As far as Foreign imports of consumer goods accounting for a huge chunk of our carbon, that claim has never held up when I investigated it. In particular, Our World in Data had some fantastic plots showing that, though I don't have time to locate them at the moment. Could I turn the tables on you and ask for some substantiation of the claim that import of consumer goods is a major source of emissions attributable in the US? Because the amount of carbon that goes into making a computer seems pretty trivial compared to that of making a car, and from burning a gallon+ a day. Also, for evidence of the inherent sustainability of urban areas over suburban areas, check out these maps: https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/maps https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/maps I forget if they account for carbon from imported goods or not, but it's a consumption based inventory, rather than the typical production based inventory.

epistasis 5y ago

I found a bit of time to do some digging. My conclusion: US transportation is about 7x the emissions of the products we import from China. The embodied carbon in Chinese exports peaked in 2008, and has been decreasing, the most recent estimate I found was 1.4Gt in 2015 [1]. This is already less than the US transportation emissions of 1.7Gt in 2015 (from the EPA PDF I linked above). And the US share of that 1.4Gt is only about 18% (409/2273B$ [2]), for about 0.25Gt of CO2 equivalents. [1] Fig 1C https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018GL077915 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201... [2] https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/CHN/Year/2015/Summary https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/CHN/Yea...

peytn 5y ago
By your analysis Hong Kong’s share of that 1.4 Gt would be 14.5%, which hardly seems reasonable.
- epistasis 5y ago
  Cold you say more about that? You seem to be saying that you don't believe that HK is the second largest export market, but that's not my analysis, that's the numbers available from pretty much any source you can find.