The World Resources Institute has a geekalicious image (see page 15 of this pdf) that shows how human activities contribute to global warming. Click on the image below to get a legible, full-sized version.
The most interesting bit, to me, is the massive contribution of agriculture and land use—the green and purple areas on the bottom left—to global climate change. Worldwide, the net impacts of land use are far more significant than global transportation emissions.
But in the Northwest, the situation is reversed. At the moment, forests in this part of the world appear to be carbon sinks, and transportation is far and away the largest single source of climate warming emissions. So just because transportation isn’t the biggest deal globally, it’s still where state and regional policymakers should focus their attention.
[Thanks to Clayton O’Brien-Smith for the tip.]
Update: In comments, milan points out original graphic on WRI’s website: small version, large version. If you’re planning on using some version of this graphic for your own purposes, I’d use the ones from WRI, since they’ve got the WRI logo on them already. I just copied the ones above out of their pdf, so they’re not quite as pretty.
Milan
That is an excellent graphic. Do you know what year the data is from?
Clark Williams-Derry
If I recall correctly, it’s 2000.
eldan
This is fantastic. Just one question though: are the relative amounts of CO2, methane, NOX, etc based on raw quantities or “CO2 equivalent” contributions to global warming?
Milan
“All data is for 2000. All calculations are based on CO2 equivalents, using 100-year global warming potentials from the IPCC (1996), based on a total global estimate of 41,755 MtCO2 equivalent. Land use change includes both emissions and absorptions.”http://www.wri.org/chart/world-greenhouse-gas-emissions-flow-chart
Laurence Aurbach
The most interesting bit, to me, is the massive contribution of agriculture and land useCompare the world chart with the U.S. chart. Agriculture is a much smaller percentage, and deforestation doesn’t even show up. In the U.S., the biggest emitters from the agricultural sector are poor soil management and feedlots—in other words, industrial farms that are bad land stewards.
Frank
Gday folks,You assert a link between CO2 and climate change. I want to draw your attention to a few things that have caused me to pause and consider.1. The IPCCs historical data on CO2 is suspect because; a)they use ice core data for pre-industrial times, the following website shows this to be suspect.http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/IceCoreSprg97.pdf b)they chose to cherry pick available data before 1950s(Mauna Loa) measurements without substantial reason as follows.http://www.biomind.de/nogreenhouse/daten/EE%2018-2_Beck.pdf2. CO2 levels have risen, yet temperatures have fallen globally for the last 10 years.3. The last year has seen temperatures fall to levels not seen since the early 1900s.4. Sunspot cycle 24 is late and will therefore probably lead to cooler temperatures for ssc 24 and 25.http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/archives/17Please feel free to offer critiques to the work I have presented with your own substantiation of your reasoning.Regards Frank
Clark Williams-Derry
Frank—I think the good (and extremely wonky) folks at Real Climate (realclimate.org) have responses to just about every objection you can think of. They’re real scientists & really smart—so I’ll defer to their expertise & judgment.