New Zealand's contribution to climate change





Keeling Curve for Carbon Dioxide Concentration in parts per million from the late 1950s to the early 2010s for Mauna Loa, HI.

 








Total fossil fuels emission from 1900 to the early 2010s for 6 countries across the globe. Data collected from http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_coun.html#K.





When looking at the graph from the CDIAC website,http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/nze.html, of CO2 emission from New Zealand I notice that significant amounts of CO2 emissions started around the early to mid-1940s. Up until then solids were the major form of CO2 emissions however it was around then that liquid emissions spiked. New Zealand entered WWII around this time so that is likely the reason for the increase in CO2 emissions. There was another spike in total emissions around the mid-1970s. Gases were the reason this time. In doing some research I found that the most likely reason for this was that in 1973 New Zealand experienced its first oil shock. According to the New Zealand History Online website,” Arab oil producers raised the price of a barrel of crude oil nearly 7 times over night. This caused some major consequences as it drove all costs up. With all this going on New Zealand’s government discovered the Maui gas field in Taranaki. The government responded by burning gas from this gas field to generate electricity and to extract the accompanying condensate for use as fuel” http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/culture/the-1970s/1973. With the burning of that gas, this is where the spike in gas CO2 emissions came from. Those 3 reasons, solids, liquids and gases, are the leading causes of CO2 emissions from New Zealand.

New Zealand’s per capita CO2 emissions estimate is 2.13 metric tons of carbon. This is approximately 56.5% lower than that of the United States of 4.9 metric tons. New Zealand ranks 51^st in CO2 emissions where the United States ranks 12^th. Both of these rankings are shocking to me in different ways. It’s a shame to see that the United States ranks so high. I wish there was more that I could do to help lower this. As far as my blog country New Zealand, I’m surprised that New Zealand ranks this high as well. They’re in the top 25% of all countries. For how small of a country it is I would have assumed it would have ranked a lot lower.

My blog country, New Zealand, has a relatively flat fossil fuel emissions curve which is very similar to that of Kenya’s as well.  New Zealand and Kenya are definitely the two lowest countries of emissions.  Italy and India I would consider to be the middle countries and the United States and China are the countries with the highest fossil fuel emissions. The United States has quite a spike in the early 1940s, which is most likely from WWII, and China had a large spike in the early 2000s and appears to be continuing upward. Currently China is the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world. However, even though they emit the most carbon dioxide I would not even consider them being at the most fault. They have four times as many yet their per capita emissions are about ¼ of what the Unites States is. Americans are way more at fault for the CO2 emissions in the world today. From 1900 to present day the United States have had the most CO2 emissions with 91,229,888 (thousand metric tons). China is 2^nd with 31,793,558 (thousand metric tons), India is 3^rd with 9,151,461 (thousand metric tons), Italy 4^th with 5,364,817 (thousand metric tons), 5^th is New Zealand with 381,831 (thousand metric tons), and last is Kenya with 80,124 (thousand metric tons). It amazes me that even with a ¼ of the population of China, the United States still has the highest amount by almost 3 times (China/US= 34.85%). Compared to India it’s even worse. Their total is only 10% of the United States total. This means that that for 1 thousand metric tons of carbon that China has, the United States has 3, and verses India's 1 thousand metric tons the United States has 10. These percentages are so eye opening and scary to me. It makes me feel like I should stop driving my car.

In comparing the Keeling Curve graph and the Global Emission of Carbon graph I noticed that they relatively have the same shape for the years that coincide. They both are going up around 1960 however the global emissions graph spikes quite a bit higher than the Keeling Curve. That is because emissions are the amounts of pollutant matter that are released into the atmosphere at a specific range of time and concentrations are the amounts of pollutant matter in the atmosphere per unit and are expressed as values of air quality. Emissions tend to be higher than concentrations.