Lots of information circulates on global warming and man’s role in it

A few facts to help and think about.

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At reason, we know that looking at facts is the beginning of the understanding of a topic, and an issue if it is seen as such.

The Global Carbon Atlas is a good place to start when looking at facts about CO2 emissions.

The below map shows the 2017 world’s total CO2 emissions.

The same information, displayed in % of the total, gives us immediately the measure of the CO2 production volumes by country and world areas.

One will find very similar data at the World Bank, UN and so on.

Man’s contribution to the whole total CO2 of the planet is c. 2.5-2.9%

A less known and important fact is that man’s contribution to the whole total CO2 of the planet is c. 2.5-2.9%. This means, to illustrate, that if China produces 27% of man’s CO2 as displayed in the above infographic, this leads to 27% of the 2.9% world’s total. 

There are, however, other significant factors to take into account, like water/ sea (here, here and here), sun’s activity, earthquakes (here or here) or changing north poles position (axis of the earth is moving towards west Siberia) over time, but not only.

Coming back to CO2 emissions, the calculation of CO2 per capita leads to a different graph, where China is not first anymore but mostly the Middle East.

Then, the evolution of these CO2 emissions over time is also a factor to look at, which requires additional graphs like the following one:

This graph allows us to see where emissions grow, and where they get under control or diminish (Source: ourworldindata.org). USA and EU have slightly reduced their emissions while China, Asia and India have increased theirs.

But there are many other elements we objectively still don’t know and need to keep in mind, like the Little Warm Age (950 – 1250 AD) followed by the Little Ice Age (c. 1300-1850 AD) 

Conclusion

Global warming requires, like many other complex topics, a multifactorial analysis, as not one simple factor can explain it: man’s CO2 represents up to 3% of the total CO2 produced on earth, and its influence on the global scale is not what we can hear.

Although it is always good to reduce pollution, waste and reduce the damage some industrial logics causes to the living and environment, it also seems good to keep our minds cool on the complex question of global warming, which causes and scale are certainly far to be those some lobbying and activist groups pretend it to be.

Thank you for your time and interest.

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