CO2 Production

Well, what do you know! Someone actually reduced their production of carbon dioxide in 2006 from the previous year--and with no official policy on it. Do you want to try and guess which country?

From AP:

WASHINGTON - A mild winter, followed by a cool summer caused U.S. carbon dioxide emissions to decline last year, according to the Energy Department. The results were hailed by the White House as support for its global warming policies.

The department's Energy Information Administration said Wednesday that preliminary data shows a 1.3 percent decline in the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide released in 2006 from energy-related sources, the first decline in 11 years and the biggest decline since 1990.

The White House quickly issued a statement from
President Bush hailing the drop in the principal "greenhouse gas" that scientists have linked to a warming of the earth.

"We are effectively confronting the important challenge of global climate change through regulations, public-private partnerships, incentives and strong economic investments," Bush said in the statement.

The agency, which tracks energy and related statistics, said that its "flash estimate" for 2006 shows power plants, industry, homes, businesses and motor vehicles produced 5,877 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2006 compared to 5,955 million metric tons in 2005.

Whether the decline of 78 million metric tons was an anomaly, or an indicator of something more, was unclear.

The Energy Department report said one reason for the decline was that 2006 had "weather conditions favorable for emission reductions."

Jonathan Adler at Volokh Conspiracy quotes the Guardian (both no link or citation) as saying that the Europeans weren't so fortunate. Hey, maybe we had a good winter, and they didn't. But that would not be the first time that Europe failed to meet its CO2 targets to reduce global warming because they had such a cold winter. Reality check, maybe?