Question

The emissions of CO2from fossil fuel burning can be reported in different ways. For example, the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) reported in 2009 that China, the United States, and India ranked highest among world nations: a. Would the rankings change if expressed on a per capita basis? If so, which nation would rank first? b. CDIAC reports the per capita rankings on the basis of metric tons carbon emitted, rather than metric tonsCO2. Qatar leads the world in per capita emissions at 12.01 metric tons carbon. Would this value be higher or lower if expressed on the basis of metric tons of CO2emitted? Explain.

Answer 1

a) percapita is calculated by dividing the quantity with population.

Let assume that CDIAC analysis be 8 for USA , 9 for India and 10 for CHina

So here china is highest.

Now on percapita basis,

assume the population of USA is 4 india is 8 and china is 10.

So, now calculate on percapita basis,

USA = 8 / 4 ==2

India =9/8 == 1.125

China== 10/10 = 1.0

With this we can conclude that, USA will be first in percapita since it has very low population.

This statement holds good when the diffrence in index values are very small

(b)

12 metric tons of carbon means it may emit in the form of CO, CO2 any carbon compounds.

so, when expressed in CO2 mettric tons since weight of CO2 is more than Carbon. overall expression needs higher number .to express the quantity