Wednesday, April 16, 2008

I can almost see the CO2 from here...

Earlier this month, Purdue University released some very cool visualizations of the movement of carbon dioxide in the US. (Callan and Mel blogged about it.)

This week, they've released a list of the top twenty counties for CO2 production in the US.

And the top ones are...

1. Harris, Texas (Houston) - 18.625 million tons carbon/year
2. Los Angeles, California (LA) - 18.595
3. Cook, Illinois (Chicago) - 13.209
4. Cuyahoga, Ohio (Cleveland) — 11.144
5. Wayne, Michigan (Detroit) — 8.270
6. San Juan, New Mexico (Farmington) — 8.245

One of these things is not like the others... Farmington has fewer than 45,000 residents. It does, however, have two coal-fired power plants, with another proposed.

It's absolutely stunning to see Farmington on the list with three of the four largest cities in the country, and with major industrial cities of the midwest.

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