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It's not easy being green...

&philcUK
08/31/06 8:56 PM GMT
I kind of touched on this jokingly in the useless facts threads but the more I have thought about it and studied it the more it has really wound me up. It seams that on an almost weakly basis, car users and motor manufacturers take a slapping from the various environmentalist lobbies around the world, with, it would seam, less and less basis in fact or reality.

Whilst it is of course true that cars produce a significantly large amount of carbon dioxide annually – in terms of how that relates to output generated by domestic energy usage it is marginal, indeed, merely the act of breathing out produces twenty percent more co2 a year than your car does. Cars and transport in general seam to have been targeted as the whipping boys by environmentalists ignoring the bigger issues that are easier to resolve. Waves of new taxes and charges are introduced regularly on the motorist on the pretext of making them more responsible for the environment. The real motive behind these, to me at least, seams to be more of a profiteering issue instigated and sanctioned by government treasuries around the globe as an easy source of revenue. Little or no attempt is made to make carbon neutral petroleum alternatives such as bioethanol available or attractive to the consumer – either by restricting supply or prohibitive taxing, despite the fact that these technologies exist and can be mass produced.

The simple act of fitting at least one low energy light bulb in every domicile around the planet would more than wipe out the effect of emissions from cars – but how often are you told that? Assuming that each household contained 4 people and ran two cars at average to low annual mileage or one car at high annual mileage, those vehicles would produce less than one three hundredth of the total annual greenhouse gases of the household and their energy consumption.

All that spiel is not to dismiss the fact that cars, trains, planes etc do create pollutants, so do demand better technology from your car manufacturers, do plant your roadside artificial trees etc etc but do that out of a sense of responsibility rather than believing you are making some big climatic impact. Far greater improvements can be made by making your home energy efficient – this can be done to a greater or lesser degree depending on your budget – if some companies were entrepreneurial enough to produce cheap home units, adding a co2 scrubber to your house would also be a massive improvement. Indeed, legislation forcing business or building owners to fit carbon scrubbers to their ventilation systems would seam like and obvious and easy measure to achieve – which is why it probably would never happen. The more power that is consumed the more profit is made both by energy companies and governments so don’t expect any big gestures any time soon aimed at improving the status quo.

The simple fact of the matter is that the world’s population produces more than 165 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide every year from domestic energy consumption and an additional 4 billion tonnes in exhaled co2. that population doubles roughly once every 3 or 4 generations – we can barely manage on the resources we have available now so unless steps are taken on a personal level at least, things are going to get much, much worse – and it wont be because of the amount of SUV’s on the roads….

OK – blood boiling at a sufficient level now – over to you….


Discuss…..
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::cgImagery
08/31/06 9:40 PM GMT
ppl have always been around.
plants were always around.
so it had to be around a stable lvl the co2 and o2
cars just make it worse :)
and all the deforestation which takes away from o2 production
so cars are to blame :P just as much as electricity
just had to say -_-
hope this made sense though. lol
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&philcUK
08/31/06 9:54 PM GMT
People have always been around but the numbers of people are growing exponentially - far faster than they ever have in history - currently automobiles produce only a tiny fraction of the CO2 output that people and their energy consumption/production do. As most of the planets oxygen is created out at sea, cars aren’t to blame for that or deforestation either...
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::noahnott
09/01/06 12:06 AM GMT
Electricity is bad!? Errrr, oh yeah....coal. But hydro power isnt bad (thats what my dad does).

Oh, thanks for the interesting statistics, I'm going to see if they are true, just incase.
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::cgImagery
09/01/06 12:11 AM GMT
lol :P
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::noahnott
09/01/06 12:15 AM GMT
I cant find any statistics... -.- I need to work on my google skills.
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::timw4mail
09/01/06 12:24 AM GMT
I agree with you Phil. It is just folly to suggest that we are destroying the planet because of the way we live; Just existing seems to be a worse impact ;øP
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::noahnott
09/01/06 12:36 AM GMT
900 grams of C02 is produced by human respiration everyday...for some reason I think cars produce more than that?
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.animaniactoo
09/01/06 12:38 AM GMT
but there are ALOT more humans than cars?
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::noahnott
09/01/06 12:39 AM GMT
Aha! Good point...never thought of that. lol. How much C02 is given off per year for transportation? Or something around those lines...oh and I want it to be a world average statistic...lol.
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+Samatar
09/01/06 12:48 AM GMT
Apparantly there is a single underground coal fire in China that gives off more CO2 each year than all the cars in the world combined...
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::noahnott
09/01/06 1:15 AM GMT
I'll buy that statistic. :) I'm still working on the breathing vs burning one, just have to finsih my gordita supremes first.
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::noahnott
09/01/06 1:44 AM GMT
*I forgot my source for this* Breathing out C02 per person: about 900g/day/person or...about 328500g/year/person or...about 723lbs/year/person. That's if my math is correct, which I hope it is.

Source An average household with two mid-sized vehicles emits more than 20,000 pounds of CO2 a year.

What do you say now? =P Wait, a mistake! But I think that is for the US and the US has only about..uh 197million(?) people. So, yeah...plus the US gives off more pollution than any other country.
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+Samatar
09/01/06 1:45 AM GMT
What about flatulence? Got any stats there...
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::noahnott
09/01/06 1:50 AM GMT
On average, a person produces about half a litre of flatulence gas per day

I think it's mainly methane and hydrogen gas though?
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::DigiCamMan
09/01/06 3:09 AM GMT
Mmmm....think I heard all this before.
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::noahnott
09/01/06 4:59 AM GMT
Oh btw, the oceans absorb about half the C02 in the air...Thats a good thing for us, bad for the fishies.

OH DEAR! ITS 11! STAR TREK IS ON! *I thought it was about 9ish*

*edit* My computer clock is wrong...again. It's really 10. -.-
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&philcUK
09/01/06 7:06 AM GMT
Noah – take things as a global issue – the 600 million plus cars in the world generate around 2.1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide between them a year. An average person breathes out 310 kilos of carbon dioxide a year, multiply that by the approximate global population and that gives you around 2.6 billion tonnes – A lot more than the cars output. Each person is roughly responsible for producing 25,000 kilos a year through domestic energy consumption totalling around a minimum of 170 billion tonnes a year globally, again a lot more than automobiles. Ok – so maybe I shouldn’t have tried to simplify things down by dividing into individual households but that was just for demonstration purposes :-)

Remember those figures are global averages and are just for domestic usage – they don’t factor in what people use in the commercial environment which you could assume is at the very least the same again.

Rather than trying to punch holes in stats by the odd million when we are talking in hundreds of billions, you could consider discussing the point I was trying to make that far from being the prime factor and major demon in carbon dioxide production in the world, cars are actually just a small bit part player and that we ourselves are guilty of far worse pollution – even in our own homes.

p.s. – the oceans don’t absorb CO2 as such – the phytoplankton and algae that live in the ocean do – and they convert it to oxygen – which is good for fishes. And for us.
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A smart bomb is only as clever as the idiot that tells it what to do……
::noahnott
09/01/06 7:29 AM GMT
Heh-hey! I've been shut down. lol.
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.CurtieBear
09/01/06 8:25 AM GMT
Actually, some very good arguments Phil. It's true, no single factor can be the culprit in this scenario.Nature, as a whole, as well as our place in it, is a finely tuned machine (for lack of a better word).
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::ladyprariefire
09/01/06 8:32 AM GMT
I love this informative list you've given us Phil. These issues are so overwhelming. I think about them often, until it's often driven me to sadness. Living in NA the consumption and population issues are of the charts. But money money money. Everyone is protecting there own interests (corporations). Education on these issues is getting better and more widespread but mostly hitting those previously interested in environmental issues. I think a lot of people find the in and outs of global issues daunting. For fear of living guilt ridden lives people find it easier to ignore stats. Ignorance is bliss (some believe). I find myself in a very human state over these issues. It's a tug of war to be at odds with our standard of living. When every family has two TV's, two cars and a computer they are an average American family. While in some other nations (more than half the world's population) none of these things make an average family. People in NA refuse to observe there lives and remove the familiar and the comfortable. But I do see small steps being made. And that is encouraging. And wheras in my Parent's generation people had 3-5 kids, most of my friends have no children. Having a pack of wild ones isn't so popular these days. But that could of course be somewhat native to my direct community. Anyway, as you say. the SUV's are not the only criminals, in fact they are petty theives in comparison.
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