I just got a route plan from the RAC from South Wales to Kent. As well as my route, it gave the carbon foot print for my journey. This came out as 103 kg of carbon. At an average of 24 mpg, and at 240 miles which is about right for the car and kourney, the weight of the fuel is about 43kg Now how can 43kg of fuel possibly contain over 100 kg of carbon?
The oxygen is not in your fuel tank. The carbon in CO2 is only 27% of the weight of CO2. Don't forget there is lots of other pollution associated with owning a car - rubber particulates, the energy involved in making, running, repairing, MOTing, disposing etc. etc. of your car.
I'm not worried about it. I just got confused as when I was in school, 103 into 43 didn't go. Now taken into account the weight difference between carbon dioxide and diesel, 103 kg is a huge amount of litres! I
If the greens want to be convincing, they should at least come up with maths that add up.
The greens are not a party, group or association; they are people who are concerned with the future of the planet, and want to leave it in better condition than they found it for the benefit of not just their children, but other peoples children.
Are you not concerned? If you are concerned then you are a green.
I hope this comes out OK. I can't check it because a bug in the board software won't let me preview this post.
(rant)If the greens want to be convincing, they should at least come up with science that adds up IMO. TBH, I'm sick and tired of all this greenwash. The IPCC have grossly overstated the effect that anthropogenic CO2 can have on global climate. They have selective memory WRT important stuff like Henry's Law and that only approx 1/50th of CO2 released can stay in the atmosphere. For that, Miskolczi has shown that the greenhouse effect is regulated by temperature (that is, the overall atmospheric greenhouse factor depends on temperature rather than temperature depending on the amount of greenhouse gas). Also, while the eco-alarmists might talk about "doubling of CO2 concentrations", Stegalstad calculates that there is insufficient fossil fuel in the planet to raise the CO2 concentration by more than about 20% even if we burn every scrap!. It gets worse, because plants need CO2 to grow and while the the third world starves the first world is intent on reducing the amount of plant food available and misdirecting agriculture to biofuels rather than feeding the World.(end of rant)
However, if you're not convinced about the greenwash and believe that your carbon footprint makes a difference, here's some calcs I did for another forum that you might find interesting. Here I compare the carbon footprint of a caravanning holiday using a (gasp) 4x4 to tow a tin tent for 200 miles and live in it for a fortnight versus using a hotel for the same period:
Based on the government figure of 243 grammes of CO2 per km for a diesel Landcruiser (which is 391 grammes or 0.86 lbs per mile), a typical diesel 4x4 isn't going to emit more than 410g/mile (about 0.9 lbs/mile). However, we'll round that up to 1 lb/mile for this exercise.
From the above, 200 miles of towing emits 200 lbs of CO2.
6 kg of propane lasts me about a fortnight and this is equivalent to 2.5 lbs of CO2 per night.
Since the 240V side of my fridge is duff, I use propane for cooking and the fridge and use EHU to power the battery charger, the telly, and the Carver water heater. Even though I probably use more gas energy than electrical energy, I'll allow 2.5 lbs of CO2 per night for electricity.
We use site showers where possible so for this, and other communal power consumption, I'll allow a further 2.5 lbs of CO2 per night.
So a fortnight's caravanning holiday including a 200 mile round trip towing with a 4x4 produces 200 plus 105 equals 305 lbs of CO2.
Now the Government's best practice guide, "Energy Efficiency in Hotels" suggests that a typical UK hotel room emits about 10 tonnes of CO2 annually. This equates to 60 lbs CO2 per night. So neglecting the CO2 emitted by travelling to the hotel, a fortnight's holiday using a hotel room emits an average of 840 lbs of CO2.
Thus, anyone who uses a holiday hotel (even if they hiked or cycled there) has no moral high ground from which to accuse caravanners of harming the environment since the hotel room they use causes the emission of considerably more CO2 than does caravanning.
Also interesting is that an average UK house produces about ten tonnes of CO2 per annum. So by shutting down your house and going caravanning, the chances are that you're actually reducing your carbon footprint.
It really bugs about all the lies and misinformation that is being bandied about by the so called greens and the government agencies.
The car scrappage thing for a start. Their claims that they are trying to take old "polluting"(????) cars off the roads so that they can promote greener cars is absolute tripe.
We drive a 1962 Morris Minor. We would have to drive 6 Morris Minors every day for 50 years to produce the same amount of pollution as it takes to manufacture ONE NEW CAR!!!!!!
When I see the government taking pollution seriously and doing something about or at least telling us the truth about it, then I might look a little more seriously at things like "my carbon footprint", but until then, such phrases are just a load of hot air.
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Topic: Carbon Footprint (
Topic Closed)
