THE U.S. E.P.A. is LYING TO YOU!
According to environmentalists world-wide, the CO2 produced by the use of fossil fuels is producing enough carbon dioxide "emissions" to create a shift in the global climate, significant enough to cause problems with the environment, melting of the polar ice caps, and eventually, our extinction.
But their research is based on flawed logic. Not only does it assume that MAN MADE CO2 is "the problem" it also assumes that CO2 is the ONLY so-called "greenhouse gas" on the planet. For the sake of argument, I'll begin by demonstrating that CO2 levels are NOT causing global warming because of any specific human activity (particularly the kind of activity that burns fossil fuels). Then I shall demonstrate that CO2 is NOT the primary 'greenhouse gas', thus demonstrating that focusing on CO2 is really, really narrow-minded (if not just simply 'clueless').
First, I'll bore you with some simple calculations, which you can repeat yourself. Feel free to report any errors to me so that I can correct them.
I once did an experiment in which I held my breath for approximately 1 minute, and using an exhaust gas analyzer, I measured the percent O2 in my exhaled breath. I discovered that after holding my breath for a minute, the percent oxygen was approximately 10%, less than half of normal (20.9%). I did this to see how efficient my lungs were at extracting oxygen from the air. I found that I could get it as low as 5% if I held my breath long enough, but below that I had some trouble holding my breath. Because I was "at rest" when I did this, it is a good representation of the amount of oxygen that I consume on average, while "at rest".
For sake of calculations, we must assume that every molecule of Oxygen inhaled and metabolized by your body produces one molecule of CO2. By mass ratio, this is 44 grams CO2 per 32 grams O2. Volumetrically, this is 44 grams for every 22.4 liters (1 mole gas at STP) of pure oxygen.
With the assumption that an AVERAGE lung capacity is approximately 1 liter (my lung
capacity is approximately 2 liters, measured while I was in the Navy, in a preliminary
examination I took for working with asbestos), and if we assume that an average person
could hold his/her breath for 1 minute and utilize 50% of the O2 in that breath, at
rest, such that it represents the normal average oxygen consumption by that individual,
we can calculate the total CO2 production as follows:
1 liter air
* (1440 minutes/day)
* (1/22.4 liters/mole)
* (0.209 moles O2/mole air)
* 1/2 (50% utilization)
* 1 mole CO2 per mole O2
* 44 grams / mole CO2
= ~300 grams CO2 per person per day
At 2.2 lbs per KG, that's equal to 0.66 lbs per day.
NOW, using this information, and extrapolating out the entire population of the world, roughly 5 billion people, we have approximately 3.3 billion lbs of CO2 generated per day by people exhaling, or 3.3 billion lbs per day of CO2.
OK, so I admit that my car DOES put out CO2, but it's a LOT better than CO or HC emissions. So what are the wacky environmentalist extremists whining about NOW? Well it seems that THEY think that my car is putting out too MUCH of the same gas that every human on the planet is exhaling right now. So let's see JUST how much CO2 I "pollute" the environment with.
With the assumption that 1 gallon of gasoline (roughly 6 lbs) burns completely, and thereby produces approximately 1 molecule CO2 for every atom of carbon, AND assuming that gasoline is a PURE hydrocarbon compound, with very few double bonds between carbon atoms, the mass of gasoline will be approximately 14 grams for every 12 grams of carbon. Ideal gasoline for '100 octane' measurements is 1,1, dimethyl-hexane, which has 8 carbons, and 18 hydrogens, which is very very close to this ratio. Adding oxygenate may alter this slightly, but in a direction that REDUCES the result of the calculation.
SO, for 1 gallon of gasoline:
1 gallon gasoline
* ~6 lbs per gallon
* 12 g Carbon / 14 g gasoline (grams cancel out)
* 44 g CO2 / 12 g Carbon (grams cancel out again)
= ~19 lbs CO2 per gallon of gasoline.
OK, this is a reasonable figure. From this we can extrapolate that, if every vehicle
in the world (estimate 500 million, 1 per 10 people on the planet) were to consume an
average of 1 gallon of gasoline per DAY, [an obvious OVER-estimate, even for the U.S.A.
because it results in 10,000 miles per year with an overall average of 27MPG per car]
then the total production of CO2 would be:
500 million * 19 lbs = 9.5 billion lbs CO2 per day.
For the sake of comparison, this is approximately 3 times the amount breathed by humans AT REST. Assuming that all of these cars are being driven this much, the amount of CO2 "exhaled" by cars is three times that of all of the humans on the planet.
OK, let's assume that this IS important. What does the U.S. EPA say about it? Well, for
starters, you can see for yourself at the following web site:
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/climate/ghgreport/hwy_veh.pdf
According to this document, automobiles in the United States are producing 1,455 Tg of
alleged "greenhouse gasses" per year.
The number stated in Table 2-1 is 1,371.2 Tg (tera-grams, or 10^12 grams), equivalent to
1.37 x 10^12 KG CO2 per year
- or -
3 x 10^12 lbs of CO2 per year (do the math if you don't believe me)
based on calculations for the year 2000.
Per day, this would be ~8 x 10^9 (8 billion) lbs of CO2 from cars in the United States alone.
Based upon THIS figure, how many gallons is that? With 19 lbs of CO2 per gallon, you can easily
calculate that to be 420 million gallons per DAY. That's 420 million. >1 gallon of gasoline
per day for every person in the United States. Now, that assumes that people of "driving age"
that aren't retired, or disabled [roughly half the population], are driving an AVERAGE of 20,000 miles
per year, each. EACH! For a 5 day work week, this would be an average commute of between 70 and 75 miles
(round trip - 35 miles each way, probably over an hours' driving in traffic each way) for every
'working person', plus additional miles for trips to the store, trips to the soccer field, and so on.
And most of the cars people commute in have reasonable 'traffic mileage', with very few S.U.V.'s and
trucks, because at $1.50+ per gallon, people just can't afford to pay >$50 per week for gasoline for
each car that is used for commuting.
And, using these figures, for a 5 year period, the "life" of a car of 100,000 miles would quickly
be exceeded, and that would scare the financial companies something fierce. At best, I would think it
would be less than HALF of that.
Needless to say it seems to me that an exaggeration of facts has taken place by the EPA, and I'd like to see where they get THEIR numbers from.
BUT, as we know, the wacky environmentalist extremists would have us think that even a SMALL change in the amount of CO2 produced by car exhausts would have a LARGE change on atmospheric concentrations. But the truth is, that volcanic activity (which does increase CO2 levels) would have a greater effect than all of the cars combined, because volcanic activity recycles the sedimentary carbonates back into the ocean, which then 'gives up' some of its CO2 as 'effervescence' (like a soda going flat). But were it NOT for the volcanic activity under the oceans, the CO2 levels would be LOWER, and there wouldn't be enough CO2 for all of the plants.
So what would happen if underwater volcanos stopped erupting?
A decrease in underwater volcanic activity causes more carbonate residue to form on the ocean floor.
As the carbonate residue continues to precipitate out, the oceanic carbon dioxide levels drop, and less
carbon dioxide is released back into the atmosphere.
As the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels drop, less carbon dioxide is depleted by the rain.
As the rain dumps less carbon dioxide into the ocean, oceanic carbon dioxide levels drop, causing less
precipitation of carbonate residue.
Algea growth diminishes somewhat due to reduced carbon dioxide levels, producing less oxygen.
Similarly, plant growth on the earth's surface is reduced slightly, producing less oxygen.
A shift in worldwide oxygen production causes an effective increase in carbon dioxide levels in
the ocean from animal respiration, and to some extent, in the atmosphere.
A new equilibrium level is reached where carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere may be immeasureably
lower than they were before, but not significant enough to cause global warming/cooling. Carbon dioxide
levels in the ocean are measurably lower, but total dissolved gas concentrations remain roughly the same.
Oceanic animals breathing the slightly higher concentrations of oxygen flourish a bit more than usual,
causing an increase in the production of CO2. A new "biological equilibrium" is reached in the
oceans.
And despite what anybody wants to admit in the wacky environmentalist camp, the same kind of analysis applies when CO2 levels are INCREASED due to car exhaust. Assuming that it's of the same level as an increase in human population, or horse population (if we abandon cars), or the population of all of the animals on the planet exhaling for that matter.
Of course, if our system were UNSTABLE, and not at equilibrium, even a slight change (such as an increase over time of the population of humans and animals) would have had a DRASTIC effect on our global climate, forcing us to radically bounce from ice age to searing heat and drought, flooding of the coastal lands by repeated cycles of melted polar caps, and all of the other disastrous climactic images you can think of. But we know that the earth's climate has been "at equilibrium" since the previous ice age, which was probably caused by an asteroid or comet hitting the earth. Something we can NOW prevent ourselves...
Someone honestly wrote an e-mail to me, and I believe it epitomizes what most people on the 'global warming' side of the argument believe. Rather than criticize it point by point (I don't really need to make people into targets like that), I'll simply quote it 'as-is' and summarize my response.
Your argument regarding global warming is somewhat flawed. While humans do exhale allot of CO2, all of that CO2 comes from the carbon in simple sugars and carbohydrates in the food we eat. All the of the food we eat comes from either plants, or animals that eat plants (or animals that eat animals that eat plats etc...). Plants make their carbon products (sugars, carbohydrates etc...) from C02 in the atmosphere. Thus, all of the CO2 we exhale originally came from plants and all of that carbon originally came from the atmosphere itself. Therefore it is impossible for us to contribute to the over all CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere because all of the CO2 we breath back into the atmosphere was originally take out by plants. Because of this the net increase of CO2 contributed by humans always comes out to zero. It is possible however for gasoline, coal and oil to contribute to CO2 accumulation. All of the carbon that is released when they burn also originally came from plants however it has accumulated over millions of years as opposed to the sort time in which it takes to grow our food. Oil and coal are made of organic matter (plants from millions of years ago. There is allot of carbon trapped in this from as it has had a very, very long time to accumulate. When we burn oil and coal we release this trapped carbon in the form of CO2. Because oil is formed at such a slow rate and we are burning it at such a fast rate in comparison, there is a net increase of carbon going into the atmosphere. Thus while we cannot contribute to CO2 accumulation by exhaling CO2 (because it is the same amount of CO2 that is being taken up by plants that are currently alive) we can contribute CO2 to the atmosphere by releasing it from stored forms such as oil and coal because that amount of CO2 will not be taken up. In short, all of the CO2 that we breath out will become plants again within our lifetime, but none of the CO2 released by burning oil, coal and gasoline will become oil coal and gasoline within our lifetime. Please look into all of this yourself, I'm not trying to deceive you. Misinformation can be very dangerous, as it leads people to ignore problems that are very real. I hope this is enough to change your mind about atmospheric CO2 contribution by humans and at least modify your page in that regard.
Basically, it follows the single assumption that the depletion rate of CO2 remains constant, regardless of changes in the production rate. Yet it can easily be demonstrated that very SMALL concentration changes of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause a significantly HIGHER amount of CO2 to be depleted by rain, due to the equilibrium constant for CO2 forming carbonic acid in rainwater. A small change in either side of the equation (depletion rate or production rate) results in a shift towards the equilibrium concentration of CO2. Following this, CO2 is then depleted within the ocean by precipitation of carbonates.
Also keep in mind that MOST of the world's CO2 already exists in the ocean, AND if there were no undersea volcanos, nearly ALL of the world's CO2 would be trapped there. Instead, undersea volcanos stir up the carbonates, and effervesce the CO2 back into the atmosphere. So a much larger factor on CO2 concentration in the atmosphere (as well as any 'global warming' effects it might cause) would be the presence (or absence) of undersea volcanos. The different in magnitude of scale should have people more concerned about volcanos, rather than the burning of fossil fuels. And there has been a little more volcanic activity recently, off the coast of California.
As it turns out, CO2 (which has a very SMALL concentration in the earth's atmosphere) is NOT the 'biggest greenhouse gas on the planet'. Strangely coincidental with what I believe is the agenda of the 'global warming' crowd (to restrict the use of energy by the common folk and reserve it only for the elite) the minor effect of CO2 has the hyperfocus microscope trained upon it, while simultaneously ignoring the 'elephant sized' contributor known as WATER, something that human beings aren't affecting in the least.
Any grade-school aged child above the age of 9 understands the basic hydrological cycle that takes place on our planet, and has been taking place for a few million years (since the 'big cool down'). But as Jeff Foxworthy has pointed out from time to time, the average adult is probably dumber than the smartest 10 year old when it comes to science (and just about everything else). Do I really need to explain to everyone how water evaporates, forms clouds, and rains back to earth? Well, I did make reference to it earlier, as the major depletion factor for atmospheric CO2. I had hoped that everyone would understand this kind of common sense.
So here we are talking about water in the atmosphere, something that we ALL know is there, especially
on hot sticky summer days in the S.E. United States and various tropical regions throughout the world.
Water absorbs FAR MORE EM RADIATION than does CO2, and the following chart (I believe) demonstrates
this more accurately than I could otherwise describe:
And I would call THAT "the smoking gun" as far as the debate goes. Oh, yeah, it's worth pointing out that the above chart wasn't the ONLY reference I found on this subject. It was merely the one that best illustrated my point. One nice explanation of CO2 absorption lines can be found HERE.