Who Really Worries About Carbon Emissions?
Carbon Footprints – Source: SPPI
The data below is from various carbon footprint calculators scattered about the web and largely based on EPA emissions estimates and conversations. Of all the agitators and propagandists lecturing the common person about their large carbon footprint life styles, not a single one has evidenced their belief in the “climate emergency” by their own behavior. This has been particularly true for President Obama, Al Gore and Hollywood.
Activity CO2 footprint (lbsCO2)
Burn a gallon of gasoline 19.4
Use a kWh of electricity (U.S. average fuel mix) 1.3
Car trip to the grocery store (roundtrip 15 miles) 11.6
Mowing the lawn (1hr, gas engine push mower) 9.7
Watch TV (42” LCD), 4 hrs 1.1
Make a pot of coffee 0.3
Use a desktop computer (CRT screen) 8 hrs 2.1
Use a 75W light bulb for 4hrs 0.4
Fly 1,000 miles 440
Annual refrigerator usage 827
Annual lawn care (mow grass 25 times) 242.5
Annual desktop computer usage (1,000 hrs) 260
Annual TV usage (42” LCD, 1000hrs) 406
Annual Coffee (365 pots per year) 109.5
Annual usage of 75W light bulb (1,500 hrs) 146.3
Annual car usage (12,000 miles @ 25mpg) 9,391
Annual home heating/cooling 30,000
Average American per year 45,000
Obama Entourage to India (flights only) 18,671,400
Obama Entourage to India (estimated, all sources) 27,921,100
U.N. Climate Confab (Copenhagen) 89,100,000
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These people leaving gigantic sooty footprints stinking of sanctimonious BS all over the place – isn’t it time they washed their feet?
I don’t give a fig about the 0’s foot print, carbon or otherwise, but what exactly IS the purpose of this India trip?
Billy Ruff’n says: November 4, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Layman’s question here: How can you get 19.4 pounds of carbon from a gallon of gasoline that weighs far less than that?
Homogenization and teleconnection.
Whilst I’m firmly in the sceptic camp, I calculate that if just 20,000 Americans were sufficiently influenced by the debate to reduce their production of CO2 by 10%, then Copenhagen would have been “paid for”. Surely, this would be a result, whatever your opinion on AGW?
What is the reason given by environmentalists for prefering to hold conferences in physical locations rather than use teleconferencing, video, and all the other modern communications aids that the non-environmental world uses so successfully to reduce their ‘carbon footprint’ and travel bills?
Ian, I must have taken a stupid pill this morning as I can see no logic in any kind of result from X number of Americans reducing their CO2 output by 10%. Why would anyone want to reduce their output of such a vital plant food which comes, marvellously, as a by-product of most human activities? Could you kindly explain your thinking on this, please, but no presure.
Ian says:
November 5, 2010 at 2:20 am
“Whilst I’m firmly in the sceptic camp, I calculate that if just 20,000 Americans were sufficiently influenced by the debate to reduce their production of CO2 by 10%, then Copenhagen would have been “paid for”. Surely, this would be a result, whatever your opinion on AGW?”
This fails to include the Americans (and non-Americans) who have been influenced to increase their CO2 production. Those who buy hybrids or solar panels, for instance! Or “energy saving” bulbs that have to be doubled up and left on continuously in order to be bright enough to replace the old incandescents.
We have silly metrics like “the size of Manhatten,” “Olympic size swimming pools,” or “furlongs per fortnight.”
Perhaps we can use this trip as a unit of carbon footprint, the “Presidential junket.”
Copenhagen was only 3.2 Presidential junkets. That’s pretty impressive one way or another!
thecomputerguy says:
November 4, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Someone should make a visual of the greenies’ (Gore, Obama, etc.) individual annual carbon footprint, in comparison with “the rest of us”, and in comparison with people in other countries – give things a visual perspective. (IE, see this six pixel long line, this is the average lithuanian carbon footprint. See this dash, this is the average American… see this line that goes half way down the screen, this is Gore. You’ll be scrolling a while to see all of Obama’s…)
————–
Ooh, I can just see it now using an scissors-style fork lift (Al Gore style) to get to the top of the CarbonFootprints of Gore and Obama 🙂
Carbon Footprint is so yesterday. Now there’s even more reason to feel afraid and ashamed of not living in a 3rd world country and in poverty, called your “ecological footprint”.
http://myfootprint.org/en/
Just for fun, I took the test, and my “score” was 3.63 Earths. Excuse me while I give away all of my posessions and go find a cave to live in.
For the eco-freaks it’s all about the guilt.
One day, probably too late, those who believe in man-made global warming will be proven terribly wrong.
Global cooling will be much worst than global warming.
Frank Mosher says:
November 4, 2010 at 6:32 pm
“I love my vibrams. just like barefoot. ease into running though to allow calves to adjust.”
I’m a runner and tried the vibrams, but I just didn’t like the feel. Trail running in them would be problematic for my feet too, but if they work for you, then great. I saw someone recently running a half marathon barefoot…on an asphalt road course too (yikes!). I’ll stick with my Asics…
As for carbon footprint hypocrisy, I noticed they didn’t have at figure for “Running Useless Climate GCMs at Supercomputer Data Centers”. Of course not! Reducing carbon footprints are for the little people…
With an extra 8 million unemployed, we have them saving a gallon of gas by not commuting. This is every day 5 days a week.
Bruce Cobb says:
November 5, 2010 at 6:04 am
“Carbon Footprint is so yesterday. Now there’s even more reason to feel afraid and ashamed of not living in a 3rd world country and in poverty, called your “ecological footprint”.
http://myfootprint.org/en/
Just for fun, I took the test, and my “score” was 3.63 Earths. Excuse me while I give away all of my posessions and go find a cave to live in.”
I only managed 2.63 Earths. Not a problem, though; my work on terraforming Mars and Venus should cover that quite neatly! The silliest bit – it’s all silly – may be my high marine fisheries footprint, which is odd because I don’t eat fish (I’m allergic). Perhaps the figure would have been smaller if I could have brought myself to tick the “wash cars rarely” and “avoid hosing paths” boxes. I didn’t, because my reason is not “saving water”, but saving effort. Let the rain do it.
davidmhoffer says:
November 4, 2010 at 6:38 pm
“Now I ask, if they truly believed their own rhetoric, why aren’t they, with all their wealth, buying up high altitude properties in northern climes?”
Viking farms in Greenland had one head of cattle for every two heads of other livestock. Currently (last figure I could find) there are less than 20 head of cattle in the entire country. If these people actually believed in the nonsense they were peddling they’d be buying up land in Greenland in anticipation of needing it to graze cattle or at least for some agricultural purpose that isn’t feasible today because growing season is too short. Growing season has lengthened by two weeks in the past 30 years. It needs to lengthen by two more weeks before there’s any serious opportunity for new crops to be introduced like apples.
A tip for all you Greenlanders – keep the cattle herds and the apple orchards separated lest you end up with a bunch of sick cattle down with bellyaches and no apples for yourselves.
Bruce Cobb says:
November 5, 2010 at 6:04 am
Carbon Footprint is so yesterday. Now there’s even more reason to feel afraid and ashamed of not living in a 3rd world country and in poverty, called your “ecological footprint”.
http://myfootprint.org/en/
Just for fun, I took the test, and my “score” was 3.63 Earths. Excuse me while I give away all of my posessions and go find a cave to live in.
For the eco-freaks it’s all about the guilt.
===========
funny that! I copped 3.1 earths and I use very little of anything recycle and tour the dump often…seems like a con job to me to scare people.
Paul Birch says:
November 5, 2010 at 7:03 am
Bruce Cobb says:
November 5, 2010 at 6:04 am
Ha! 0.91 earths for me. It was 1.2 earths until last month when I bought a compact car to drive for when I don’t need a full size 4WD diesel pickup truck.
You don’t have to live in a cave to achieve this but it certainly helps and nowhere does this carbon footprint calculator ask if you live in a cave or exactly how much energy you use for heating and cooling. I live in a man-made cave of sorts with three walls and floor sunk deep into a north facing hillside. All my water comes from rainfall I collect and total usage is around 800 gallons per month and half of that I discovered is taken up by the clothes washer but I drain my clothes washer onto the ground so it ends up back where it came from anyhow after a short delay and detour.
I don’t really do this for altruistic reasons. For me it’s a lifestyle engineering challenge to live comfortably, happily, and well under a nominal but not excessively minimalist philosophy and I love a good challenge.
Woohoo!
3.97 earths and 62.25 hectares.
That’s despite a very good track record on re-cycling, sensible diet and being mean with buying new furniture or replacing appliances only when bust.
Maybe my rural mileage bumps it up. Good job I make a lot of carbons to enhance the crop yield on my 62 hectares.
Must go plant some rapid growing spruces to be able to chop down for firewood in the coming winters.
Wonder what I can do to break the 4.0 barrier and get 100 hectares of land – this is SimEarth right?
I always wondered what the carbon foot print of the Olympic Games was. There were a lot of celebrity fly-ins for that too.
Not only does Al Gore have the carbon footprint of Godzilla and King Kong combined, he recently purchased an $8 million+ villa on the beach front!!! Al Gore cannot possibly believe in man-made, runaway warming.
Bruce Cobb says:
November 5, 2010 at 6:04 am
Ha, my guilt should be bigger than yours. I rated at 8.13 Earths. I’m proud of that. I always knew I was bigger than life and now I have proof! OK, OK, jokes aside, that little eco-footprint calculator was perhaps the biggest waste of time I have ever encountered. What a biased and worthless exercise in stupidity! It’s probably more accurate than the average climate computer model, though…
Not sure how you guys did it. I came in at 6.31 Earths (244.80 acres), and that’s still a tad below the U.S. average.
If all those other people had said that they were not going to go, based on their belief that they should not add to the carbon footprint, etc., then Obama would not have been able to go either. So clearly it is not the president’s fault, but the fault of other people who just can’t get their priorities straight on saving the planet from carbon.
Sorry, I was distracted, there were an infinite number of monkeys at my door claiming to have created a better GCM.
Ric Werme says:
November 5, 2010 at 5:24 am
Copenhagen was only 3.2 Presidential junkets. That’s pretty impressive one way or another!
That says more about the Pres junk than Copenjunk. At Copenjunk there were thousands of journalists, politiciens etc
Add to the list …
Breathing for a year (we all like breathing right?) … 429 – 723*
*depends on figures used.