GW: Separating facts from fiction

Lucifuge Rofocale said:
What I'm now studying is about what is contributing more to the Greenhouse effect, live organisms or man made pollution. Live organisms, including humans and plants, are exhaling greenhouse gases at a higher rate (because there are more humans and animals than before) . If we find a correlation of, lets say, 97% animal-3% fuel greenhouse gases, would it be correct to say that current GW is man made, but now because they burn fuel but because they breathe?
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Now don't be silly! I don't have any numbers, but just a qualitative argument will refute that. Take cars, for instance... How many times do you fill you gas tank per year? I bet you you have consumed more than your car's weight in fuel last year. Most vehicles produce several times their weight in greenhouse gases each year. Not only does most of the fuel you put in your tank become greenhouse gas emissions, but the carbon in the fuel combines with oxygen in the air, almost tripling the weight of the fuel itself. And I'm not even including here all of the industrial activities that are implicit in driving a car: manufacturing, road building, fuel extraction, ore extraction, production of plastics... Breathing is peanuts when compared to driving.
 
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Orwell said:
Now don't be silly! I don't have any numbers, but just a qualitative argument will refute that. Take cars, for instance... How many times do you fill you gas tank per year? I bet you you have consumed more than your car's weight in fuel last year. Most vehicles produce several times their weight in greenhouse gases each year. Not only does most of the fuel you put in your tank become greenhouse gas emissions, but the carbon in the fuel combines with oxygen in the air, almost tripling the weight of the fuel itself. And I'm not even including here all of the industrial activities that are implicit in driving a car: manufacturing, road building, fuel extraction, ore extraction, production of plastics... Breathing is peanuts when compared to driving.
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But we aren't talking about cars, don't you think? Even if we reach a 100% electric cars rate, the other problems you mention don't go away. The electric cars have to be build.
Your rant about how much GH gasses each car produce is what I'm looking at now. I'll be back.
 
Lucifuge Rofocale said:
But we aren't talking about cars, don't you think? Even if we reach a 100% electric cars rate, the other problems you mention don't go away. The electric cars have to be build.
Your rant about how much GH gasses each car produce is what I'm looking at now. I'll be back.
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I'm beginning to loose patience with you: cars are just an example I used to qualitatively demonstrate that breathing is peanuts in terms of CO2 emissions compared to other human activities!

For your information, according to wikipedia, transportation represents only about 20% of all human carbon dioxide emissions. Energy production alone accounts for about 30%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitigation_of_global_warming#Greenhouse_gas_emissions
 
Also, if you want to keep animals (including humans) alive and well, you have to produce a comparatively large amount of plant matter just to feed them. This will pretty much sequester any CO2 (and more, probably much more, since the amount of plant matter needed to feed an animal for a given amount of time is typically several times the weight of the animal) produced by breathing.

Your breathing causing GW "argument" is bogus.
 
I'm not asking for your patience. I'm not even debating with you since you haven't touched any of my arguments. You are ranting about something I didn't claim. I accept that there are some billions of CO2 gallons produced by human activity. What you can't realize by now is that it doesn't lead to human made GW per se. Other data is needed to stablish that.
 
Orwell said:
Also, if you want to keep animals (including humans) alive and well, you have to produce a comparatively large amount of plant matter just to feed them. This will pretty much sequester any CO2 (and more, probably much more, since the amount of plant matter needed to feed an animal for a given amount of time is typically several times the weight of the animal) produced by breathing.

Your breathing causing GW "argument" is bogus.
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Would you please stop the strawmans? Where did I make that claim? I said I'lll investigate the subject
 
Lucifuge Rofocale said:
I'm not asking for your patience. I'm not even debating with you since you haven't touched any of my arguments. You are ranting about something I didn't claim. I accept that there are some billions of CO2 gallons produced by human activity. What you can't realize by now is that it doesn't lead to human made GW per se. Other data is needed to stablish that.
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CO2 measured in Gallons? At what temperature and pressure? How much CO2 are we talking about here?
 
Orwell said:
Also, if you want to keep animals (including humans) alive and well, you have to produce a comparatively large amount of plant matter just to feed them. This will pretty much sequester any CO2 (and more, probably much more, since the amount of plant matter needed to feed an animal for a given amount of time is typically several times the weight of the animal) produced by breathing.
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But don't they give off large amounts of methane, which is more potent as a forcing agent than CO2?

Orwell said:
Your breathing causing GW "argument" is bogus.
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How so?

Say my family (five of us) are thinking of travelling 2 kilometres. We will use more oxygen and hence produce more carbon dioxide by walking than sitting in a car. Wouldn't the relative CO2 impact be the car CO2 emissions less the additonal CO2 emissions associated with 5 people walking (as opposed to being at rest?
 
delphi_ote said:
Methane (CO4) is not carbon dioxide (CO2.)

Also, this is one very recent paper. It has yet to be backed up by further studies. The amount of methane produced in a forest is entirely speculation at this point. We'll have to see where future research goes.
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I know my high school chemistry was a looonng time ago, but isn't methane CH4?
 
Orwell said:
I'm beginning to loose patience with you: cars are just an example I used to qualitatively demonstrate that breathing is peanuts in terms of CO2 emissions compared to other human activities!

For your information, according to wikipedia, transportation represents only about 20% of all human carbon dioxide emissions. Energy production alone accounts for about 30%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitigation_of_global_warming#Greenhouse_gas_emissions
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Have you read this article.? I don't know if it is accurate in its caluclaions, but it is a bit of a hoot.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/10/11/do1102.xml
 
Orwell said:
Is methane produced by breathing? No.
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I thought we were discussing this line:

What I'm now studying is about what is contributing more to the Greenhouse effect, live organisms or man made pollution
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I believe that in New Zealand the single largest contributor to greenhouse forcing comes from flatulent sheep (or I might just be talking nonsense!)
 
No, we're discussing this:
Lucifuge Rofocale said:
What I'm now studying is about what is contributing more to the Greenhouse effect, live organisms or man made pollution. Live organisms, including humans and plants, are exhaling greenhouse gases at a higher rate (because there are more humans and animals than before) . If we find a correlation of, lets say, 97% animal-3% fuel greenhouse gases, would it be correct to say that current GW is man made, but now because they burn fuel but because they breathe?
Click to expand...

By the way, although methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, its residency time in the atmosphere is relatively short: it remains in the atmosphere for approximately 9-15 years.
 
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