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Do you feel guilty driving your car?

This is a discussion on Do you feel guilty driving your car? within the The Pit - General Discussion forums, part of the Website Forums category; Originally Posted by DaSilva PS: Take a look at this... Jeremy Clarkson says Porsche 911 Turbo cleans LA's air Thanks ...

View Poll Results: Do you feel guilty driving your car due with respect to emissions etc???
Yes 5 9.80%
No 35 68.63%
Don't Care 11 21.57%
Voters: 51. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 05-12-2008, 03:48 PM   #31
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Re: Do you feel guilty driving your car?

Quote:
Originally Posted by DaSilva View Post
PS:
Take a look at this... Jeremy Clarkson says Porsche 911 Turbo cleans LA's air
Thanks but I'd rather breath the street air than the stuff coming out of a exhaust tube.
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Old 05-13-2008, 10:56 AM   #32
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Re: Do you feel guilty driving your car?

Thanks for the numbers Steve, it's interesting to see it.

Well, these numbers may look very small, 1% at the scale of the earth is enormous.
And the natural production of greenhouse gaz is absorbed by the plants and oceans, whereas the human CO2 is added to the atmosphere... that is a huge difference.

One should not forget that life is very rare. It only developped on earth because of the delicate and subtle balance found on the earth. It seems that 1% additionnal greenhouse gaz, coupled with deforestation, is enough to disturb this balance. It may not provoked the global warming, but surely accelerated it.

Of course your particular car is not responsible for the global warming.
But like Sartre said, one people can make things change. if you decide to act in an eco-friendly way, you'll induce other people to do so, and gradually it will have an influence. if you buy your car with pollution in mind, and that a lot of people do so, it will make the carmakers hurry up the production of green cars. If you lessen your electricity consumption and buy "green" appareils, it will make the industrials recognize the need for greener goods...


Wikipedia has some graphs figuring the spectacular increase of greenhouse gas since the Industrial Era, but they wouldn't work here, so if you're interested, Greenhouse gas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


wikipedia says:
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the concentrations of many of the greenhouse gases have increased. The concentration of CO2 has increased by about 100 ppm (i.e., from 280 ppm to 380 ppm). The first 50 ppm increase took place in about 200 years, from the start of the Industrial Revolution to around 1973; the next 50 ppm increase took place in about 33 years, from 1973 to 2006.[26]. Many observations are available online in a variety of Atmospheric Chemistry Observational Databases. The greenhouse gases with the largest radiative forcing are:


(Source: IPCC radiative forcing report 1994 updated (to 1998) by IPCC TAR table 6.1 [6][7]).

Also found this, not sure about the source though:
Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions

The skeptic argument...
As human CO2 emissions are much smaller than natural CO2 emissions, man's impact on climate is minimal.
What the science says...

Manmade CO2 emissions are much smaller than natural emissions. However, the CO2 that nature emits (from the ocean and vegetation) is balanced by natural absorptions (again by the ocean and vegetation). Human CO2 emissions upsets the natural balance.
The carbon cycle

Consumption of vegetation by animals & microbes accounts for about 220 gigatonnes of CO2 per year. Respiration by vegetation emits around 220 Gt. The ocean releases about 330 Gt. In contrast, human emissions are only around 26.4 Gt per year.
Land plants absorb about 440 Gt of carbon per year and the ocean absorbs about 330 Gt. This keeps atmospheric CO2 levels in rough balance.
Human CO2 emissions

As for human CO2 emissions, about 40% is being absorbed, mostly by the oceans. The rest remains in the atmosphere which is why atmospheric CO2 has risen to record high levels over 380 ppm. A natural change of 100ppm takes 5,000 to 20,000 years. The recent increase of 100ppm has taken just 120 years.
Carbon isotopes - the human "fingerprint"

How can we know the rising CO2 levels are due to human activity? The carbon atom has several different isotopes (eg - different number of neutrons). Carbon 12 has 6 neutrons, carbon 13 has 7 neutrons. Plants have a lower C13/C12 ratio than in the atmosphere. If rising atmospheric CO2 comes fossil fuels, the C13/C12 should be falling. Indeed this is what is occuring (Ghosh 2003) and the trend correlates with the trend in global emissions.

Figure 2: Annual global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement manufacture in GtC yr–1 (black), annual averages of the 13C/12C ratio measured in atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa from 1981 to 2002 (red). Image courtesy of
Chapter 2 of the IPCC AR4 report.
The ocean's diminishing ability to absorb CO2

While the ocean absorbs around half of human CO2 emissions, empirical observations reveal the oceans are losing their ability to absorb CO2. A study released in May 2007 found that the Southern Ocean has reached its saturation point, diminishing its ability to absorb more CO2 (Quéré 2007). Similarly, CO2 absorption by the North Atlantic has dropped even more dramatically, halving over the past decade (Schuster 2007). If this trend continues, it potentially leads to a positive feedback where the oceans take up less CO2 leading to CO2 rising faster in the atmosphere leading to increased global warming.


Anyway...it's better to prevent such troubles than to cure them, so even if it's very complex and not as simple as some says, I will try to make some efforts.
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Old 05-13-2008, 02:12 PM   #33
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Re: Do you feel guilty driving your car?

Good info

The earth has experienced higher Co2 levels in its past that were not man made., ice core samples prove this. The earth warms up then cools down.

In about the 15th century when greenland was discovered it was called Greenland because.......it was green, and warm and not the ice shelf it is today. The earth was warm then it cooled a little and 1600s in london Queen elizabeth the 1st held ice parties on the river Thames now its getting warmer again. Its a cycle the earth gets warmer then it cools.

If we have a year when the earths volcanoes erupt more ( at the moment 40% of all co2 comes from volcanoes) then it puts the humans pollution in the shade.

I believe its more to do with the suns influence on us more than our pollution.

It funny how the figures also state that since 1997 the earths mean temp HAS NOT GONE UP but has fallen 0.5c and all of a sudden its not global warming but climate change.....

HELLO the climate changes it always has and it always will!!!! what a brilliant TAX
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Old 05-14-2008, 04:31 AM   #34
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Re: Do you feel guilty driving your car?

You're right Steve, the earth just happens to be in a warming period. This is normal.

However, the trouble is that... this warming happens way too fast. And this is because of us. It is not the warming that we are producing, but we are making it happen too fast. The earth and life will not be able to adapt itself to this warming because it is fast and "sudden".

Of course volcanos, cows, dinosaurs emits more CO2 than humans. But like the article says, this CO2 is balanced by oceans and trees.

We are emitting CO2 that can't be absorbed by the earth, so it goes into the atmosphere and strenghten the greenhouse effect.And the deforestation is lessening the earth's absorption capacity. Then the oceans seems to be full so won't absorb as much CO2... So more into the atmosphere, so more greenhouse effect...

The quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen shockingly since the Industrial Era.

We are destroying the balance, with our 1% and deforestation.

The global warming is too fast, and thus will go even faster, and we don't know how it could end. So, we'd better try to be more cautious by now...
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Old 05-14-2008, 07:56 AM   #35
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Re: Do you feel guilty driving your car?

Quote:
Originally Posted by coolraoul View Post

Of course volcanos, cows, dinosaurs emits more CO2 than humans. But like the article says, this CO2 is balanced by oceans and trees.
I dont believe that the earth is perfectly balanced at all. The earths corrects the balance over many years, if loads of volcanoes erupted today and if humans were not on the planet the amount od co2 would not be soaked up by the trees/ oceans. It would take a long time for it to right itself.

My argument is that the earths gets in and out of these periods all the time and i dont belive we are having the effect the governments are leading us to belive.

Do you honestly think that if the Governments of the world thought we were heading for impending doom that they would do i little bit more than just tax us???????????? come on......

All of the sudies showing co2 rising have been paid for somewhere by people/companies/governments who want us to believe this IS happening to make us pay more money so thay can make more money/tax us more


Quote:
Originally Posted by coolraoul View Post
The global warming is too fast, and thus will go even faster, and we don't know how it could end. So, we'd better try to be more cautious by now...

there are intances in the earths history that co2 has risen faster than it has today and the world has warmed quicker than it has toady, unless every person on the planet cuts back it wont happen.

My last example is lets say we ie the developed world......USA Europe etc lower our emmissions China/india etc are making more and it isnt reduced anyway im starting to bore myself here

Lets just agree to disagree


Now then what else can we debate
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