Sunday 19 April 2015

Cars Carbon Footprint Is Not The Only One

By Cornelius Nunev


For good or bad, governments and a good cross section of people want to reduce the "carbon footprint" or emissions of carbon dioxide, of human civilization. It's not so much that automobiles are not contributing, but some info about cars carbon footprint could be surprising.

Carbon footprint of dog as bad as car

One of the most common things people look at on the subject of cutting down on their carbon footprint is their car. Lots of people are working hard to cut back the carbon footprint of civilization.

AutoGuide points out that the carbon footprint of a car may not be that bad as shown by a brand new Zealand study. IT showed that the Toyota Landcruiser with its 4.6-liter V-8 and a full-size SUV has the same carbon footprint as a dog does.

The Landcruiser averages 6,200 miles a year producing 55.1 gigajoules of energy. That is equivalent to 1.1 acres of land. That is not very bad in contrast to the 2.07 acres needs for a dog to live. The average dog uses 3.17 ounces of meat and 5.5 ounces of grain per sitting. That means that just one year of kibble to feed a dog is more than one year of running a vehicle, according to the study done by Robert and Brenda Vale.

Cat footprint

Granted, the Vales, who published this finding in their book "Time to Eat the Dog?", made a slightly dubious comparison. A lot of people drive about double the Vale's 6,200 mile figure, but doubling the mileage to 12,400, closer to reality, results in said Landcruiser producing a carbon footprint equal to using 2.2 acres of land, about 0.05 more than the dog. Then again, one doesn't need $80,000 in carloans to get a dog, whereas one does for a Landcruiser.

They likewise found a cat had a carbon footprint roughly equal to a Volkswagen Golf.

Fuel powered leaf blowers emit more emissions looked at in cars than a Ford Raptor pickup with a 6.2-liter V-8 and a 411 horsepower, as shown in an Environmental Protection Agency test Edmunds found.

The Echo two stroke leafblower and the Ryobi four-stroke leafblower are much worse than the Ryobi. The Ryobi had 13.5 times more nitrous oxide, 36 times more NMHC emissions and 6.8 times more carbon dioxide than the Raptor, and the two-stroke numbers were much worse than that.

Automobiles not too shabby comparatively

Even electric vehicles carbon footprint may be larger than one might think. According to the New York Times, since roughly 45 percent of the country's electricity is generated by coal, powering an electric car has a carbon footprint in coal-heavy areas. Granted, it isn't terrible; a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists found it's no worse than driving a normal fuel-efficient subcompact.

However, more emissions are produced in manufacturing electric automobiles. According to AutoBlog, the Low Carbon Automobile Partnership, an advocacy group located in England, estimated in 2011 that producing a hybrid car generated 8 percent more carbon dioxide than making a normal car. Making a plug-in hybrid generated 12 percent more and a fully electric car produced 23 percent more carbon dioxide than making a gas-powered automobile. Granted, since electric car production is low, that doesn't mean one should start picketing all Nissan dealers, Everett, Washington to Miami, Florida, either.




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