Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alastair McIntosh who wrote (8515)	12/8/2006 2:57:56 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 36921

Well damn. I just spent half an hour getting all the data from BP and so on, writing a rant, and lost it when I clicked "back" from going to the graph of CO2 at Mauna Loa. But I had written the totals on an envelope. Total coal, oil, gas million tons oil equivalent produced in 1996 was 7408 and in 2005 was 9181. That's a 24% increase. I got the data from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Which is a highly reputable source. bp.com The coal data was from 1995, not 1996, so there would be a small exaggeration - maybe it should be 22% not 24%. CO2 was 362 ppm in 1996 [beginning] and 382 at the beginning of 2006 [give or take a couple of ppms]. That's a 20 ppm increase which is a 5.5% increase in CO2. So, the exciting conclusion. Despite a 22% or maybe 24% increase in million tons of oil equivalent, there was only a 5% increase in CO2 levels. That means we are NOT getting a very good bang for our buck. Millions of tons oil equivalent relates to energy content, not carbon content. So a ton of gas gives a lot of energy from hydrogen burning while a ton of coal gives no hydrogen burning - there's more CO2 from a given amount of coal energy than from gas energy. So, since the coal production increase is so large [and nearly all in China], there is a lot more CO2 being produced per joule of energy produced than there was in 1995. Despite that, CO2 levels only increased 5%. Total carbon burned is no doubt available somewhere, but it's significantly more than a 24% increase over those 10 years. Summing up, we are getting a small CO2 increase despite a large CO2 production increase. That's because it's NOT just coming from people and it's being sucked out of the atmosphere faster than we can fill it up. Maybe I've made a mistake here somewhere. I'm sure Mr Numerate Wharfie, who cheats with numbers [confusing 2% for 2ppm] will be able to find the mistake. Mqurice