It's a bit hard to get an intuitive feel for either, so speculation like this doesn't accomplish much. It'd help us undecided if you two could post some links to studies or research :-)
-AbyssDragon
Dago wrote:
You mean to tell me that all of the combined wildfires in North America release more C02 in a year than 200 million cars on the road every day for the same year? Give me a break... Yes, I do. Smoke from a fire releases vast amounts of CO2 because fires consume vast amounts of oxygen. Car emissions, however, are under some tight restrictions and cars combust gasoline under controlled circumstances. The output CO2 is nothing compared to fires. For that matter, where do you come up with that ridiculous 200 million figure? That's more than 2/3 the population of the United States. If you include Canada and Mexico maybe you end up with that many cars on the road, but how much time does the average car spend on the road each day? Figure most of those are commutes, and you get 1-2 hours. You're making the same kinds of mistakes I was talking about before. You take one number and misapply it, and it leads to a bad conclusion. In this case you're pretty darn close to assuming the whole continent is composed of drivers who each own a vehicle and drive it 24 hours a day. I will grant you, however, that CO2 output from cars is significant. It is a by-product of internal combustion and there are plenty of cars, so we can safely assume that the percentage of CO2 caused by cars is not so low as to completely ignore it. Heck, if you could show me valid statistics saying they hit 30% of the total output I could believe it. (Jets output more.) However this still doesn't prove much, because consumption is still significant and can't be overlooked. The net output is what must be taken into account, not the gross. Lummox JR | |
1.3 people per car in North America, something like 300 million people living in North America, yeah, it is 200 million cars. And yes, Lummox, I said North America - that includes Canada. Controlled or not, there is no way in hell that all the wild fires in North America release more C02 than those 200 million cars (including the almighty gas-guzzling SUVs). Saying that those emissions is nothing compared to wild fires is an immediate dismissal and I don't believe it for a second.
And you tell me that I misapply my stats. I can't prove that I'm appyling them properly, and you can't prove that I'm not. So, believe what you will, and I will believe what I will, and that's pretty much all I have to say on this subject. -Dagolar | |
Dago wrote:
I can't prove that I'm appyling them properly, and you can't prove that I'm not. If you can't prove that you are applying them properly, then you aren't. | |
As much as I hate to take the side being championed by both Dareb and his lapdog Lummox...
You realize that you are talking about 200 million little tiny fires, that are controlled, regulated, and filtered... compared to fires you could see from space with the naked eye? Here's a homework assignment for you... think of an average brand of car. Find some specs for it. Find out how many cubic centimeters or whatever its cylinders are. Go find news stories about the wildfires last summer and fall. Find where it talks about how many miles wide and long each one was, and how tall the flames spouted. Do the math... figure out how many of those cylinders could fit inside one of the forest fires. Not a math whiz, but I'm guessing you'd run out of cylinders before you ran out of space in the wild fire. Now, ask yourself... were the forests equipped with any filtration devices? Was the plant life optimized or altered, in any way, to produce less emissions when it burned? Here's the real kicker... a forest fire not only emits CO2, it damages the ability of the land to reabsorb it. The question you should be asking is how can a forest fire not produce more emissions than our cars. Before anyone asks... I'm a pedestrian, not only do I not own a car but I've never been licensed to operate one. I believe that the national (global?) insistence on everyone having their own personal conveyance and driving it at the least efficient speeds ought to be criminal. It's stupid and wasteful... if 200 people are going in the same direction, it's stupid and wasteful to build and fuel 200 separate vehicles to carry them. It would be still be stupid and wasteful even if we all used clean-burning flubotinum powered cars. We're not "killing the earth", though... not even close. Any time ol' Mother E wants to laugh in the face of both automobiles AND forest fires, all she has to do is let off a major volcanic eruption or two. You can look at statistics showing that over the 60 years, temperatures have risen four or five degrees... you can also look at statistics showing that they've dropped, or stayed the same. How? By choosing when exactly you start counting. Temperatures fluctuate wildly. If you want to show that the temperature has risen, you pick an unusually cold starting year, where the temperature was two degrees lower than average. Then, you look ahead until you find a year (that's a nice, photogenic number like 20, 25, 40, 50, 60, etc.) year later than your start year, where the temperature happens to be 2 degrees higher than normal. Ta-da... you have just "proven" that the temperature rose 4 degrees in 25 years. | |
Just because I can't PROVE it to YOU doesn't mean I'm not. I'm not going to spend an hour looking up references and stuff. You go do that and find out for yourself.
-Dagolar | |
Statistics are pretty biased depending on who's writing them, which is why I no longer look just at articles by environmentalists. However, if there is some level of consistency by looking at several different articles from various authors (which I have), I think it's a little more than just speculative.
But I do agree that statistics don't always reveal the full truth on their own. Speculation works both ways folks. -Dagolar | |
Dago wrote:
1.3 people per car in North America, something like 300 million people living in North America, yeah, it is 200 million cars. You've just committed a logic error. Just because that many cars may exist doesn't mean they're all in use, and certainly not all at the same time. Many families have more than one car, but the car needn't be used to be counted. There has to be an estimate made on how many hours per day each car operates. "1.3 people per car" is where the math goes wrong, and this is what I meant about abusing statistics. This does not automatically lead to the fact of those cars being in use, and in fact what matters is how long the average car is used. One thing that you'd find with car statistics is that the amount of time on the road probably doesn't scale directly. If a car is the only car in a family, it will get used more. If a family has two cars, they won't drive around twice as much because some things the whole family still does together. The second car however may be used for other errands, so while the amount of driving does increase, it increases by less than 100%. And it gets even more complicated than that because different kinds of cars get different gas mileage. And the types of cars owned by families would vary, since a medium-sized family might own a sedan and a minivan whereas a single persom might own just a sedan, or an SUV. So even strict averages aren't sufficient. And yes, Lummox, I said North America - that includes Canada. Controlled or not, there is no way in hell that all the wild fires in North America release more C02 than those 200 million cars (including the almighty gas-guzzling SUVs). Saying that those emissions is nothing compared to wild fires is an immediate dismissal and I don't believe it for a second. Consider the scale we're talking about; wildfires are huge, burn a fantastic amount of material, and last for a long time--and there are typically several every year. But regardless, I don't see how you can call an examination of scales a dismissal when you've done nothing but dismiss what I said repeatedly. I say the continent is a carbon sink, which I've actually seen statistics on (and this was just a straight report as I recall, not connected to anything in particular), yet you come back right away with a well-everyone-knows-it's-not? Heck, anyone with a little understanding of natural forces can give you an idea of the scale involved, and even after multiplying one average engine by 200 million and a fraction of a day, the scales don't come out even. North America is a very very big place and so are its forests, yet you're counting that out. Yet you call what I've been saying a dismissal? And you tell me that I misapply my stats. I can't prove that I'm appyling them properly, and you can't prove that I'm not. See above. Straight multiplication of any old figures you pick up can lead to badly mistaken results. Statistics are nuanced, more than you seem to realize, and not knowing that is why so many people accept junk science on its face instead of probing deeper for the truth. Sometimes the truth agrees, but sometimes it doesn't, and it's important not to confuse quick calculations for in-depth analysis. Lummox JR | |
I never once said that those cars were being driven every hour of every day. All I said was that there are 200 million cars being driven in North America.
You're going to have shorten up your posts, Lummox. I'm not going to spend 10 minutes reading every one. :( -Dagolar | |
You're going to have shorten up your posts, Lummox. I'm not going to spend 10 minutes reading every one. :( Here's exactly your problem... you don't see actual information as being valuable. Your whole argument consists of "Everyone knows we're ruining the environment" and you're getting whiny because Lummox is pulling out something a little more sophisticated then "Everyone knows we're not." Lummox isn't padding out his posts with anything unnecessary... if this were a simple issue, simple posts would suffice. If you're not willing (or more likely, able) to deal with his points, either admit where you're mistaken or just stop posting. Responding to legitimate points with "Gee, that was too long, so I won't read it." doesn't exactly do wonders for your credibility as someone who's read "lots of studies." | |
All I said was tighten it up a bit so I don't have to read another 6 paragraphs that could be summarized into less than 6 paragraphs. It's not a difficult request. If you can't do it, fine, leave it long, and I will read it.
Everyone knows we're ruining the environment. Did I really say that? Where did I say that? { :( -Dagolar | |
Dago wrote:
All I said was tighten it up a bit so I don't have to read another 6 paragraphs that could be summarized into less than 6 paragraphs. It's not a difficult request. If you can't do it, fine, leave it long, and I will read it. Actually it is a difficult request; you're asking me to summarize something practically to sound bytes, and that's why bad statistics get around to begin with. Countering a sound byte with another is just going to get us nowhere. My point is that statistics are more complicated than that, and can't be taken lightly. Lummox JR | |
Alright. Well I've been wandering around looking for stuff and here's a site I found and some info to go with it and some books that I have. Anyone can look at it and see what they think.
http://www.sierralegal.org/m_archive/bk02_02_15.html simple and crude deductions led me to speculate that there is something like 600-700 million tonnes of carbon dioxide given off by automobiles in North America each year. This is just automobiles. I have no idea how much all industrial processes give off in a year in North America. http://www.cals.wisc.edu/media/news/01_01/ northern_forest_fires.html This site gives some info on forest fire which I enjoyed reading. I think it boils down to that we both have a legimate point, Lummox. Forest fires, specifically wildfires, are a big contributor to C02 emissions in North America. Automobile emissions are an equally large contributor. Neither is worth setting aside, and automobile emissions are certainly not dwarfed by wildfire emissions. I think the big difference, however, is that it's a fair bit easier to lower emissions from automobiles than it is from wildfires. Check out the sites, see what you guys think, comment on them. -Dagolar | |
Dago wrote:
Alright. Well I've been wandering around looking for stuff and here's a site I found and some info to go with it and some books that I have. Anyone can look at it and see what they think. It's instructive to note that the Sierra Club is rabid in its pursuit of various ecological policies, and has relied on junk science before. It's unlikely that the figure is quite this high. However, this does at least fall within the region of plausibility, because as I mentioned earlier a study has said that North America outputs 1.6 billion tons per year (turns out those are metric tons too), while absorbing 1.7. http://www.climatechangedebate.org/pdf/FanPaper.pdf (found via Google) If both our figures are accurate, then cars output 37.5% to about 44% of total carbon dioxide emissions. The skeptic in me says that's probably on the high side, but I'm willing to accept this figure is a reasonable starting point. As Lexy mentioned, the torching of a forest also cuts down on the ability to consume carbon. To grossly simplify the analysis just for the sake of discussion, let's assume the current rate of fires is fairly stable and thus that the 1.7 billion figure I referenced is also fairly stable. Let's also assume for the sake of argument that forest fires make up only 40% of the total output, just as an educated guess. That means that if you were to reduce fires by half over the long term, You'd be cutting down that 1.6 billion figure to about 1.3, while the abrosbtion could go up to as high as, say, 1.8 or 1.9 billion tonnes a year. This is pure fancy; it partly illustrates the danger of running with statistics blindly, and partly illustrates the complexity of the systems involved, but it also makes a good superficial case for reducing forest fires as a first priority. http://www.cals.wisc.edu/media/news/01_01/ northern_forest_fires.html This site gives some info on forest fire which I enjoyed reading. I didn't actually find any statistics on fire's carbon output there, which would have been useful in the exercise above. I think it boils down to that we both have a legimate point, Lummox. Forest fires, specifically wildfires, are a big contributor to C02 emissions in North America. Automobile emissions are an equally large contributor. Neither is worth setting aside, and automobile emissions are certainly not dwarfed by wildfire emissions. Even with the statistics you've presented, it's not at all clear that cars are "an equally large contributor". At worst they seem to come close. I think the big difference, however, is that it's a fair bit easier to lower emissions from automobiles than it is from wildfires. Actually that's a fantasy. To lower car emissions requires increasing their cost to offset expensive design changes, while also convincing people to drive less; it's an uphill battle. Habits are hard to break, and the usual solution to this problem seems to be to just legislate tougher emissions standards--unfortunately you can't just legislate engineering problems away, and current standards are already butting up against reality. Wildfires, however, can be much easier to control--it's weird to say that but it's true. One of the reasons we had so many of them this summer was that poor ecological policies prevented the forest service from clearing underbrush that helped to feed the fires and spread them more rapidly. The quicker a fire can be contained, the smaller an area it will damage and the less impact it will have on the environment. It's possible to put a huge dent not only in the number of fires but also in the amount of damage they do; it's unfortunately just not possible to stop them completely. Lummox JR | |
Let's not forget all the "big" fires of 2002 were traced directly to individual people... someone who wanted to start a fire to earn money and glory fighting it, or people who improperly burned their trash.
Tell me it's easier to get even 20 million cars off the road then it is to not start a fire. | |
Well that's the bottom line in decision-making then, because economics is very prevalent in policy making.
Does it cost more to lower emissions on vehicles or to try (there are no guarantees there) to reduce the occurrence of forest fires? Whichever costs less in reducing emissions is the path that should be taken in this situation. The irony, of course, being that the increased temperature in the last century has created more forest fires... -Dagolar | |
Getting 20 million cars off the road is going to be a little difficult. :)
Might be easier to reduce emissions of the existing cars to be comparable to taking 20 million cars off the road. That's under a lot of debates now. -Dagolar | |
Dago wrote:
Well that's the bottom line in decision-making then, because economics is very prevalent in policy making. I agree, although who it costs is at least as importance as what it costs. The irony, of course, being that the increased temperature in the last century has created more forest fires... Careful there--it's a bad idea to put the cart in front of the horse. The biggest contributing factor to wildfires is simply drought. Temperature fluctuations would of course affect that, but the effect of temperature changes on rainfall patterns is largely unpredictable. Lummox JR | |
-Dagolar