The Oil Drum | DrumBeat: April 2, 2008

290 comments on DrumBeat: April 2, 2008

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AlanfromBigEasy on April 2, 2008 - 9:25am

Test on Carbon Footprint

http://www.earthlab.com/signupprofile/ecp.htm?ver=9&postredir=false

Best Hopes for a Low Score,

Alan

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theantidoomer on April 2, 2008 - 9:34am

I got a 276. Not bad eh?

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mehdirah on April 2, 2008 - 9:53am

267 :-) Who makes better

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m005e on April 2, 2008 - 10:49am

MY SCORE 263 8.5
WINDHAM 312 12.8
VERMONT * 328 13.4
UNITED STATES 354 15.2
WORLD 339 14.1

I am filled with moral rectitude!

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olepossom on April 2, 2008 - 11:47am

I was 211, with about 30 of that coming from air travel. They do not have an option for GSHP on heating and cooling, and the thermostat setting did not specify summer or winter. The two are different, of course, and it should be pegged to your electicity/natural gas consumption. I have taken all sorts of different tests on carbon footprints, and they all differ in amounts. "Buying local" for groceries means one thing when you still eat fresh strawberries from the Southern Hemisphere in November, versus eating in season, from what comes out of your backyard, or local farmer's market.

I do not see how my carbon footprint is lower than the world's carbon footprint, or that Vermont's average is lower than the world's average. I assume that this is on a per captia basis.

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Will Stewart on April 2, 2008 - 12:35pm

212/5.1

Living in a passive solar, PV-powered home certainly helps, along with recycling, etc, though 3 bedrooms with family seems to bump it up.

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weatherman on April 2, 2008 - 2:02pm

Shouldn't we be worrying more about peak oil/gas/coal than this warming stuff. After all where I live we have had 2 days of spring weather so far, and it's april. I see Canada and the Northern US are still snowbound.

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shargash on April 2, 2008 - 2:06pm

Yeah, lets wait till summer and then worry about this warming stuff, at least until it is winter again, when we won't have to worry any more.

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weatherman on April 2, 2008 - 2:15pm

it's April. Shoulden't the US and Canada be thawing out by now? Scandanavia seems a bit late with spring as well. Spring seems late everywhere.

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ChrisN on April 2, 2008 - 2:20pm

As I discuss in my Part 3 article today, this is the coldest winter since 2001 worldwide...

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fleam on April 2, 2008 - 6:42pm

Was in the low 20s this morning and this is Arizona!

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jokuhl on April 2, 2008 - 6:22pm

"Shouldn't we be worrying more about peak oil/gas/coal than this warming stuff."

Please write
"Weather doesn't equal climate.." 500 times, and then clean the chalkboard.

Luckily, we get to worry about BOTH. We don't have to choose.

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NZSanctuary on April 2, 2008 - 8:43pm

I suggest s/he also write "The US and Canada does not equal the world..." 500 times after that.

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PaulS on April 2, 2008 - 10:23pm

Weather isn't climate, yes, quite so, but this US-and-Canada thing, I dunno. China is a huge landmass too and they had big, well-publicized record-setting problems this year, and that extended on west through Iran. That leaves only the micro-countries of Europe, where, IIRC, on the whole it was warm-ish. Then there's the Southern Hemisphere, but there's precious little land (outside of Antarctica) that has much of a winter (in almost all inhabited places, the average low in the coldest month seems to be over freezing.) So there's no significant sample to go on. No matter what happens in the very, very few inhabited areas that do have real winter, one can always attribute it to a localized effect perhaps caused by a high or a low parking somewhere for a while, which after all does happen now and again.

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NZSanctuary on April 3, 2008 - 8:48pm

What!?!

1) The sea has more say about average global temperature than land mass.

2) Average global temperature is average global temperature. Ignore some cherry picked countries - even if they are big.

3) And what has winter got to do with average global temperature? Winter and summer happen at the same time on this planet.

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super390 on April 2, 2008 - 2:30pm

The people who are scoring lowest are generally the ones contributing least to Peak Fossil Fuels. Conservation helps both causes.

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nick2w on April 2, 2008 - 5:57pm

201

As the price of fuels is asked for in $/euros Im sure that discriminates against europeans. In the Uk we are paying about 20c per kwh for electric and 0.47c per kwh equivalent for gas. Shame it doesnt give you the option of actually putting in usage figures

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tompaah7503 on April 3, 2008 - 4:48am

Yup. I have no idea what electricity costs in the US, or if the calculator even counts on the ever-depreciating dollar value.. Would be better if you could put your actual usage there, not the amount paid for it (I use about 990kWh/year at home).

My score was 165 and carbon output 1.4 tons.

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Undertow on April 3, 2008 - 8:30am

0.47c per kwh equivalent for gas.

Don't know what you meant to type but that's just not right. See UK Gas and Electricity Prices

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whaleoil on April 2, 2008 - 11:23am

234! Always knew I was a cheap bastard.

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had3z on April 2, 2008 - 9:46am

screw that.
i got something against forms that require a zip-code and e-mail, just to let you take a test.

information wants to be free :P

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AlanfromBigEasy on April 2, 2008 - 10:13am

I had a typo in that section.

The score means little (IMHO), I was interested in the tons of carbon (6.7 tons in my case, mostly flying).

I do not compost, but I have little to compost and no need in my neighborhood, do I lost out there,

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River on April 2, 2008 - 10:23am

My score was 2...but I cheated. Had I not cheated my score would have been 7...if I wasn't a liar.

Actually I have printed up a vast number of carbon credits and awarded them to...myself. If I apply a few of my carbon credits my score is a minus number.

Before I am jumped on for my somewhat questionable carbon credits I would like to point out that I am only following the lead of some governments. Besides, Cheney has said that my way of life is not negotiable...He is my roll model. Tomorrow I will take my shotgun and try to scare up a covey of lawyers.

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AlanfromBigEasy on April 2, 2008 - 10:58am

Good hunting !

BTW, isn't it a "swarm" of lawyers ?

Best Hopes for Renewable Resources, Like Lawyers,

Alan

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River on April 2, 2008 - 11:20am

I was thinking of quail. Swarm does seem more appropriate for a bunch of lawyers. Maybe 'plague of lawyers' would be even better? Something from the Old Testament seems appropriate.

Best hopes for lawyer repellent in a spray can...

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sgage on April 2, 2008 - 11:52am

A slime of lawyers?

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WNC Observer on April 2, 2008 - 1:58pm

A deposition of lawyers, maybe?

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Yohahn on April 2, 2008 - 2:39pm

How about a "murder" of lawyers? They use that for crows.

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Dryki on April 2, 2008 - 3:02pm

A "murder" of lawyers, like a murder of crows

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theantidoomer on April 2, 2008 - 10:39am

I kind of have an issue with the tons of carbon number. How does this determine if you flew 4000 miles on a 100 seat jet or a 500 seat jet? Wouldn't your carbon usage be split among the number of passengers? Determined by the efficiency of the plane?

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what the curtains on April 2, 2008 - 11:19am

MY SCORE 161 1
My City 286 10.9
WASHINGTON * 302 11.5
UNITED STATES 354 15.2
WORLD 339 14.1

The only things I can see that I'm doing to contribute to such a low score are walking to work and living in a tiny little 400 sq foot house (with another person).

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kjmclark on April 2, 2008 - 11:49am

Using four people in the house, we're at 223. However, that doesn't give us any credit for all the trees we plant or the charcoal we put in the soil. Our electric use is $66/month, which fits between 50 and $75 so I had to use the higher number. If I use $50 a month it calculates a 216, so the real number is around 220.

The real question - what do we have to get it down to? The answer is something negative. I just hope we're planting enough trees.

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Ammond on April 2, 2008 - 12:15pm

RE: Test on Carbon Footprint Scores

My scores: ECP of 501 and carbon output is 26.1 tons per year. Do I win?? B^)

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ET on April 2, 2008 - 12:29pm

196 hrummph! (mostly thanks to a mate who can skin the white off the rice, and being retired)

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earldaily on April 2, 2008 - 12:54pm

292
misleading considering the fact I produce local food and have carved out a niche of building solar spaces onto existing homes.

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sgage on April 2, 2008 - 1:21pm

267 here, and I was as honest as I could be. I heat primarily with wood that I put up myself from my own woodlot, using a horse for the pulling, so it's basically all renewable. Solar, if you think about it. But there was no entry for wood in the heating question! Oh well. We do have an oil furnace for extra cold times and going away, so I just put in oil. Maybe I should have put in solar.

I would suspect my biggest hit was my truck - I gotta have a pickup truck out here. And where I live means absolutely zero chance of walking/biking/mass-transiting anywhere. Just not gonna happen.

But the exact scores are not as important as at least understanding and thinking about what the variables are - just like with the "footprint" quizzes you can find on the web.

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