Formula One: Green quotes

...any research to improve that racing engine would have to be directly relevant to research to improve fuel efficiency in road cars... actually contribute something to society rather than yearly sterile research for another 200-300rpm from a fixed-capacity engine.

FIA President Max Mosley on the motor sport's brand new focus on fuel economy


The entire fuel bill and the carbon burn for the entire formula one world championship season is less than one 747 taking off for one flight.

Steve Slater
Formula One commentator


Jenson Button's Earth Car (the green Honda) will emit 50 tonnes of carbon this formula one season, five times higher than the average Briton produces in 12 months.

Guardian sport

Although the messages may be a little confusing for now, something green is brewing in F1. Great news indeed for conservation.

World public opinion on global warming

WorldPublicOpinion.org recently conducted a poll to split hairs over what people thought about global warming.

The poll was conducted in 17 countries—China, India, USA, Indonesia, Russia, Thailand, Ukraine, Poland, Iran, Mexico, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Argentina, Peru, Israel and Armenia. These represent more than 55 percent of the world population.


The results were not unexpected. About 12-13% of people in the US and China think global warming is not an important threat compared to only 4-5% of South Koreans and Australians who felt the same way. Surprisingly 70% of Mexicans believe the problem is critical compared to the USA's 46%.

On the need to take action, Indians were the least supportive with 24% feeling that unless we are sure that global warming is really a problem, we should not do anything that would cost money. On the other hand, Australians seems the most concerned with 69% saying something should be done now even if the costs are significant.

The study does affirm that although there are dissenters, an overwhelming majority in the countries polled believe global warming is a problem that needs to be addressed. But the data also shows that the protection of economic interests may prove to be a wet blanket with developing countries like the Philippines (49%), Thailand (41%), Poland (39%), Ukraine (37%) and India (30%) leading the way on "going slow".

Graphic source: here.
Read the detailed srticle here.

Beating global warming: An Australian perspective

FIRST

We must accept the reality that information on environmental issues and global warming issues are being manipulated by skilful public relation gurus to maintain the sales of fossil carbon based fuels and products.

SECOND

We remove the excess carbon dioxide from our atmosphere. We do this by modifying our agricultural practices to enhance the buildup of soil organic matter.

THIRD

For large-scale industrial power generation, we switch from a system primarily based on fossil fuels, to a system primarily based on nuclear fuels. It is both the only feasible option, and the safest.

FOURTH

For our mobile transport fuels we switch totally to ethanol and biodiesel produced from sugarcane and grains, and oil palms and oil seeds. That’s for cars, trucks, busses, ships and aeroplanes. Source.

The article is a long read but if you can put aside some of its diatribes, you might find some practical suggestions on what an agro-commercial society can do.

And since Malaysia wants to go big into that space with our palm oil and stuff, an alternative view into the practice of large-scale organic farming could be insightful.
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Carbon footprint calculators

A carbon footprint calculator asks questions about your lifestyle and consumption habits and calculates how much carbon dioxide you produce annually.

Why bother knowing your carbon footprint?

Good question. The answer is if you really want to reduce global warming, start at home. Know how many tons of greenhouse gases you are personally dumping into the atmosphere. Then choose how you want to cancel those effects (to be covered in later articles).

Here's a few calculators I found on the net.

1. Carbonfootprint.com Calculator
2. WRI Calculator
3. An Inconvenient Truth Calculator
4. Junkscience Calculator
5. BP Calculator
6. Carboncalculator.co.uk

My only issue with carbon calculators is that many were written for western audiences and tend to categorize usage around American or European peculiarities. Some calculators for example only work if you provide a valid US zip code or they ask you to choose car models only found in that country.

We're seeing the same harebrainedness found during the baseball world series where the 'world' is defined as Florida, New York, California, etc.

Anyway given the seriousness of the situation, I hope someone will come up with a calculator that's more applicable to Asian audiences soon.

What is Carbon neutrality

What does it mean when someone goes carbon neutral?

It means the person emits no net carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The principle is similar to a balanced budget. If you must spend X dollars, to keep your head above water you better make sure you recover that X dollars somewhere.

With this simple idea, if you're able to calulate the amount of carbon you produce from your lifestyle in a year, you can make up for what you used (called an offset) by doing a number of things.

The simplest is tree planting. A tree can soak up a ton of Co2 in its lifetime. Another way is to contribute money to energy conservation projects or to those that generate energy from renewable sources.

Lets do a quick example. Lets say using a carbon footprint calculator (one example here) I learn that I produce 10 tons of Co2 a year. I have 2 choices,

a) sponsor the planting of 10 trees to absorb that much Co2, or

b) donate money to a hospital for them to install energy devices like solar water heaters to prevent electricity usage that would have otherwise produced 10 tons of Co2.

Its not an exact science and hospitals in apathetic countries will laugh you out the door but you get the idea.

In countries that do take their carbon neutrality seriously, businesses are already offering people a way to live carbon neutral lives by offering "carbon credits" for sale. See examples here and here to understand how they work.

The main point is that if you must pollute, you should do something to allow that amount of pollution to be absorbed or better yet, prevent its production somewhere on this planet. If everybody does this, then in theory we will have a 'balanced carbon account' i.e. no net gain of Co2 produced by human activity.

Read this, this and this to get a better understanding of carbon neutrality.

Carbon stats: How do we fare with our neighbours?

Got these off the net. All stats are per capita up to 2001/2002.




Source: http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_coun.htm

Of the three, it looks like we are the highest emitters of Co2 per head. However I feel the data should be compared with GDP or something to get a balanced picture as countries with different population & industry mixes may have different emission profiles.

I omitted Singapore precisely because of this.

Calculate your carbon footprint

This table is extracted from an article by George Barnwell about how much carbon dioxide you're dumping into the atmosphere, the main component of greenhouse gases. And that's from electrical appliances alone. Read his short article here. Note that 1 pound is equivalent to 0.453kg.

If you're interested in the bigger picture, try out BP's Carbon Footprint Calculator and see for yourself what your carbon footprint is.


Mine is 6 tonnes a year, lower than the Singapore average of 8.38. Woohoo!

And if you're wondering what a tonne of CO2 is like, read this, also from the BP site.



Aren't numbers painful :)