The big picture continued, part 2

Now let’s continue to bring some things about the Earth into perspective. As we turn our focus to our little piece of the big picture, let’s first look at all the people. There are about 6,584,657,000 people on Earth today. Seems like a lot. The United States has only 301,462,000 people, which is about 4.6% of the world population. That leaves some 6,283,195,000 people on the rest of the planet. A lot of folks like to blame all the world’s problems on the USA. Of course what they are really doing is just picking out an easy target and diverting the real blame away from the actual source. More on that later.

For sake of argument, let’s have a big party in Rhode Island, the smallest of the 50 United States. It contains about 1,545 square miles of the Earth’s surface, but let’s break it down into about 43,072,128,000 square feet of land. To prepare for our big party, let’s plow it all over into a big flat spot, and then divide the ground into boxes that are 2.5 feet wide and 2.5 feet long. We’ll use one of them football field chalk line thingies and make a big chunk of grid work. Rhode Island should now be nothing but 6,891,540,480 little boxes. Don’t worry; when we’re done we can plant a big garden and lots of trees to help wash the environment free of carbon dioxide.

Now, invite everyone on the planet. It will probably take a couple trips to get them all in and there will be a long line at the bathroom, but when you place each and every person from the world population in one of our boxes in Rhode Island, you’ll find that they all fit with room to spare. Every last person on the planet comfortably standing in our smallest state. So, maybe that huge population number really isn’t as many people as we are lead to believe.

What I’ve been doing here and in my last article is making comparisons in such a way as to make things appear smaller within what I call the big picture. When politicians and many groups with a cause are trying to persuade the masses one way or the other, they will do the same thing, but make their comparisons the other way around so they appear bigger. It is often nothing more than a cheap parlor trick to fool the average person.

So, let’s try it. Let’s take all those people we have comfortably standing in Rhode Island and get them to start piling up on each other’s shoulders. We’ll go ahead and just turn off gravity to help out with this visualization. I don’t have the exact figure, but let’s just assume that the average height of all the people is 5 feet. Well, we’re standing on shoulders, so we’ll subtract all the heads and let’s just figure the average is 4 feet from shoulder to the feet. How tall will that be when everyone has piled on? Somewhere around 26,338,628,000 feet high. Can’t visualize that? Try 4,988,376 miles. Need something to grasp? This pile can reach to the Moon and back nearly 21 times!

Wow, you say? No kidding, that seems like a lot of people. But wait a second, isn’t this the same group of people we had just fit side-by-side into the smallest of the United States with room to spare? Yep. So if we want the world population to seem small, put them in Rhode Island, but if you want to claim overpopulation, stack them to the Moon. Are you starting to see how this works yet?

So let’s try one of the anti-oil environmentalist’s favorite parlor tricks. Back in 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez turned a bit too early when starting to navigate into the waters of Prince William Sound and hit a reef. Never mind that they were dodging ice bergs, that isn’t really important. Seriously, there were a lot of things that went wrong leading up to this accident, but fortunately humans have the ability to learn from mistakes and everything that went wrong was analyzed and solutions were developed. Today, such an accident to occur in Prince William Sound is quite impossible. But back to the oil spill.

When citing the size of the tanker and the size of the spill, everyone states those numbers in gallons. The tanker held 53,094,510 gallons of oil and about 11,000,000 gallons were spilled into the ocean. They also like to say “million”. The spill was over eleven MILLION gallons of nasty crude oil (a natural product that freely leaches up from out of the Earth, constantly “contaminating” our oceans from below and being naturally consumed by many biological organisms). Now, when talking about crude oil production figures, everyone states the quantity in barrels. For instance, the US produces about 5,178,000 barrels per day (2005 average), with about 800,000 barrels per day coming from Alaska’s North Slope fields. The standard measure for crude oil is the barrel, which is 42 gallons.

So, if you want the numbers to seem like a lot, just convert them to gallons. Want them to seem smaller, convert them to barrels. Let’s flip the numbers and see how it looks. The Exxon Valdez carried 1,264,155 barrels of oil and spilled about 261,905 barrels of oil, or about 21% of its cargo. Which sounds better when you’re trying to convince everyone that the oil company is evil: 11 million or 262 thousand? While the US production figures become 217,476,000 gallons per day, with about 33,600,000 gallons of that coming from the North Slope. Well, that makes the spill seem smaller and our production look larger doesn’t it?

So, let’s turn our attention to one of today’s great unit flipping statistic manipulations. Carbon dioxide and the great man-made “global warming” crisis. I pull my hair out every time I hear a talking head pounding on the podium about “tons of carbon dioxide” emissions. What is a ton of carbon dioxide? Seems like a big figure, yes? It is the carbon component of combustion that they are generally worried about. Most of the carbon is released with a couple oxygen atoms bound to it in the form of CO2. To get the biggest sounding number, they figure the “weight” of this gas using the atomic weights of all the atoms together and comparing it to the “weight” of the atmosphere at sea level. So you add the single carbon atom with the two oxygen atoms to come up with an atomic mass. Then apply some fancy math to the atmospheric pressure of 14.7 pounds per square inch and you have your tons of carbon emissions.

Humans have no perception of the weight of gasses in our atmosphere, so telling us about the tons of carbon emissions has no point of reference to the guy on the street. But we do know that a ton of a solid material is a lot, so our mind automatically compares this to create a visualization of a ton of carbon dioxide in the air. And it makes it seem like a lot. The first bait-and-switch they just did on you was adding the weight of the oxygen. This actually gives that carbon dioxide an atomic weight that is 3.67 times heavier than the carbon-based product that was burned to produce the CO2. So, by this theory, if you burn a ton of coal to make electricity, you just produced 3.67 tons of “carbon emissions”.

In the simplest of terms, burning something changes it from one compound into another, or several others. It is not possible to magically increase the amount of stuff you have by burning it. All the atoms that were involved in the burning process are still there at the end. They have been oxidized, resulting in the production of energy in the form of heat and light. Most burning involves a carbon-based compound where the carbon is oxidized, or combines with oxygen from the air. The density after combustion is considerably less, meaning the physical space occupied has increased significantly.

They always use the sea level atmospheric pressure because that will give you the biggest number when referencing weight. However, very little of our land mass is near sea level and the higher you go the less the atmospheric pressure. Coal burned in Denver would produce fewer tons of carbon emissions than the same amount of coal burned in New Orleans using their fuzzy math methods. But that is irrelevant to those who are trying to scare the public into believing the man-made global warming dooms day crisis.

Let’s try figuring this out in terms of volume. This would be quite difficult to figure because the density of the atmosphere changes greatly as we get further away from sea level. For sake of simplicity, we’ll take the theoretical average depth of the troposphere where the majority of the gasses are contained to be 7.5 miles thick. Now, the total volume of that region over the entire planet is very roughly 1,725,763,017 cubic miles of air. And this represents only about 60% of the total volume and mass of the entire atmosphere, but the upper regions do not concern us in this example. Make no mistake; they use the additional weight of the outer atmosphere when calculating how many tons of CO2 you are producing by burning an incandescent light bulb!

The average daily respiratory output of the human is 450L of CO2, which when you add up everybody means that the entire planet’s population produces 1 cubic mile of CO2 every 1.4 days just by breathing. Higher levels of physical activity will produce more CO2, which is a natural byproduct of cellular energy consumption. If you’ll let me play that one out for a second, if, as they claim, reduction of CO2 is the single most important thing, then we figure that lazy people produce less CO2 through lower activity and shorter life-spans, while physically active people produce more CO2 via higher energy use and longer life-spans, then we should also be looking at stopping people from being so active and living so long, right? Hey, just applying some of that Logic 201 stuff.

But that’s not my point, just a fun side note. The fact is, the CO2 produced by humans, even the entire range of animals covering the entire planet, is insignificant. Throughout a whole year, all of us together produce a mere 260 cubic miles of CO2. The real deal is that CO2 is 0.0383% of the composition of the air in our troposphere. That means there is about 66,096,724 cubic miles of CO2 in this region all the times, which is what we consider normal at this point in our planet’s history. Sounds like a lot, but remember it is only a tiny 0.0383% of the total volume of air. Compared to the 260 cubic miles we breathe out, we can’t even make a measurable impact. When considering the total atomic mass of our entire atmosphere (per figures published by NASA scientists), there is about 196,747,100,000,000 metric tons of CO2 in the atmosphere. Again, this is the normal amount, which goes through constant fluctuations, both up and down.

One well used environmentalist figure says each US automobile driver contributes 17,000 pounds of CO2 per year to “air pollution”. Again with the number thing trying to make it sound larger than it really is, convert that back to 7.7 tons, then compare that to the 197 TRILLION tons of CO2 normally present. The difference is so small that we can’t even begin to assign a percentage to it. Multiply it out among millions of cars and we still haven’t made a contribution to a measurable increase in the CO2 figures. And, don’t forget to subtract out what the Earth uses and converts back to oxygen and elemental carbon.

We must remember that CO2 is constantly being consumed by plants and produced by both animals and the Earth itself. A single volcanic eruption can produce more CO2 and other gasses that the EPA would call “air pollution” than all the man-made CO2 and pollution we have contributed to the air over the last 100 years. I have yet to hear a call for a ban on volcanoes and to shut down Yellowstone National Park by covering it with an air tight cap to keep all the CO2 in the ground. The fact is, the Earth cleans itself up just fine. The insignificant little humans covering that little spec of Rhode Island have no net effect on the overall composition of the huge atmosphere. We are truly self-centered egotists if we think we can affect the planet to a significant degree.

So how much CO2 do cars really put out? No one really knows. It is different for every car and every driver. Most studies use some very sketchy statistics to come up with these numbers. Usually it involves gasoline consumption and they reverse engineer the figures to guess how much carbon must have been released during the consumption of that gasoline. They don’t actually have a measure of how much CO2 is actually coming out the tailpipe of the world’s automobile population. And they don’t know what part of that made it up into the atmosphere, what part was used by plants, and what part fell back to the ground to rejoin carbon in the Earth’s crust.

The cry is for the government to force automobile makers to improve the fuel efficiency of all the cars. Thereby skipping over the actual problem and putting the blame squarely on the shoulders of an easy target. We do this a lot in today’s world. It is never our fault, always someone else’s fault. A current claim is that automakers need to improve mileage by 3 MPG and it will save the planet. Heck, I can fix that right here, right now without any involvement of the automakers at all.

It’s YOUR fault! Take your foot off the gas peddle knucklehead. The thing that really gets me about American drivers is how crappy you all are at driving safely and economically. I’m not just talking about common courtesy on the roads (which is non-existent). I’m talking about HOW you drive. People sitting at a stop light, light turns, every vehicle takes off like the proverbial bat out of hell, racing down the street. A block later every tail light is coming on as they all have to slow down to wait for the timing of the next light. That one changes, slam the gas peddle again and off we go for another block. The guy in front is only doing 10 MPH over the speed limit, so you have to pass him. It doesn’t matter that your turn off is only a mile away, you’ll gain 2 seconds of time by racing around that slow-poke. Arriving at the mall, you’ll circle for half and hour to find a parking spot that is 10 feet closer to the entrance than the first one you saw when you pulled in off the street. Spent an extra half-gallon of gasoline to save 3 seconds of walking; good for you, moron. Got your Greenpeace sticker on the bumper, too. Brilliant.

This is the FACT. If each and every one of you would leave earlier, slow down, have a little patience in your travel, and exercise some fine motor skill throttle control of your current vehicle, there would be no need for the automakers to fight over fuel efficiency. Here are a couple tips. Of course you want to start with keeping your vehicle properly tuned and in good working order, that should go without saying, but I find that I must clearly spell out what I consider to be common sense. Next, if you are in a rush to get somewhere, you will burn more gas. So plan ahead and leave earlier. Fuel efficiency of an internal combustion engine is inversely proportional to air temperature to some degree. Leaving for work earlier in the morning when it is cooler out and there is less traffic will decrease your fuel consumption significantly. Now, when you drive, take it slow and smooth. When the light turns, first take your foot off the brake and gently rest it on top of the gas peddle without applying any pressure. Do this while you are looking both ways to ensure cross traffic has stopped and there are no emergency vehicles coming. Now gently press down on the peddle with steadily, but slowly increasing pressure. Slowly bring the car up to the speed limit, and then hold it there. Drive at a smooth and steady speed. You should not be “pulsing” faster and slower with traffic. If you find that starting to happen, slow down and put more distance between vehicles.

The cold hard fact is that 90% of you, especially you suburbanites and city drivers, are the cause of higher fuel consumption simply because of the way you drive. Every vehicle is capable of getting better fuel mileage than the “sticker” says just by sensible operation. I always hear idiots complaining about how they bought this new such-and-such vehicle but it doesn’t get near the mileage the tag said it would. Then I see how these folks drive and have to say, no kidding you don’t get that mileage, lead foot. Duh! I drive a lot due to my work and I have tested my theories on this many times. Just by the way I drive and how hard I push on the gas peddle can change the fuel efficiency of a vehicle by up to 60%. I’ve measured it time and time again and know the numbers to be fact.

It’s not the government’s problem to force the automakers to fix our vehicles. It’s each and every person’s responsibility to educate themselves and learn how to drive correctly and efficiently. If there is anything the government should do, it should be to put driver’s education programs back into our high school curriculum so we can start teaching this stuff to our kids before they get on the road.

And that concludes today’s lesson. Check back tomorrow and we’ll look at solving another one.