| CO2 Emission Basics |
| Written by John Gabriel | |
| Tuesday, 26 October 2010 | |
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The term co2 emission is something that you may think you know something about. You know, it's one of those terms that we've heard so much about in the last few years that it has become almost second nature. You can barely watch the television for an hour without some reference or other to carbon dioxide. But you might not know as much as you think you do.
The term co2 emission is something that you may think you know something about. You know, it's one of those terms that we've heard so much about in the last few years that it has become almost second nature. You can barely watch the television for an hour without some reference or other to carbon dioxide. But you might not know as much as you think you do. You probably think it means, quite simply, any release of carbon into the air. Pop open a soda can - there's some there. Drive your car around, and you release carbon then too. fire up the BBQ grill and get the coals fired up - more co2 emission. In fact, carbon is just the beginning of the matter, but it's certainly not the end. Your emissions don't always come in the form of carbon. That's why, over the last few years, some new terms have come into the vernacular such as carbon footprint and greenhouse gas. Even if you could completely end all of your carbon based gases you would still be emitting other gases, many of which have even more profound impacts on the environment. These other greenhouse gases include things like methane, ozone and water vapor. We won't go into the whole ozone thing because it's confusing how we are trying to save as much of a greenhouse gas as possible, but there is a good explanation for that. And the water vapor thing is just wicked. Every time you breathe out you release it. Methane is released in scads by cows and elephants and - you, although you may try to hide it. So now you can begin to see just how all of those things begin to fit into the larger picture. it is virtually impossible for a single living organism to be low emission. There are so many things going on in energy transfers in any ecosystem from food production and digestion and decomposition that gas emissions are simply everywhere. You can't stop yourself for producing a co2 emission level of some kind or another. Every apple or orange in the store had to be picked and then transported (probably by a big diesel truck) to your store. The store has the lights on and the heater going to keep folks comfy. And don't fall back on those coal electricity plants. Even the windmills have to be made with steel and plastic and all kinds of oils and grease to keep them functional. So even zero emission energy production has a huge development carbon footprint. It's lower in the long run, but it still doesn't do anything about the steel mill emissions - and there really isn't much we can do about that and still have steel. So there is no getting away from it. You are simply going to have to resign yourself to the fact that you either have to go back to the stone age and use only dead animal skins to keep warm, or we need to get smart about all this carbon footprint stuff and find some ways to find huge new carbon sinks or mitigate large segments of industrial co2 emission processes. There are some alarmists out there who tend to portray the human, that's you, as an evil beast who can do nothing on the planet except consume and destroy. You might have gotten it into your head that the planet would just be so much better off if you were dead. Folks advocate for you to give up all kinds of things and talk about all sorts of drastic measures, moist of which probably won't work and none of which apply to them - only you. The truth of the matter is that there are simply enormous natural processes involved that we just don't know all that much about. Which means more study is needed, but centuries worth. Just two decades ago the alarmists were talking about the next ice age coming, and then it flipped in less than five years to global warming. Now it's just "climate change." We need to be good neighbors within our environment, but it doesn't mean we all have to give up our extended life expectancies and electricity to save the polar bears - if you believe they are in danger. Your co2 emission footprint is probably a lot bigger than you imagined. A lot of things you use and do generate gas directly or indirectly. And there isn't a clean solution for managing the greenhouse gases of billions of people. We have to take it one solution at a time, and why not think big? Efrac is committed to finding better carbon sinks that take it completely out of the air as well as mitigation methods to keep it from getting there in the first place. And we're not working on soda pop either. There are opportunities to remove millions of tons of co2, and that reduces your carbon footprint as well. You still need to do your part, but we don't have to give up all of our technology to have a cleaner planet, as a matter of fact, our technology might just save it. The Article Author: Efrac is working on finding new and innovative ways to mitigate co2 emissionlevels. To read more about what you can do to help visit efracsystems.com |
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