Comments RHY has made

hallucinatory stuff / brainwashing

Tia Ghose - it always has and will be about drugs (or brainwashing). Without them, how could anyone in their right mind believe the most violent book ever written (have lost the stats on how many time `slay' `slew,' `slain,' `smite' . . . are used ) as the work of 'almighty?'

amazingdrx - Try, 'Thou shalt not bullsh*t thee!'On Off-topic thread of the day posted 1 year, 8 months ago 10 Responses

Carbon Neutral CTL?

If people can claim "carbon neutral" air travel, why can't China claim "carbon neutral" CTL?

China has an annual production capacity of 3.1 billion condoms and imports another 1.5 billion.

Assuming they could inflate the used ones to an average size of 10 liters, they would have an impressive 46 gigaliter capacity to store the unwanted CO2. On China kicks off the coal-to-liquids rush posted 1 year, 9 months ago 8 Responses

Carbon wingprint

I once asked David Suzuki two questions:

1. What his carbon "wingprint" was (he flies around like a butterfly telling people to stay carbon neutral),
   
2. Why he couldn't publish his books electronically to save a few trees.

Five billion dollar jackpot!

Thought the terrorists won when they received $5billion dollar plus payout from the 9 insurance companies!

Was the "hit-n-run" driver one of the beneficiaries?
On Reflections on death by SUV posted 1 year, 9 months ago 25 Responses

TSA*

@ JMG

Interesting point about TSA!

"it appears that these guys are not so dumb as to underestimate the total tourism emissions by a factor of three."

Dumb, politically motivated, jockeying for position, seeking rewards/recognition, carving a career path--so what's new?

"...I think it's incorrect to proceed from a quoted total emissions figure that is given in terms of total visitors by using a per visitor number.  That's fine for individual footprint calculators..."

The figure of 25 million tons of CO2e provided earlier takes into account the number of passengers and flights; it isn't from an individual footprint calculator (See  Transportation, Energy, and the Environment, Section A - U.S. Energy Consumption and Transportation Sector Energy Consumption, Table 4-21).

See:  http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc/aviation/index.htm [IPCC 1997. Intergovernmental panel on climate change. Aviation and the Global Atmosphere.]

@ scatter

The reply wasn't meant to be "smarmy!"

"If you read my post again I point out that the emissions should be split between the origin and destination country. It's hardly fair for all of the emissions to be lumped on NZ is it?"

This is a moral, as well as a legal, but especially a monetary issue. The emissions should be split according to the monetary gains made by various parties (the host country, airlines, aircraft manufacturers...). You'll find New Zealand is the major "beneficiary" by far!

The IPCC estimate for aircraft emissions' RFI ranges from 2-4, as you probably know already (not 1.9). Various carbon calculators use different RFI values: The Clean Air-Cool Planet calculator uses an RFI of 2.8, which is the appropriate factor; Native Energy uses a much lower RFI estimate of 2.0.  Check them out; you'd be surprised despite the conservative RFI. See:
http://www.nativeenergy.com/pages/native_energy_travel_of ...
AND http://www.iac.ethz.ch/tradeoff/index.html

You first wrote "they" said, then changed it to "my" calculation in a later post. Are you one of the authors? You have nothing to lose by submitting your calculations for a peer review on this forum.

@ Justlou

Air pollution is but one of the problems! Even if everyone could fly in on airships, or come over in canoes, imagine the enormous stress they'd still cause to the environment. Each year, for a few months, 2.4 million visitors swamp fragile areas of ecological significance driving, riding jet skis and power boats, bathing, eating and defecating in places where there's little or no infrastructure to absorb human waste, all of which ultimately ends up in our coastal waters enlarging the dead zones.  
On Tourism and carbon neutrality posted 1 year, 10 months ago 12 Responses

This is why it is a gross underestimate!

@ scatter

Ok, Einstein! Multiply your average of 6.6 tons by the 2.4 million visitors and see what you get. I bet you already exceed the professor's figure by 100 percent (6.6 tons of CO2e x 2.4 million visitors = 15.84 million tons of CO2e)!

Now add about 20 percent for the pollution cost of indirect flights and another 30 percent on top of that for the primary energy used to pump out, transport, process/refine and deliver the jet fuel and hey presto, you get pretty annoyingly close to 25 million tons of CO2e!

(15.84 million tons of CO2e + 20 % more emissions for indirect flights = 19 million tons of CO2e; 19 million tons + 30% additional emissions due to primary energy = 24.71 million tons of CO2e).

~~~~~~~~~~~~

@ justlou

"So, at what time does a one-earth consciousness vs. a global consumptionness kick in?"

Probably at 11:59:59pm, if ever! On Tourism and carbon neutrality posted 1 year, 10 months ago 12 Responses