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"Little known" or "Made up on the spot"? The US motor vehicle fleet consumed 174,930 million gallons of fuel in 2006 according to http://www.infoplease.com/ipa

by mapt 13y ago

"Little known" or "Made up on the spot"? The US motor vehicle fleet consumed 174,930 million gallons of fuel in 2006 according to http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004727.html http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004727.html There are 308 gallons of fuel to the ton, in crude oil (somewhat different from gasoline, but not sufficiently different to care about) That's 567 million tons of fuel consumed by the US motor vehicle fleet per year. There are 370 million tons of bunker fuel consumed by the entire global shipping industry per year according to http://www.futuresmag.com/2012/10/15/cleartrade-exchange-to-list-bunker-fuel-swap-contr http://www.futuresmag.com/2012/10/15/cleartrade-exchange-to-... Only a tiny fraction of that industry is presently passing through the Panama Canal. Headlines: "Global Merchant Shipping Tonnage to Reach 12.4 Billion Metric Tons by 2015, According to New Report by Global Industry Analysts, Inc. " "...canal traffic in 2009 reached 299.1 million tons of shipping." The canal is much, much shorter than an average oceanic merchant shipping route, so an even lower fraction of ton-miles is spent on shipping through the canal. Transit times are on the order of 1 day (compare with a typical trip on a vessel slow steaming at 18 knots), so even if you assume they're running their engines full-blast inside the canal (they're not), this is still a tiny fraction of the above sum. Carbon emissions, in case you weren't paying attention in chemistry class, are normally about 85% of the mass of complex hydrocarbons (nC=12n, n2H=2n, +2H=2), so these quantities are almost directly comparable. Bunker fuel is indeed nasty stuff, but their carbon emissions are not particularly unique (nor are any hydrocarbon fuel's) - they do have more subtle sulfur and particulate air pollution.

kayoone 13y ago
Well i should have included some of my notes when posting this, as people were even arguing about the fact that the fuel is nasty, which it clearly is. Anyway: US carbon emissions from 2008 for Motor Gasoline: 1.135 BMT[1] Total worldwide shipping emissions: 1.12 BMT [2] And yes, its some nasty stuff they burn [3] [1] http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/carbon.html#transportation http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/carbon.html#transportatio... [2]http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/feb/13/climatechange.pollution http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/feb/13/climatech... [3]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-16-ships-create-pollution-cars-world.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-1...
- mapt 13y ago
  1) It seems we have this problem: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2008/03/25/202471/the-biggest-source-of-mistakes-c-vs-co2/ http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2008/03/25/202471/the-bigge... Carbon is easier here because it's a lot closer to 'tons of fuel burned'. 2) Aside from that, 'motor gasoline' does not count diesel fuel, which contributes to motor vehicle emissions through our well-developed trucking industry. 3) In re: [3], they're speaking of some very specific types of pollution. Pollution we systematically eliminated in automobiles decades ago and in trucks recently by improving the refinery process & selecting cleaner oil deposits to produce low-sulfur fuel, implementing catalytic converters and combustion feedback sensors, and just generally getting smart about how we burn things. Low-hanging fruit. We could have fixed this in bunker fuel if we'd wanted to by now. "Carbon pollution" is not like the other types of pollution. It's not a health issue, and it's not at all avoidable if you're using fossil fuels. If thermal efficiency is already up there, there is no reasonable way to reduce it in any sense, other than 'burning less'. It is also basically the same amount of carbon emissions per thermal output from coal to bunker fuel to gasoline (with slight improvements for natural gas). There's no 'cleaning things up'. 4) So... What on Earth were your original numbers supposed to indicate? Where did they come from?

by mapt 13y ago

kayoone 13y ago

Well i should have included some of my notes when posting this, as people were even arguing about the fact that the fuel is nasty, which it clearly is. Anyway: US carbon emissions from 2008 for Motor Gasoline: 1.135 BMT[1] Total worldwide shipping emissions: 1.12 BMT [2] And yes, its some nasty stuff they burn [3] [1] http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/carbon.html#transportation http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/carbon.html#transportatio... [2]http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/feb/13/climatechange.pollution http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/feb/13/climatech... [3]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-16-ships-create-pollution-cars-world.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-1...

mapt 13y ago
1) It seems we have this problem: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2008/03/25/202471/the-biggest-source-of-mistakes-c-vs-co2/ http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2008/03/25/202471/the-bigge... Carbon is easier here because it's a lot closer to 'tons of fuel burned'. 2) Aside from that, 'motor gasoline' does not count diesel fuel, which contributes to motor vehicle emissions through our well-developed trucking industry. 3) In re: [3], they're speaking of some very specific types of pollution. Pollution we systematically eliminated in automobiles decades ago and in trucks recently by improving the refinery process & selecting cleaner oil deposits to produce low-sulfur fuel, implementing catalytic converters and combustion feedback sensors, and just generally getting smart about how we burn things. Low-hanging fruit. We could have fixed this in bunker fuel if we'd wanted to by now. "Carbon pollution" is not like the other types of pollution. It's not a health issue, and it's not at all avoidable if you're using fossil fuels. If thermal efficiency is already up there, there is no reasonable way to reduce it in any sense, other than 'burning less'. It is also basically the same amount of carbon emissions per thermal output from coal to bunker fuel to gasoline (with slight improvements for natural gas). There's no 'cleaning things up'. 4) So... What on Earth were your original numbers supposed to indicate? Where did they come from?