Calculate Your Ecological Footprint

Originally Posted by Xaccers

The spent fuel can be recycled, and any remaining waste can be launched into the sun, or to the moon. It will seriously reduce the greenhouse affect.

How much energy does it take to launch a pound of payload out of the Earth's gravitational well? (And, more to the point, it also currently costs around $10,000 for each pound.)

How much pollution will that rocket cause?

And what happens if the lauch goes wrong? Bang! Oops, a nice radioactive shower for someone's country...!

Of course as soon as we can we should move to fusion reactors and shut down the fission reactors.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to decommission a fission reactor? And are you going to lauch all that material into space too?

[Jerrek]

YOUR RESULTS:
Food Footprint 0.6 hectares or 1.5 acres
Transportation Footprint 5.4 hectares or 13.4 acres
Housing Footprint 1.3 hectares or 3.2 acres
Other Footprints 2.7 hectares or 6.7 acres

Total Footprint per person 10 hectares or 24.8 acres

IN COMPARISON:

Your Eco-Footprint measures 98.5 % of an average American Footprint.



5% set aside

That comes to 5 earths.


Hmm. Before everyone jumps up and down over my transportation thingy, I fly on average 100 to 150 hours a year because I find it relaxing and it is my hobby. Now I put down 100 hours a year in a commercial jetliner, but there is a difference between a jetliner and my single engine Cessna that I fly.

Second, I used the housing footprint of my family. I don't expect to have a 4,000 sq. ft. house for a few years.

I do want a 4,000 or 5,000 sq. feet house though. Anything smaller is stupid. And yes, we have the space to spare.

Lastly, it seems my food "print" is much smaller than most of you folks... Probably because 60% of my diet is raw green leafy vegetables (romaine lettuce, kale, swiss chard, etc.) and the remaining part is mostly other vegetables and fruits and nuts.

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by Graham

How much energy does it take to launch a pound of payload out of the Earth's gravitational well? (And, more to the point, it also currently costs around $10,000 for each pound.)

How much pollution will that rocket cause?

And what happens if the lauch goes wrong? Bang! Oops, a nice radioactive shower for someone's country...!



Do you have any idea how difficult it is to decommission a fission reactor? And are you going to lauch all that material into space too?

Don't use SRB's like the shuttle, just use hydrogen/oxygen rockets.
And you're thinking of using today's technology, when it will be tomorrow's that will be around when the time comes.
As for the cost, what price are you willing to pay to make a drastic change to the green house emissions?
Isn't reducing carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide pollution worth it? Not to mention all the other nasty carconogenic chemicals which are spewed out from fossil fuel power stations.
Renewable resouces like solar or wind cannot make enough of an impact into our energy and pollution reduction needs, partly through NIMBYs and partly because things like wind turbines produce more pollution in their production than they can save during their lifetime.

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by Jerrek

Lastly, it seems my food "print" is much smaller than most of you folks... Probably because 60% of my diet is raw green leafy vegetables (romaine lettuce, kale, swiss chard, etc.) and the remaining part is mostly other vegetables and fruits and nuts.

And you spend 150hrs a year in a sealed vehicle with recycled air?
Your other passengers must love you

(darn we need a "passing wind smilie")

Originally Posted by Xaccers

Don't use SRB's like the shuttle, just use hydrogen/oxygen rockets.

And where does the hydrogen and oxygen come from? Water, sure, but it needs to be purified and electrolysis-ised (or whatever!) and that needs energy and generating energy generates heat as does burning hydrogen and oxygen.

And you're thinking of using today's technology, when it will be tomorrow's that will be around when the time comes.

You hope... (So do I, but nobody can say when a breakthrough will come)

As for the cost, what price are you willing to pay to make a drastic change to the green house emissions?

Like shooting Dubya and his pals, you mean?! (Into space, before anyone gets upset about me proposing assassination attempts!! )

I agree we need to stop messing up the planet, but such changes *HAVE* to come from the top down. There's no point in you or I saving a little here or there if other governments and industries are doing their damndest to ignore the problem entirely.

[Jerrek]

Originally Posted by Xaccers

And you spend 150hrs a year in a sealed vehicle with recycled air?
Your other passengers must love you

(darn we need a "passing wind smilie")

OFF TOPIC

Improper combination of foods cause excessive gas that your body cannot deal with. I don't eat food that will rot inside my body and cause obnoxious fumes. (put an egg, or a steak, or some cheese in an enclosed box in the sun when it is 37 degrees outside, and open it after 8 hours. not pleasant, eh?) I don't smell.

[Jerrek]

Originally Posted by Xaccers

Don't use SRB's like the shuttle, just use hydrogen/oxygen rockets.
And you're thinking of using today's technology, when it will be tomorrow's that will be around when the time comes.
As for the cost, what price are you willing to pay to make a drastic change to the green house emissions?
Isn't reducing carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide pollution worth it? Not to mention all the other nasty carconogenic chemicals which are spewed out from fossil fuel power stations.
Renewable resouces like solar or wind cannot make enough of an impact into our energy and pollution reduction needs, partly through NIMBYs and partly because things like wind turbines produce more pollution in their production than they can save during their lifetime.

Plant trees. Don't worry about emissions. Plant lots and lots of trees. Line every street with trees. Every highway and freeway. Every neighborhood. Plant trees on top of buildings. Trees are wonderful things.

Originally Posted by Jerrek

Trees are wonderful things.

You can even talk to them...!!

<Sings> I talk to the trees, but they don't talk to me...!

[Jerrek]

I talk to my plants when I water and clean them.

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by Graham

And where does the hydrogen and oxygen come from? Water, sure, but it needs to be purified and electrolysis-ised (or whatever!) and that needs energy and generating energy generates heat as does burning hydrogen and oxygen.

Use the energy from the nuclear power stations
That's the nice thing about using H2/O2 as a fuel, you start with water, reduce (I'm using the chemical term reduce here) the hydrogen using electrolysis storing the oxygen too, then you oxidise the hydrogen out of the bottom of the rocket and get loads of water again.

Originally Posted by Graham

You hope... (So do I, but nobody can say when a breakthrough will come)

Well if we don't go for space, we can always send it to the sea bed, it's not like it's going to float to the surface!
The cost of decomissioning is apparently less than 5% of the total electricity generation costs according to the Wold Nuclear Association.

Originally Posted by Graham

Like shooting Dubya and his pals, you mean?! (Into space, before anyone gets upset about me proposing assassination attempts!! )

I agree we need to stop messing up the planet, but such changes *HAVE* to come from the top down. There's no point in you or I saving a little here or there if other governments and industries are doing their damndest to ignore the problem entirely.

Definitely agree.
The politicians can't spend anymore time faffing about undecided.
They need to actually do something.
Show people how safe the new nuclear power stations are.
The problem is, nuclear scares people, they don't understand that waste from a nuclear powerstation can be dealt with more safely than a fossil burning powerstation, where the waste flows out into the atmosphere and causes global warming along with acid rain.
Both produce nasty pollution, but at least with nuclear we can keep it contained and if some does leak the global environmental impact is much smaller than CO2 etc.
If possible convert any oil or coal burning power stations to gas (don't know if it can be done), it will help a little until they're no longer needed.
Encourage people to use low energy light bulbs. Did you know that a 2p increase in fuel does less for the environment than making everyone use at least one low energy light bulb, but costs the public so much more?

Originally Posted by Jerrek

I talk to my plants when I water and clean them.

"I talk to the trees...that's why they put me away..."

- Eccles - The Goon Show

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by Jerrek

Plant trees. Don't worry about emissions. Plant lots and lots of trees. Line every street with trees. Every highway and freeway. Every neighborhood. Plant trees on top of buildings. Trees are wonderful things.

Another really good idea.
Trees soak up carbon dioxide while they're growning.
But you have to chop them down once they've grown and store them somewhere where the CO2 which is releaced when they decompose isn't released back into the atmosphere.
For instance, the rain forrest, so called lungs of the world, actually has a net CO2 absorbsion of about 0. That is, it produces through decomposition about as much as it absorbs. Now if we could prevent the re-release of the CO2 we'd have a fantastic CO2 sink.

Build roads. May sound daft, but they absorbe CO2 for a considerable amount of time.
Remember the biosphere 2 experiment? They abandoned it because they couldn't figure out where the oxygen was going?
It was going into the concrete of the structure.
They'd messed up their soil cultures a bit, having too much bacteria, producing too much CO2 and taking in loads of oxygen in the process. Some of this CO2 was absorbed by the concrete, so the net oxygen levels dropped.
Course you should cycle on the road once you've built it

[SMHarman]

YOUR RESULTS:
Food Footprint 2.2 hectares or 5.4 acres
Transportation Footprint 4.1 hectares or 10 acres
Housing Footprint 2.3 hectares or 5.6 acres
Other Footprints 3.1 hectares or 7.8 acres

Total Footprint per person 11.7 hectares or 28.8 acres

Hence, it requires 6.1 Earths to support each member of the present human population at your standard of living.

My transport footprint is huge having an American wife and the twice yearly+ trips to see family in the US.

[MovedGoalPosts]

119.8% of an average american - And it's supposed to be the Yanks who are the planet's evil dooers

There was me thinking I was quite green, doing the recycling bits, switching off unwanted lights and all that.

Apparently it needs 6.4 earths to support my standard of living. But I'm still here so thats either gotta be a load of tosh, or perhaps that's why Africa is starving ?