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To: umgud
The number I hear all the time from the global warming crowd is a gallon of gas makes 22 lbs of CO2. Now a gallon of gas is aprox. 6 lbs. So how can 6 lbs make 22 lbs, even if a gallon of gas is all carbon it can not happen. Oh, and the air that gets burned with that gallon of gas is aprox. .038% CO2.

If my thinking is wrong, someone please explain it in a way I can understand.

57 posted on 03/16/2008 8:36:25 PM PDT by Veloxherc (To go up pull back, to go down pull back all the way.)
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To: Veloxherc
If my thinking is wrong, someone please explain it in a way I can understand.

Sure:

Human activity does not cause global warming. Don't even bother to argue the details of CO2 because the moment you do, you've admitted the absurd and untrue basis for their arguments.

59 posted on 03/16/2008 8:42:53 PM PDT by Content Provider
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To: Veloxherc
So how can 6 lbs make 22 lbs, even if a gallon of gas is all carbon it can not happen. Oh, and the air that gets burned with that gallon of gas is aprox. .038% CO2.

In the basic hydrocarbon combustion formula, hydrogen from the fuel is burned with Oxygen from the atmosphere to form water. At the same time, the carbon in the fuel combines with oxygen in the atmosphere to form carbon dioxide. In a jet engine, the air to fuel ratio is roughly 60 to 1, so for every unit of fuel, you are also using 60 units of air, but you get that free from the atmosphere.

HC+O2=Heat+H2O+CO2

As you can see from the above simplified equation, every carbon molecule in the fuel gets combined with two oxygen molecules from the atmosphere and gets spit out the back of the jet engine as carbon dioxide.

The atomic weight of carbon is 12 and oxygen is 16, so for every carbon atom in the fuel, you create a carbon dioxide molecule that weighs 44 atomic units. That ratio 12 to 44 is close enough to the article's claims of 140 tons of fuel and 329 tons of CO2 to know that we're at least in the ballpark with our simplified equations.

Same goes for your automobile. You're gulping a heck of a lot more air through the air filter (thus more mass) than you are sucking from the gas tank.

Therefore the weight of the tailpipe emissions is much more than the weight of the gasoline used.

84 posted on 03/17/2008 10:12:13 AM PDT by Yo-Yo (USAF, TAC, 12th AF, 366 TFW, 366 MG, 366 CRS, Mtn Home AFB, 1978-81)
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