Is global warming really caused by human activity? Use the calculator below and take your own conclusions!
Calculator based on the excellent article by Thomas Murphy: Recipe for Climate Change.
The three main sources of human CO2 atmospheric emissions and their associated intensities, i.e., how much CO2 each emits to the atmosphere per unit of energy produced:
Source | Reaction | CO2 intensity |
---|---|---|
Coal | C (1 g) + O2 (2.7 g) → CO2 ( g) + kcal | g/kcal |
Natural gas | CH4 (1 g) + 2O2 (4 g) → 2H2O (2.25 g) + CO2 ( g) + kcal | g/kcal |
Gasoline | C8H18 (1 g) + 12.5O2 (3.51 g) → 9H2O (1.42 g) + 8CO2 ( g) + kcal | g/kcal |
This is important so we can later correlate each energy source with world's current power production (see next section).
Here we find out how much CO2 is released to the atmosphere due to human activities.
We start by stating how much energy is produced yearly by our civilization:
PWh |
Source | Share | Power (PWh) | CO2 amount (Pg) |
---|---|---|---|
% | X PWh | Y Pg | |
% | X PWh | Y Pg | |
% | X PWh | Y Pg |
Total amount of CO2 emitted: ×1012 kg |