3,275 lb = 1,489 kg
950 lbs = 432 kg
1,600 lbs = 727 kg

I did not check this claim because every CO2 calculator is a little different, but they’re generally close enough that an approximation like this should suffice to give you an idea of how much CO2 we’re talking about here. As for giving some meaning to the totals, here are some statements you can make from the CO2 conversion of 12 kg CO2 absorbed per tree per year:

- The meat portion of the average American diet has a carbon footprint equivalent to that of 128 trees to offset for that year.

- Cutting red meat with fish, eggs and poultry will let 36 trees offset CO2 from other sources during the year.

- Going vegetarian will let 61 trees offset CO2 from other sources during the year.

If you would like to try out a CO2 calculator, may I recommend the two at right in the Links menu, which were from American Forests and the US Climate Technology Cooperation Gateway, with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and others. I will write an article on this later but I think you’d still get an experience of interest to just go there and fiddle around if you’ve never tried out one of these things.

If you can find dietary information as to how the diet of the average person in your geographical domain is compared to the average American, just as a ballpark figure, you can adjust the calculation by that factor. If you know yourself for your life, even as an approximation, you can also make the adjustment to your life for your own knowledge.

This was in tribute to the United Nations’ World Food Day on Oct 16 2007 which I had missed because I had not known about it. [Envirostats author]

- Courtesy of Cynthia Hubert in the Sacromento Bee, via Scrippsnews due to protected subscription sign-in requirements at the former, Oct 15 2007

News scoop from the Independent, saying a confidential report produced for the International Marine Organization (IMO) by Intertanko, the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners, just showed the new headline statistic that was way over what the IMO had been going on all this time, as was suspected by other sources I had quoted in Stat 0468. However, I have gone back to correct Stat 0468 so that information is fine now, on Oct 18 2007, that this report came out as per the story by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

Part of the reason is because the shipping industry has grown by an average of 4.5% annually since 2001. That’s compound growth so multiply by 1.045 six times.

Lots of other good information is in the source article, like how shipping emissions have avoided politics this far because it has sounded sustainable (and is relatively speaking in transporting 90% of the world’s goods), but can be a LOT more sustainable due to the fuels used, to be seen in near future updates, if Stat 0175 didn’t already tell you a few things already. There was also a fact about how ship pollution plumes can be at least 1,000 miles long. That’s pollution!

I love being up to date and also being updated! [Envirostats author]

- The Independent, Oct 10 2007

Please note that each of these comparisons are individual and not cumulative, so that the comparison is to Canada, or each of all but six countries in the world, or the aviation industry, etc. and not their combined totals.

This statistic has been updated to reflect the Intertanko report mentioned due out in Stat 0470 that did eventually come out on Oct 19 2007, documented here by the BBC. 

Conventional pollutants from ship engines also contribute other pollution, like how shipping contribute 50% of the smog-related sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions in the greater Los Angeles area, according to Peter Greenwald, a senior policy adviser with the South Coast Air Quality Management District. 

More than one in 10 children has asthma in the world’s biggest port cities.

Ships transport 90% of the world’s consumer goods, including computers, cars, shoes, clothes and toys, burning tons of the dirtiest kind of fuel per hour in the process. Fuels used in ships tend to literally be the dregs of the oil barrel after refiners have removed cleaner fuels like gasoline and jet fuel, to power their massive engines.

Stat 0465 showed the US car count to be 135 million for 2005 so the shipping emissions are easily 1.5-2.5 times that for all US cars. 

Comparison to aviation industry via Stat 0063, which also stated computers generated about the same GHG emissions as the aviation industry at 2% so the shipping industry also emitted more than computers of the world. Comparisons to the aviation industry was made in some articles but without reference to how much, which’s supplementing information is partly why I do this blog.

Canada’s percentage of GHG emissions at 2% courtesy of the David Suzuki Foundation. This is actually an old statistic from 1997, but Canadian GHG emissions increase relative to the rest of the world has not been vast enough to change it, which, if you think about it, 1% of the world’s GHG emissions has to be a huge number considering what China and the US, among other nations, are doing. Our increase relative to the rest of the world can be found on this Canadian Television (CTV) article, with 2003 data that is old so it is not blogged as a separate statistic. However, where Canadians are guilty with regards to GHG emissions is our per capita rate, third highest to the US and Luxembourg in 2003 and still relatively high now, wherever it actually may be. I just can’t remember and don’t have the time to research it for now. More directly quoted, comparison to Canada’s percentage of GHG was found in the Environmental News Network.

Comparison to emissions of other world countries, stating only six countries emitted more GHG than the global shipping industry as a whole, courtesy of the New York Times. It may even be fewer than six with the new numbers because this was quoting the old numbers that was about 600 million tonnes relative to the new number of over 1 billion tonnes.

Other shipping enviromental impact statistics can be found in Stat 0175 just revised this morning. Some of these were astounding!

Earth Justice stated that shipping GHG emissions account for 3-4% of world emissions, but they seem to be the only ones using the 4% value aside from other organizations using their statistic. It’s not surprising considering they are lobbying for the regulations on the emissions so a value to make their case more urgent is in their best interests, though it’s a great lobby and with these sorts of estimates, may not be that much of a stretch, if any.

The recent story bearing some of these shipping headline statistics was about a high profile petition to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), by Oakland-based Earthjustice on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth and Oceana, to regulate shipping emissions, particularly greenhouse gases but also sulfur dioxide and other emissions, in US Territorial waters. Shipping industry official supports this petition and the US EPA was asked to respond within 180 days.

The European Union has been battling this for some time in their jurisdiction, since at least March 2007, because it has a huge impact on their economy considering they have 41% of the world’s cargo shipping fleet. No doubt additional regulations in the US will have an impact on them. As a disclaimer, I only happened upon the EU situation in researching material for this entry. I do not know the situation, or where it stands, with the EU on shipping regulations on GHG emissions for ships.

Italicized commentary by Envirostats author.

- Headline statistics percentage from the Associated Press via Google, Oct 4 2007 

- Comparison to car equivalents, country equivalents and SO2 emissions in LA from the New York Times, Oct 4 2007

- Ship volume transport and port city asthma in children statistics from Earth Justice

- Ship fuel description from the New York Times, Feb 21 2004

- European share of world marine vessels fleet from the Financial Times Europe, Mar 22 2007

- Canadian share of world GHG emissions via the David Suzuki Foundation FAQ page, last updated 2007 when accessed

The percentages of US electricity consumption, when translated to primary energy consumption, makes for 7.3% of US residential primary energy consumption and 1.6% of total US primary energy consumed.

Digital TV was not included because at the time of the report’s release, Jan 2007, that data for 2006 was not available. There was supposed to have been an update in the spring of 2007 (PDF pg 13), but CEA’s website where the source document was found showed no such updates.

A life cycle analysis style study done by TIAX LLC for the US Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), it looked at consumer electronics energy usage in many detailed ways that were, both, enlightening and interesting, but often in too fine detail for posting on this blog. If one wanted to write essays upon the topic, including comparison of about a dozen common consumer electronic products’ energy consumption, individually and nationally because they would not necessarily be present in the same volume. An overall interesting read packed with useful data and practical lifestyle information. [Envirostats author]

- Energy Consumption by Consumer Electronics by US Residences, by TIAX LLC for the US Consumer Electronics Association (0.9 MB), Jan 2007

1 kilogram = 2.2 pounds
36.4 kg = 80.08 lbs

A Swedish study in 2003 suggested that organic beef, raised on grass rather than concentrated feed, emits 40% less greenhouse gases and consumes 85% less energy. A nice statistic, but too isolated a study and very possibly outdated due to changing production processes to quote more universally as a headline statistic.

Most of the greenhouse gas emissions are in the form of methane released from the animals’ digestive systems, while the acid and fertilising substances come primarily from their waste. Over two-thirds of the energy goes towards producing and transporting the animals’ feed.

“Methane emissions from beef cattle are declining, thanks to innovations in feeding practices,” says Karen Batra of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association in Centennial, Colorado. “Everybody is trying to come up with different ways to reduce carbon footprints,” says Su Taylor of the Vegetarian Society in the UK: “But one of the easiest things you can do is to stop eating meat.” Good advice, but a little reduction would be more practical for everybody and overall more effective.

WOW! That’s about all the author can say about the headline statistic. To appreciate this statistic more, it has to be broken down into components, and to understand some of the science.

The 36.4 kg of CO2 equivalents does not mean 36.4 kg of CO2 released because 80% of the greenhouse gases (GHG) involved in making meat is from cow flatulence, which is in the form of methane that has the global warming potential 21-23X of CO2 (See Stat 0405). That means 1 kg of methane does the same global warming damage as 21-23 kg of CO2, with 21 the more commonly used value. If so, then it works out to be about 1.4 kg methane and 7.28 kg of CO2, the latter of which would account for transportation of that meat, processing and freezing, among other factors.

What is the CO2 equivalent worth? Some articles cited it as more than the equivalent of driving for 3 hours while leaving all the lights on back home. The preferred version was of a European car driving for 250 km, which is a much more concise concept than just “driving for 3 hours”.

On the energy required, the 169 megajoules of energy is enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days, much preferred to leaving all the lights in the house on all day. What is “all day”? 24 hours or just all “day” and not “all night”? And who knew there were 20 light bulbs in an average house? And what kind of lightbulb?

And then the other stuff about the SO2 and phosphate was also left out, which enhanced the statistic to make it even more damning than just the CO2.

From Stat 0406, the global average meat consumption in 2006 was 100 grams per person per day, which varied from 200-250 g in rich countries to 20-25 g in poor countries.

100 g = 3.5 ounces
200-250 g = 7.1 to 8.8 ounces
20-25 g = 0.71-0.88 ounces

If you are curious, figure out how much beef you eat each week in kg and do some math to see how much impact your beef consumption has on the environment. Of course, for each person’s local situation, the value may be a bit more or less than what the math would suggest, but rounding off a few digits would probably give a fair value to accept.

Maybe more mind numbing would be the statistic of meat produced but not consumed. It is not known if beef gets wasted as much as chicken and other meats. However, it probably is a reasonably safe assumption to think it were so. Regardless, the next time you don’t finish some of that beef, you think about how much that is and do the math on what’s going into the garbage environmentally.

Italicized comments by Envirostats author.

- Akifumi OGINO, Hideki ORITO, Kazuhiro SHIMADA, Hiroyuki HIROOKA (2007). Evaluating environmental impacts of the Japanese beef cow-calf system by the life cycle assessment method. Animal Science Journal 78 (4), 424–432.doi:10.1111/j.1740-0929.2007.00457.x

- Less academic version of academic article at New Scientist, Jul 18 2007