how do you determine it?

the problem is you seem proud of that

by 'beat' you mean lower than yours... right?

hopefully....

Does the carbon footprint calculation take into account the fact that walking to the store is a larger carbon footprint than driving because you have to eat more to make up the calories?

Yeah, you can have hope...

@alderian that just isnt true and is also bullshit justification for using your car to much

Your car emits more CO2 than you do.

Alderian.

In fairness, that does technically depend what you eat :P
Some foods are imported from so far away that the 'food-miles' would make up for it. Still, I doubt an entire diet like that is practical, let alone likely!

would 4.1 worlds be big enough for your ego?

You can determine it by going to a website and taking a brief quiz over your habits and lifestyle. I just found a random site and took it. By "beat", I do mean lower.

Also, this thread is completely benevolent. I'm just curious and wanted to mix things up a bit.

did you know something interesting i found out over its lifespan (i.e from as its being made) until its scrapped a toyota prius is worse environmentally (or carbon footprinty) than a range rover

Not surprising. It's newer technology. Give it time.

link?

no its the way they build it or ship parts all over the place to build it

Alderian, while that is often the case for many "green" alternatives (eg. Re-usable cloth diapers vs. plastic disposable diapers), I seriously doubt that what you say is true. For one, cars emit lots of carbon. You might have had a point in terms of energy consumption, and not carbon footprint, but I don't even think this is the case. The car uses far more energy moving it's weight than you do walking.

trim101, would that be true if the Prius was more widely adopted? Then the individual shipping pollution would be smaller, and there would be incentive to build more local factories to meet demand.

http://www.whatsmycarbonfootprint.com/calculate.htm

That's a different one then the one I found. I couldn't find the one I used I forgot to bookmark it.

Yeah it calculates CO2 emissions in tons/yr. Mine is 28,696 tons/yr because I log over 200 flying hours a year.

Actually I just looked at it again that's my household total, not personal.

they estimate I release 0.3065 tons of carbon dioxide every year

so is .3 my footprint or is there something else I need to calculate

i duno maybe chrisp i saw it on top gear and they were saying they keep shipping the semi built car/components all over the world which buggers up all the environment damage elements the finished car has

I got 25, Sicarius, but I pretty much guessed, especially on the part about the electric bill and all

If people have Co2 footprints - Do plants have oxygen footprints?
I mean after all it was *them* who started this whole atmosphere changing madness...

2.8 tons a year to roughly a 1/10 of diplomats.
I don't drive (cycle everywhere) and my heating bill is negligent because I get "Fernwärme" (powerplant waste heat).
But it didn't ask anything about work. My usage of the high power computer nodes probably averages at 2-5kW/h a day.

I think mine is fairly accurate.
maybe a little on the low end but still close

also i filled in for a family of four..

idk about that quiz

diplomat, does anyone else live with you? Really?

@sceptic_ka - I appreciate you're not a native speaker of English (and that you're probably German), but that was a genius piece of language error: negligent (nach-/fahrlässig) is not the same negligible (geringfuegig/unerheblich - I presume this is what you actually meant)!

Alderian is wrong, but he made me think that walking isn't as good as cycling. Cycling diminishes friction and helps converting potential energy into kinetic energy more efficiently.

except the rubber for the tires the metal for the bike etc

@trim101 the idea that a Prius has a worse environmental credentials than a Land Rover was a story doing the rounds last year (although most of the reports I read compared the Prius to a Hummer). It was a claim that received a lot attention because it seems so counter-intuitive (and thus newsworthy). The claim however is quite dubious (according to many sources - I am didn't personally analyse evidense first hand). It was a media beat-up.
At any rate hybrid technology is a good way to go, and the expenses involved wiill be reduced as hybrids become more common and as the technology is developed further.

Yeah. My wife. We don't have any kids

@trim101 - the rubber for the tires and metal for the bike are pretty negligible over the lifetime of the bike, I know many people who've had their bikes for 30 years or more, I've had mine for at least... 15 years, maybe longer, and don't have any reason to replace it.

As for the Prius, I have heard the they aren't as good environmentally when you factor in the manufacturing, but that they are still over their lifetime, equal to or better than most cars. That being said, buying a used, car, that get's pretty good milage is even better environmentally, since the car has likely already made up for it's manufacturing, so any fuel savings from this point forward are "bonus." Whereas buying any new (reasonably fuel efficient) car means you have to keep it for a number of years to "make up for" it's manufacturing. Luckily, as people have pointed out as hybrids become more common, the manufacturing will become more efficient and the costs in both price and carbon footprint will go down.

I'll try to find the short article on the Prius that I read.

Well that didn't take long...

http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-06/ff_heresies_09usedcars

So the manufacturing of a Prius is worse than the manufacturing of a Hummvee, but once they start driving the Prius quickly catches up. Used cars though... are a little more murky.

This year the carbon output caused by the power needed to run the Internet exceded the carbon output of the aviation industry... And it's growing at 10% a year. Google's server hubs alone in 2006 used electricity equivalent to 3 months of the demand of the UK... An Internet forum chat about safi g the Earth is the most recent oxymoron it seems!

@Submariner - that sounds like some pretty interesting data, can you point me at the source? I'd like to see it!

I don't know if the numbers are that large Submariner, but I have heard similar things. It's frightening, but I know that Google and IBM are switching to greener ways of cooling their servers.

trim101, the rubber on bicycles? Really? Rubber is extraordinarily cheap to produce, and does very little environmental damage... The only reason rubber gets a bad rap is because it's not very biodegradable. You should see the environmental damage caused by people who want to recycle rubber...

Okay, I know I overstated the car/walk thing and don't have any facts to back it up.

I guess the key thing I was trying to get at, and unsuccessfully at that, was that, you can't just eliminate carbon use by walking instead of driving. By burning up more calories you have to eat more which means more chickens, cows, and such which produce some level of carbon.

If everyone abandoned their cars to be more healthy, the food production would have to go up to match. I was wrong to say it would be more because I have no evidence of even strong belief in that. I just wanted to point out that you aren't going from some number to 0.

For what it is worth I live 2 miles from my work and often bike when the weather is decent enough. Far different from many Americans who incredibly spend hours a day in their cars commuting. Nevermind the carbon, how can anyone waste that much of their life driving?

There was an article in the UK Guardian this Safursay quoting data from a 2006 US Dep of Commerce survey... I'm typing this in from my iPhone so can't paste a link in.

Yeah mine's distorted because it assumes I fly airliners, not small propeller aircraft, which consume much less fuel and pollute less.

@Alderian: I wasn't sure you were being ironic or not, it's hard to tell at times :)

But looking at my food consumption after I resumed using a lot my bicycle I'd say that most of what we eat is used to power hearth and lungs, so that cycling almost doesn't change how much I should eat.

So yeah, if we *really* wanted to pollute less, we should probably also avoid having children, as the more we are, the more food we need :P

That's interesting. Somehow I have a hard time believing that a Prius is not eco-friendly, but this intrigues me and I will do more research.