Discussion on Mathematical Probability of Climate Change (moderated)
Man Made Climate Change
I was thinking about all the hype regarding man burning carbon fuels and adding Co2 to the atmosphere. I started to think "what if we were able to burn up ALL the known reserves of fuel in an instant? What would that do to the atmosphere?" So I set about to punch known numbers into a spreadsheet to find out.
My "sources" are mainly wikipedia but all of the raw numbers I've used can be found using google. Certainly I encourage anyone who wants to check these numbers to PLEASE inform me of any errors on my part. I freely admit that many of my numbers are only estimates of unknown reserves so my final result will be inaccurate by some unknown value. This is an exercise in extremes.
Per wikipedia the numbers for total Crude Oil were as follows:
Crude Oil - 1,707 billion barrels - Approximately 5,800,000 BTUs per 42-gallon barrel
Crude Co2 formula: (diesel, gas, and propane I just took an average of the three since I didn't have the independent values)
Kg of Co2 = 5.8 per barrel x 155 pounds (average) x .45 x 1,707 billion (reserves)
Natural Gas and Coal conversions.
https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/wholefarm/html/c6-89.html
Natural Gas formula: Kg of Co2 = per meter3 36,409/1,000,000 x 117 pounds x .45 x 187 trillion (reserves)
Coal formula: Kg of Co2 = 26 X 215 X 1,139 billion
26 million BTU per ton x 215 pounds Co2 per million x .45 x 1,139 billion (reserves)
26 x 215 x.45 x 1,139,000,000,000
Now for the mass of the atmosphere and the Co2 resulting from burning fuel.
The atmosphere has a mass of about 5.15 × 10 18 kg, (Wikipedia)
Pounds of CO2 emitted per million British thermal units (Btu) of energy for various fuels:
Coal (anthracite) 228.6
Coal (bituminous) 205.7
Coal (lignite) 215.4
Coal (subbituminous) 214.3
Diesel fuel and heating oil 161.3
Gasoline (without ethanol) 157.2
Propane 139.0
Natural gas 117.0
This is what I get when I (