"A car's manufacture causes the same environmental impact as its lifetime use"

[mjr]

[QUOTE 4918501, member: 9609"](at a wild over estimated guess) production of bike 100kg CO2
car uses 150g co2 km
pay back time 416 mile ?[/QUOTE]
That's similar to the 400 mile estimate in this link:

About 530 pounds.

[QUOTE 4918754, member: 9609"]china [...] we're wasting out time trying here.[/QUOTE]
So by a similar argument, we can all go kill someone because mass murderers exist?

 

[Profpointy]

Regarding the claim that the Chinese and Indians are worse than us, need to bear in mind there are a billion or more of each, rather than a mere 60 million so per capita would be a fairer measure. We should also remember that a good deal of the Chinese's CO2 is directly or indirectly from manufacturing stuff for us, so it should really be out of our quota rather than theirs

 

[jefmcg]

Regarding the claim that the Chinese and Indians are worse than us, need to bear in mind there are a billion or more of each, rather than a mere 60 million so per capita would be a fairer measure. We should also remember that a good deal of the Chinese's CO2 is directly or indirectly from manufacturing stuff for us, so it should really be out of our quota rather than theirs

Yes.

(I think Australia would like between Canada and the US, but with a small population, they don't have that much effect on the world totals)

 

[Globalti]

You buy a Prius to assuage your guilt and get a chunk of cash back from the tax man if it's a company car, don't you?

 

[John the Monkey]

This has all been very interesting, and at times entertaining, but four pages in I don't feel any closer to that 'definitive answer'. The closest attempts are probably both on page 1, where greencareports claims:

...fully 75 percent of a car's lifetime carbon emissions stem from the fuel it burns, not its production. A further 19 percent of that is production and transportation of the fuel, leaving just six percent for the car's manufacture.

While The Guardian begs to differ:

The upshot is that – despite common claims to contrary – the embodied emissions of a car typically rival the exhaust pipe emissions over its entire lifetime. Indeed, for each mile driven, the emissions from the manufacture of a top-of-the-range Land Rover Discovery that ends up being scrapped after 100,000 miles may be as much as four times higher than the tailpipe emissions of a Citroen C1.

The discrepancy strikes me as striking. 6% v 75%, as against 'rival' - ie, 50/50, give or take.

You'd think estimates would be different....but not by several orders of magnitude.

I remain baffled. And curious.

Greencarreports does offer the paper on which their figures are based, at least.

 

[Glow worm]

According to the New Scientist Magazine, we're all doomed anyway. Might as well follow the advice at the end of the Article

 

[KnackeredBike]

For me the pure mathematics would surely mean it makes no sense.

If we look at the energy used as a basic "unit" of environmental impact (of course there will be further externalities but it is difficult to quantify everything.

A petrol car driven for 100,000 miles will use about 12,000 litres of fuel.

That will be about 116,000 kwh of energy used when pootling to the shops 500m away. Which is an absolutely insane amount to use in manufacture of a product which ultimately is made of quite cheap materials, primarily steel which is very easy to recycle.

The sums are skewed because ICE engines are very inefficient. I can imagine if you are using actual useful energy then the figures may be closer.

 

[raleighnut]

According to the New Scientist Magazine, we're all doomed anyway. Might as well follow the advice at the end of the Article

View attachment 368184

The scary thing is that's probably true.

 

[Tim Hall]

Figure of 6,000 seems a bit low. There's 16,900 bulk carriers at present with a further 500 on order.

Bulk carriers aren't the same as container ships.

 

[User482]

[QUOTE 4918430, member: 9609"]sadly nothing to be learned in there, it was taken over by a group of unpleasant individuals who seem more interested in bullying others[/QUOTE]
In fairness, it improved after some unpleasant individuals stopped posting there.

 

[User482]

@User482 knows shoot like this and why don't you post in SC&P?

Every decent study I've seen says that the majority of a vehicle's impacts occur during its use.

 

[Drago]

Most of the reputable studies I've read state the opposite, that the cars fuel consumption and pollution in use is one of the less critical pollution factors. The energy required to make, for example, a Pious is equivalent to in excess of 1000 gallons of petrol, 60,000+ miles of use, and that's ignoring the very nasty chemicals used during the extraction of the rare Earth metals, and the actual damage done extracting the materials from the ground, and the energy required to ship them to the opposite side of the planet to use in England.

But who really knows? So many variables, and so many investors, companies and entire industries with a vested interest in not revealing the full extent of the damage they cause. Nevertheless, it's likely safe to say that both are significant contributors to pollution, and we should be making/buying less cars and driving them less.

 

[User482]

Most of the reputable studies I've read state the opposite, that the cars fuel consumption and pollution in use is one of the less critical pollution factors. The energy required to make, for example, a Pious is equivalent to in excess of 1000 gallons of petrol, 60,000+ miles of use, and that's ignoring the very nasty chemicals used during the extraction of the rare Earth metals, and the actual damage done extracting the materials from the ground, and the energy required to ship them to the opposite side of the planet to use in England.

But who really knows? So many variables, and so many investors, companies and entire industries with a vested interest in not revealing the full extent of the damage they cause. Nevertheless, it's likely safe to say that both are significant contributors to pollution, and we should be making/buying less cars and driving them less.

The only study I've seen making that claim about the Prius was appalling nonsense, published some years ago and thoroughly debunked. If you've seen something more recent I'd like to read it.

 

[Wobblers]

The 15 largest container ships create the same amount of CO2 per year as all the worlds cars combined. Maybe we should try and clean them up aswell as cars

Uh, no they don't. Two thirds of the output from the worlds' oil refineries is petrol and diesel - most of that for cars. Heavy fuel oil accounts for 10% - and only a fraction of that ends up as the bunker oil that shipping uses. In other words, the entire shipping industry produces less than a third of the CO2 you get from private cars. (And I've used the most conservative estimates here, the reality is that the impact of shipping is likely to be considerably lower than that of cars.)