How the heck do they measure the greenhouse gases a city, province, country, planet produces?
Tom's talking about manitoba's greenhouse gas emmisions growing last year.. and says
"Manitoba's greenhouse gas emissions grew again in 2006, this time by 150,000 tonnes compared with the previous year"
So, how accurate is this measurement? I can only assume they measure how much fossil fuel we consumed and extrapolate how much green house gas that would cause... but that is a pretty huge assumption I would think... (also leads me to wonder if that is what they do.. what takes them so freakin long to come out with 2006 numbers?)
Actually it's pretty precise. You measure based on energy use and known factors like landfill emissions. Large sources (i.e Inco) are also required to report their emissions to Environment Canada, and some others do it voluntarily.
I think so. If you know that gasoline produces X % of a certain gas and Y % of another, you could extrapolate that. Some sources (Inco again) will provide exact measurements.
no there measurement are not 100% accurate either... and since Vehicles supposedly make up 37%... the variety of vehicles and how much CO2 they produce per litre of fuel varies somewhat.
Obviously it won't be 100%, because some fuel sold here may be burned elsewhere, but it would balance out in the same way. Natural gas use is easy to measure, since it all comes through Hydro.
A good portion is not actually burned at all is my point. Vehicles are very far from effecient users of the actual fuel, never mind how inefficient they are at turning the fuel they do use into energy.
Natural Gas too..... not all of it is burned in your furnace...and older furnaces are worse... so actually getting the REAL number is mere guess work...
You can say well... 90% of the fuel is actually consumed, but.. there is absolutely no way at all of proving that measurement to be acurate across an entire province.
I would expect that these things are taken into account. And there is no way of proving that this is 100% accurate, but short of putting a dome up and measuring all of the air, this is the best and most effective way of doing it.<p>
<blockquote><cite>Posted By: zander</cite>I would expect that these things are taken into account. And there is no way of proving that this is 100% accurate, but short of putting a dome up and measuring all of the air, this is the best and most effective way of doing it.<p></p></blockquote>