PrintOctober 31, 2010
Last gasp for the California economy
Proposition 23, the California ballot initiative, would suspend AB 32, the cap and trade regulations for reducing carbon dioxide emission to 1990 levels until unemployment in California drops to 5.5% or below for four consecutive quarters. So how much CO2 will be eliminated and will it make a difference?
From SFGATE, the San Francisco Chhronicle's website, we learn,
The most controversial piece of California's efforts to battle climate change, a cap-and-trade program for large polluters, was unveiled Friday by the California Air Resources Board [CARB] just days before the state's voters will decide whether to put the entire effort on hold.The proposed cap-and-trade regulation, which is more than 3,000 pages long, would take effect beginning in 2012 and eliminate 273 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air by 2020, largely by forcing the state's biggest polluters to cut their emissions or pay for excessive emissions. It is a major piece of AB32, the climate change law that will be suspended if Proposition 23 passes on election day.
273 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, seems like a huge number doesn't it? But don't humans exhale CO2 each time they breathe? Of course they do.
An average adult breathes about 0.5 L of air per breath at rest. Normal air contains ~ 0.03 % of CO2 which gets enriched to 4 % of exhaled air. The difference, 3.97 % is what you exhaled. One mole of air at room temperature have a volume of ~22.4 L (use ideal gas equation p*V=n*R*T, p=pressure [bar], V=volume, n=amount in mole, R=ideal gas constant, T=temperature [Kelvin]). 1 mole CO2 is equivalent to 44 g. So, 0.5 L*(1 mole /22.4 L)*(44 g / mole) = 0.982 g[rams]One breath therefore contains ~ 1 gram of exhaled CO2.
Did you catch the part where CO2 is just .03% (.0003) of the atmosphere? Bet you liberal friends what's the percentage of CO2 in the air and earn a few beers and a lot of silly answers.
How much CO2 does a person produce in one year?
Let's do some basic math. 12 (breathes per minute) x 525,600 (minutes per year) x 1 (gram per breath), that's 6,307.200 grams per year or 6,307 kilograms of CO2 per year or 6.307 metric tons of CO2 per person per year.
Ok, lets multiply 6.307 metric tons per person times the population of the planet (approximately 6.878 billion souls). That gives us the amount of carbon dioxide produced each year just from people breathing, 43,380,921,600 tons (43.4 billion) metric tons.
So, CARB's 3,000-page bureaucratic nightmare will reduce the CO2 in the air by 273 million metric tons by 2020. A little math finds that all these onerous regulations, and outright wealth re-distribution will have a negligible effect of decreasing CO2 by .00629 (.63%) as compared to the amount of CO2 the citizens of Earth produce each year just by their existence!
But hold on, there are other significant sources of CO2 adding to the total amount produced each year on our small blue-green space ship. After all, there is only one atmosphere that blankets our entire planet. We don't call these myths and fairy tales "California Warming," it really is global, baby.
Let's add an additional 29.32 billion tons of CO2, produced from cars, industry, agriculture, tourists, spilled gasoline, refineries, hot springs, barbeques, lawn mowers, fireplaces, and soda pop, to our calculation. The total resulting climate change for ALL of this government stupidity is statistically infinitesimal... ZERO.
The Progressive/Socialist bureaucrats are drooling at the opportunity for more authority to regulate every aspect of our lives. Can you imagine the thousands of Byzantine regulations being enforced by those swell folks from the SEIU thugocracy?
Prop 23 must pass. AB 32 will have zero effect on the environment and will shatter the lives, property, wealth and well being of millions of California's working class families. Who would vote against such insanity?
