Early Retirement Extreme Forums

http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx

Not sure how accurate this calculator is. If anyone has a better one, let me know. I came out at 8.77 metric tons of CO2e, which rather surprised me--I expected to be closer to neutral (to be fair, I guesstimated the presumably annual figures since I'm at work without access to my real records). I guess I have a lot further to go, like composting, gardening, and finally exploring solar voltaic power.

How about you all?

I did it on a lark, even though I am skeptical of it as a metric and C02's role in temperature ;awaits stoning; BUT I got:

House 1.95 metric tons of CO2e
Flights 3.12 metric tons of CO2e
Car 2.56 metric tons of CO2e
Motorbike 0.00 metric tons of CO2e
Bus & Rail 0.00 metric tons of CO2e
Secondary 3.92 metric tons of CO2e
Total = 11.55 metric tons of CO2e

I'd definitely dispute flights as I only fly standby when there is extra seats available on a flight that is going anyway... And secondary as it has no inputs for meat, produce I grow or harvest on my own. I don't recycle much but I produce very little trash (mostly burned)... Also, having a bank account = .4 metric tons C02? ...hmmm...

I'm was surprised to see burning 6 tons of wood (pellets, which I don't burn) only added 0.08.

I think it's an interesting figure for this forum whether you believe C02 impacts temperature* or not simply because C02 production seems so correlated with consumption behaviors, e.g. large house, large car and a lot of driving, etc. I kinda expect most of us here would have lower C02 output than average. Like I said, I'd think some of us might be pushing neutral!

*In the interest of keeping this thread on topic, I pre-emptively started another thread to discuss the validity of this and other tenets of climate change science.

Sounds good, SW... I wonder how much my yard would offset it... Many of the timber land managers in my area sell 20-30 year carbon offsets... after logging that is.

I think calculator is pretty good, although it should differentiate between power used (hydro, nuclear, coal)... And the secondary doesn't seem to translate well to rural life.

Yeah the car one was amusing to me too... Owning a junkyard has no impact on your carbon. If anything the old parts might help fix older cars, diminishing need for new ones.

House - 0.4 (EDIT - actually - 3.5)
Flights - 9
Car - 3
Secondary - 4.4
TOTAL -17 (EDIT - actually - 20)

I put in 120 one-leg flights for all of my work travel. That gets me up to the national average.. Jeez!

@JohnnyH - Wood is carbon neutral. Trees suck CO2 from the atmosphere and release it again when burned. The small plus probably has to do with turning the trees into pellets and transporting them through the distribution system.

I'd just like to point out that North Korea is on the list of countries to choose from. Apparently people there use an average of 3.36 tonnes, though you have to wonder how they got that value.

House: 0.03 (that can't be right, maybe I'm misreading my gas bill)
Flights: 1.84
Car/Bus: 0 (rounded down, apparently)
Secondary: 2.13
Total: 4.01

For 1 year, 2 people; gas heat, electric ac:

House 10.77 metric tons of CO2e
Flights 0.93 metric tons of CO2e
Car 4.27 metric tons of CO2e
Motorbike 0.00 metric tons of CO2e
Bus & Rail 0.00 metric tons of CO2e
Secondary 2.59 metric tons of CO2e (x2 for 2 people?)
Total = 18.56 metric tons of CO2e (so 21 ?)

Those Flights are killer!

Here's my half ...

Your Carbon Footprint:

House 5.39 metric tons of CO2e
Flights 0.66 metric tons of CO2e
Car 0.00 metric tons of CO2e
Motorbike 0.00 metric tons of CO2e
Bus & Rail 0.00 metric tons of CO2e
Secondary 1.59 metric tons of CO2e
Total = 7.64 metric tons of CO2e

Total = 2.45 metric tons of CO2e

Actually I think it's overestimating my commuting cost, given the train I ride is electric and roughly half our electricity is generated by hydro around here. But I'll let that slide.