Doing Your Part

A while back I calculated, very back-of-the-envelopely, that we could offset carbon dioxide emissions if we all bought (and kept) three books a week.  But I didn't show my work, and I'm not sure my numbers are right.

So, let's see.  From here there's a net of 4 billion tons of CO₂ added to the atmosphere every year.  That represents just over a billion tons of carbon - CO₂ is 27% carbon by weight.

If everyone on Earth bought three books a week, that's a trillion books a year, more or less (156 books per person x 6.7 billion people = 1.045 trillion books).  If each book weighs one kilogram (so we're not talking paperbacks here, unless the author is Neal Stephenson) that's a billion tons of paper.  But paper (well, I'm using cellulose for my numbers) is only 44% carbon by weight, so that's not actually a billion tons of sequestered carbon.  I think that's where I went astray before.

So, dividing 3 books by .44 to get the real number, we learn that a book a day keeps global warming at bay.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:46 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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