Tuesday, September 15

World

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)
Post contains 187 words, total size 1 kb.

1 ...and you can burn them to counteract global cooling, so it's win-win! :-)

-j

Posted by: J Greely at Wednesday, September 16 2009 08:08 AM (9Nz6c)

2 I'm doing my part!
Off topic--we are being bombarded with spam. I just ran the Blacklist spam finder over the last hundred thousand (yes, 100k) comments, and there are still at least 500 spam comments still to weed out from PP and Munuviana alone (I've zapped several thousand from the few blogs I have permissions for). Anything you can do to stop these pesky boot-sellers, Darling Pixy?

Posted by: Susie at Wednesday, September 16 2009 01:31 PM (3OYxd)

3 Out of the last 150000 comments, there are 412 comments on entries for which you have editing privileges that match your search criteria.

Posted by: Susie at Wednesday, September 16 2009 01:36 PM (3OYxd)

4 Thanks Susie!

Yes, I'll give the boot bootleggers the boot. smile

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, September 16 2009 03:46 PM (PiXy!)

5 They are still winning!
Out of the last 150000 comments, there are 1571 comments on entries for which you have editing privileges that match your search criteria.

Posted by: Susie at Wednesday, September 16 2009 11:59 PM (3OYxd)

6 Sorry about that.  Had to pull another all-nighter at work. sad

Okay, 60,000 comments deleted, several dozen IPs banned, and blacklist updated appropritely.  That should slow them down a bit. smile

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, September 17 2009 05:07 AM (PiXy!)

7 Weasel poop!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, September 17 2009 05:38 AM (PiXy!)

8

Hey, Pixy, Wonderduck here.  I'm in Chicago, at my mother's bedside, but I'm not sure when I'll have firefoxy access (this visitor computer has nothing but IE).

Could you leave a short message at The Pond saying that I'll be in-and-out of contact for a while for me?  I think you still have access, yah?

Then delete this comment, if you want.

Thank you much, Poppa Pixy!

Posted by: Wonderduck at Sunday, September 20 2009 02:24 AM (29dFo)

9 No problem, Wonderduck.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, September 20 2009 12:24 PM (PiXy!)

10 The same spammer is hitting you and hitting Brickmuppet. But it's interesting: the spammer's embedded anchors are turning into links here, but not on Brickmuppet's. Does Ambient Irony use different rules, or run different code?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Monday, September 21 2009 05:39 AM (+rSRq)

11
same spammer is hitting you and hitting Brickmuppet
...and what's this deal about a "boot sexperience"?

Posted by: Old Grouch at Monday, September 21 2009 07:35 AM (KyCzn)

12 Spam?  What spam? wink

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, September 21 2009 08:54 AM (PiXy!)

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