In this lab, we conducted basic measurements and calculations to estimate the area impact of vehicles used by Camden County College as well as the contribution of vehicle-based pollution from the county, state, and nation. To determine this, the class needed to estimate the annual average emission produced by an average car at the college. With this data, we were able to determine the amount of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and hydrocarbons that are released into the atmosphere every day. In my original hypothesis, I assumed that the numbers we were going to find would be extremely high, however, I was still surprised by the actual amounts we deduced. However, I did hypothesize that older cars who receive lower amounts of miles per gallon would produce the larger amounts of emissions, which happened to be the case in this instance.
Materials:
1. Instructions
2. Data Table
3. Clipboard
4. 50-300 Cars
5. 3-4 Group Members
6. Writing Utensil
7. The U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Environment Protection Agency’s
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The numbers calculated in the table above showcases the amount of vehicle-based chemicals that are released into the atmosphere every day. These chemicals are suspected to contribute to not only the global warming of the Earth, and have also been linked to many harmful health effects to humans. It was extremely surprising to see such high levels of emission within the results, so much that it begs for a solution. One way the college alone could cut down on exhaust emissions would be to promote alternative fuel technology as well as implement energy efficient transportation to be accessible to all students. However, this initiative would take a large amount of funding. A more practical approach could include an overall increase in public transportation as well as the encouragement of the use of car-pooling; or better yet, to encourage the use of walking or biking to
It has little to no effect to the environment when one car is on the road, but what if there are three billion other cars on the road? With the amount of carbon dioxide discharged into the air, diseases are forming, natural resources are diminishing, ice caps are melting. Who is held responsible for this? Who is responsible for the carbon dioxide debt that we owe the planet? Essentially, the government is held responsible for this clutter. Because of the lack of regulation and promotion from the government, citizens are mindlessly wasting water, littering trash, and overexploiting nature for its valuable resources. Therefore, the government must be held responsible for fostering green practices.
Every day, millions of Americans turn on the engines of their cars and drive to school or work. What these people do not realize is that the vehicles they operate greatly pollute the planet. According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent website post, “Environmental Impacts from Automobiles”,
With a declining or no use of cars can result in the reduction of pollution quite tremendously. They can by reducing the greenhouse effect. As the author reports in the article, “In German Suburb Life Goes On Without Care” by Elisabeth Rosenthal, “Passenger cars are responsible for 12 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe… and up to 50 percent in some car-intensive areas in the United States.” Therefore, with cars being a leading factor of greenhouse gas emissions, reducing their usage would have a positive effect on the environment. After days of near-record pollution,
Three quarters of emissions in 2004 were coming from road traffic (Woodcock, p.1930, 2009). Emissions used from transportation are forecasted to increase from the year 2007-2030 by about 80% according to studies done by James Woodcock who is currently studying climate change and health from car fuels (Woodcock, p.1930, 2009). This is due to the fact that the emissions from vehicles are increasing significantly and are higher than any other energy fragment (Woodcock, p.1930, 2009). The only way to lower this percentage is to decrease the number of individual automobiles on the road and increase the number of public transit systems, starting long distance walking to work or school, carpooling or even biking to destinations. These principles would
First, cars pollute the environment. In 2012 the EPA reported that a whopping 28% of emissions came from transportation. As it says in the article “Running off the Road”, by Grover Kingsley, “With their largely petroleum based fuel, cars constantly spew carbon monoxide into the air.” We are responsible for the
In addition, these six counties had at least one or more code red days per year, when air pollution has reached unhealthy and harmful levels for everyone. These six counties, Rockdale, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry, Cobb, and Rockdale, all lie the nearest to the city of Atlanta, an intersection of interstate highways. Though many culprits contribute to this hazardous level of air pollution in the Atlanta Metropolitan Area, cars contribute so much more because of the sheer amount of cars that exist in the Atlanta Metropolitan Area. An average car can emit 6 tons of carbon dioxide per year, and assuming that the every adult has a car that does not run on electricity in Metro Atlanta’s population of 5,490,000, there would be 32,940,000 tons of carbon dioxide emitted by those cars per year. To give a perspective, the Scherer plant, a coal-fired power plant, in Juliet, Georgia gives off 25.3 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, but these estimations do not include other vehicles that emit carbon dioxide and other pollutants (Center for Global
The American Auto Industry, in the form of vehicles it produces, account for almost one-fifth of emissions in the United States. Subtracting emissions created from production,
Cars and truck account for 20% of all U.S. global warming emissions, where more than 24 pounds per gallon of carbon dioxide and other global warming gases come right out of the car’s tailpipe (“Union of Concerned scientists”). This frightening statistic is part of the reason why the federal government has put in place many policies and incentives such as the Clean Air Act, The National Program for greenhouse gas emissions, Catalytic Converter Federal Laws, and incentives of $12,000 in California to get people to upgrade to more fuel-efficient cars. With such programs and incentives put in places, it is also important that car companies such as Toyota and Ford also take action to further cut pollution rates. They have done so by
Motor vehicles are a leading source of air pollution. Even though automobile and truck engines have become far cleaner in recent decades, the sheer
“Automobiles have a large impact on the quality of our environment and public health. Automobile use affects virtually every aspect of environmental quality - including noise levels, air quality, water pollution, and urban sprawl. Ninety percent of the environmental impact of automobiles occurs through the operation of the cars: about 10 percent from the production, raw materials and disposal of
Each gallon of gasoline you burn creates 20 pounds of GHG. That 's about 7 to 10 tons of GHG produced a year for a regular vehicle (“Reduce Climate Change” 1). Getting better gas mileage is a good thing because it means that people can get better miles per gallon without releasing as many carbon emissions. According to Barack Obama’s administration, they have approved regulations that will force automakers to nearly double the average gas mileage of all new cars and trucks they sell in America by 2025 (Krisher 1). This will make it so all automakers will produce vehicles that will be less detrimental to the environment and will help fend off the hazardous effects certain to come with climate change. Fuel efficient cars are considered advantageous because of their “smaller gasoline engine”, which release fewer pollution emissions (“Fuel Efficient Cars...” 1). A car that is considered fuel efficient does not consume a lot of gas and gives the best possible mileage. The less fuel consumed by the car, the less smoke that will come out of the exhaust. As a result, the damage done to the global atmosphere is less ruinous. Gases, like carbon dioxide are harmful to us as well as our environment. They aid in depleting our ozone layer, causing detrimental global climatic changes. Fuel-efficient cars will help in reducing pollution by at least 50% (“Environmental Benefits of
The second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States is related to transportation, the burning of oil to produce energy in a combustion motor. The combustion process inside of engines is what produces the carbon matter that is emitted into the air through the exhaust system on gas-powered vehicles. Gas-powered transportation is accountable for 24 percent of the global carbon emissions; this should not come as much of a surprise given the amount of urban sprawl that is being seen in the United States and across the globe. In the past decade, the Environmental Protection Agency, the United States government, and major car manufacturers have been working in conjunction to find ways to provide a “greener” form of transportation (EPA, 2011). This has included testing the use of hydropower, ethanol, natural gas, biodiesel, and electricity as a means of powering vehicles, which has led to the introduction of hybrid vehicles. Hybrid vehicles run on electricity and gasoline, the byproduct of oil that is generally used in the engine combustion process of vehicles (U.S. Department of
The U.S government has been actively involved in overseeing emission standards for years. This corresponds with the statement made by the U.S Department of transportation that, “Transportation is the largest end-use sector emitting CO2”, and also the statement released by the NRCAN in which, “Fuel usage & carbon dioxide emissions have grown steadily over the past two decades.” These factors are only to be associated with your average four door sedan and/or light truck. These do not include your 18 wheelers, heavy trucks, or the gas guzzling vans that emit more carbon dioxide into the air and are also on the road more today than ever have been before. Cars are readily and easily obtainable more so now than ever have been. This creates more fuel to be burned up in which produces more toxins to be constantly released into the atmosphere. In fact, according to Scientific American “cars relate as much as 30 gallons of GHG, while only driving 3 miles.” These miles can be correlated with something just as simple as your average work commute. According to the United States Census Bureau, “Nearly 600,000 full-time workers had "megacommutes" of at least 90 minutes and 50 miles.” Those workers alone would each be releasing up to 500 gallons of GHG. These can be considered some of the bigger factors that the greenhouse gasses have taken a toll on.
Automobiles are a major producer of greenhouse gas. One gallon of fuel burned puts five pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Let’s say that an average car gets 25 miles to the gallon, and that car has a ten gallon tank. Every time a car gets filled up with gas, another fifty pounds of carbon dioxide have been put back into the atmosphere, and that is just one car. The automobile industry is very important to the world economy, so I am not saying that we should stop making cars, but there are other solutions. The recent trend of hybrid electric cars that get up to fifty miles to the gallon are becoming more popular. Also public transportation is very important. City dwellers that live downtown, do not need to drive their cars to work. Every major city has a form of public transportation that can get anyone around the city, and for that gallon of gas a bus burns the same five pounds reaches the atmosphere, but instead of one
We used the estimated coefficients of the multiple linear regression model (Eq. (2)) to project CO2 emissions from road traffic at 1 1 km gird for the year 2002. Thus, Total amount of emissions at parish level had been disaggregated with the second group data of Louisiana (in section 3.2). The current method has involved 135,164 1 1 km grid cells for the State of Louisiana. The resolution is sufficient to provide information regarding CO2 emission