Quote:
Originally Posted by TomPerry
My golf car gets about 35 miles to the gallon. At 2.5 hours per week, at 20 miles per hour, it would consume about 74 gallons per year, and at 6 pounds per gallon, it would consume about 445 pounds of gasoline per year, maximum! How can 445 pounds of gasoline produce 1,474 pounds of CO2???? Fake news!!!!
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Use your high school chemistry. Gasoline is C8H18. It takes 12.5 oxygen molecules (O2) for perfect combustion to 8 CO2 molecules and 9 water molecules (H2O). Carbon molecular weight is 12, Oxygen 16, Hydrogen 1. You can do the math yourself but 1 gasoline molecule is 114 and 8 CO2 molecules are 352. So it takes 477 pounds of gasoline to generate 1474 pounds of CO2, which is not far off from your off-the-cuff estimate. In practice, a small amount of CO is produced so the theoretical amount of CO2 is slightly less, but it's definitely not fake news.