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Do WE add to global warming?

jklingel | Posted in General Questions on

These are probably academic questions; maybe just philosophic, or worse. (1) Do we humans add to global warming just by being here en mass? If we are pumping out 400 btu/hr (except the exercise freaks who pump out 1500-2000/hr when doing their thing), and there are X billion of us, do we add anything significant to the temperatures around us? (2) How about poorly insulated, over-sized houses? This one occurred to me today whilst talking about insulating under a slab with another cat. I told him how an engineer suggested that I leave a gap, devoid of insulation, 18″ wide around the perimeter of my slab so that I could use my fuel to heat the footers 42″ below. Said engineer also suggested 2″ of XPS under the slab. (No, thank you, engineer or not. Not in zone 8 or WTH we are in Frb.) I’m just curious if anyone on Earth ever had too much time on their hands and actually calculated these. FWIW…

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  1. GBA Editor
    Martin Holladay | | #1

    John Klingel,
    The "heat island" effect certainly exists in cities -- an effect caused by too much pavement, too many black roofs, not enough tress, and too many air conditioners spewing heat. It's a local effect, although if urban centers were to continue to grow during the next century the way they did during the last century, perhaps such heat islands could affect the climate. We'd need a climatologist to do the math.

    I doubt whether human biomass could affect the climate, however. As the number of humans has been increasing, we've been killing a lot of large, medium, and small mammals and birds -- look what happened to the bison as Americans of European origin moved west. So it's not clear to me that the mass of mammals and birds (collectively) is greater or less than it was 200 years ago.

  2. user-659915 | | #2

    "Do we humans add to global warming just by being here en mass?"

    Yes. And our collective farts are probably worse for global warming than our exhalations - methane being a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So don't blame the jocks for this one.

    And yes, we have been eradicating a large number of wild animals and birds - but we've added even larger numbers of domesticated ones to feed our meat craving. Four or five centuries ago North Carolina was home to a few hundred thousand people and a similar number of buffalo. Now it hosts six million people, ten million hogs, and goddess knows how many domesticated turkeys (no jokes please).

  3. user-659915 | | #3

    "Is this a handbasket? Hell, fellas, let's take 'er for a ride!"

  4. 5C8rvfuWev | | #4

    "And our collective farts are probably worse for global warming than our exhalations - methane being a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So don't blame the jocks for this one."

    Which is nothing, James, compared to the methane produced by (drum roll) cattle (according to a meteorologist who was discussing global warming some time ago on The Weather Channel). He claimed that cattle added more methane to the climate than .... whatever. Having spent considerable time in the early mornings of my teen years in a cow barn, I have no trouble at all believing it!

    It would be interesting, wouldn't it, if say Vermont or Wisconsin polluted as much as, say, New Jersey or CA. Hmmm.

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