Reducing Your Carbon Footprint Helps Drain the Carbon Bathtub
Posted by Raymond Plumbing Heating and Air Conditioning on Wed, Mar 10, 2010
You hear a lot these days about reducing your carbon footprint. Environmentally conscious Lorain County residents buy energy-efficient furnaces and air conditioners and invest in heat pump technology to reduce their carbon footprints. Reducing the energy we use reduces the carbon-based fuels burned to create that energy which reduces ozone-depleting carbon by-products released into the atmosphere.
Our current rate of energy consumption is pouring into the atmospheric bathtub twice as fast as it is draining out
What most Lorain County residents have trouble understanding is the considerable time lag between decreasing carbon consumption and reduction of carbon in the atmosphere. To explain the relationship between energy consumption and carbon dioxide build-up to his MIT students, professor John Sterman developed a unique visual aid, the Carbon Bathtub. View the Carbon Bathtub visual aid now.
Picture a bathtub with a running faucet and open drain. When we use energy, carbon dioxide (CO2) pours into the atmosphere just like water pours into a bathtub. If water pours into the tub faster than it can drain out, the tub fills with water. The bathtub stays full until more water is draining out than is pouring in. The same concept applies to CO2. At our current rate of energy consumption, CO2 emissions produced by burning fossil fuels are pouring into the atmospheric bathtub twice as fast as they are draining out.
The Earth’s natural absorption of CO2 helps drain the carbon bathtub, but far more slowly than CO2 pours in. Plants and soils absorb about 30% of atmospheric CO2; oceans, another 25%; and rocks and sediments, less than 1%.; but the absorption rate is extremely slow. The remaining CO2 -- 45% -- remains in the atmosphere, keeping the planet’s carbon bathtub full. This is why merely cutting back on energy consumption will not solve the carbon problem. Scientists estimate that it will take hundreds of thousands of years for the planet to absorb – drain out – all the CO2 humans are pouring into the atmosphere. Until we find a way to drain out more carbon than we’re adding, the carbon bathtub will keep filling.