CO2 norms are stupid - the horse calculation

"Alex87f" (alex87f) 10/12/2015 at 04:37 • Filed to: None

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So, I was debating this with someone and thought I’d calculate how much CO2 a horse emits compared to a car.

An average horse walks 4mph, has a lung capacity of 11 liters, and breathes 36 times per minute when walking.

That means the following:
36 * 11 = 396 liters expired per minute
396 * 60 / 4 = 5 940 liters per mile

Each of those liters contain an additional 4.5% CO2 when breathed out than when breathed in.

5 940 * 0.045 = 267.3 liters CO2 per mile

CO2 has a specific density of 1.98g/liter

267.3 * 1.98 = 529gr CO2 per mile (353g/km for us metric people)

According to the EPA, the average american car emits 411 gr CO2 per mile.
So a horse emits more CO2 than a car, is about 10x slower, can only carry two people, and will also emit CO2 at idle, as you can’t turn it off (well you can, but it’s been known to be permanent)

Now you may be wondering where I’m getting at. And no, I don’t want to ban horses. How would we film westerns if we did?

And no, I don’t think a horse pollutes more than a car. My point is CO2 emissions should be looked at as part of a wider picture that includes all components. Not like us Europeans currently do, as in France, for example, a horse would get the highest eco-tax, $10,000.

duurtlang > Alex87f 10/12/2015 at 04:42

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A new car with 353 g/km would net €87.6k in CO2 tax here in the Netherlands :)

Flavien Vidal > Alex87f 10/12/2015 at 04:53

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Yeah, but there are 9.2 million horses in the US on average, vs 260 millions cars and trucks on the roads. And the main problem is actually coming from cows who produce a shit load of CO2, a lot more than a horse...

Pretty sure that if there were only 9 millions cars in the US, you wouldn’t have any regulation at all lol

Baeromez > Alex87f 10/12/2015 at 04:53

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Well, when “looked as part of a wider picture” you do need to consider that there are only around 58 million horses in the world (including both feral and domesticated animals), whereas there are well over 1.2 billion cars in the world. That’s more than 20 cars per horse.

Furthermore, I’m positive that a similar study on humans would reveal that as a species we are biologically responsible for more CO2 emissions than most, if not all, other individual species. I’m sure that cattle (1.4 billion animals worldwide) and chickens (19 billion) would be the only species anywhere near the total CO2 emissions of humans (7.3 billion), with sheep (1+ billion) and pigs (968 million) not far behind.

Alex87f > duurtlang 10/12/2015 at 04:55

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Holy crap! That’s insane!

It’s weird though, you guys don’t have that many diesels on your roads, how do you manage that with so many taxes on CO2?

Alex87f > Baeromez 10/12/2015 at 04:56

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Absolutely. My point is we need to stop thinking CO2 is the end-all be-all of benchmarks and look at things a car emits other than CO2.

Alex87f > Flavien Vidal 10/12/2015 at 05:00

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Yeah sure, but the point is that CO2 is not the ultimate disaster it’s been made into.

Cars pollute a million times more than horses, yet their CO2 rating is better than that of a horse. What this says to me is that it’s time to re-think how we tax emissions.

(and on a side note I wonder how much CO2 we’d save if we ate a little less meat and a little more of everything else)

Baeromez > Alex87f 10/12/2015 at 05:04

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I get that, but from a pollution standpoint, CO2 emissions are one of the most important emissions to regulate. They affect not only air quality, but also global climate change.

Flavien Vidal > Alex87f 10/12/2015 at 05:10

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No, industries pollute a lot more than cars. Agriculture is probably the worse, nonetheless, regulation were totally necessary and allowed big US cities to breathe again.

LA in the 70’s was the equivalent of Beijing today. Look at Beijing and what a deregulated industry/car industry allowed to pollute as much as it wants actually do.

Comparing horses and cars makes no sense... You can also compare humans to cars if you want. Some C02 pollution is necessary and delt with easily by trees, absorbing easily a reasonnable amount of CO2. But if it’s too much, in cities, where there are less trees, you end up in trouble. As I said, NY today and in the seventies... The difference in pollution level is staggering. There are more people in NY today though.

Those regulations are not stupid, and emerging countries without regulations prove it to us every single day.

duurtlang > Alex87f 10/12/2015 at 05:29

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Lots of smaller cars with small engines. Lots of cars with very low CO2 emissions on paper, but not so low in real life. The CO2 tax is rather exponential, and is different between diesel and gasoline. Gasoline cars can emit a little bit more for the same amount of tax.

For example: a VW Golf wagon TSI bluemotion only emits 99 g/km on paper. Probably double in reality, but I digress. 99g/km for gasoline is €1840 in CO2 tax.

To be clear: this tax is only valid at the purchase of a new vehicle. It’s not an ownership tax, and when after a few years it’s sold to another person there is no tax. Newly imported used cars will be hit with the tax as well, but with a steep discount based on age.

CO2 tax (rounded) for CO2 emission in gr/km for a gasoline powered car:

50: €300
100: €1900
150: €7100
200: €21000
250: €43000
300: €65000
350: €86000

Tax is issued per gram, but I made the 50 gram steps to make it a clearer.

duurtlang > Alex87f 10/12/2015 at 05:35

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This is true, but in defence of horses; horses eat grass, emit CO2 (and manure), grass fixates CO2 (and manure) to grow, horses eat the grass. And the cycle is complete. It’s a sustainable cycle and the net CO2 emissions of a horse are roughly zero.

Cars run on fossil fuel, or electricity usually generated by burning fossil fuel. The cycle to fixate CO2 in fossil fuel isn’t a season like in grass, it’s millions of years. We create more free CO2 than we can fixate. As a result burning through that stuff isn’t sustainable.

Twingo Tamer - About to descend into project car hell. > duurtlang 10/12/2015 at 06:29

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Those taxes are insane...

505 - morphine not found > Alex87f 10/12/2015 at 06:40

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The horse will get you laid, though.

duurtlang > Twingo Tamer - About to descend into project car hell. 10/12/2015 at 06:52

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Yes, they are. They are effective though, you see very few recent thirsty (on paper) vehicles with Dutch plates. Even something like a Subaru BRZ (181g/km; €13k CO2 tax) is priced out of the market because of it.

Twingo Tamer - About to descend into project car hell. > duurtlang 10/12/2015 at 07:05

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Yeah I guess you can’t argue with the results.

Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > Alex87f 10/12/2015 at 07:07

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Your assumptions are wrong: the horse doesn’t use its total lung capacity when breathing. The volume of a breath is only around 10% of total lung capacity in an idle human : I expect it’s something of that order in a horse too. So it’s more like 35gm/km than 350.

However, in support of your “this is silly” thesis, don’t forget methane emissions. Methane has about 70x the GWP of CO2 (depending on whose numbers you believe), and ruminants (horse, cows, sheep) fart A LOT. Yearly methane emissions of a horse are apparently around 25 m^3 = 16250gm of methane, which is equivalent to 1,137,500gm CO2. So a year’s worth of horse farts is worse for global warming than driving 11000 km in a (non-VW) economy car.

(This discovery is probably worth an Ignobel prize. Amazing how you can waste time on the internet)

Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 10/12/2015 at 07:14

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Or maybe you’re not wrong - further research (slow night:-)) shows total lung capacity for a horse at around 45-50 litres, so it looks like your 11 l value IS breath size.

facw > Alex87f 10/12/2015 at 07:55

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Greenhouse gas emissions by sector, according to the EPA. Methane production by cows is a big contributor

beardsbynelly - Rikerbeard > Alex87f 10/12/2015 at 08:06

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the CO2 from the horse isn’t even the problem, they produce a fair amount of methane (CH4)which is exponentially worse. To the tune of 100 times more heat trapped by Methane than Carbon Dioxide in a 5 year period.

Most, if not all emissions taxes take this into account though.. but the problem with taxing Agriculture means you drive food costs up, which, in a world where it is so easy to import food from a different country with lower taxes.. is a difficult task.

More often than not, emissions schemes will make larger allowances for Agriculture than they would for other industry.

Roman Savchuk > Alex87f 10/12/2015 at 08:28

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I see flaw here. Horse doesn’t blow all it’s lungs away with every breath, must be something like 1/20th of full volume on slow walk, 1/5th on full speed

Alex87f > Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen 10/12/2015 at 08:30

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There you go, an Ig Nobel prize for you.

I had no idea methane was that important to global warming. We may have to go full Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

Alex87f > duurtlang 10/12/2015 at 08:32

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Oh yeah, I’m sure a horse has a total CO2 output close to 0.

The point I was trying to make is that looking at CO2 only is a very, very shitty idea and that we should be taxing cars based on at least all the Euro-6 pollutants.

Alex87f > Flavien Vidal 10/12/2015 at 08:37

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Dude, that was not my point haha :).

What I meant to say with this article is not “We should not regulate CO2 at all”, but rather “We should tax cars based on the full spectrum of their emissions, not only an insanely low CO2 target like us Frenchies currently do” (and that ultimately led us to the diesel situation we have now).

I highly doubt CO2 is the main factor of Beijing’s current air situation. It’s caused by its lack of industry and transportation regulation in its entirety.

TheRealBicycleBuck > Baeromez 10/12/2015 at 10:38

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If we are going to think about the big picture, then we need to think about how we are going to meet our current transportation requirements if cars were to go away. A one-for-one replacement of car by horse would create several problems - increased CO2 emissions (as others have mentioned), increased methane emissions, and a big pile of poop. Horses “emit” between 15 to 33 pounds of manure a day. When horses were the primary form of transportation (circa 1900), the City of New York was dealing with 1,200 metric tons of manure every day.

To answer your question about CO2 emissions from people - the average adult produces 314L of CO2 per day. With 7.2 billion people on the planet, our species exhales roughly 4.5 million metric tons per day.

Automobiles are what shaped our cities and suburbs into their current form. Commuting the average 12.8 miles on a horse would take a bit over an hour each way without killing the horse. Forget commuting any further than that. The horses couldn’t handle much more.

If we were to keep commuting these distances, our infrastructure would have to be redesigned to accommodate horses at both ends - we would have a small barn in every yard and all the parking garages would become large stables.

Of course this is all ridiculous. Horses failed as primary transportation in large cities for obvious reasons.

wiffleballtony > Alex87f 10/12/2015 at 11:27

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I’ll put on my conspiracy hat. I think CO2 emission regulations aren’t really about the environment. They’re about limiting personal movement.

Alex87f > wiffleballtony 10/12/2015 at 15:58

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I’ll put mine too: I think they’ve been lobbied into place by carmarkers to push consumers into dealerships thanks to Cash 4 Clunkers programs & eco taxes.

I also think the biggest European winners from the Dieselgate are the same carmakers who will sell petrol cars to the consumers to whom they sold diesels a few years ago.

Baeromez > TheRealBicycleBuck 10/12/2015 at 19:39

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Lol, I was not advocating in defense of horses as transportation.

TheRealBicycleBuck > Baeromez 10/12/2015 at 20:28

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I knew you weren't. It's just fun to take these scenarios to their logical conclusion. I love it when some bonehead suggests we ban all cars or other such nonsense.

John the Wet Blanket > facw 10/13/2015 at 10:49

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Methane does not last long (estimated half life I saw was about 7 years). It quickly turns to CO2. But, if we are going to do that, what is the amount of unburned methane emitted by utilities? By landfills?

By EPA estimates, just over 1/3rd of methane comes from agriculture. Fossil fuel waste produces almost 2/5ths.

Furthermore, agricultural methane is already part of the carbon cycle, while fossil fuels adds carbon to the carbon cycle.

Pontifex (G/O Fuck yourself, Spanfe||er) > Alex87f 10/15/2015 at 12:20

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Inhaled air is ~1% CO2, while horses exhale air at ~4% CO2. (source: Gunnarsson, 2007; http://equinfo.se/oxygenconsumpt… ). This would mean a horse inhale 59.4 liters of CO2 and exhales 237.6 L, for a net change of 178.2 L CO2. This would correspond to 352.8 gr CO2 / mile, lower that the EPA’s average for US car emissions.

Of course, there are quite a variety of other factors that would be important. The 11 L volume estimate appears to be for a thoroughbred at rest. Other breeds of horse will have different lung capacities (which I would imagine would tend be be lower, as the thoroughbred was selected for activities requiring very large amounts of oxygen). Additionally, the volume of CO2 produced would more realistically be a function of exertion. Animals never use their entire lung volume, but a larger proportion is used during times of heavy exertion.