Carbon Fudgeprints


It seems that everyone has a carbon footprint.  The idea is that everything you do puts CO2 into the atmosphere or if it doesn't then it jolly well ought to so let's work out the carbon equivalent by just making stuff up.

No calculation could be simpler.

I go to the shop and I buy a loaf of bread.

The bread was delivered by truck to the shop
from the baker who got the grain by truck from the farm
which got the seed and fertiliser by truck from ...

Stop it, please!  William of Ockham wouldn't like it.

It is absolutely impossible for anyone to measure in any meaningful way how much CO2 production they are individually responsible for, except from their own lungs.  CO2 emission can only be determined at the immediate source.  How can anyone work out their personal CO2 equivalent for their share of the grain that grew and was shipped to the mill to make the flour that was shipped to the bakery to make the bread that was shipped to the store?  Carbon footprinting is the mathematical house that Jack built.  Shoddily.

You can measure how much CO2 comes from coal and oil fired powers stations.
If you want to know your share of that you can read your meter.
You can measure how much CO2 is emitted by a vehicle, ship or plane.
If it's your vehicle, you should know how many gallons of fuel you buy.

My point is that you can calculate CO2 responsibility more accurately by passing the buck up the chain to the fossil fuel end-user.

You can measure power station CO2 emissions indirectly at the coal unloading sidings.
You can measure vehicle CO2 emissions indirectly at the filling pump.


If you want to know the carbon footprint of a factory which makes counterclockwise elasticated blung-flouters, just read the utility meter and the fleet fuel bills.

That simplification misses a lot out.  But trying to deal with the missing bits means putting fudge factors in the calculations.  That is why I think that a carbon footprint is a carbon fudgeprint.

As soon as a government starts fudging the tax figures they invite the public to challenge the figures.

I am confident that at least some of the opposition to climate science is a reaction to the stupidity of politicians who subscribe to the inordinately complex and mostly bogus 'carbon footprint' idea.

Tell people that coal-fired power stations pump out CO2 and they will believe it.  Tell them that you can calculate exactly how much CO2 they, personally are responsible for out of all the CO2 in the entire planetary atmosphere and they may - in my opinion ought to - bundle you off to a home for the perpetually bewildered.