McLaren become the first Carbon Neutral Formula 1 Team

Skeeter · 6 Dec 2011 at 15:25

http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2011/12/12869.html

Quite impressive... Until you read that they have just 'bought' carbon neutrality by providing funding to some hydro-electric projects.

But still... should keep the green hippies at bay, for a while..

Firestar_3x · 6 Dec 2011 at 15:28

Shame they couldn't buy some windfarms or something in the UK and put the money / jobs back into this country.

arknor · 6 Dec 2011 at 15:39

hydro electric power plants have destroyed massive areas of forest i though? are they really good for the enviroment?

formula one is carbon neutral since 1997 anyway

Skeeter · 6 Dec 2011 at 16:11

arknor said:
hydro electric power plants have destroyed massive areas of forest i though? are they really good for the enviroment?

No. They are good for humans. The environment gets pretty screwed by them.

formula one is carbon neutral since 1997 anyway

'Formula 1' as a travelling circus of teams and fans has been, but It wouldn't have covered the teams actual construction of the cars or running of their factories and offices.

Participant · 6 Dec 2011 at 16:36

This carbon neutrality thing is an absolute joke. Everything is already carbon neutral on account of the world's oceans alone being able to process far more CO2 than humans will ever throw at them.

People should concentrate on dirty emissions not CO2 grrr /rant.

Gaijin · 6 Dec 2011 at 16:40

Becoming slowly more popular now. Both my friend's GT1 teams have been carbon neutral for 2 seasons and 1 season respectively.

Gaijin · 6 Dec 2011 at 16:43

Robbie G said:
This carbon neutrality thing is an absolute joke.

It's not such a joke if you are appealing to sponsors who may hold environmental issues close to their heart, regardless of their accuracy.

Clarkey · 6 Dec 2011 at 16:45

Robbie G said:
This carbon neutrality thing is an absolute joke. Everything is already carbon neutral on account of the world's oceans alone being able to process far more CO2 than humans will ever throw at them.

People should concentrate on dirty emissions not CO2 grrr /rant.

Yeah, totally.

Skeeter · 6 Dec 2011 at 16:46

Its all about 'image'

Mr Men · 6 Dec 2011 at 18:01

Ironic considering the fuel they have wasted with their blown diffuser

Indy500 · 6 Dec 2011 at 21:52

"Carbon footprint" is the reason that we don't have proper waste-water filtering (the consequences, among others, being oestrogen-mimicking compounds causing damage to fish populations). Then people wonder why cod is so expensive.

CO2 is used by plants for photosynthesis, it's not a waste product. Unless you want to cull large numbers of humans\animals, stop volcanoes erupting etc, you will make no appreciable dent in CO2 levels.

Water vapour creates a bigger greenhouse effect, shall we start cloud-seeding everywhere now? The whole thing's a sick joke. :rolleyes:

Skeeter · 6 Dec 2011 at 22:50

320 parts per million, to 390 parts per million... So from 0.00032% of the atmosphere, to 0.00039%.

Show me the data from the last 100,000 years, and we can start to talk trends. The idea that 50 years represents a significant enough time frame to start drawing up trends in relation to the development of our planet is so idiotic I don't know why scientist even tolerate it.

It would be like a Dr assessing if a patient has died by taking their pulse for a mere 0.0001 of a second.

50 years is 0.0000000110132159% of the age of the planet (4.54bn years). It's impossible to draw meaningfull information from such a minute spread of data.

arknor · 7 Dec 2011 at 05:22

how do you propose we measure it from more than 50 years ago?

Ceryndrion · 7 Dec 2011 at 07:35

ice core sampling..

arknor · 7 Dec 2011 at 08:04

Ceryndrion said:
ice core sampling..

which is how reliable? even modern dating techniques are thought to be way off

Dave M · 7 Dec 2011 at 08:11

arknor said:
which is how reliable? even modern dating techniques are thought to be way off

Aren't ice cores a little like tree rings, they have lines showing the new seasons snow fall.

Surely that helps with dating?

Demon · 7 Dec 2011 at 08:14

I don't see how any rational person can think that the amount of extra crap we've pumped into the atmosphere over the last 100 years or less won't have any effect on the balance of things.

I'm as sceptical as the next man when it comes to carbon neutrality, it's very much always seemingly the lesser of two evils, which isn't ideal, but I don't for one minute pretend that doing nothing is the right thing to do..

Participant · 7 Dec 2011 at 08:26

Gayjin said:
It's not such a joke if you are appealing to sponsors who may hold environmental issues close to their heart, regardless of their accuracy.

It's blindingly obvious that I wasn't talking about it being a joke from the point of view of corporate social responsibility

. CSR is designed to add value through pandering to stakeholders' misguided opinions, it's just that firms never admit it. Therefore of course F1 teams are being sensible. I'm saying I believe the science is a joke.

Clarkey said:
Yeah, totally.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.png[IMG][/QUOTE]

Ooooh, a graph.
Do you have one that directly links CO2 levels to temperature change?
Or maybe one that contains CO2 data from ice cores dating back thousands of years, which show that CO2 fluctuates naturally anyway?
Or one that shows a period in which CO2 is rising but temperatures are falling?
Or perhaps one that proves that CO2 drives temperature and not vice versa?
Do you realise how little information a 40 year period actually gives us, in the big scheme of things?

Correlation != causation. Here's another graph for you:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/3HwPA.gif

That's right, CO2 is at a historically very low level. And guess what? The dinosaurs didn't drive 5 litre Mercedes or run coal fired power stations.

Demon said:

I don't see how any rational person can think that the amount of extra crap we've pumped into the atmosphere over the last 100 years or less won't have any effect on the balance of things.

I'm as sceptical as the next man when it comes to carbon neutrality, it's very much always seemingly the lesser of two evils, which isn't ideal, but I don't for one minute pretend that doing nothing is the right thing to do..

Click to expand...

This discussion is about CO2, not 'crap' as you so eloquently put it. Natural cycles have a much higher effect on the atmosphere than the CO2 released through man made activity, which is just processed by vegetation and the oceans anyway.

Dave M · 7 Dec 2011 at 08:32

I don't think a model that can't even predict near future trends deserves such a fervent following. It's the best we've got right now but dressing it as fact and denouncing anything who dares consider alternatives as irrational is not science.

Skeeter · 7 Dec 2011 at 08:38

arknor said:
how do you propose we measure it from more than 50 years ago?

To the same level of detail? We can't, and that's my point. With such a tiny data set it is impossible to draw any meaningful trends. To then use those trends to impose legislation is bonkers.

If there wasnt such an 'image' around CO2, and therefore money to be made and votes to be won, the data would be dismissed in a heartbeat.