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Here is the Wikipedia article on breathing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

"The gas exhaled is 4% to 5% by volume of carbon dioxide, about a 100 fold increase over the inhaled amount."

So we effectively expel 100x the amount of CO2 we take in.

Here is a really good breakdown of the math which lines up with Wikipedia:

https://www.globe.gov/explore-...

There are various professional amateur collaborations depending on your field of interest. In astronomy there's the Society for Astronomical Sciences. There's GLOBE which is also oriented towards students. I'm vaguely aware of opportunities to do field work in archeology and paleontology. The Economist had a DIY science article in their recent Christmas issue about low cost sensors. I don't know if this meets your "crowd/open sourced" buzzword criteria or what a "resurgence in fringe ideas" has to do with citizen science.

How sure is "pretty sure"? Is it sure enough to include some studies, or a source for numbers, or...?

I found this blog post from somebody who put together some related numbers. It doesn't exactly relate to the carbon costs of farming the food and collecting/refining the gasoline, but it discusses the carbon mass per unit distance emitted by the various modes of transportation.

Here are the interesting numbers. CO2 produced per 3.2 km of travel above what is produced by breathing at rest:

By car: 0.88 kg CO2
Walking: 0.039 kg CO2
Riding a bike: 0.017 kg CO2

So traveling by car produces 51 times as much CO2 emissions than biking. As I said, that doesn't include the carbon cost of farming, so I found this study showing that producing food produces 2.778E-7 tons of CO2 per kcal. Going back to that bike ride, the 3.2 km bike ride consumed 49 kcal more than resting, and the amount of CO2 produced from farming/etc. operations for 49 kcal of food is 0.014 kg of CO2. So it nearly doubles the CO2 produced to ride a bike, to .03 kg, but driving a car still produces 28.75 times more CO2. And that doesn't even account for the cost of getting the fuel - it's only tailpipe emissions. Even carpooling, say with five people in the car, produces more CO2 than each person individually riding a bike.

(Please let me know of any errors I've made. I don't claim to be infallible.)

Anyway, one should point out that biking produces less CO2 than walking or using any other vehicle, for a given distance.

Why aren't we taxing walking?!

Anyway, one should point out that biking produces less CO2 than walking or using any other vehicle, for a given distance.

I produce more CO2 when I bike than when I ride in a car.

The car itself is another story, though.

This news looks like one of The Onion great news... but I just checked, and I couldn't find it.

Anyway, one should point out that biking produces less CO2 than walking or using any other vehicle, for a given distance.

www.globe.gov

A good site that kids all over the world that has kids doing real science.

Good times, good times.