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4 Tons Of Plants per Mile to Ride In Your Car

Posted by Hemos on from the burning-'em-up dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "As you might know, I enjoy big numbers. So it's just natural that I was attracted by this news release from the University of Utah, "Bad Mileage: 98 tons of plants per gallon." "A staggering 98 tons of prehistoric, buried plant material is required to produce each gallon of gasoline we burn in our cars, SUVs, trucks and other vehicles." For a reasonably efficient car, riding 25 miles per gallon, this translates to 4 tons of prehistoric plants per mile, or more than two tons per kilometer. The research paper also mentions that everyday, we are using the fossil fuel equivalent of all the plants growing during a whole year just for our cars. Even if these numbers are too large, this still makes you think about how inefficient our cars are. This analysis describes the calculations and contains other details about the research paper which will be published in November by Climate Change."

6 of 995 comments (clear)

  1. FIRST POST by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    HAHAHAHAHHA

  2. First Post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Another reason to fund fuel cell research, methinks

  3. Re:so give them up by Biff98 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    The day Bill Gates says Windows sucks and Linux is really the way to go.

  4. Re:Site is slowing down - Article Text Below by kamukwam · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    In U.S. units, that is equal to a bit more than 196,000 pounds or the equivalent of 3 CowboyNeals .

    Are you sure there is nothing wrong with your CopyPaste-skills?

  5. Which is heavier? by literacy_nazi · · Score: -1, Offtopic


    Which is heavier, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead?

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    If you can't write properly, what makes you think people want to read what you've written?

  6. Re:Site is slowing down - Article Text Below by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    "(Score:1, Informative)"

    Apparently his trolling skills are unbeatable!