This visual is brilliant–it sums up capitalism, more or less. See more examples after the jump.


The Kettle
The one that struck me as most clever was the steaming kettle inside a transparent rotating Earth, to show the accumulation of water vapor.

A Still Body Tends to Rest Unless Acted Upon by External Forces

Positive Feedback Mechanisms
I remember learning that methane and water vapor had a substantially greater effect than CO2.

Albedo effect–light particles popping out of the Sun in an amusing way.

Changes in surface water kill plankton and reduce carbon absorption.

Social Disasters
Defense against flooded nations.

Here, a government bureaucrat and a corporate hog work together to create a monster.

The big picture regarding the modern life metaphor.

Watch the video:

Wake Up, Freak Out – then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.

This past two weeks, I’ve used:

• a Prius to get groceries and dinner
• a Civic to check out an apartment in SF
• a 328i to check out an apartment in SF and visit Golden Gate Park
• a Nissan Versa to get groceries and go up to Mount Diablo to check for some of this week’s meteor shower action
• a Honda Odyssey to move from Berkeley to a new apartment in SF
• a Mini to get back over to Oakland for a Saturday homebrew BBQ

There are two ZipCar lots within two blocks from my new location in the city. The credit card style swipe is ingenious. I’ve called customer service twice and was able to talk to real human beings right away.

I can roughly quantify the opportunity to save money that I’ve created by switching from my car to ZipCar.

Assuming an average hourly cost of $10 (including SF 9.5% tax and the 10% EVP discount), I’ll save money in any month that I use ZipCar fewer than 50 hours. That seems like more than enough driving for me. The potential savings could be much higher with other people. I had access to cheap loans and cheap insurance, and I did repair work myself, so car ownership was relatively affordable for me. ZipCar is better though, because of the flexibility and simplicity I now enjoy.

A New Kind of Freedom..
For my first ZipCar experience, I made a last-minute reservation for a 2008 BMW 328i named Bui, which was parked at a gas station about a mile away from my house. I was hoping to get a Volvo S40, but someone else snatched the one that was near me before I could reserve it. I was fully prepared to pay the hourly rates for these premium cars, but the Low-Car Diet is covering that cost for now. The nice thing about this BMW was the absence of any exterior markings identifying it as a ZipCar, unlike the cheaper cars, so you can car-share inconspicously if you wish.

I unlocked the car with my credit-card style pass, and hopped in to find that the fuel tank was 100% full. The tire pressure warning light was on, but I ignored it after visually inspecting all the tires. False tire pressure warnings are common in BMW’s, even the brand new cars. So, I took off from Berkeley to San Francisco, where I picked up some friends and then went over the Golden Gate Bridge to Muir Beach. I’ve always thought the 3 Series was overpriced. I still do. Granted, the steering and suspension offer very good road feel. As with most autostick-fake-manuals, the transmission’s response was too slow and ended up hurting my brain. A good bit of power comes in around 4,000 RPM, but the exhaust note is rather light and raspy–kind of like a wimpy Formula One?

We made it comfortably through downtown SF, over the bridge, up into the hills of Marin, and across Hwy 1 to Muir beach. The GG and the shoreline were cloaked in fog, though sunny blue skies were clearly visible to the east. I stayed at the beach for a few hours, hoping to even out my Midwestern-style farmer’s tan by only sunblocking my face, neck, and forearms.

So, my experience was pleasant and painless, although there was one catch. After I dropped Bui off at his parking lot of origin, I returned about 10 minutes later to check if someone had left their sunglasses in the car. No sunglasses, but later in the day I was hit with a $50 late fee. According to the website, I had the car for an additional 10 minutes beyond when I know that it stopped moving. Apparently the cars are equipped with fairly sophisticated brains that log data and allow them to be tracked from headquarters, but I’m not sure where this 10-minute discrepancy came from.

The mass on either side of a chemical reaction must balance, so I thought to myself, “If a gallon of fuel weighs 6 lbs, where is the other 13 lbs coming from?”

Well, it turns out that the additional weight is from the 21 lbs of oxygen that your car sucks from the atmosphere to burn that gallon of gas! Your car also spits out one gallon (8 lbs) of water in the process. 21 lbs of oxygen fills about four phone booths (~250 cu. ft.), and 19 lbs of carbon dioxide fills about two and a half phone booths (~150 cu. ft.). If your fuel economy is 25 mpg, then the above quantities occur every 25 miles you drive.

Here’s a simple mass equation:
C8H18 + (25/2) O2 = (8) CO2 + (9) H2O
hydrocarbon + oxygen = carbon dioxide + water

Basically, each Carbon atom broken from a fuel molecule grabs two Oxygen atoms from the air, and every two Hydrogen atoms grab one Oxygen atom from the air. Breaking these bonds yields heat energy.

Is this surprising to anyone else?
Disclaimer: As this not my area of expertise, I make absolutely no guarantees regarding the accuracy of this very simple example. The real-world process of combustion involves many variables.

This chart shows that on a 1,000 mile trip, a U-Haul truck running on gasoline will emit 2,774 lbs of carbon dioxide, while some other truck running on diesel fuel will emit 2,798 lbs. On this trip, the U-Haul will emit 24 lbs, or a whopping 0.8%, less carbon dioxide! Aside from questioning the comparison of a gasoline truck to a diesel truck, this difference is so tiny (less than one percent) that its meaning is quickly swallowed up by any other variables in the system (age of truck, miles per tank, driving habits, fuel cost, total energy efficiency, weather). The glaring offense is the fact that the other truck’s dark cloud of smoke appears to have nearly three times greater area than the lighter U-Haul cloud. So, visually, the chart implies that U-Haul emits 60% less, while the dubious numbers show that the difference is less than 1%; this is a visual distortion of extreme proportions. Mysteriously, a trip of 999 miles or 1,001 miles yields a difference of only 23 lbs.




Now let’s zoom out for a reality check. Does a truck really emit 2,800 pounds of carbon dioxide on a 1,000 mile trip? 2,800 pounds seems high. A brief search points to the EIA emission coefficients, which suggest that burning a gallon of diesel fuel emits 22.4 lbs of CO2. Assuming 10 mpg on a 1,000 mile trip yields 100 gallons burned. Apply the coefficient and you get 2,240 lbs of CO2. So, that number is close enough. As strange as it seems, mixing a gallon of fuel (weighs about 6 lbs) with oxygen, and then burning the mixture does produce about 20 lbs of CO2. This is because each carbon atom freed from a fuel molecule hooks up with two oxygen atoms from the atmosphere to form a CO2 molecule. The hydrogen in the fuel also hooks up with oxygen to form water. So my guess is that the math could look like this: 6 lbs of fuel + 24 lbs of oxygen = 22 lbs of CO2 + 8 lbs of water.

Check out the excellent data attribution line — “All numbers are estimates based on averages from various reliable sources.”