Feb 18 2007
NASCAR Contribution to CO2 Emissions
So the Daytona 500 just finished. If you didn’t see the last lap, you really need to. It has good racing, and above all, a spectacular crash. Clint Boyer finished the race upside down and on fire. Oh, and the time differential between the top two racers was 2 one-hundreths of a second.
I got to thinking, those cars don’t get very good fuel mileage - I wonder how much they carbon dioxide they emit into the atmosphere. It turns out it was easier to figure out than I expected, as someone else had done much of the leg work.
From pinkfreud-ga on Google Answers, we see that NASCAR burns about 200,000 pounds of fuel per year. It’s unclear if that’s for one car or for the entire competition, but based on my rough calculations it appears that’s for all of NASCAR. Though at the end of this post, you’ll realize it doesn’t really matter. If that was for one car, the final answer would just need to be multiplied by the number of cars racing each weeked; which is around 129 (43 cars in 3 races).
According to this site, one gallon of gasoline burned produces about 20 pounds of carbon dioxide. 200,000 times 20 is 4,000,000 pounds of carbon dioxide produced per year. Converting this from pounds to metric tons, and we see that NASCAR produces about 1,800 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.
The global CO2 emissions are estimated at 25 billion metric tons. Therefore, NASCAR contributes about 0.0000072 percent of the global CO2. Even if that 200,000 pounds was for each car, which I don’t think it is, it would only increase the contribution by NASCAR by 2 orders of magnitude to 0.00072 percent. These are miniscule numbers.
I would conclude that while NASCAR is an obvious contributer to atmospheric CO2 level by nature of their internal combustion engines, that the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere is very small. Lovers of NASCAR can be safe in watching their favorite sport without having to worry about them killing the environment.
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...Related Posts:
3 Responses to “NASCAR Contribution to CO2 Emissions”
To reduce spam, comments are automatically closed 30 days after the last comment. If you would like to comment on any closed thread, please use the contact form at the top of this page.
Does that calculation only include the cars in the race on race day?
What about qualifying and practice? How about hundreds of trucks moving around all the equipment to get the cars to the event? What about 200,000 cars showing up to a location on a hot summer day? Is NASCAR an industrial point of pollution? Are the races permitted for clean air requirements?
Not to mention lots of smokers, tires burned up, fires, all the energy gone into watching cars race is definitely killing the environment but hey its NASCAR !
Thanks for the comment.
The above calculation makes a lot of assumptions, many of which may not be entirely valid, and ignores many aspects that you bring up.
I think the 200,000 pounds of fuel burned per year is for all the cars in one year. My estimation follows.
I’m estimating that the average length of a race is 400 miles. I don’t know what it is, but it seems like a fair estimate for all three series. It might be a little high of an estimate, but it won’t make much difference. I estimated the fuel efficiency at 4 miles per gallon which is actually on the low side. Therefore, dividing 400 by 4, the average number of gallons of fuel burned is 100 gallons per event per car. There are 43 cars per event (though not all of them finish the race), which means that 4,300 gallons of fuel are used per event. There are 3 races held each weekend, meaning 12,900 gallons of fuel are consumed per weekend. And at 37 events per year, that’s 477,300 gallons of fuel used per year, which is actually quite a bit higher than than the 200,000 gallons I used in my original calculation. I made a mistake in the original calculation. It’s been fixed. But the mass of CO2 emitted by the 3 major NASCAR events (NEXTEL Cup, the Busch Series and the Craftsman Truck Series) for the year totals around 4300 metric tonnes. This still amounts to only 0.0000017 percent of total emitted CO2.
One thing that I’m not certain of is the amount of carbon dioxide produced per gallon of fuel burned. The number I used was for unleaded gasoline cars, which clearly doesn’t apply to NASCAR, but it’s the best number I can find.
You’re right that this does not include practice and qualifying. Nor does it include the trucks needed to haul the cars to the events. It does not include the effects of the spectators, or their vehicles showing up to the events.
Attending a race is very clearly not a healthy environment. In addition to the CO2 that the cars produce, they produce aerosols (small particles about the size of one one-millionth (1×10^-6) meters in diameter from both the engines and the tires (and yes, from the smokers too). These have been shown to have adverse health effects, and not just because of the risk of lung cancer. See Particulate matter in the atmosphere: which particle properties are important for its effects on health? and its references.
Any sources of better numbers to use in the calculations is greatly appreciated.
I am not saying that NASCAR is good for the environment, it clearly is not. All I’m saying is that in relation to the other sources of atmospheric carbon dioxide it is not a major contributor.
“Even if that 200,000 pounds was for each car, which I don’t think it is, it would only increase the contribution by NASCAR by 2 orders of magnitude to 0.00072 percent. These are miniscule numbers…. Lovers of NASCAR can be safe in watching their favorite sport without having to worry about them killing the environment.”
Using this kind of logic, a motorist can claim, “Hey, I only cause 1/[appropriate gigantic number here] of the global warming going on in the world, so no need for me to change my course, I can go right on polluting the air that others breathe, because the damage I do is so miniscule.” And so people don’t get their fat-asses out of their SUVs and onto bicycles, not understanding that if there are billions upon billions of unnecessary wasteful drives throughout the world each year, THE SHIT PUT IN THE AIR ADDS UP!!!
NASCAR is pure shortsighted selfishness, and those who support such waste are evil.
Deal with it.