by F.G.Helmke
Can you kill the Earth "by burning an oil lamp?" Let’s
calculate:
Total oil
produced up to date: 100 billion tons
One ton is one
billion milligrams
That’s one hundred
billion billions of milligrams of oil produced
(100 000
000 000 000 000 000 mg)
The atmosphere
of the Earth: 4 billion cubic kilometers (at sea level conditions)
One cubic
kilometer is one billion cubic meters
So the
atmosphere contains four billion billions of cubic meters of air
(4 000 000
000 000 000 000 m³)
100 billion
billions of milligrams divided by 4 billion billions of cubic meters
That’s 25 milligrams of oil burned per cubic meter of air in our atmosphere.
That’s 25 milligrams of oil burned per cubic meter of air in our atmosphere.
100 000 000
000 000 000 000 mg
: 4 000
000 000 000 000 000 m³
= 25 mg/m³
Now let’s do the following experiment: Get a
one cubic meter cardboard box. Put you head inside and seal it. Take a syringe
with 25 mg or about 33 ml of crude oil, put it into an oil lamp and light it. If
you survive, keep on driving your car! If not, be sure you go to heaven! When
you arrive there you’d better have a good apology why you allowed this to happen your
planet!
