Documentary "population zero"?

Question

i found the writing for the narration to be horrible and a few factoids in the piece didn't seem right-

-he says that for every gallon of gasoline burned that 19 pounds of pollution are released into the atmosphere..? how does 6 pounds of fuel make 19 pounds of pollution?

-he says wild horses roam free again in north america...? i thought the spainish introduced the horse to america.

Answer 1

I'm not familiar with the documentary, but there are wild mustangs in the west.  There were prehistoric small horses, Eohippus, on this continent, but they became extinct.  The Spaniards did bring horses to the New World.

Eohippus (meaning "dawn horse") was the earliest-known horse - it was the size of a tiny dog. Another name for this genus is Hyracotherium (meaning "mole beast").

Anatomy: Eohippus (Hyracotherium) was only 2 feet (60 cm) long and 12-14 inches high at the shoulder.

This primitive horse had 4 hoofed toes on the front feet and 3 hoofed toes on each hind foot. It had a long skull with 44 long-crowned teeth.

Diet: Eohippus was a grazing herbivore that ate soft leaves and plant shoots.

When Eohippus lived:  Eohippus lived during the early Eocene Epoch, about 50 million years ago. It lived in the Northern hemisphere (in Asia, Europe, and North America). The first fossils of this tiny horse were found in England by the famous paleontologist Richard Owen in 1841 and named Hyracotherium.

Less than 10,000 years ago, however, many of these horse-like species became extinct, along with other browsing animals such as mammoths. Climate changes and over-hunting by humans may have been to blame, but no one knows for sure. The only survivors were horses in Asia and several zebras. In North America, however, horses were wiped out.

So where did the modern horses come from, the ones that spawned America's cowboy myth? Historians believe that Spanish explorers brought the animals with them on their voyages to the New World in the 1500s. Let loose upon the land, they soon reclaimed the prairies that had once been theirs alone, producing vast herds of wild horses.

The American west is home to thousands of untamed, free-roaming horses that are descendants of horses brought here by Spanish explorers. They are more properly referred to as feral horses rather than wild horses. Many live in this area of Wyoming, this particular group being the White Mountain wild horses, located near historic Pilot Butte.

Answer 2

You also forget what happens when those emissions mix in with the chemicals in the air. It begins to break down the mixture we breathe and turn it into pollution. Also, the spanish did introduce the horse but after that for a time there were wild horses that roamed the west.

Answer 3

"-he says that for every gallon of gasoline burned that 19 pounds of pollution are released into the atmosphere..? how does 6 pounds of fuel make 19 pounds of pollution?"

Remember that the burnt gasoline combines with the oxygen around, that might be what he means. I'm not entirely sure though because I'm not very familiar with chemistym

Answer 4

well i for one loved that documentary. shows i am legend is not really factual.