How do people emit carbon into the air?

Question

Other than driving a car and breathing. Does using electricity or heating your house emit carbon into the air?

Answer 1

Yes electricity is commonly generated by burning a fossil fuel, often coal, to generate steam which in turns drives a turbine and generates power.  Heating a house by a gas or oil fuelled boiler produces carbon dioxide which is emitted into the atmosphere.

Answer 2

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Answer 3

Humons directly emit carbon into the air known as CO2 by simple means called BREATHING. All living things that take in oxygen emit CO2.

Answer 4

Around 70% of the electricity generated in the US comes from facilities that emit greenhouse gases.  So basically yes, any electricity you use in your home increases the level of carbon in the air.  Another factor is buying products that have to be shipped long distances (which is pretty hard to avoid in our current system).

Answer 5

Unless you get your electricity from Hydro Power, Wind Power, or Nuclear Power, something needs to be burned to create the energy needed to spin the turbines that generate electricity.  This burning material is most likely coal or natural gas which does emit co2.

If you heat your home with electricity, oil, or gas, then you add co2 into the air.

Answer 6

Power generation (coal burning power plants for example: 40%

Transportation: autos, airlines, ships 30%

Other major impacts include logging/deforestation, which wipes out the trees that would have absorbed the CO2 and stored carbon in their trunks, etc. while also releasing the oxygen.

Some agriculture such as cattle ranchingcan be a major impact due to the methane that cows release as part of their digestive process.  The greatest impact is when the cattle are raised on land that was cleared of forest and converted to pasture (one of the reasons rain forest is being decimated at record rates in Brazil.  It's a McDisaster.)

Just about anything that is manufactured uses energy, and the impact is increased by transporting the goods to market then sending the trash to landfills where much of it decomposes into methane and other greenhouse gasses.  With bottled water for example a lot of the water is transported in small trucks to bottling plants, then it's shipped to the store, then the billions of empty plastic bottles are trucked to landfills.  Much of it is tap water anyway.  All for the convenience of not having to buy and refill a bike water bottle.  The simplest answer to this portion is to buy and waste less stuff.  It's very cost effective.

Answer 7

yes it does