Carbon Footprint Logic Fail

No, they're not random words strung together. The following is an actual conversation (originally about saving money) that made me headdesk hard, and yet I think the lack of thought is not atypical.

Person 1: I need a camera battery charger. I can go to the local Circuit City/Compusa/Radioshack and get one for about $40. Or I can order one online–including shipping, for about $18. It is the same thing, and if I can wait 5 days for postal service, it is much cheaper.
Person 2: Of course then you run into the whole carbon footprint local vs non-local issue.
P1: I’m pretty sure that no matter how I get my battery charger , it is going to be of non-local origins.
P2: I don’t think you understand my point. BUYING locally.

Head, meet desk.

I've read that in any given purchase, the biggest contribution to the object's carbon footprint occurs in the drive from the store to your home. I don't know if that's literally true and in what cases, but the important point is to remember that economies of scale have a big factor. A single skein of alpaca yarn goes from raw fiber in Peru to scouring in China (virtually all wool and most other animal fibers are cleaned in China due to more lax environmental and worker safety laws) to spinning God Knows Where to warehouse to store. That's a lot of travel. But Peru-China-GodKnow all go by boat in quantities of several thousand tons at a time. GodKnows to warehouse goes by the semi full, which is around 10 to 20 tons. Warehouse to store goes several hundred pounds. Store to my house is 100 grams. You can see how the division works out.

In the particular case mentioned, the mail truck is coming to your house whether it carries a charger or not, while if you buy it locally, you have to go out in your personal vehicle to get it. Thus unless there are unusual mitigating circumstances, buying online actually has a lower carbon footprint.

If you are buying something produced locally, you are cutting down on some of the carbon footprint. (In my example, the Peru-China-Godknows-Warehouse portion goes away). For something produced remotely, there are many good reasons to buy local, but carbon footprint is not one of them.

Critical thought: it is your friend.

Again triggered to get off my hinder and post by a post by ldragoon.

Last time I was at Barnes and Noble, I saw a book titled "The Really Inconvenient Truths: Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don't Want You to Know About--Because They Helped Cause Them." Yes, with emphasis in the title and everything. Bad sign, that.

So, perhaps the biggest environmental catastrophe us liberals don't want you to know about? When women take hormonal birth control, some of those hormones are carried out of her body in her urine and pass into the water supply, where they are affecting the reproductive abilities of aquatic species downstream.

1) I thought everyone already knew about that. Guys, there's this problem with widespread birth control use I don't want you to know about, that's why I just told you about it. I don't know any reliable links, or I'd direct you to those. Because I don't want you to know about this.
2) You know, there's always trade-offs and you need to make apples to apples comparisons. Hormones in water supplies in amounts that effect ecosystems are a problem. Over population among humans is also a problem. Which do you suppose causes more damage overall, the amount of hormones a woman taking birth control pisses into the ecosystem over her lifetime, or the three extra humans beings she would bring into the world on average without them and the damage they would do over their lifetime, not to mention the extra humans they would then produce?
3) If you consider the existence of birth control to be "liberal", then YOU'RE A FUCKING WINGNUT! Iain Murray = wingnut. George W. Bush = wingnut. McCain = likely wingnut, because you don't pause like that when you actually don't know about an issue, you pause like that when you know what you want to say will royally piss someone off.

On top of that, I'm probably heading into a political debate with my mother. She sent me a political joke that was a bit too conservative for my taste. I wrote back "Dare I ask who you plan to vote for? Or should I just say that I'm voting for the one who isn't a mysogynistic war-monger and leave it at that? ^_~"
If she wants to get into it, I'm just going to ignore her. I can NOT deal with her ignorant hypocritical shit right now.

What's the Worst That Could Happen?

The global warming "controversy" is an excellent example of why I ignore the American news media. In the 1990s, more than half of news stories on global warming said it wasn't happening, or there was doubt as to whether it was happening. A examination of a randomly selected sample of 10% of the peer-reviewed scientific studies on global warming published during the same time period, a sample size of thousands of papers, found that not a single one doubted global warming.
50+%, versus none. I'm forced to conclude that either the American news media was lying to us, or they couldn't identify a reputable source if their life depended on it. Either way, the end conclusion is that they are absolutely worthless.