Lately I’ve been particularly curious as to whether Santa’s old sled is a clean green flying machine, or if he should be replacing his 8 reindeer with an environmentally-friendly car.
I should mention that, surprisingly, I was unable to find statistics specific to Santa’s magical flying reindeer, so these calculations use numbers from various sources and may not represent actual pollution caused by Santa and his animals. In other words, don’t complain to the government about the damage Santa is causing the environment based on this article.
Santa’s yearly trip around the globe is 44,000km long, twice the average of a North American driver. If we assume that the magic provides the altitude for this trip, then reindeer power only needs to push Santa’s sled forward. To complete the trip in 12 hours, I estimate they must travel at a speed of about 3100km/h. To travel at this speed, for this length of time, the reindeer need to eat an incredible 980 million calories each!!
So the next question is: how much food is in 980 million calories? Well, if they’re eating corn, they’d need to eat 16,500 lbs each — or 1.6 acres of food. Growing 12.8 acres of corn has its own implications for the environment that we’ll leave for another calculation.
We now need to consider that during the global trip the reindeer are “letting out” some of that corn in the form of methane (甲烷,沼气). A resting cow produces 110 kg of methane per year, so flying reindeer would each let out about 4.8 tons. With methane causing 20 times the global warming damage of CO2, and the altitude increasing that damage by 1000% that another 20 times, we can put Santa’s round-trip emissions at 15,488 tons. This is much more than the 100 tons an environmentally-friendly car would release on the same trip!
【2017年高考英语一轮复习讲练测:必修1.1《 Friendship》(测)(原卷版)】相关文章:
★ 湖南省汝城二中2014届高考英语一轮复习阅读训练 (64)
★ 2017届高考英语二轮复习大题冲关秘籍完形填空之夹叙夹议文:名校模拟(含解析)
★ 湖南省岳阳市2014高考英语一轮单项选择训练题(3)及答案
★ 2014高考英语(新人教版)一轮基础训练(17)A、B卷(附答案或解析)
★ 【人教版】2014届高考英语一轮复习指导考点针对练:必修5 unit3《Life in the future》
★ 湖南省汝城二中2014届高考英语一轮复习阅读训练 (60)
★ 2014届高考英语一轮复习课时作业(十四)必修3Module 2《Developing and Developed Countries》(外研版)
★ 【人教版】2014届高考英语一轮复习指导考点针对练:选修6 unit2《Poems》
★ 2017届高考英语二轮复习书面表达限时测验:5(含解析)
最新
2017-04-24
2017-04-24
2017-04-24
2017-04-24
2017-04-21
2017-04-21