Talk:Carbon dioxide equivalent

[Untitled]
Should this be merged and redirected into GWP, since they are the same? William M. Connolley 20:17, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Overly complicted and confusing for non-experts
This entry seems to dictate a superficial notation difference between to concepts: CO2e as an equivalent concentration, and CDE as an equivalent emission rate. Problems:

1. CDE is not a recognized standard name or abbreviation

2. CDE is not a quantity but a rate (e.g., ton/year)

3. CO2e is commonly used for both concentrations and rates, depending on the context, and is simply a weighted number based on GWP in both cases.

4. as presented, this is more confusing than helpful to non-experts.

I would recommend:

1. incorporate this under GWP or at least reference GWP.

2. add a better introduction explaining the concept of weighting emissions or concentrations by GWP and why that would be done in simple terms.

3. add a section explaining the time-scale issue and describing the standard 100-year generaly used today.

4. keep the two sections w/o the 'CDE' term -- replace with CO2e

38.96.176.66 (talk)


 * My suggestion is instead of having "carbon dioxide equivalent" and "equivalent carbon dioxide", have carbon dioxide equivalent emissions and carbon dioxide equivalent concentrations. Woood (talk) 09:33, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Its not a notational difference; they are two different concepts. I don't understand the assertion that the article is over complicated. Unless you can point to a simpler way of explaining the same difference? William M. Connolley (talk) 22:25, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with Woood above - this would follow the IPCC approach. I have not seen 'CDE' used elsewhere. Flit (talk) 22:02, 19 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I also have not seen the abbreviation "CDE" in any literature or reference sources. According to the European Commission, "A carbon dioxide equivalent, or CO2 equivalent, abbreviated as CO2-eq is a metric measure used to compare the emissions from various greenhouse gases on the basis of their global-warming potential (GWP), by converting amounts of other gases to the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide with the same global warming potential." The link is: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Glossary:CO2_equivalent Nellied3 (talk) 07:51, 21 May 2013 (UTC)nellied3

Counting nouns
In the section "Global warming potential", para 2 we see the use of an ambiguous noun billion with no clarification as to its actual value. I have rewritten it using the British value 1x10^12. I strenuously suggest that in any article using such counting nouns there must be a disclaimer indicating the actual value of the unit. A very much better solution is to use the real value intended as an arithmetical quantity. Counting nouns are for children, politicians and news-media hype, not for encyclopedic use. 58.7.166.200 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:13, 19 December 2015 (UTC)