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_equivalentNellied3 (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)