[SentraSE-R]

Thanks very much for not giving up on me!

I am revisiting the issue after reading this article, which states "April 23, 2009 The Guardian has reported on new research showing that in one year, a single large container ship can emit cancer and asthma-causing pollutants equivalent to that of 50 million cars," and "15 of the world's biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world's 760m cars."

Certainly my paltry 226 gallons of gasoline burned last year and 11,650 miles driven aren't even a hiccup of a giant cargo ship's pollution: 1/50,000,000 of that cargo ship's pollution, if it runs its engines 24/7, is .63 seconds. It emits more in .63 seconds,\ than the average car does in a year. Even if my car emits 75X more HCs than the average car, its annual HC output isn't a minute of the cargo ship's annual pollution.

If someone could quantify the claims about the amount of air pollution the refineries produce to produce my 226 gallons of gasoline, or other examples of how insignificant my personal pollution is, I'm teetering on the brink of coming back.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around how much of a problem 80 million pounds of unreported volatile organic compounds is. If my 226 gal. of gasoline = 1356 lbs of VOC, that's one thing, but if we're talking about those 226 gallons equaling 25,764 lbs of CO2, with 40 million cars in CA, 80 million pounds isn't that much.