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Are you certain about that? I know a car emits much more CO2 and H2O than most anything else, but as an example, I was pretty sure the smog over L.A. was a direct result of oxides of nitrogen. Or was that only toxic, and not greenhouse, and thus not part of our consideration?


According to http://www.epa.gov/oms/climate/420f05004.htm cars also produce significant amounts of methane and nitrous oxide, which are both greenhouse gases. However good old CO2 represents 94-95 percent of the greenhouse potential from your average car.

So no, it is not all CO2, but the rest is a rounding error.


Precisely. If you're talking about greenhouse impact, MPG is the only important measure.

If you're cared about pollution aside from that then yes, there are huge differences depending on make, model, maintenance, etc.


Should the water vapour also be an important part of your cars greenhouse gases?

(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Role_of_water_va...)


Nitrogen oxides are both toxic and greenhouse gases, but in the quantities that they're emitted from tailpipes, the toxicity is a much bigger problem than the greenhouse effect.




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