Superbowl vs. Greenhouse Gases?

Image from: http://www.jazzsports.com/super-bowl-2006/images/bowl_XLI.jpg

     As you all know, Superbowl XLI is on Sunday.  However, it turns out that not only will the Chicago Bears be versing the Indianapolis Colts, but the Superbowl itself will also be versing Greenhouse Gases.  What exactly is meant by this?

     The NFL is anticipating a high amount of heat-trapping gas emissions to be released at the game on Sunday, and in anticipation of this they are planting 3,000 magrove trees and some other native Florida trees.  This will end up being nearly a year long project, since they started to plant these trees in August and won’t finish planting them until May.  These trees are being planted in hopes that they will help to take in some of the very harmful greenhouse gas emissions that will be produced because of all the events of the Superbowl.   The greenhouse gas that the NFL is concerned about these trees absorbing is CO2:  ”make the games “carbon neutral” because the trees will eventually absorb carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, emitted at the events.”  This massive amount of tree planting has also been done for the last 2 superbowls.  I was trying to find out exactly how effective this project was the last 2 years, but I couldn’t.  I have to believe though that it must have been somewhat successful for the NFL to continue doing this for the third year in a row.

    In total, the events surrounding the Superbowl, there will be about 500 tons of CO2 emissions.  This is resulting from power for the game, the Superbowl theme park that is next to the stadium, and approxiamtely 1,200 vehicles or more.  It sure seems like all these news posts in the last couple of days have really started to reach to people.  Ideally I guess the NFL should be trying to encourage these CO2 emissions from being produced in the first place, however, it is still a good start for them to do their tree planting project. 

     One of the major news realeases that have been coming out recently concerning global warming was from the U.N. which stated that there was a 90% chance that all of the things that have been happening in terms of global warming in the last 50 years have been the fault of humans and human activity.  I personally feel that this percentage is probably a little higher based on my knowledge that I  have gained on the topic this year from Mr. McKinley’s class and blogging.  It just seems to me like every time I post on global warming the articles usually end with some thoughts on how we humans need to stop some of the things that we’re doing in order to reduce the effects of global warming.  Typicall on this list are things such as: ride your bike instead of driving, or even carpool, use the electricity in your house sparingly, and so many other things. 

    Some other good news that was mentioned in this article is that many of the 2008 candidates for the Presidency are considering making laws that limit the amount of greenhouse gases that are produced.  This would definitely have a very positive effect on our environment.  Also, “That could place value on offset projects by creating a market where industry might invest in green projects in exchange for the right to pollute.”

    So, I think it was good to know that more important things went into the Superbowl this year, I mean not to say that the game and the commercials aren’t important, I just think that this shows that now people are starting to catch on to how important of an issue this is.  Hopefully the trend will continue.

 Source:

http://timethief.wordpress.com/2007/01/31/trees-take-on-greenhouse-gases-at-super-bowl/