Join me in Doing a Yearly Carbon, Petroleum, and Water Use Inventory?

I find it easier to do this in community, with the warmth of some human company, than alone.

It helps to measure progress to motivate continuing progress and acknowledge the value of efforts I've made.

I will get more accurate if I do it in community. And have more emotional "spoons" to keep going.

I try to complete it by fall, anyone want to do it together on this thread or set up a videoconferencing thing?

What are you using to measure the carbon/ petroleum? Fuel and drinking/washing water are easy enough though I failed the water check already we had a 600m3 leak a few months back.
I cannot find a carbon footprint measure I like, they vary with a difference of over 100% for the same inputs.

Thanks Skandi.  The short answer is "yes.".

It's so hard to measure; all the pieces you mention can get measured with uncertainty.  I just do the best I can and try to measure it by hand instead of using an on-line measuring program.

I can measure:

--heat
--electricity (assuming the worst of the "sustainable" energy, i.e., that it cost as much to build the turbine amortized over its lifetime as if you burned coal)
--transportation (though I realize I have missed the embodied energy of the vehicle, the roads)

Food is almost impossible, so I just count it as total failure/industrial ag,, and I think I'll subtract the calories I've grown.

I'm open to suggestions though.

Which footprint measurers did you get the %100 result from?

I figure I can measure progress quite accurately this way, even if the absolute quantities are still unknown, and this keeps me making real solid progress forward instead of just spinning my wheels and feeling like I'm doing a lot but actually not making much progress.  Thoughts?

I think so long as you use the same calculator each year you can see if you are going in the right direction even if the actual number is wrong.  I really can't remember which ones I tried but try a few of the online ones, throw in the same inputs and you'll be amazed how the output changes. Some of them were because there was no way to say never to certain things, like eating out or taking a bus/train. Some didn't allow spending to be set low enough, for example I buy less than one pair of shoes a year but some of the calculators would only allow one to say 1 minimum or 1 item of clothing per month which is 4x what I actually buy. Other calculators allow you to say how much you spend on such things, but do not take into consideration at all how you spend that sum.

Here are my results (in pounds of CO2 emitted)

electricity 3175.52                  Petroleum
natural gas (stove, hot water) 612  Petroleum
oil heat 3559.91                          Petroleum
transportation 1124.4                  Petroleum
wood (approx 1/4 cord) 1250    (for cooking) -----------
food: 4,000                                                       Petroleum
(food is a generic approximation for worst case scenario, American foodprint)

total:
13,722lbs of carbon dioxide emitted Oct. 1, 2020-Sept 30 2021