an average vehicle puts out nearly 20 lbm of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere

Question

an average vehicle puts out nearly 20 lbm of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for every gallon of gasoline it burns, thus one thing we can do to reduce global warming is to buy a vehicle with higher fuel economy. a U.S. government publication states that a vehicle that gets  25 rather than 20 miles per gallon will prevent 10 tonsof carbon dioxide from being released over the lifetime of the vehicle. makeing reasonable assumptions, evaluate if this is a reasonable claim or a gross exxageration.

Explanation / Answer

Not sure what you are looking for, but i will show you how to say how many miles it needs to drive to prevent 10 tons from being emitted.
First you know 1 gallon makes 20 lb-mass of CO2 with your old car. It also gets 20 miles to the gallon. Therefor it produces 20/20= 1pound of CO2 per mile it drives. Your new car gets 25 miles per gallon. 20/25=.8 lb CO2/mile.

10(2000)= X(20/20) - X(20/25) where x is the number of miles
you get
20,000=.2X

X=100,000 miles.
you would have to drive 100,000 miles to have a difference of 10 tons of CO2, hope this helps.

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