MAE 124/ESYS 103 Spring 2008

Additional Guidance for Paper 2.

Paper topic:  Paper2_Instructions.pdf
Writing Guide:  WritingGuide.pdf

Note: Hard copy abstract, outline, and references due in class Friday, May 30. Turnitin.com is also set up to accept this submission, and we'd be grateful for the turnitin.com submission as a back up. (The digital copy will give us a back up in the very unlikely event that your paper submission disappears, and it will leave us with a record of what you submitted after we hand back the outlines and are trying to grade your final papers.)

TA Robb Kulin's Office Hours: Wednesdays 12-12:50 pm in EBU-II Room 262. Robb's e-mailed advice.

Frequently Asked Questions

1.  Can you tell me of any good resources for scientific papers pertinent to this paper topic, such as scientific journals that are highly regarded in the field?
This paper topic asks you to think about life cycle assessment as applied to mitigation wedges. We'll continue to talk about this in class, but here are some starting points.

For life cycle assessment, take a look at the links in our suggested reading list. Other good links:
For further information on carbon mitigation wedges, look at the paper we assigned by Pacala and Socolow, Science, 2004, and at a related paper by Socolow et al., Environment, 2004. Additional information on stabilization wedges is available from their web site, and you should take a close look at the in-class activities assigned for Friday, May 16.

Check out the course-related news links for ideas for other technologies that might merit consideration. You might also look at the San Jose Mercury News' Green Energy section, which has extensive coverage of alternative energy issues.

A good way to find scientific papers is by using either Google Scholar or the ISI web of science to search by key words for refereed publications pertinent to your topic. If you are on campus or are using UCSD proxy servers, you should be able to click through to the full publications that come up in your search.

2.  How do we use turnitin.com?
See the detailed instructions.

3.  How do I create footnotes? Are endnotes acceptable?
Footnotes and endnotes are both fine. Any consistent format is OK. The Chicago Manual of Style is one standard format, and you can find a detailed discussion of its usage for term papers at this University of Wisconsin writing center site.

You may also use citation methods commonly used for scientific papers, such as in line references to author and year, with a full reference list at the end. A sample reference might be "[Smith and Jones, 2006]". In this case, you should be sure to identify specific page numbers where relevant ("[Smith and Jones, 2006, p. 291]").

4.  How should web pages be cited? What types of web pages are acceptable as sources?
If you use a web page as a source, then you should cite it, providing as much standard reference information as possible: author, title, date, location, etc. Keep in mind that web pages vary considerably in credibility. In general, the most credible information comes from peer-reviewed scholarly publications (which could include electronic journals and electronic reprints posted to web pages---if you use a journal article or other publication that happens to be posted to the web, then please cite it the same way you would cite it if you had found it in the library, with standard information such as author, title, publication year, journal name or publisher, volume number, page numbers, etc.) Researched reports (with citations) from environmental organizations are also often fairly reliable, although they may not have gone through a peer review process. Some web pages are essentially advertising brochures for a particular product, and you should probably assume that the authors are presenting a biased view of their product's features. (Much material also appears in blogs, which can be interesting and provocative, but may not have much real research or information behind them. We don't recommend blogs as primary research sources.)

5.  How do I request an extension?
Please contact the TA (Robb Kulin for the 1 pm section; Ben Maurer for the 2 pm section). Note that if we grant an extension for one of the paper deadlines, that will not extend to the other deadlines.

6.  How should I format my paper?
Please use the following guidelines.
  1. Upload Word or pdf documents only to turnitin.com. (RTF may be OK as well; plain text can be a little tricky for formatting.)
  2. Include your name (First, then Last), PID, course title, instructor's name, and date in upper right hand corner, single spaced.
  3. Use 1 inch margins, with 12 point font for the whole document. Use 1.5 or double spacing for the main text.
  4. Center your title at the top, but do not include a separate title page.
  5. Clearly label sections (abstract, introduction, etc.)
  6. Include page numbers, centered at the bottom of the pages.


7.  I am confused about the focus of the paper. If we research a life cycle assessment, then will section C of the report (Life Cycle Assessment) be a summary of the life cycle, or the actual assessment that we found copy-pasted?
For this paper you should perform a life cycle assessment yourself. That means that you will want to find as much data as you can about a carbon mitigation strategy, and use the formalism of life cycle assessment to evaluate the strategy. You should not plan to copy/paste anyone else's life cycle assessment (and although life cycle assessments have been completed for many products, it's unlikely that you'll find a life cycle assessment that does exactly what this paper asks you to do.)

8.  Should we focus most of the paper on judging the strategy, defining the life cycle, or making our own assessment of a strategy?
The assignment asks you both to complete a life cycle assessment and to evaluate the results. This is admittedly confusing, since life cycle assessment always should include an evaluation of results. Section C of your paper should be the meat of the data analysis and impacts assessment for your life cycle assessment. Section D (the final evaluation) is the final component of any life cycle assessment, and was pulled out separately in the list of paper sections in order to emphasize the importance of evaluating your results. The balance between sections C and D will depend on the topic you choose and the available data.

9.  I was hoping to get your feedback on a possible paper topic that I'm researching. I'm looking into doing a life cycle assessment of the California high speed rail that will (hopefully) run from San Diego to San Francisco. Would this be appropriate? If not, do you have any suggestions to direct me to a better topic?
Yes, this would be an appropriate topic, provided that your life cycle assessment specifically takes into account carbon mitigation strategies. To what extent would the rail reduce greenhouse gas emissions? The important thing to keep in mind for this paper, is that you do not need to take on an entire "carbon mitigation wedge" as defined by Pacala and Socolow.

10.  I am still having trouble focusing on exactly what I need to research. To my understanding, I am supposed to research a mitigation strategy, and how it affects CO2 emissions specifically. The example LCA's we have read are very heavy with data from lots of testing. Is this what I need to be after? Is this paper intended to be focused more specifically on CO2 than the examples that we read?
LCAs can be rich in data, and that's an important aspect of carrying out a plausible analysis, so we encourage you to find as much data as you can keeping in mind that professional LCAs are carried out by teams of staff, and you're simply one student with a term paper deadline. If you can't find data, you should certainly identify the category of data that would be needed for a thorough LCA. We've asked for carbon mitigation strategies, and we'd like to hear about the impact on CO2 emissions. But a good LCA should consider all environmental impacts, so don't limit yourself strictly to carbon emissions.

11.  What are possible paper topics?
Here's a recap of the list we suggested in class on Wednesday May 21, in no particular order.
  1. Any of the wedges from the carbon mitigation exercise. These are all great strategies that significantly reduce green house gas accumulation. However, be careful not to take on too broad a topic, since you won't have too many pages in which to analyze it. Your strategy does not need to represent an entire wedge worth of green house gas emissions.
  2. Any one of the three categories of solar technologies (water heaters, solar-thermal, photovoltaics).
  3. Micro-hydro
  4. Tidal energy
  5. Geothermal energy
  6. Any one biomass crop and/or form of biomass energy (e.g. ethanol, biodiesel, etc.)
  7. High-speed rail versus cars
  8. Carbon capture and storage
  9. Composting toilets
  10. Urban (rooftop) gardens
And of course, anything else you can thing of is great, provided it stays within the broad scope of the assignment. For whatever strategy you choose, think about materials, production, use lifetime requirements, disposal. Compare it to alternatives. Think about green house gas savings. Consider the feasibility in terms of cost, infrastructure, current resources.

12.  For the paper, I am still sort of confused about the LCA and evaluation. I am planning to do either passive or pv solar energy. In the LCA section, for example, do you want us to primarily focus on the production of materials needed for solar energy, kind of like packaging of ketchup etc? When you mean finding measurable data, do you mean finding data about the production materials, and energy required to produce solar panels or something? Or do you mean the power or energy yield it can produce compared to a regular coal-producing energy powered home?
I think that if you're considering the full life cycle, you'll want to consider the materials and energy needed to produce a solar panel and also the energy produced by the solar panel through the course of its lifetime. Check out the EPA Life Cycle Assessment 101 document (http://www.epa.gov/nrmrl/lcaccess/lca101.html) for more clarification about standard definitions about LCA.

13.  I have a question about the inventory analysis section of the LCA. I'm not really sure about how to implement this component into the assignment. I have some data and outcomes from some papers and a few calculations i want to carry out because they are not covered anywhere but nothing to really fill data collection, refinement and such. How should I go about this?
For the inventory analysis, think about what you would need to do if you were a manufacturer presenting a LCA for your product. You'd have data about the materials from which your product (CFLs in your case) were made, data about energy used for manufacturing, data about energy use during their lifetime, and data about disposal. Although the published literature on CFLs may not cover all of this, you should be able to report as much data as you can, identify areas where data are not readily available and make estimates for these (with large uncertainties).

14.  Some of the papers I'm using to get numbers don't match up (example: one paper bases results on CFL's having 8 times the lifespan while an other says 10) Although the conclusions are the same the numerical framework CO2 emissions and other components come from are different. How should I go about this, average, choose one or just mention both (but than how do I do my own calculations)?
You will want to discuss the range of published values in your paper. In your shoes, I think I'd take advantage of the range to develop some sense of the uncertainties in the calculation. If you're finding values of 8 to 10 in the published literature, then you could call that 9 +/- 1, and ask about the sensitivity of the results to this particular uncertainty in the published data. Formally, you could carry out statistical error propagation to show how the uncertainty in CFL lifetime influenced the final assessment, but since you only have a couple of values, it would be sensible simply to use the low and high numbers to obtain limits for the range of possible outcomes.

15.  I've spent hours researching the CO2 sequestration rates of gardens (or of individual plants) and I can't find anything. It seems like it should be easy to find but I haven't had any luck finding any numbers. I've tried looking under plant respiration, plant metabolism, and lots of others, to no avail. Any ideas where I can find this info so I can analyze the carbon mitigation effects?
I think probably the reason you're not finding CO2 sequestration rates for gardens, and especially rooftop gardens, is that these gardens don't include trees, so they should have no long-term CO2 sequestration. (To determine how much carbon plants take up, you just have to determine the relative fraction of a plant's mass that is comprised of carbon---since all of the carbon comes from the atmosphere, that should be a direct measure of CO2 uptake, regardless of metabolism.) If CO2 sequestration is not a factor, then the benefits for rooftop gardens have more to do with the many other issues that you've been exploring---green building design rooftops; reduced transportation costs for compostable waste and for food; and human well being issues (which might translate into reduced transportation costs to go to green places). And the costs are clearly fertilizer/water issues (although not a factor if you consider growing crops in cities versus growing crops in the countryside and trucking it to cities) and risks of building damage. (You might also consider pollutant issues for urban crops. Is produce less healthy if it is raised in or near a city with poor air quality?)

16.  I'm freaking out a little here and wondering if I should change my topic. Can you help?
We understand that this is a challenging paper topic, because much of the data that you would ideally want access to is proprietary or not easily available or not compiled in a single reference. Do the the best you can with published resources. Explain where you are forced to make assumptions. And don't panic. There are lots of good topics for this paper. (Just try to choose something that has at least some measurable impact on atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.)

17.  I'm working on urban rooftop gardens. For this topic, it seems I'm going to need to make a variety of assumptions, such as the above and the prospective lifetime duration of the garden, and the number and total area of the gardens. Do I assume we put in gardens on every rooftop that can handle it and in every vacant lot? Do I just make these assumptions on my own making sure they seem reasonable?
In the spirit of the carbon mitigation wedge concept, you can assume that every rooftop and vacant lot that can handle a garden gets one. And you can assume that composting is mandated and everyone does it. Whatever assumptions you make, you should be sure to articulate them (or you may want to consider a couple of scenarios---universal application versus partial implementation of the gardening concept; or gardens versus photovoltaics for rooftops.

18.  Do you think an appropriate topic would be low-cost energy efficiency technology such as CFLs and using powerstrips to rid of phantom loads? My preliminary research indicates that switching to CFLs could reduce emissions by 90 billion tons of carbon, about 0.45 of a wedge.
Low-cost conservation strategies such as CFLs and power strips are a fine paper topic, provided that the strategies make a measurable impact on carbon. And certainly 45% of a wedge is a measurable impact.

19.  LCA considers photovoltaic solar energy. Should I talk about the health impacts of the materials (such as cadmium) needed to created PVs, and in particular, should I address the health impacts for workers manufacturing PV systems? Would health issues still be an environmental impact?
Yes, do talk about health impacts of manufacturing---that's certainly one of the environmental impacts that can be considered in LCA, and I think that remains one of the lingering concerns for photovoltaics.

20.  I have been trying to find data about the carbon that is created when the product is being produced, but can't seem to find much on it. In the case of photovoltaics, the literature is full of information on toxicity of the materials required to produce the cells. Do I have to be really specific about carbon emissions created when making solar panels?
Since carbon emissions are one of the central goals of this exercise, you do need to address carbon. To determine how much carbon is created when solar cells are manufactured, you'll want to figure out how much energy is used, and translate that into carbon emissions. As always, it's possible that some of the information you want is proprietary, but I think you should be able to find a relevant estimate.

21.  Do you think I would be able to do this paper on the difference in the use of university readers versus normal text books?
As we have noted in class, the paper strategies do not need to represent an entire carbon mitigation wedge. However, they must represent a plausbile, non-negligible carbon mitigation strategy. I'd be hard pressed to believe that print-on-demand university readers and normal text books have wildly different carbon footprints (for much the same reason that the EMI music distribution study we discussed in class suggested that music downloads and CD purchases have similar environmental impact.)

22.  Should the rough outline due on Friday summarize the entire paper as a whole or just the LCA?
It should be a rough outline of the entire paper, but obviously if you have more information for certain segments of the paper, you can fill those parts in more completely.

23.  Usually the abstracts have the conclusions and results summed up concisely, but if we haven't written the whole report yet, will we be marked down if the abstract is not complete?
Abstracts normally do summarize all the findings, but you can probably write a fairly complete abstract that summarizes what you know at this point and skirts around any lingering gaps in your conclusions. (Scientists and engineers routinely do this in order to submit abstracts for conference presentations several months in advance of the conference.)

24.  I am doing my paper on solar thermal for high temperatures (ie, the plants in the desert). Can I focus on just this technology, or do I need to compare this to another strategy (ie, photovoltaic, coal plants, etc.). If so, does this mean I need to do 2 LCA's? One for each technology?
A good life cycle assessment considers trade offs between multiple options, so ideally you should consider a base case solar thermal system versus some alternatives. Perhaps you'll be able to find a published paper that summarizes numbers for conventional power. Or following along the lines of the hydrogen fuel report that we assigned for last week, you may just want to consider alternatives within the scope of the solar thermal facility that you are studying. Your page limit won't give you a lot of room for a full-blown LCA of two different technologies.

25.  I was wondering if carbon sequestration via seeding the ocean with iron would be a good topic to address for the next paper. I am personally against the idea, but i know that companies such as Planktos were planning to go through with this particular plan last year.
Carbon sequestration via seeding the ocean with iron is extremely controversial, and it probably is not a good topic. You'd potentially end up mired in the controversy without space to write a straightforward life cycle assessment. As of February this year, Planktos has cancelled their plans, and their web site appears to be dead. (On the other hand, if you were to find adequate information in the peer reviewed literature to write a measured and well researched, quantifiably justified life cycle assessment on iron fertilization strategies, then we wouldn't want to dissuade you.)

26.  I'm having a hard time finding actual values for CO2 reductions as a result of more energy efficient buildings, but I've found some figures on reduction in energy usage. If a green building uses, say, 15% less energy than a conventional building, can I extend this to a 15% reduction in carbon emissions? Or is it more complicated?
A 15% reduction in energy use is probably fairly close to a 15% reduction in emissions. (If you want a more accurate estimate, you could consider the fact that some fraction of US electricity currently comes from nuclear and renewable energy. Depending on how the load is balanced, reducing energy use could mean that less nuclear energy would be produced or that less fossil fuel would be used. In reality, excess load is probably covered almost entirely by fossil fuels, so 15% less energy use might translate into more than a 15% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.)

27.  The carbon mitigation strategy I wanted to look at is the Energy Star Program for energy efficient appliances and lighting. Should I focus on the program as a whole, just appliances, or a single thing like compact fluorescent bulbs?
You may choose to focus on the program as a whole, or on a single component. You'll make your paper easier to write if you choose a smaller component. We're adamant that you should choose something that will have a measurable impact on carbon emissions, and you might imagine that just one component of the Energy Start Program would have a fairly small impact. However, you can be fairly sure that a single component will at least have a non-zero impact, so it is fair game.

28.  My paper centers on the question of whether eating less meat will reduce our carbon footprint and how less we would need to eat to make an impact. Is this an appropriate topic?
The topic is appropriate, provided that you can identify the greenhouse gas impact of meat consumption. Many of the environmental impacts associated with meat consumption are related to water usage, environmental degradation, pollution, and overall land use. But for this paper, we want you to be sure that you're also able to consider greenhouse effects. Can you pinpoint those for meat?

29.  I was thinking doing a LCA on meat production versus vegetables like soy. The LCA of different types of meats and different types of vegetables are different so should I just choose one type of meat and one type of vegetable and compare?
You'll make your analysis simpler if you consider one category of meat compared with one alternative, so beef versus soy, or beef versus fish, would be reasonable alternatives. And if you think that people might not readily switch to a full vegetarian diet, you might consider the impact of reducing meat consumption by 90%.

30.  I've decided to write my paper on wind electricity as a way to significantly reduce anthropogenic gases. I'm a little unclear on what you want us to discuss in the introduction? Should I discuss how wind electricity works? And then discuss how this significantly reduces anthropogenic emissions? Should I also compare this to other forms of electricity production (coal, oil, etc)?
The introduction can be brief, but it should introduce the topic, so a summary of the principles of wind electricity and their impact on anthropogenic emissions would be appropriate. Somewhere in your life cycle assessment, you'll want to compare wind power with some alternative, and coal or oil are obvious choices.

31.  Through my research I've learned that even though wind power produces zero emissions in the operation stage of its life cycle, producing, transporting, maintenance, and dismantling wind turbines does result in some anthropogenic emissions. The anthropogenic gases caused by all stages of a wind turbines's life cycle analysis are minimal, however, and I believe that wind power is still a good way to reduce carbon emissions (especially in comparison to other forms of electricity generation). Does it seem like I'm on the right track for this paper? As long as I back with facts and numbers, this should make a strong argument, right?
Sounds like a good topic, and I think you are on track (as you say, provided you back up your ideas with facts and numbers.)

32.  I am writing about photovoltaics vs coal as my LCA and have run into a few issues. The main one is that there is no current standard for photovoltaics, and are thus hundreds of different types with different materials and construction methods. Should I narrow my paper to consider only a specific type (e.g. thin cadmium telluride, poly crystalline si, etc) or take averages and general trends? The problem with using general trends is that different photovoltaics have different issues for disposal. If I am going to compare with coal, i need to be pretty specific on the waste to be useful. Do you have any suggestions on how to organize my data and specify my scope?
To make the paper tractable, I'd advise choosing one type of photovoltaic, and explain very carefully in your life cycle assessment how you've set boundaries for your analysis. Try to choose a type of photovoltaic that is relatively widely used or that is likely to become relatively widely used---an analysis of a controversial or fly-by-night method for making photovoltaics might be unsatisfactory.

33.  You probably get a lot of questions, especially the day before a due date, but i appreciate any advice you can give.
I am getting lots of questions now, just before the outline is due, and I sort of expect lots of questions next week as well. That's good, since it means that you are all thinking hard about how to tackle the carbon mitigation problem.

34.  When we are gathering data about greenhouse gas emissions, is it OK to draw some of that data from published life cycle assessments? For example, when I talk about the process of obtaining cadmium-telluride (the semiconductor) for PV solar energy, can I cite a LCA that explains the cadmium refining process? I know on your website it says we have to perform the LCA ourselves, and I am trying to do that, but I am uncertain what exactly that entails. As I look into materials such as the semiconductors and aluminium needed for framing and structural support for solar panels, and I have found some data in LCAs, and wondering if I can use it. Can you please tell me if I am on the right track?
Yes, it's possible that the best source of data will be someone else's published life cycle assessment, and that is troubling, because we've specifically asked you to do the life cycle assessment yourself. You should plan to do your own life cycle assessment, with a carbon mitigation focus and paying attention to the environmental problems that we've addressed in this class. Even if you end up closely following the reasoning of one or two published life cycle assessments, you'll want to be sure to adjust the method and interpretation to be consistent with the guidelines in this assignment. In the example you suggest, if you use published life cycle assessments for aluminum and semiconductors, you'll simply end up drawing on the published information as credible sources for data to support your solar panel life cycle assessment. Sounds like you're doing fine.

35.  I am a little confused about the LCA section. My topic is carbon capture and sequestration. I don't know how the LCA would be applicable to the topic.
Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) involves building facilities that use energy and environmental resources to capture carbon and sequester it. What is the full life cycle assessment for establishing a carbon capture facility? How does a coal powered plant with carbon capture compare with one that does not carry out carbon capture in terms of efficiency, operating costs, and overall environmental impact?

36.  I have some sources that have many authors (some have 5). When I cite them in my paper, is it okay to just use the first author listed, or can I just list the article name, instead? I'm really just trying to save words to keep my word count at a minimim. Maybe just listing last names would be the best, but is that allowed? Or should I footnote? I'm not quite sure how to do that, do I just number my biblipgraphy and reference only the number when I cite?
Please do include full author list in your bibliography. As we said for the first paper, we won't count your bibliography in your word count, since we don't want to discourage you from using a broad range of sources. When you reference the papers in your text, use just the first author's last name, with an "et al" to indicate other authors.

Thus if you had a reference for a hypothetical guide for this term paper, you might have the following listing in your alphabetical bibliography:

Gille, S., S. Taylor, R. Kulin, and B. Maurer, 2008. How to write a term paper on Life Cycle Assessment for MAE 124/ESYS 103, J. Pedagog. Methods, pp. 83-97.

In the text, if you weren't using end notes, you'd reference it as "Gille et al. (2008)" or "(Gille et al., 2008)".

Alternatively, you can use numbered end notes. By most conventions, they are numbered in the order that they are cited. So the first citation is "[1]", even if the author name is Zzwyg. In scientific literature, you can reuse the numbers. Thus you have a citation list numbered in order of first citation, although some sources may get cited repeatedly so that their numbers are reused again and again through your paper. If you do this, it will help us out if you also make a quick alphabetical bibliography.

In the humanities, usually each citation gets a new number, so references are repeated in the end note list again and again. By convention the first reference would contain detailed citation information and subsequent references could have reduced details. This strategy is fine too, but if you do this, we will require that you make a bibliography, alphabetized by author last name.

37.  I've just realized that some of my initial cost information comes from a life cycle cost analysis on rooftop gardens in Singapore. It's a fantastic, detailed article, and I'm just using it for initial costs and the extra weight a garden adds to the roof. The dollar amounts seem to be in U.S. dollars and the article was in Science Direct. Is it okay to use the statistics for my initial cost evaluation in my paper?
The article sounds great, and it's fine to use it. Science Direct might be the web access source, not the actual journal, so make sure that you identify the full publication information.

38.  I found a stat from the EPA that the total CO2 emissions for the U.S. in 2007 was 5894 million metric tons, which converts to 1.31*10^13 lbs CO2. (I've been using lbs. in my assessment). The mitigation wedge reading puts the total U.S. emissions at 7 billion tons Carbon, which converts to 1.4*10^13 lbs carbon (I'm assuming they're using U.S. tons, not metric, but it isn't stated). If I multilphy this value by (44/12) to get the actual CO2 value (I've been working in CO2 units, not just C), I get 5.13*10^13, which is almost four times more than the EPA value. This is why my values for percent of total emissions and percent of one wedge don't coincide. Could it be that the wedge paper actually means CO2 emissions, not C? (That would sure help my analysis!) I've been using the EPA value for my paper, but now I'm trying to determine the percentage of a wedge that my topic represents, and I'm a little worried about the discrepency between percent total emissions reduction and percent of one wedge. Also, if a wedge starts at zero and rises to 1GtC/year in 50 years, should I just use the value for 50 years from now? My analysis uses facts and stats form the present - lots will probably change in 50 years.
There is a lot of confusion in the published literature about CO2 versus C, and you're right to think about checking the conversions. The wedge publications talk about CO2 emissions, but their numbers are in gigatons of carbon per year, and they seem to be quite clear that this represents carbon (and not CO2). We're interested in overall mitigation, so it's fine if you compare the effect of the strategy you're studying with a wedge at the 50 year mark, provided that you're clear about what you're doing.

39.  When I was doing the outline for my topic, I realized my subject is too broad and too challenging. Is it okay if I change topic?
Yes, you may change topic, but please fill your TA in on your plans---the TAs have the abstracts and outlines and will be trying to offer feedback where needed before the final papers are due. In general, I'd recommending narrowing your topic rather than completely changing.

40.  When will our abstracts and outlines be graded and returned to us? Will we get them in time to respond to comments for the final draft?
The TAs are doing their best to get them back quickly. Unfortunately, given the size of the class, we can't guarantee returning all of the abstracts/outlines by Monday or even Wednesday. However the TAs are trying to carry out a triage and they'll let you know if they've flagged any problems that need to be headed off before the final paper.

41.  I was wondering how detailed you want the life cycle assessment. I'm doing my paper on wind powered electricity. I have found a lot of information regarding my topic, but organizing the life cycle assessment is a bit challenging. I have set up my life cycle assessment in the following form: resource extraction, resource transportation, material processing, component manufacture, component transporation, turbine construction, turbine operation, and turbine product disposal. For the component manufacture should I go over the materials that comprise each component (Tower=steel, generator=steel and cooper, gear=mainly steel, blades, hub, nose cone)? Also, the transportation stages are difficult because this is a site specific issue. Should I just come up with an average of how many miles these resources and components must travel to a specific site? Finally, do you expect us to show how much greenhouse gases are emitted for each stage?
It sounds like you've had great success tracking down the entire life cycle of wind turbines. That is giving you a phenomenal amount of data to organize. A professional organization writing a life cycle assessment could easily produce a 200 page document, and we're asking for a lot less than that, so you'll probably need to distill your results into a succinct form. We are interested in the materials that comprise each component, but we don't want you to exceed the assigned word count in order to fit them in. Can you summarize your numbers in a table? For transportation, you may come up with an average number of miles. (Alternatively, you could focus your LCA on a single site, but I think there is merit to considering a national or global average, since it will show you a more substantial impact on carbon.) And yes, it's in the scope of the assignment for you to show greenhouse gas emissions at each stage in the process.

42.  Can I put graphs in the LCA section of my paper, provided that I cite my sources?
Yes, graphs are a good idea, provided they help you tell your story. As you note, you should be sure to identify the source of the graphs or the source of the data that you use to make the graphs yourself.

43.  Would you like the numbers to be summarized into tables? At this point I think I would rather just integrate the numbers into my paper. Is it okay to put numbers (from different sources) into my paper that aren't exactly the same?
It's your choice whether you present your numbers in a table or in a text. Numbers from different sources are fine, but of course you'll want to convert everything into consistent units so that your interpretation is clear.

44.  I chose to do forest storage as my carbon mitigation strategy because it was on the wedge game. Before submitting my outline I couldn't find a lot of information about the actual life cycle of such a strategy, and I attributed that to the fact that since forest storage has such a basic and fundamental life cycle, and guessed that it wouldn't take long to go through the life cycle assessment. Since then I haven't been able to find much more info. I don't know how exactly to go about finding 2000 words worth of material. I was considering going into certain supplemental strategies that would need to go along with forest storage to make it more effective, but then again, they do not have alot to do with the actual physical life cycle of the strategy. Should I change my strategy? Or could you give me a little guidance?
I don't think you need to change topics. I've googled "tree planting carbon mitigation" and also "tree planting carbon mitigation life cycle assessment", and I see that there is a fair body of refereed published literature on the topic. Here are links to a few papers:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/jl53020l0081p565/
http://www.springerlink.com/content/300082p8h77v0528/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VFV-48B5KTX-3&_user=4429&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000059602&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=4429&md5=4a739f8a0e97f74a83abb1c4932ec68b
http://jeq.scijournals.org/cgi/content/full/35/4/1439
A more careful search using Google Scholar or the Web of Science should turn up plenty more material. I think a careful LCA will easily fill your page count. But if you do run short of material, there's plenty of controvery that you can consider as you weigh various options. For example, check out this news item:

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051219/full/news051219-14.html

45.  Can we copy and paste useful tables into our papers as long we cite the sources?
Yes, you may use tables (or graphics) from other sources if they are properly cited.

46.  When will we get our outlines back?
For the 1 pm section, you'll get feedback if Robb sees problems that you need to address. Otherwise, your outline will be graded and returned with your paper, and you will receive a single grade for the outline and paper together that takes into account the relative weighting of the outline and paper. For the 2 pm section, Ben was able to finish going through them, and they have been returned.

46.  Does the work cited section count in the maximum words total? What about the abstract or appendix? I did not realize how quickly 2000 words can be used in writing an LCA. I guess we have to be very selective on what to talk about.
The bibliography and appendices do not need to be included in your word count. We've also agreed not to require that you count the abstract either. (We're giving you all the professional tricks of the trade I guess.) You are exactly right that you will need to be selective in what you present.

47.  I am doing my paper comparing hybrid cars to gasoline cars. As of right now I have only done an assessment on hybrid cars and have compared the hybrid values with online sources for gasoline cars. I was wondering if I had to do my own assessment for the gasoline cars too.
You don't need to do your own assessment of gasoline cars, but you need to make sure that you have an apples and apples comparison of hybrid and gasoline cars, and that might mean adjusting the published numbers for gasoline cars to match your hybrid car assessment.

48.  For the hybrid car assessment, was I supposed to figure out the carbon emission from the production of all the car parts to the point where the car gets disposed?
Ideally, you should consider carbon emissions from all aspects of car part production, usage, and disposal. But exactly how you do that depends on how you choose to set the system boundaries for your life cycle assessment.

49.