Difference between 'carbon footprint' tag and 'greenhouse-gas-emissions'?

Question

We have two related tags that I feel overlap largely but IMHO are distinct enough to keep them as separate tags; carbon-footprint and greenhouse-gas-emissions. Assuming other people agree the tags are not synonyms, my suggestion is to make it more clear when to use each tag by improving the tag usage guidance description for both tags (the excerpt that appears if you hover on the tag on the main site).

Currently the tag description for carbon-footprint is "a measure of the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced directly and indirectly by a person, an organisation, an event or a product."

greenhouse-gas-emissions doesn't have a tag wiki yet.

Any suggestions? For what kind of questions should people use the carbon-footprint tag and for what questions the greenhouse-gas-emissions tag?

Answer 1

This is a hard thing to categorise. The topics intersect somewhat and the tags are currently used interchangeably.

It might be worth renaming greenhouse-gas-emissions to just greenhouse-gas (or greenhouse-gases?), and have it be a tag that categorises questions about gases but not necessarily about emissions, like the following:

• How much does the methane content of natural gas vary, and what is the impact?
• Which gases increase the greenhouse effect more than carbon dioxide?
• How much of the emitted CO2 is human caused

That way, questions about the emission of GHGs could fall under carbon-footprint. A 'carbon footprint' is a measurement of emissions that boils them down to a single number (CO2 equivalent). It's meant to be an 'at-a-glance' indicator of how high (or low) an impact a particular individual, business, event or product has on the environment. As such, the sorts of questions tagged carbon-footprint would be:

• How to assess, estimate, measure and/or quantify, emissions, product life-cycles, or other carbon-generating processes that would factor into a carbon footprint. For example:
  • How would you calculate carbon emissions of software?
  • Is a solar cell phone charger a sustainable choice?
  • With current technology, how much CO2 is emitted when making renewable power plants?
  • Why is the per capita CO2 emissions so much higher in Wyoming than in the Northeast?
• Ask for comparisons of alike sources of carbon, e.g comparing the footprints of different sized households, transport options, products (clothing, furniture etc) and so on. Examples:
  • Which has a smaller footprint -- canned or frozen vegetables?
  • Carbon footprint of CNG vs. Diesel as a vehicle fuel
  • What type of cheese has the lowest carbon footprint?

---

The excerpts for both tags could then look like:

carbon-footprint

a measure of greenhouse gas emissions produced directly and indirectly by a person, an organisation, an event or a product. Questions about measurements, data, emissions or emission sources should use this tag. Use [greenhouse-gases] if your question is about a particular gas. Use the [global-warming] tag for questions about the effects.

greenhouse-gases

Gasses that contribute to global warming by trapping radiant heat from the sun in the atmosphere. Use this tag for questions about certain gases and their effects. Use [carbon-footprint] for questions about measuring emissions from a person, organisation, event or product. Consider [global-warming] for questions about the effects.

What do you think?

Answer 2

For greenhouse-gas-emissions, riffing on the description for carbon-footprint, how about this:

For questions about direct greenhouse gas emissions produced by a product, process, or facility (such as a factory or power plant).