Climate change and things

Yeah I believe the world is getting warmer and that mankind’s emissions of CO2 are a major factor. Then you have all these animals farting and we know that CH4 is a far worse greenhouse gas than CO2. Indeed, if you read up on the Permian extinction (the greatest ever loss of life on Earth), about 250 million years ago, the CO2 warmed up the Earth but not too much. However, it got to a point when the methyl clathrates burst and the overwhelming release of CH4 did the trick. Mind you it took a few 100’s of thousands of years so maybe it isn’t a threat to us right now.

A bigger worry for me is not the rising sea levels for they say if all the ice caps melted then sea levels would rise by 64m. Nasty but not the end of the world and it would take them a long time to do so. More plausible was the scenario in the movie, ‘The Day after Tomorrow.’ I had read about this well before the move – if just enough cold fresh water from the Greenland ice cap hit and stopped the Gulf Stream, it could happen with days or weeks and the Northern Hemisphere could be plunged into a new Ice Age. The outstanding question for me is, ‘How did ever warm up again?’ Maybe it’s the Earth axis wobble.

My biggest concern for you all is that we are fiddling around the edges and not tackling the big issue. Think that awful word ‘holistic’ entered our vocabulary about 30 years ago but it’s the approach we need right now.

Let me digress:

Breast cancer is the biggest cancer in the UK and we screen for that but know little about the underlying causes. Prostate comes in at no 3 and colorectal at no 4. Don’t see either being tackled. Ah but Lung Cancer is no 2 so let’s bash the smokers. Non-smokers don’t like them so they are a simple easy target.

Cars? Well we’ll hit them with emissions related taxes. We’ll encourage electric cars even though the leccy is primarily generated from fossil fuels. Maybe we go to fuel cells using methanol (mostly produced from oil) and oxygen which still pumps CO2 into the atmosphere. Hydrogen? Er that’s a bit difficult so we are going to have to wait.

Flights? Well, whack up the taxes. But where does the money go? Doubt if it does much for emissions.

Incandescent light bulbs? An easy one too but this ignores the fact that the output of fluorescent ones degrades in time and that when you consider the economics of manufacture and disposal, they save far less energy than the simplistic figures advertised. And they add mercury to their disposal dumps.

We are just picking at bits and the ‘easy bits’ at that. We have ignored the bigger things and have focussed much more on emissions that CO2 absorption.

Green movements have opposed fission based nuclear reactors for years. Yes there have been accidents and deaths but nothing like those of the coal industry. And here I am only talking about direct casualties. Fusion reactors have been forecast since I was about 12 and are still said to be 50 years away.

Deforestation is killing the lungs of the planet. What is being done about that? Neither Kyoto nor Copenhagen paid much attention to that. We really must stop this.

There is talk about freezing CO2 and burying it but is that not like bandaging a septic cut? And anyway, where is the pressure to accelerate this?

Charcoal for cooking in Africa is laying waste to the woodland and no doubt generating loads of CO2. SolarAid, a charity, is trying to provide solar panels to give people light. I suggested they might also offer those cheap mirrored reflectors used in Asia with the cooking pot at the focus. Their answer was that it isn’t always sunny. True, it isn’t always but in the tropics, it very often is so that might reduce charcoal consumption by 2/3rds a year when it is.

And what if we do switch to fusion and/or hydrogen, what will be the outcome of all that extra water? Anyone thought that one through? The Met Office has already said that high altitude contrails over Britain affect our climate.

And I haven’t even started on ocean acidification.

Copenhagen? Load of hot air (no pun intended). Achieved bugger all and no other conference will until we enter them with a spirit of ‘let’s see what we can do together.’

And then there is the cold snap in the reign of Edward II which wiped out half of the British population through famine – that, is more than the Black Death. Why did that happen?

And finally, there is population, sheer numbers. China has limited offspring to one except in special circumstances. Are any of the rest of us willing to do the same? It is the sheer numbers and their aspirations (albeit individually justified) that is the biggest threat of all. Anyone measured the CO2 increase attributable to breathing humans?

Now we all know that mercury, cadmium, cyanides etc. are real and clear nasties. But then the composition of our air and water and their interactions are far more complex. Do we really understand them? Dear God, we are hard pushed to forecast the weather a week away with anymore accuracy than you predicting the time you will serve your next Sunday dinner.

I don’t know the answers in all this but I’m damn sure that we have got nowhere near it so far.