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Green Issues

A weekly column on current issues by John A Burton of the World Land Trust. The views expressed are personal, and do not necessarily reflect those of the WLT. Feedback and comments are welcomed.

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Climate change -- it's official

Monday, February 05, 2007

So everyone is agreed, climate change is occurring. And it's man made. It's about time these facts were recognised but the problem is that politicians are still not facing up to the real causes.

Aircraft emissions, cars and central heating are all important, but however much we in Britain and the rest of Europe reduce, it will make virtually no impact on the global situation.

The driving force behind the spiralling outputs of CO2 is the growth in human populations, and the growth in those peoples aspirations to a western-style standard of living.

And environmental campaigners are just as guilty as politicians in ignoring this very serious and obvious fact. If we don't do something about the human population, both in developing countries and in the developed, highly consumer orientated countries, the situation will continue to deteriorate at an alarming rate, until a man-made or natural disaster reverses the trend.

Pandemics, volcanic erruptions, earthquakes will take an increasing toll of human life. And bear in mind that a volcanic erruption of the scale of Tambora in the early 19th century with its follow on of lost harvests, could kill tens of millions in the 21st century.

The predictors of doom in the latter part of the 20th century, did not get it wrong, they simply got the time scale wrong. And still we are doing nothing about human population.

Labels: Climate Change and Carbon

Posted by John Monday, February 05, 2007
 
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2 Comments:

I agree with the concerns about population growth. These websites give some further information for those who want to do more and maybe contribute to charities working in the field.

http://www.popolpress.com/websites.htm

http://www.ippf.org/en/About/History.htm

http://www.fpa.org.uk/about/detail.cfm?contentid=555

http://www.popcouncil.org/index.html

http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.aboutus.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1680926,00.html

http://www.globalafrica.com/PopCnGen.htm

http://www.populationaction.org/

http://www.balance.org/about.html

http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=199§ion=2

By  Anonymous, at 07 February, 2007 01:45  

As we are struggling to reduce the CO2 in our atmosphere, this idea occurred to me:



Divers use rebreathers these days to enable them to stay underwater longer, to prevent nitrogen uptake and to reach greater depths. Every re-breather I have seen works on the basis of CO2 absorption using a product called ?sofnalime?, which I believe is a trade name for soda lime. With each breath, the air passes through a cylinder containing the sofnalime, during which time the CO2 is absorbed into the sofnalime medium, and breathable air comes out the other end ? simple and effective. So here is my query: Would it not be possible to scale this process up to pump air through a large amount of sofnalime to absorb some of the CO2 from our atmosphere?



I am unfamiliar with the manufacture of sofnalime and the disposal of the used material (mine goes in the bin), so this may make the process prohibitive ? I also am unaware as to whether anyone else has considered this notion.



Thank you for reading this.

By  Dr Dawn Heather, at 09 February, 2007 12:19  

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