Alternative solutions to "global warming"

[jtaylor]

1. Reduce the number of people in the world

Today, we stand at over 6 billion people. It was only in 1950 that the world's population was 2.5 billion. We have more than doubled in only 50 years.
UN estimates show the world's population reaching 9 billion by 2050 and 12 billion by 2150.

A number of ways to achieve this, not least remove our obsession with trying to cure EVERY disease out there, including the natural body-aging ones which lead to "dieing of old age"
Anyone know how much CO2 a person breaths out per minute/hour/day?
The new Mini breaths out 102g/km of CO2 - how much does a running/walking human breath out?
How much CO2 are all the 6 billion people breathing out each day, compared to the increase in other CO2 they've created?
Also, a person's "carbon footprint" should include any offspring they have chosen to produce - and hence the environmentalists may get off the back of single people who drive nice cars (i.e. me!) as their carbon footprint will be negligible compared!

2. Kill all the cows in the world.
Simple, effective.

Livestock's Long Shadow, a new UN FAO report (full report) says livestock (cows, pig, sheep, etc.) generate more CO2 than all forms of transportation (cars, planes, etc) combined, with the worlds live stock expected to double by 2050.

Also, as the world's population increases we see more livestock, more other forms of CO2 production. See 1 above!

Just a bit of an inflamatory debate for a Wednesday morning!!

J

[englishangel]

Apparently kangaroos are also ruminants but have a different bacterium and don't produce the methane like cows so scientists are working on it from that angle.

[cstegerlewis]

Can't think which site I saw it on but there was an authoritative report issued (somewhat tongue in cheek) last week by an environmental scientist, who had calculated it was better to drive 2km's or so to a shop than walk or ride a bike because:

to drive, you have the 'cost' of emissions from the car, and the sunk transport costs of getting the fuel into the car (ship, Refinery, tanker etc) which beacuse the volume is so small is relatively low; compared with

to cycle, you have the increased work rate of the person, generating greater CO2, plus the increase energy consumption, derived from food, which due to bulk and relative density has a high carbon footprint in getting it to the shop.

So driving a 4.5l V8 Land Rover is now officially green (or at least in my logic it is ) - after all it is a 7 seater so I can take half my street to the shop and get 7 congestion inducing bikes off the road

[Mid A 15]

Turn the Central Heating down by a few degrees in offices, shops and homes.

Maybe it was CH but I seem to find an awful lot of places too hot!

Am I alone in this or is it an Old Blue phenomenen?

[J.R.]

Apparently kangaroos are also ruminants but have a different bacterium and don't produce the methane like cows so scientists are working on it from that angle.

..... and if I was one of those scientists, I'd work on it from a VERY WIDE angle !

[Richard Ruck]

Turn the Central Heating down by a few degrees in offices, shops and homes.

Maybe it was CH but I seem to find an awful lot of places too hot!

Am I alone in this or is it an Old Blue phenomenen?

You are not alone!

Pubs, shops, trains, (especially) the London Underground - the list goes on.

Must have been those nice cold dorms......

[J.R.]

Turn all the 'effing lights off in all the office blocks in the City of London at night. It might look pretty, but how much does it cost, and how much co2 is produced ?

People don't want me to smoke in public, so I don't want them to drive their cars !!!!

£20 a day congestion charge, and £50 a day for gas guzzlers in London would help as well !

[kayinbaja]

To fuel this juicy Wednesday debate, you might want to read "Billions and Billions by Carl Sagan.

[gemmygemmerson]

Increase the Pirate population. Everyone and especially Pastafarians ( myself included ) knows that there is a direct correllation between the decrease of Pirates and Global Warming........




Ok. Seriously though. I went to a 3 day conference on climate change where I had to listen to how weeds are going to cause the apocalypse, peak oil and carbon offsetting.

Carbon offsetting is useless because the damage has already been done and though we won't see the effects for another 40 years planting more trees which should have already been there to deal witht the maximum carbon output we should be making. Even if the entire planet's civilisation was wiped out and trees were planted everywhere, the climate is F*****.

Ok. On a less apocalyptic note. Switch off all electronic products. That standby mode is destroying the planet.

Does anyone else think that Individual Carbon Allowances should be introduced?. I don't personally because it will end up being just another way for the rich to use the current amount of carbon they are using and the less well off to be put at a disadvantage.

[sejintenej]

One can look at it from other angles.
a) Electricity. Currently most production causes the release of CO2 - gas, coal etc. Back in the First Oil shock in the 1970s they already had the technology to produce all the projected electricity requirements of the UK for tghe following 20 years growth. The growth hasn't occurred - efficiency has improved. It was shelved because it only converted 20% of the energy available and the government wanted a far far higher rate of conversion so they dropped the technology.

b) Reflect sunlight into space. Mirrors are about 70 - 80% efficient at reflecting light, they are heavy, difficult to manage, tend to break and consume a lot of energy in production (as well as using dangerous mercury). I think it is kevlar which has reflectivity of over 95%, is infinitely flexible, very light and strong and pretty cheap. Why not cover the polar icefields, the Sahara, the uninhabited tundra and much of the world's oceans relecting dunlight away from Terra. Of course they could place huge sheets in space to have the same effect but ........

c) Not sure about cows. Yes - they do consume a huge amount of plant material to procuce food so doing away with them and using the same land for veg should feeed several times as many people as the cows would. However I cannot see farmers procucuing so much plant material (maize / corn at present) if cows don't need it so less CO2 would be consumed that way.

d) a slant on b) 2nd para, use the material to make a solar sail to move us further from the sun

Arthur C Clarke mark II at your service

[J.R.]

Why is it that weeds and cows are getting the blame ?

Man is destroying this planet, not all the other wild-life !!

Leave things alone.

Walk everywhere.

Don't use aerosols.

Don't use chemical insecticides.

Down cut down the forests.

I could go on forever.

But on a much brighter note, if man doesn't f*ck this planet up completely, then eventually our sun will burn out and it'll be 'Goodnight Vienna !' anyway.

Not in our lifetime, though !

[gemmygemmerson]

Well apparantly weeds are killing the other plants which absorb more Co2 so there is less plantlife to absorb the emissions.

Hydrogen powered cars are also out of the window because even though they would not release dangerous emissions the technology has still not been developed far enough to be of use and the production of new cars would increase carbon emissions anyway.

Totaly buggered aren't we.

[Mid A 15]

There is a lot of money to be made by blaming (and charging) ordinary people for "climate change."

Man wasn't flying aeroplanes or driving motor cars during the ice age yet the climate changed! That suggests there are other factors beyond the control of man.

However there is a lot of propaganda about which says it is all the fault of man and dissenting views are suppressed.

Here is an article for those that are interested. If you don't want to read the whole thing (it is long) start from "The Green Piltdown."

http://www.christianorder.com/features/ ... oct06.html

[gemmygemmerson]

There's reasonable climate change which interchanges between the norm we are at at the moment and ice ages but then the climate change that is goign on at the moment is not lying within that pattern and it increasing far more rapidly and to a greater degree that would be expected. The Carbon that has been emitted and the other gases have caused irreversable damage to the ozone layer etc. 99% of that won't be cancelled out by an ice age's 'refresh button'.

[jtaylor]

And the point I'm trying to make re. billions of humans on the planet is that WE may be the problem, both our personal breathing-out, and the things we do.
The thing I'd like to understand is whether the fact that we all need to eat and breath (ignoring everything else we do) is enough to have made the changes we've caused....i.e. regardless of what we STOP doing, we're still knackered. If that's the case, then all the broken-record pontificating about uneconomical cars and TVs on standby is fiddling while Rome burns, or rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic - pretty pointless! We'd have to do something BIGGER, rather than feeling good about ourselves for doing tiny things to reduce CO2....

The elephant-in-the-room is US - but of course nobody wants to say we need to reduce the world's population - that'd be a far too inconvenient truth....?