Hint :- get more space on your screen / press the F11 key
What if everyone on Earth does as I am doing. Let's do the numbers. Atmosphere, world population and economics. What time frame are we looking at.
10sq M 10 square metres = 10 squares, each a metre by a metre 10² 10 metres squared = 100 of the above squares 10cubic M 10 cubic metres = 10 cubes, each a metre x metre x metre 10 M³ 10 metres cubed = 1000 big blocks ( 10x10x10 ) co2 is measured in parts per million, ppm.
The Problem
Pre-industry = 280ppm co2 - is what / nature / god / gods / gaia / intended.
Now = 380ppm co2 - what a good living standard has created.
Too soon = 480ppm co2 - when too many people want a good living standard.
Walk East 280m then walk North 280m and keep the idea up and you will soon have walked around a plot of ground that is a 6.5 billionth of the Earths surface. If you are clear on it then there is no need to start arguing about who gets the chunk with Park Lane & Mayfair and which turkey gets a crappy bit like the doldrums off the west coast of Africa. Yep there are 6 & a half billion of these little lots. Strike me pink there is also 6.5 billion of us sharing this little rock. Um... Would that be one lot for each of us. This also this means there are 12 people for every square kilometer of the earths surface. (land, sea, icy bits top and bottom) THIS PLANET IS NOT LOOKING SO BIG NO MORE.
Take a big deep breath and another. Well that breath and all the other breathing you have been doing since the doctor turned you upside down spanked your behind, got you crying and cleared the airways, has probably allowed you to think the air endless. Not so. To get a feel for how thin the earths atmosphere is try this. Bring up Google earth, pan out till the altitude reads 100km then tilt till you see the horizon. Obviously the sky blue haze is our very thin atmosphere. From sea level up to 12km contains 80% of the air. Stand in the middle of your supposed "lot" and look up, THIS IS YOUR COLUMN OF ATMOSPHERE. A column of air 280m x 280m and up to 100km in height. Obviously the density thins out to nothing at the top. Anyway, we squash all the air up till it weighs the same as the air density at sea level then share it out between all of us and we each get a cube that is 871m x 871m x 871m. Pace out a square this size, it's good exercise at a brisk walk then look up from the corner and imagine the whole cube. Then, let it be said as one's lungs can "MINE ALL MINE". Yell it with pride for "your cube of air" will never be this clean for you again.
The dirty bit. Extra carbon dioxide is in your air. By extra we mean the amount above what nature intended (and comfortably deal with). First we want to find out how many cubic metres of CO2 at the amount of 380ppm there is in our cube of air. Secondly we want to figure out how many more cubic metres of CO2 it takes for us to lift the amount in our air to 480ppm and effectively poison our own 0.66km of air. It turns out that if all the CO2 is pushed into the corner of our cube of air then this cube would be 63m long by 63m wide by 63m high. All the extra carbon dioxide to bring us up to 480ppm would be another smaller cube 40m x 40m x 41m high.
The disgusting bits. 1 tonne of carbon dioxide gas = fills up 540 cubic metres. To raise the CO2 by 100ppm in tonnes in my cube of air would be 66 000 cubic metres of co2 divided by 540 cubic metres per tonne = 122 tonnes.
Again.
Pre-industry = 280ppm co2 - is what / nature / god / gods / gaia / intended.
Now = 380ppm co2 - what a good living standard has created.
Too soon = 480ppm co2 - when too many people want a good living standard.
Can I wreck what's mine ? a good analogy = a group of new immigrant workers in Sydney with petrol powered blowers in a basement worked away till they passed out on their own fumes only a few months ago. It can't be assumed that people don't do stupid things.
Hold on tight as we accelerate into the future.
Let us assume that 100ppm of co2 is a bad thing. Before we burnt fossil fuels the air contained 280ppm co2. It is now 380ppm co2 and another 100ppm co2 will not be good.
Imagine 26%. Being this much taller, shorter, wealthier, Imagine if there was 26% more water in the ocean. Same. Imagine 26% more co2 in the air.
What ? I am wrecking the planet. We all are. negative. I haven't changed, lights are on all over the place. (the kids) positive. Well I did published this. You. Try and be green it should make you feel good. But the economy and population are balanced with the way we do things now . To make the necessary adjustments to the enviroment will put a cost back on the economy and population. Yes we are in a pickle wich ever way we go. 6.5 billion people emit 6.5 billion tonnes of co2 per year. This is an average of 1 tonne per person. It will be next to impossible for a person whose output is close to 20 tonnes to reduce their amount significantly but frightfully easy for those on the lower end of the scale to increase their co2.
Recycling - your best efforts may feel good but it can cost more in carbon to - advertise, collect , sort, filter, remanufacture, than to get the product in bulk from its source. Recycling in this country of mine can keep unwieldy government departments going gangbusters. ( Whose sole existence could be regarded as a carbon injustice.) All operating the in the guise of "Environmental protection". "We of the western world" can feel smug in the knowledge that we have stabilized or even reduced our greenhouse emissions when ultimately we are guilty of transporting the problem to third world nations where we benefit from slave labor and cheap coal fired power stations which do the job for us in somebody else's backyard. Kermet the frog. ------------- IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN.
BreathingEarth World Economy Read it. See it
The New Shoreline New Scientist Environment Your CO2
Nothing to do with the above. BUT ! Right now you may be in the dark about something or under a cloud or both.
sun = real time : clouds updated every 3 hours
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Economy :- The worlds bigger ecomomies which are healthy at the moment are actually slowing the worlds economic growth figure down to 5%. Right now the entire world is running on full throttle. Your city will proberbly have more cranes than ever before and at this stage it would seem that there is no foreseeable end to this current international ecomomic boom.
What I see - The world economy continues to function faster due to a number of things.
1. Greater returns due to technology. 2 Easy money due to ever growing "first world pension funds" providing low interest rates. 3 The same funds being invested into ever riskier economies looking for returns. 4. All these facts causing an ever faster feed-back effect on exponentional "wealth creation".
Every increase in wealth correlates to an increase in energy use.
Four things are leading us towards a very dubious future :- Climate change, limited oil,an extra 90 million people per annum and a supercharged economy. Seven years is the average length of economic cycles. Our present economic cycle (the most powerful in history) will probably wane within the next five years at just the time that the problems mentioned become critical. Past this point the wealth created by technological development and efficiency will be absorbed by the cost of adjusting to our ever degrading environment. While the price of our limited oil supply goes sky high. We will find ourselves running faster just to hold on to what we've got.
One last thing.
Why would you be an enviromentalist and put your country in a loss position when we know that it is better to let the economy rip ahead and have the capital needed to deal with the great changes when they arrive. Sad.
Mull over all you have read.
Thank you for your interest.
Yours faithfully
My Climate