Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Definitely Not Oprah's Book Club - "The Weather Makers"


Unless you have a strong science background much of the information you get these days about global warming can be perplexing at best. You're left in the position of grabbing a few snippets that seem believable and taking the rest of the premise on faith. Big Oil and Big Coal and their media lackeys have exploited that very weakness for years. Just listen to the nonsense that still comes spewing out of the mouths of the denialists - all of it faith based drivel.

But maybe you really want to understand what this is all about if you can find a way to do it without getting lost in indecipherable technical babble. There is a way. Get yourself a copy of "The Weather Makers" by Tim Flannery. Of all the books I've read on climate change, The Weather Makers is hands down the best. Flannery, who describes himself not as a "science writer" but a "writer scientist" manages to harvest information, gather it all together and present it in a way that is powerfully understandable. You read it, it makes sense.

For example, have you ever wondered how a kilogram of carbon in your gas tank turns into three kilograms of carbon dioxide at the tailpipe? It's because a molecule of carbon and a molecule of oxygen have very similar weights. The carbon molecule that emerges from your tail pipe bonds with two molecules of oxygen, creating CO2 that's about three times as heavy.

Here's a brief excerpt from the book that I hope will encourage you to get a copy of it:

"The twentieth century opened on a world that was home to little more than a billion people and closed on a world of 6 billion, and every one of those 6 billion is using on average four times as much energy as their forefathers did 100 years before. This helps account for the fact that the burning of fossil fuels has increased sixteen-fold over that period.

Jeffrey Dukes of the University of Utah [observed] ...that all the carbon and hydrogen in fossil fuels was gathered together through the power of sunlight, captured by long-ago plants. By calculating the efficiency with which we are able to retrieve that fuel, Dukes has concluded that approximately 100-tonnes of ancient plant life is required to create four litres of petrol.

Given the vast amount of sunlight needed to grow 100-tonnes of plant matter, and the prodigious rate at which we are using petrol, coal and gas, it should come as no surprise that over each year of our industrial age, humans have required several centuries worth of ancient sunlight to keep the economy going. The figure for 1997 - around 422 years of fossil sunlight - was typical. Four hundred and twenty-two years' worth of blazing light from a Carboniferous sun - and we have burned it in a single year."

"It makes me realise ...that the power and seduction of fossil fuels will be hard to leave behind. If humans were to look to biomass (all living things, but in this case particularly plants) as a replacement, we would need to increase our consumption of all primary production on land by 50 per cent. We're already using 20 per cent more than the planet can sustainably provide, so this is not an option.

In 1961 there was still room to manoeuvre. In that seemingly distant age there were just 3 billion people, and they were using only half of the total resources that our global ecosystem could sustainably provide. A short twenty-five years later, in 1986, we had reached a watershed, for that year our population topped 5 billion, and such was our collective thirst for resources that we were using all of Earth's sustainable production.

In effect, 1986 marks the year that humans reached Earth's carrying capacity, and ever since we have been running the environmental equivalent of a deficit budget, which is only sustained by plundering our capital base. The plundering takes the form of overexploiting fisheries, overgrazing pasture until it becomes desert, destroying forests, and polluting our oceans and atmosphere, which in turn leads to the large number of environmental issues we face.

By 2001 humanity's deficit had ballooned to 20 per cent, and our population to over 6 billion. By 2050, when the population is expected to level out at around 9 billion, the burden of human existence will be such that we will be using - if they can still be found - nearly two planets' worth of resources."

"The Weather Makers" - if you read one book on global warming this year, let it be this one.

9 comments:

  1. We don't need to wonder why the rush to find anoher planet so the haves can begin all over again. Why is it the people who run the Central Banks (inturn run everything)...Rockerfellers, Carnegies aren't one bit concerned about the earth not being able to sustain the population already here? What makes these people soooooooooo greedy and heartless?

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  2. we'll be dealing with the full effects of what we've done to this planet long before we can even dream of populating another. I don't know that the "central bankers" aren't concerned about the looming challenges, they might even see in them some terrific opportunities. Besides I doubt there is much hope of reform coming from the top anyway. Military action, yes, reform, no. Change will only happen when conditions deteriorate enough that the masses demand it.

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  3. Look Preschool, open your mind, read the book, and until you've done that and have something intelligent to add, go away. You're an utter waste of bandwidth.

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  4. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  5. Oldtool, I told you to go away until you had at least read the book and had something intelligent to say. I didn't read your latest, endless rants - just binned'em. Keep it up if you need the typing practice but you're wasting your precious thoughts on comments posted here. Bye, bye.

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  6. Are you desperately lonely preschool? Has everyone else just gotten bored with you and walked away? Do you have no one else to annoy? Surely there must be a distant relative somewhere if you just look hard enough. I feel genuine pity for you. Poor thing.

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  7. Why do you suppose that none of the 400 Climate Scientists were allowed to speak at the Bali Conference . . . could it be that the IPCC didn't want the competition.

    But big Al showed up (divinity school dropout) to plead his case.
    I remember the judge in Britain that said Al's movie had no scientific facts in it . . . so show the kids the "Great Global Warming Swindle" as well.
    Funny how the CBC has never run the GW Swindle here . . . full of scientists with scientific facts as well.
    Best part was when Dr. Moore told of his parting with Greenpeace.
    The Greenpeacers decided they wanted to ban Chlorine . . . Moore said to them that it was an element on the Periodic Table . . . like you can't ban it. But the dumb-asses went on with their "Mision" and Moore left the group. Seems like he was the only sane one.

    Enviro's are marxists in disguise . . .

    Be waiting for those "Scientific Facts" mound of whatever!!!!

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  8. The only one bored is you . . . "mound of don't confuse me with facts" . . .
    I am part of the concensus, you say . . .
    Hundreds of "Climate Scientists" say there is no concensus . . . only an agenda, pushed by enviro-nuts/marxists who want to control the population.
    I have supplied you with the comments of many "Qualified" scientists . . . you respond with a book by a ZOOLOGIST . . . and David Suzuke "BUG SCIENTIST" . . .
    The next thing you will be saying "Its all Bush's fault" . . . .
    China is the world's biggest polluter, soon to have the world's biggest military . . . I suggest you do like Maurice Strong and move there to fight the menace.

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  9. Blunttool, this is the very last time I'm going to indulge your abject ignorance. I've wasted far too much time on your worthless intellect as it is. For your information, if your atrophied cerebrum can yet absorb information, climate science entails virtually all scientific disciplines. That includesan array of scences including (but not limited to) geography, geology, hydrology, botany, zoology, climatology (weather) and even cosmology. Is your mind so narrow, so befuddled that you cannot grasp that? If you don't understand that, you understand nothing and merely spew out sound bites that appeal to a wilfully dim intellect. You dismiss a scientist and his work without having the faintest concept of what that is and yet you cling like an ape child to the teat of those long discredited. You have the intellectual curiosity and critical thinking of my hound. The distinguishing factor is that my hound cannot type although you give me cause to fear he may yet do that too.

    I'm washing my hands of your detritus. Henceforth I won't reply to anything you say, merely avail myself of the "delete" button.

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