Thursday, December 10, 2009

Carbon Dioxide



Since the beginning of the industrial revolution mankind has made his work easier by burning things made of carbon. Things like coal, wood, oil, and gasoline. The chemical process is the oxygen in the air oxidizing with the carbon in the item burned. The end result is heat and carbon dioxide.

Steam, diesel, and gasoline engines have reduced our workload. At the same time we have gotten fat, and our life expectancies are now actually decreasing. We burned enough stuff that the level of carbon dioxide in the air and the ocean has increased significantly.

China is responsible for the greatest amount of this pollution - but there are a lot of Chinese people. America, Australia, Canada, and Saudi Arabia lead the pack as the most wasteful countries on earth, i.e. the highest per capita consumption.
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The poor countries (including China) are trying to turn Copenhagen into a massive transfer of wealth from rich to poor. This may be desirable, but by focusing on this they have ruined any possibility of success.

I forecast that individual selfishness and greed will win out over any sort of successful global effort to significantly deal with the problem.
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We foresaw this back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Steadily increasing world population, massive air, water, and soil pollution. Everyone knew the day was coming. Well, its here now, and our leaders are not about to make the appropriate response. Their greedy little self centered games, and the continued denial will just continue to increase.

These two charts are courtesy of the eminent German magazine Der Spiegel.

It’s a true shame, honest. But I feel 100% certain that Copenhagen is going to end up being just a massive waste of time.

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