Vocal Voices

But not those you will read in the press.

We've reached the point in the year where we get the preliminary 2017 CO2 average rise figures. They will be revised and probably down. However it tells a story. It is not that easy to interpret the story because there are so many factors. But only really large factors actually show up.

For instance.

Mt St Helens and El Chicon volcanic eruptions in the early 80's.
The truly massive Mt Pinatubo eruption in the early 90's.

These have a dampening effect on CO2 growth and Mt Pinatubo had a huge impact for 2 years.

Then there are the El Nino years. These have a positive effect on CO2 Growth.
In the 80's, towards the end of the decade, there was a truly massive El Nino
In the 90's, again, there was a large El Nino in 97-98, I'm sure many will remember that
In 2015-16, again, there was a huge El Nino.


To do a like for like I have only taken the first 8 years of each decade. This means that the impact of 98 and 88 are not yet felt. This will show in following 2 years figures, however 89 and 99 showed significant falls which impact the average.

So let us see how really good we are at our CO2 reductions. All those accords, treaties, all those taxes on fuel and everything else. Figures are in ppm (parts per million), CO2 rise since the previous year...

60 - 67 0.74
70 - 77 1.20
80 - 87 1.54
90 - 97 1.31
00 - 07 1.95
10 - 17 2.35


The really worrying figure is 00 - 07. There were no Volcano's, there were no huge Nino's. Just average. 60 - 67 to 00 - 07 is the trend the climate scientists are trying to get us to focus on. In short, we can't continue to do this without consequences.

At this rate, one more decade and we'll be growing, on average, CO2, nearly four times as fast as we were in the 60's. This is a decadal average, which means most of the year to year variations are ironed out. This is now 6 decades of records. Even the most pessimistic scientists call this a trend.

How about that in picture form. Perhaps we should entitle it Abject Failure.

As time as passed I have become slightly less interested in the CO2 problem.

Many things hav made a comeback since the days of my youth and they are all down to the global population explosion and the capitalist creed of growth over everything - there is no debate about that, unlike climate change/global warming.

I am talking of such things as access to fresh water for drinkng and crop irrigation; and the wars that could erupt because of it; we all need that water to survive. Only 3% of all the water on Earth is fresh water and 70% is locked in the poles, icecaps and glaciers. Just over 30% of fresh water is ground water in aquifers with only 03% as surface water in rivers and lakes. It is amazing how scarce fresh water actually is.

There are also concerns about the amount of arable land available and food security in general. As the world's poor have become more prosperous they have turned away from a largely vegetarian diet in favour of protein - meat. In order to accommodate all those animals we have cut down forests and jungle to turn into grazing land. We have literally no idea what beneficial plants and animals we have made extinct in the process.

Another concern with food is the depletion if fish stocks and the poisoning of that food chain. Some 20% of fish stocks are depleted with another 50% overfished and heading for depletion. Only 17% are said to be sustainably fished, but then comes the poisoning. A recent study by the National University of Ireland, Galway, says that when it examined the guts North Atlantic fish, the team found tiny plastic fragments in 73% of its sample. The fish studied were small deep sea varieties which come to the surface at night to feed and are in the middle of the food chain.
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Then comes pollution of the visible kind and the modern infatuation with plastics. There was an explosion of plasic types from about the 1950s when there was almost a plastic for everything. I remeber tree-huggers protesting outside place that were turning over to large scale use of plastic, such as Schweppes. The prophesy was that we would be inundated in plastic, and that has now come true. However, there was a very powerful plastic lobby as there semed to be a plastic for everything and it was virtually indestructable so we went on a binge of bottles, chairs, foams, clothing and such. It is a rather cruel irony that plastics' versatiliy and indestructabiliy, which have made our lives so much easier, could be the things to kill us off.

CO2 poisoning of the liveable biosphere reduces available water, increases heat, damages crops and creates serious heat issues with the population.

We may be running as fast as we can in our journey to catastrophe, but increasing CO2 in the way we are is like lighting a fire behind you, in a 50mph wind, then trying to outrun it.

Stupid is as Stupid does.
Don't light matches when standing in a pool of petrol
Don't light your cigarette when standing next to a gas leak...
Don't continue to increase CO2 when you are destroying the environment around you at a rapid pace...

All good common sense. Sadly the last one doesn't seem to be filtering through.

Suff wrote:Don't light matches when standing in a pool of petrol
Don't light your cigarette when standing next to a gas leak...
Don't continue to increase CO2 when you are destroying the environment around you at a rapid pace...

All good common sense. Sadly the last one doesn't seem to be filtering through.

I'm convinced that it won't filter through until it's too late, when there'll be "weeping and gnashing of teeth".
I'm just glad I will not be around to see it happen.