The one factor no one mentions about Global Warning
There are 6 billion people in the world, each one generating a temperature of 98.6F (internal -- external/skin surface temp is 96.7)
So even if everyone in the world stopped using ANY combustion, the amount of heated CO2 being expelled into the atmosphere and pure thermal energy being radiated from skin surface would be enough to raise the mean temp of the world by several degrees.
We, by our very metabolic processes (and our success in limiting infant mortality drastically while increasing average life expectancy considerably) ARE the cause.
It's not what we do.
It's what we are -- warm-blooded human mammals.
Years ago, when working with the SF Zoo's Avian Conservation Program, a member of the public asked me what it would take to save the condors.
I said: "Some sort of typhoid or cholera epidemic in the Los Angeles basin that wiped out 90-95% of the population." *
The person then replied:"You seem to be a little too enthusiastic about that possibility."
And I did have to admit that LA was not my favorite place in the world, but in fact the original range of the California Condor went all the way north to Oregon, so, I asked this person, "would you feel better about it if I included Half Moon Bay and Marin County in the plague?
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*(Partially to provide a whole lot of ripe meat for the birdies, but mostly because their traditional for was beached whales -- dozens of condors would feast for months on one beached whale -- and removal of most of the population would allow that to happen again. But people who pay beach front property prices do NOT appreciate their homes to be immediately downwind of 30 tons of rotting flesh.)
So even if everyone in the world stopped using ANY combustion, the amount of heated CO2 being expelled into the atmosphere and pure thermal energy being radiated from skin surface would be enough to raise the mean temp of the world by several degrees.
We, by our very metabolic processes (and our success in limiting infant mortality drastically while increasing average life expectancy considerably) ARE the cause.
It's not what we do.
It's what we are -- warm-blooded human mammals.
Years ago, when working with the SF Zoo's Avian Conservation Program, a member of the public asked me what it would take to save the condors.
I said: "Some sort of typhoid or cholera epidemic in the Los Angeles basin that wiped out 90-95% of the population." *
The person then replied:"You seem to be a little too enthusiastic about that possibility."
And I did have to admit that LA was not my favorite place in the world, but in fact the original range of the California Condor went all the way north to Oregon, so, I asked this person, "would you feel better about it if I included Half Moon Bay and Marin County in the plague?
---------------------
*(Partially to provide a whole lot of ripe meat for the birdies, but mostly because their traditional for was beached whales -- dozens of condors would feast for months on one beached whale -- and removal of most of the population would allow that to happen again. But people who pay beach front property prices do NOT appreciate their homes to be immediately downwind of 30 tons of rotting flesh.)
posted by Saintperle at
12:35 PM
