Energy consumption and the environment


Help Cool the World

Sure you care enough for the environment youand  the  Royal  Society  in  London.
segregate your wastes at home, teach your
kids not to litter candy wrappers justAs well as the threat posed by the worlds
anywhere, make sure your cars emission parts27,000 nuclear weapons, the scientists
are in good condition. But what will you saypointed to global warming as a new and
when respected scientists are now saying thatserious  contributor to potential apocalypse.
apocalypse  is  at  hand?
The dangers posed by climate change are
According to the website which aims tonearly as dire as those posed by nuclear
approach the challenge of climate change withweapons. The effects may be less dramatic in
a positive and informative attitude, thethe short term than the destruction that
apocalypse is being heralded not by lunaticscould be wrought by nuclear explosions, but
in white robes, but by sober and respectedover the next three to four decades climate
scientists.change could cause irremediable harm to the
habitats upon which human societies depend
An article at the website reports thatfor survival, the statement from the BAS
members of the Bulletin Of Atomic Scientistsread.
have today moved the minute hand of their
Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to theSo what are the facts? Every year, according
midnight Moment Of Doom, with climate changeto Global Cool, over 26.5 billion tonnes of
being cited as a major cause of theirCO2 is emitted around the world. Add an
pessimism.annual increase of 0.5 billion tonnes, and it
is predicted that we are fast approaching the
In 1947 the symbolic clock was set up to warnpoint at which the global climate will become
the world how close it was toirreversibly  unstable.
self-destruction during the then Cold War,
with midnight being the moment of globalThe scary thing is that the general consensus
atomic conflict. The clock started at sevenamongst scientists is that we are now only a
minutes to midnight, and has got as close asdecade away from this point with salvation
two minutes to in 1953. There have been 17coming in the form of a seemingly impossible
alterations  since  the  clock  was  founded.reduction of our CO2 emissions by a minimum
of one billion tonnes per year. And that isnt
The decision to move the minute hand to 11.55even a permanent reprieve but only a buy out
was taken by the BAS board of directors andtime for us to develop long-term solutions to
sponsors, which includes no less than 18the  problem.
Nobel Laureates, and was announced at a joint
news conference at both the Association forWhat to do? Maybe a visit to sites like
the Advancement of Science in Washington DC,Global Cool would help.



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