Interesting discussion. At the Scripps Aquarium you can find a display showing carbon spikes on a very cyclical basis, ongoing for millions of years. Is this from volcanic activity, or is there a larger phenomena such as changes in the planet's core changing the rotation axis or some other event? What concerns me most is that constantly the plant has rapid onset of an ice age following each CO2 spike. According to records gathered for this study, we are way overdue for an ice age. Historically much of the planet is then under ice during these time periods. In such events there is not enough land left for agriculture to sustain the world's population. In a prudent world we would be encouraging people to have one to two children so we can reduce population to prepare for mass migrations. Reduction in world population would also solve many geolicialy short term problems, such as shortages in food, water, housing, and the destruction of habitats for the balance of the planets life. Even now, countries that have gotten their population under control, are experiencing a time of prosperity while those countries with expanding populations are suffering and are more likely to have violence and wars. I think most people would agree that reducing population would put less pressure on resources and would reduce environmental impacts. So, as a world, why are we not addressing what the optimum population should be, so that all people can enjoy a high quality of life?
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Barbara A.B. Salvini, P.E.
Barbara A.B. Salvini Engineering
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With the quality of our civil infrastructure declining in the world, civil engineers need to concentrate their advocacy time and energy on advocating for the creation of lasting infrastructure this is not required to be renewed every few years, rather than trying to get involved in the commentary about global warming or climate change, or the new buzzword carbon free.
The best thing we can do to impact all these things, is to try to design, and encourage construction of systems with longer lifespans. It is easy to see a less carbon impact of reconstructing roads once every 50 years, instead of once every 10-years. It is better use of all our resources to concentrate on real things like creating homes that last more than 30 years. Our fore-fathers designed buildings that lasted hundreds of years that people still live in. In America, the standard is to assume that the houses will turn over every 30-40 years.
It is better for us to spend time and effort attempting to design Cities that people can really live in, rather than Cities we go to in order to work. Look at the Cities in Italy. Even though they have a similar population to major US cities, they have much lower per capita energy usage. Why? Because people live, work, eat, buy groceries, etc. all within a short distance. Walking is possible as a most of the time solution. In the US, we don't think a 50 mile commute every morning is unreasonable. Most people in Europe would laugh at someone willing to drive 20 miles to purchase groceries. In the US, we do that without thinking about it. Additionally, the buildings many of them live in are hundreds of years old, so farmland is not constantly being turned into subdivisions.
You can probably tell that I am not a climate change advocate. My problem is that climate change experts predicted a rise in water surface from 1950-2010 of over a meter. Didn't happen. If we could figure out how to remove the climatic effect of two active volcanos, we could remove the climatic effect of all the carbon used by humans. I think developing effective point source solutions, which almost no one is working on, would be much more effective cost-wise than making each human reduce their individual carbon footprint.
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Dwayne Culp, Ph.D., P.E., P.Eng, M.ASCE
Culp Engineering, LLC
Richmond TX
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