No – it’s not the start to a rap but maybe it’s an idea – any aspiring climo-rappers out there?
THE
EARTHSHOT PRIZE 2022 - Congratulations to 44.01, winner of the Fix Our Climate category
ACCORDING TO THE UN, REMOVING CO2 IS ESSENTIAL IF WE ARE TO LIMIT GLOBAL WARMING.
OMAN-BASED 44.01 REMOVES CO2 PERMANENTLY BY MINERALISING IT IN ROCK.
Words of caution to 44.01 as geopolitics throws up surprises, like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the horror scenario of another possible Trump presidency, or the Saudis negotiating at COP to have methane categorized as ‘green’, which might result in a great idea from 44.01 becoming ineffective.
Taking CO2 out of the atmosphere is adaption!…right? A very, very welcome adaption, admittedly, but isn’t it mitigation we REALLY need?…and it’s very much a shared problem! A problem for us ALL - the transport and mixing properties of atmospheric flow are of great significance! In fact, they are fundamentally, crucially important!
I remember being utterly incredulous at the time, as President Chump (after securing what was hopefully his one-and-only presidency) giving Obama one of many kicks over environmental policy, just to keep up the farce and put on his coal face in front of an uninformed, under-educated, gullible, desperate following, based largely in America’s ‘rust belt’ and coal belt states – it was Trump’s promise to the republican worker-base to revitalise American coal.
On the subject of that coal, the history of mining in Virginia (for example) and the fight for rights is monumental [bless you Mary 'Mother' Jones, ref. West Virginia coal wars, 1912–21], but just as happened here in the UK, coal has had its day, and good riddance!…although there were rumblings, even here in the UK, which I hope have now subsided, completely.
The transport and mixing properties of the atmospheric flow play a major role in the distribution of atmospheric chemicals, with consequences for air quality, absorption of UV radiation (ref ozone) and for OUR climate and the action of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide and methane, et al). It is now well accepted that the distribution of chemicals is an integral part of climate systems. Air quality considerations have typically taken account of flows on local and regional scales of pollutants (poisons, toxins if you wish) emitted in industrial zones, which can be transported thousands of kilometres. Therefore, meeting local or regional quality standards must take account of transport in atmospheric flow on much larger scales.
For illustration purposes, an average man has approximately 6 litres of lung capacity, say 8 grams in weight for a couple of lungs full of air. Last year, globally, 40 billion tonnes of carbon-based emissions were pumped into OUR atmosphere and potentially into OUR lungs! That's 50,000,000,000,000,000 lungs-full!
Other more immediately damaging pollutants from coal burning - sulphur dioxide hits the 120 million tonnes per year mark (and was dropping, I recall); nitrogen dioxide; particulates!
In other words, what happens in China, or the US, or India…or the UK, will end up affecting the lungs of someone in the Azores, or Tasmania or Donald Trump as he sits on his lawn at Mar-a-Lago…which’ll be under water before you realise, Donnie! Those pollutants can be emitted in Beijing or Cleveland and reach your lungs within twelve months!
The ignorance around environmental issues is astonishing – we all need to act and embrace the people who will act for us if our voices can’t be heard above the din of vested interests of the Trumps in this world!
If you’re not shouting at all – what does that say about you?