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The Forum > Article Comments > Australia’s oversized footprint > Comments

Australia’s oversized footprint : Comments

By Andrew Bartlett, published 22/6/2007

Australia has a huge impact on the global ecosphere.

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"Many regions of the world that are now desert were once lush fertile regions covered with trees."
And...many regions of the world that were once desert are now lush and fertile. Things change, adapt or die.

"Digging up and putting back into our atmosphere nearly half the carbon that it tooks many tens of milions of years of geological and biological process to get out of the atmosphere"
Given that CO2 levels were over 2000ppm in the Jurassic you can hardly say that it is "half the carbon".

"Our life support system is extremely tenous and fragile as shown by Chris Shaw"
Who the fark is Chris Shaw to show us anything. Captain Underpants says otherwise.

"I agree with Bob Brown"
I knew someone had to...feel lonely?
Posted by alzo, Tuesday, 3 July 2007 1:14:57 PM
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Alzo,

I don't know much about Chris Shaw, or you for that matter, but he wrote a very good post above (see http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6002#84707). The essence of his post is that the circumstance which allow for advanced life forms such as our own are very rare in the Universe. Scientists are a long way from understanding completely what allows the very thin crust of the earth, which comprises the biosphere, to be capable of supporting humankind and other high order mammals, rather than, instead, being the toxic inferno that exists on Venus on the one hand, or the frozen barren surface of Mars on the other, and even those two apparent extremes, from humankind's point of view, lie in a very narrow band of possible states when the Universe as a whole is considered.

So, I hardly think it is prudent, given the self-evident fragility, and extreme unlikelihood of the existence of advanced life forms, to go tampering with the biosphere that allows it to exist. Whatever is the significance of that statistic about the statistic of the Jurassic era that you threw at me, the point remains that digging up such vast quantities of carbon that have been lying underground for tens of millions of years and putting them all back into the atmosphere in little more than a hundred years is obviously asking for trouble.

Even if we can avoid the fate of Venus for our own planet, the historical, archaeological and geological record shows that extinction of vast ranges of species, far less, the catastrophic collapse of human society, is far from being just a theoretical possibility. If we allow our endowment of fossil fuels to run out and fail to act against global warming and other environmental perils, then I don't see how our globalised civilisation can do any better than past failed civilisations.

(to be continued)
Posted by daggett, Thursday, 5 July 2007 1:54:59 PM
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(continued from above)

Also, much of the extra knowledge that we have today depends upon complex technologies themselves dependent upon supplies of fossil energy and non-renewable mineral resources (copper in particular). After those run out, it is not clear if we will still be able to have computers and the Internet and all that extra knowledge we have gained in the past few decades could just s easily be lost.

Col Rouge: I was simply pointing out the illogicality of your case. As I pointed out above, the other scientfic advances which have made modern human civilisation appear to be more advanced than past failed civilisations have only been possible because of fossil fuels. I see no possible way that micrprocessors would have ever been built without abundant supplies of fossil fuels in the first place.

Can you envision micro-processors being manufactured on the scale that they are today, if at all, with only the relatively diffuse trickle of solar radiation as the primary source of energy, rather than tens of millions of years worth of captured concentrated solar energy that we find in fossil fuels? I can't.
Posted by daggett, Thursday, 5 July 2007 1:59:31 PM
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"the toxic inferno that exists on Venus on the one hand, or the frozen barren surface of Mars on the other"
Could have a lot to do with the 3 planets' respective distances from the sun.

"to go tampering with the biosphere that allows it to exist."
The biosphere has been tampered with before and not by humans. CO2 has been much higher in the geologic past, at the same time temperature has been both higher and lower. Higher order mammals also existed and flourished during these high CO2 periods.

"archaeological and geological record shows that extinction of vast ranges of species"
These extinction events were most likely caused by asteroids or massive volcanic events. Both of which dwarf any possible human effort. In fact it was one of these extiction events that allowed mammals to gain a foothold on the evolutionary ladder. Which ultimately lead to the rise of the most loathed mammal of all...man.

"Can you envision micro-processors being manufactured on the scale that they are today, if at all, with only the relatively diffuse trickle of solar radiation as the primary source of energy, rather than tens of millions of years worth of captured concentrated solar energy that we find in fossil fuels? I can't."
How about with nuclear power? I can. Fission reactors should tide us over until fusion reactors become a reality. There are lots of possible energy sources.
Posted by alzo, Thursday, 5 July 2007 2:56:07 PM
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Alzo, today we seem no closer to realising the dream of unlimited supplies of energy from nuclear fusion than we were thirty years ago. According to one scientist, who has worked on nuclear fusion, the nail in the coffin of nuclear fusion will prove to be the lack of sufficient supplies of the necessary hydrogen isotope tritium. For further information, see the forthcoming second edition of "The Final Energy Crisis" edited by Sheila Newman (http://candobetter.org/sheila).

In regard to nuclear fission, it is obviously a more viable source of energy that just may, if we are extremely careful, provide a bridge towards a more sustainable future whilst stocks of Uranium and Thorium last, however it has a very considerable environmental cost. If we increase the scale of nuclear power generation to the extent necessary to fill the gap power the environmental risks we currently face will be multiplied many times. The Chernobyl disaster. which could have been far worst if not for the quick thinking of those courageous workers on the spot is one illustration. On top of the hazards of electricity power generation, even more environmental threats are posed by mining of Uranium, enrichment, reprocessing and disposal of nuclear wastes. A likely consequence of the expansion of uranium mining in Central Australia is that the Eastern seaboard stands to be exposed to clouds bearing poisonous radioactive uranium and other toxic metals blown from the mine tailings dumps (see David Bradbury's film "Blowin' in the wind" for a graphic illustration of this threat). In the past, the long-term containment of tailings from mining operation has been problematic and, more often than not, fails in the longer term (as Jared Diamond has illustrated in describing past mining operations in Montana in Chapter 2 of "Collapse" pp35-41). I don't hold out any greater hope that the mining companies will do any better a job containing the mountains of tailings from the planned expanded Uranium mines.

Another problem with nuclear fission is that it can only be used to generate electricity. ... (ToBeContinued)
Posted by daggett, Thursday, 12 July 2007 12:53:29 PM
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(ContinuedFromAbove) ... In order to operate transport or run factory machinery or mine milling equipment, the electricity has to be either somehow stored chemically, or transported directly as electricity using power lines, transformers and other expensive infrastructure. In the former case, energy is lost, in creating, for example, hydrogen from water, and the containment of hydrogen necessitates the fabrication of particularly strong and well-sealed containers. In the latter case, large quantities of non-renewable resources, particularly copper, are required, and it is expected that the world's production of copper will begin to decline next year (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=000CEA15-3272-13C8-9BFE83414B7FFE87).

The other "lots of possible energy sources" are essentially derived from solar energy or geothermal energy. All require the use of equipment, the manufacture of which now requires non-renewable rare metals, petroleum-derived plastics and fossil fuel energy. The problems in building renewable energy generators, on a scale necessary to indefinitely meet global society's demands, as well as to provide the necessary additional energy to build replacement generators and infrastructure, without reliance upon fossil-fuel energy, appear to be overwhelming. It seems unlikely that this can be done on a scale anywhere near the scale we have been able to do thus far relying on our finite endowment of fossil fuels.

So, I would suggest that it would be extremely imprudent to continue to consume natural resources at our current rate, let alone to increase our rate of consumption, and to go on trashing the world's ecology as we are doing now on the assumption that we can find an easy replacement to so much of that conveniently packaged solar energy captured over tens of millions of years that we have found buried under the ground. It would be far more prudent to assume that our current practices are unsustainable, and to begin now to reduce those levels of consumption.

Those who are consuming the most whilst contributing the least to society, such as property speculators and financial advisers should be amongst the first to be made to do so.
Posted by daggett, Thursday, 12 July 2007 12:56:11 PM
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