From Popular Mechanics, August 1953 p119...

Growing Blanket of Carbon Dioxide Raises Earth’s Temperature
Earth’s ground temperature is rising 1-1/2 degrees a century as a result of carbon dioxide discharged from the burning of about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal and oil yearly. According to Dr. Gilbert N. Plass of the Johns Hopkins University, this discharge augments a blanket of gas around the world which is raising the temperature in the same manner glass heats a greenhouse. By 2080, he predicts the air’s carbon-dioxide content will double, resulting in an average temperature rise of at least four percent. If most of man’s industrial growth were over a period of several thousand years, instead of being crowded within the last century, oceans would have absorbed most of the excess carbon dioxide. But because of the slow circulation of the seas, they have had little effect in reducing the amount of the gas as man’s smoke-making abilities have multiplied over the past hundred years.

Yes, 1953. This issue, if you have it... or see it laying around your parents basement, or on ebay, or whatever.

Now if even 1/10,000th of GDP had been spent on this since 1953, where would we be today?

BioDiesel...The Death Warrant of the Orang?

In an article by Ian MacKinnon The Guardian report today on the scam which is destroying habitat in Borneo and Indonesia at an alarming rate. The cause? Demand for the Oil Palm to make BioDiesel in the West.

“In reality it’s over for the tiger, the elephant and the orangutan,” said Mr Smits, who founded the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. “Their entire lowland forest habitat is essentially gone already. We find orangutan burned, or their heads cut off. Hunters are paid 150,000 rupiah [£8.30] {$16.41} for the right hand of an orangutan to prove they’ve killed them.”

Maybe no war, but how do all the drivers of biodiesel Benz's here in Asheville feel about rainforest destruction, I wonder.

The numbers are damning. Within 15 years 98% of the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia will be gone, little more than a footnote in history. With them will disappear some of the world’s most important wildlife species, victims of the rapacious destruction of their habitat in what conservationists see as a lost cause. Yet this gloomy script was supposed to have included a small but significant glimmer of hope. Oil palm for biofuel was to have been one of the best solutions in saving the planet from greenhouse gases and global warming. Instead the forests are being torn down in the headlong rush to boost palm oil production.

Pretty serious stuff. The article even gets worse than this, believe it or not.

The sodden peat of central Kalimantan acts as a vast organic sponge that stores huge amounts of carbon. But as it dries while being drained for plantation, or by roads being cut through to remove timber, it releases the stored carbon. In Indonesia alone, the peat releases 600m tons of carbon a year. Worse, it is often set alight to speed clearing, adding to the CO2 from the huge forest fires that blanket much of south-east Asia in haze. Estimates say Indonesia’s fires generate 1,400 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, pushing it to the world’s third-largest producer of CO2 from 26th, if both factors are considered.

Surprise, surprise, surprise! Indonesia, trying to help the world's CO2 problem, jumps to the top the list with the solution. Amazing.