Termites produce more CO2 each year than all living things combined!
Termite and Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Facts:
Scientists have calculated that termites alone produce ten times as much carbon dioxide as all the fossil fuels burned in the whole world in a year.
Pound for pound, the weight of all the termites in the world is greater than the total weight of humans.
Scientists estimate that, worldwide, termites may release over 150 million tons of methane gas into the atmosphere annually. In our lower atmosphere this methane then reacts to form carbon dioxide and ozone.
It is estimated that for every human on Earth there may be 1000 pounds of termites.
On the average Termites expel gas composed of about 59% nitrogen, 21% hydrogen, 9% carbon dioxide, 7% methane, and 4% oxygen.
It is thought “There are 2,600 different species of termites, and it is estimated that there are at least a million billion individual termites on Earth, that they emit two and four percent of the global carbon dioxide and methane budget, respectively-both mediated directly or indirectly by their microbes.
Moral of the story: Thank your local exterminator for slowing global warming. - D0PPELGANGER
Your constant brain farts produce the most greenhouse gas, so die.
Here are 18 examples of the spectacularly wrong predictions made around 1970 when the “green holy day” (aka Earth Day) started:
1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment.
3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”
7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.
8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.
12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.
13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out.
14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.'”
15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated that humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.
16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.”
18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
Location: any donut with a hole in the middle can get (frank)ed right in its hole, NJ Joined: 04.08.2012
Apr 23 @ 9:20 AM ET
Here are 18 examples of the spectacularly wrong predictions made around 1970 when the “green holy day” (aka Earth Day) started:
1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment.
3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By… - D0PPELGANGER[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”
7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.
8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.
12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.
13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out.
14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.'”
15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated that humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.
16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.”
18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
In the USA, they use "US gallons" ......... in Canada we used to use Imperial Gallons, but when we switched to 4 Liters in three bags, it must have confused them.
I know a lot of Americans that have trouble with our use of Metric time when they come to visit Canada.
OSLO (Reuters) - Norway is repairing the entrance of a "doomsday" seed vault on an Arctic island after an unexpected thaw of permafrost let water into a building meant as a deep freeze to safeguard the world's food supplies.
The water, limited to the 15 meter (50 ft) entrance hall in the melt late last year, had no impact on millions of seeds of crops including rice, maize, potatoes and wheat that are stored more than 110 meters inside the mountainside.
Still, water was an unexpected problem for the vault on the Svalbard archipelago, about 1,000 km (620 miles) from the North Pole. It seeks to safeguard seeds from cataclysms such as nuclear war or disease in natural permafrost.
"Svalbard Global Seed Vault is facing technical improvements in connection with water intrusion," Norwegian state construction group Statsbygg, which built the vault that opened in 2008, said in a statement on Saturday.
"The seeds in the seed vault have never been threatened."
Spokeswoman Hege Njaa Aschim said Statsbygg had removed electrical equipment from the entrance - a source of heat - and was building waterproof walls inside and ditches outside to channel away any water.
The number of visitors would be reduced to limit human body heat, she said. Some of the water that flowed in re-froze and had to be chipped out by workers from the local fire service.
An underlying problem was that permafrost around the entrance of the vault, which had thawed from the heat of construction a decade ago, has not re-frozen as predicted by scientists, Aschim said.
In a story published two days ago in the Independent, a U.K. newsmagazine. Seth Berenstein reported on the claims of a group of scientists, including Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University, about the possible effects of the United States withdrawing from the December 2015 Paris agreement on global warming. Oppenheimer is quoted as saying that “one expert group” (unidentified) ran a worst case computer simulation of what would happen if the U.S. does not curb greenhouse gas emissions but all other countries meet their targets. It found that “America would add as much as half a degree of warming (0.3 degrees Celsius) to the globe by the end of the century.”
“Another computer simulation team put the effect of the U.S. pulling out somewhere between 0.1 and 0.2 degrees Celsius.”
Wow! As a matter of fact, the Paris Agreement contains no targets. It is a “best efforts” political commitment to constrain the growth in global GHG emissions by amounts to be set by each country in a series of five-year plans. The first five-year plans were estimated to reduce eventual warming (if one believes the models) by about .015 degrees. Even those emissions reductions were contingent on the industrialized countries giving at least $100 billion per year to the developing countries to finance their programs. The developing countries have since said that they need at least $300 billion a year and the industrialized countries have not even come up with $40 billion over five years.
The thesis that all the other countries of the world would, absent the U.S. participation, go on to reduce emissions by the amounts envisioned by U.N. bureaucrats is baseless anyway. The U.N. claims that global emissions will have to be cut in half from today’s levels by 2050. All the authoritative sources on global energy supply, demand and emissions project that, instead, emissions will grow by 40% or more by 2050.
So, under an unrealistic scenario based on questionable modeling and inaccurate assumptions about what the rest of the world will do, the so-called experts are projecting that the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement could affect global temperatures by somewhere between 0.1 and 0.3 degrees Celsius 83 years from now. What a catastrophe! - D0PPELGANGER
you do realize that 0.1 and 0.3 is an average and some areas are more severely affected than others, right?
And that temperature affects many things - anyone with a basic understanding of chemistry and physics knows that it upsets pH, chemical equilibrium, pressure, etc.
Many lifeforms are sensitive to this. Humans are lucky because we can adapt our surroundings to us. Most other animals don't do this. They will die.
