Sustainability Questions and Answers

Importance and Inspiration

Why is the TecEco technology so important and what was your inspiration?

.The solution to our excess emissions of carbon dioxide is to use the gas. My inspiration was nature where carbon is a scarce resource as a construction material. Making man made carbonate using Gaia Engineering tececology employing our Tec-Kiln and Eco-Cements we can solve the problem..

I have yet to see a holistic cost benefit Eco study including the good effects of global warming - can you point me to one?

We typed the question into google and many pages of references that state they are "holistic cost-benefit analyses" on climate change were found by the search engine. Unfortunately much as I would like to, a comparative study and report on these numerous references is beyond my capacity. Any volunteers?

In relation to the good effects of global warming it is simplistic to be thinking that a couple of degrees is nothing and plants will grow better. The point is that the earth is like a giant kettle to some extent. One or two degrees on average means several more degrees at the poles. We have a vested interest in the infrastructure and trappings of civilisation and the considerable melting of our ice caps that will follow will flood many of our cities. Dry lands may become drier and wet areas wetter. Like a warming kettle air and water currents will increase in rate and the climate will be much wilder and erratic. Do we want that?

If you look at the temperature record for the whole of the holocene it is currently average and there are huge fluctuations.

Compared to the last 8,000 years there is definitely a recent warming but compared to the whole of the holocene we seem to be about average.

Given the above facts I agree climate change has been with us for many millennia. A good book covering most of the holocene is "Climate Change in Prehistory The End of the Reign of Chaos" by William Burroughs [1].

See also newsletter 63 where we discuss past climate in more detail and the relationship to CO2 in the air. The point we try to make in the newsletter is that there is a relationship between the composition of the atmosphere and the climate and they have been connected in the past. The rate of change of atmospheric composition is faster right now than it has been for as long as we have ice core records which is some 15 thousand years according to Burroughs..

Whether you think global warming is happening or not I look at it in the following manner. You are deaf and in a long rail tunnel, it is dark and a wind starts blowing through the tunnel. Do you step to the side or keep walking along. Is it a normal wind or is it the wind caused by a freight train coming your way very quickly? You will not know until it passes you but precaution would dictate that you stand aside.

It is the same with global warming and climate change. Whether we are right or wrong, living more sustainably has to be a good thing. We are now planetary engineers whether we like it or not and have to therefore act accordingly.

Since the end of the last ice age we have been in an overall warming phase.

Not completely true. Some the coldest years that for example drove the Norse out of Greenland were from about 1400 to 1700. Ice cores show a variable climate rather than a gradual warming. What is alarming about the most recent 30 years of so is the incredible fast rate of change.

The climate has never been static as scientists seem to now want.

You are correct, climate change has always been with us and any scientist worth his/her salt would recognise this fact. The Carboniferous and late Permian were for example periods of significant global warming. What worries me about the present episode is the rate of change which is in the order of twenty time that in previous epochs.