Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
What had changed from Hogbom
'
s and Arrhenius
'
day, when it was thought that it would take
years
before anything of concern might happen, were revolu-
tions in public health and economic development. The
world population, which numbered just under
.
billion
in
, had grown to
billion when Keeling published
his data in the late
s and to about
billion by the year
. The rate of population growth was unprecedented.
People were having more babies and living longer, and
infant mortality was declining all over the world.
At the same time the standard of living in even the least
developed areas of the world also grew. Per capita income
more than doubled, and more people with more income
meant about a tenfold increase in world economic output
[
]. It takes energy to power that output, so energy use
increased by a similar amount. This tenfold change, plus
the increase expected in this century in total energy con-
sumption, plus Revelle
'
is work, is responsible for changing
the
estimate of a
-year CO
doubling time into
today
'
s
-year estimate.
.
The Big Problem: Lifecycle of
Greenhouse Gases
If greenhouse gases could be removed from the atmos-
phere rapidly, solving the global warming problem would
be much easier. We could wait to see how bad things
became, change our ways as needed, and have everything
return to normal in a short time. Regrettably, it doesn
t
work that way. The removal time of some of the main
greenhouse gases is measured in centuries. If we wait until
bad things happen we will have to live with the
'
