A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Back to 500BC.
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Tuesday, July 4, 2017
Blue Sky Mining
“We are aware of the great difference in carbon dioxide that is emitted from biological sources and carbon dioxide emitted from fossil sources. One has sequestered rates measured in thousands of years while the other in millions of years. Yet the cost is still the same. We would request the IPCC to address the relative costs of each. (Sri Lanka Country Statement COP21)
RANIL SENANAYAKE on 07/04/2017
We are moving into very dangerous times. The statement above,
underscores the importance of differentiating between the biotic and
non-biotic compounds that we add to the atmosphere. This is an
observation that should have been incorporated into planning and costing
responses to climate change. We should be informed of the emerging data
and planning responses. We know that the mean temperature will rise,
but the speed of that increase may be much more than the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has computed, because
they left out the most significant contributor to keeping our plants
warm, water vapour. On average, water vapour accounts for about 60% of
the warming effect and is the largest contributor to the Greenhouse
effect. It is the natural blanket that has kept the atmosphere warm
enough to sustain life. But the IPCC ignores water vapor as a
contributory cause of the warming trends by assuming humans don’t change
it measurably. They wrote, “Water vapour is the most abundant and
important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
However, human activities have only a small direct influence on the amount of atmospheric water vapour”. This stand is dangerous and must be questioned. They have focused on the carbon from fossil and biological fuels and in doing so, might have done the planet a great disfavour.
However, human activities have only a small direct influence on the amount of atmospheric water vapour”. This stand is dangerous and must be questioned. They have focused on the carbon from fossil and biological fuels and in doing so, might have done the planet a great disfavour.
First, water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas it regulates
and is maintained by the atmospheric temperature which limits the amount
of water vapour in the air; but if something else that causes the
temperature to go up is added, the increased temperature causes more
water to evaporate. Because the temperature of the surrounding
atmosphere limits the maximum amount of water vapour the atmosphere can
contain, the water vapour cycle has helped maintain an equilibrium of
temperatures in the past.
Water vapour is a by-product of respiration in
plants and animals. Its contribution to the pressure increases as its
concentration increases, as the total air pressure must remain constant.
The presence of water vapour in the air naturally dilutes or displaces
the other components of air. Thus the output of water vapour can have a
direct effect on the oxygen concentration in a local area.
Life on earth learned how to maintain gas and material flows, optimum
for the evolution of biodiversity. Carbon dioxide, although essential to
the process of life, was being introduced into the atmosphere by
volcanic processes at disruptive levels, throughout geologic history.
But the gas has not concentrated in the atmosphere, because it was
sequestered by living things and put away out of circulation from the
biosphere of living carbon. This store of carbon was fossilised and has
been slowly accumulating over the last few 2 hundred million years.
Through these processes, which are still active today, carbon that
enters the lithosphere (rocks) is removed completely from the biological
cycle and becomes mineralised into pools aged hundreds of millions of
years. This is why it is impossible to be carbon neutral by planting
trees that live for a few hundred years at best, to make up for
releasing carbon that has been locked away for millions of years.
The major exchange of carbon with the atmosphere results from
photosynthesis and respiration. During the daytime in the growing
season, leaves absorb sunlight and take up carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere. In the oceans the planktonic cycle operates a similar
photosynthetic cycle. Both create biomass. In parallel, plants, animals
and substrate microbes consume this carbon as organic matter, transform
it in the process of respiration and finally return it as carbon
dioxide to the atmosphere. When conditions are too cold or too dry,
photosynthesis and respiration cease along with the movement of carbon
between the atmosphere and the land surface. The amounts of carbon that
move from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, respiration, and back
to the atmosphere are large and produce oscillations in atmospheric
pressure, water vapour and carbon dioxide concentrations.
This was the difference in value that Sri Lanka addressed in Paris, yet two years later have we yet held the IPCC or the scientific community responsible for ignoring such a fundamentally important fact? The bureaucrats attending the meeting seem still unaware that the carbon emitting from burning fossil fuel is ‘new’ carbon, fossil carbon that has entered the atmosphere for the first time. It could be termed Newly Formed Oxides of Carbon (NFOC), this is accompanied by an equal volume of Newly Formed Water (NFW) as the fossil hydrogen atom released joins with oxygen to form water which enters into the atmosphere for the first time. These molecules, because they are chemically the same as those of living water and cycling carbon are not taxed for degrading atmospheric stability.
This was the difference in value that Sri Lanka addressed in Paris, yet two years later have we yet held the IPCC or the scientific community responsible for ignoring such a fundamentally important fact? The bureaucrats attending the meeting seem still unaware that the carbon emitting from burning fossil fuel is ‘new’ carbon, fossil carbon that has entered the atmosphere for the first time. It could be termed Newly Formed Oxides of Carbon (NFOC), this is accompanied by an equal volume of Newly Formed Water (NFW) as the fossil hydrogen atom released joins with oxygen to form water which enters into the atmosphere for the first time. These molecules, because they are chemically the same as those of living water and cycling carbon are not taxed for degrading atmospheric stability.
While fussing with the carbon cioxide emitted by burning fossil fuels,
the fact that an equal volume of water vapor is emitted into the
atmosphere seems to have been missed in the assumptions. With more
water vapor in the air the warming effect will increase. Which in turn
reduces the percentage of the other gasses that the atmosphere holds.
A clear distinction between fossil and biotic energy and a placing of
differential values on the two sources, will go a long way to expose
these addicted economies and assist ‘developing nations ‘ to avoid the
pitfalls.
The ‘fossil subsidy’ extended to fossil fuels, includes the cost of
emitting NFOC’s and NFW, the fossil cost of steel and cement production
required for the creation and operation of future ‘development’
projects, should become cost criteria for acceptance or rejection of
future ‘development’ projects. The current Government thinking of
pinning our development to Oil, Gas and Coal, is dangerous and propels
us into a very uncertain future. The inability of the bureaucracy to
respond to the changes is seen in the inability to advise on simple
issues. The storage of drugs and medicines with a temperature threshold
is a case in point. We all know the misery that dialysis patients go
through, but their medicines that were once stored in hospital stores,
now require air conditioned rooms to maintain their effectivity. With
current temperatures now rising well above their temperature thresholds,
such open storage will make these medicines degrade. Who is there in
the government to advise the various arms of government on such issues?
The extreme danger to us all by allowing the burning of fossil fuels as
an energy source is not just the injection of fossil carbon and fossil
hydrogen into the atmosphere it is the disturbing fact that it is using a
diminishing resource, that all life depends on, oxygen.
Oxygen is the second most abundant substance on earth, but only four percent of it or 1.2 x 10 15 is
found in the atmosphere and in living things. This component cycles
through the biological system in about four thousand years. The total
amount of atmospheric oxygen is maintained at about 21 % volume
constantly, by the action of plants and the phytoplankton of the
oceans. All the oxygen in our atmosphere present has originated from
some plant or green microorganism.
Normally, the oxygen volume is about 21.9% globally, this level of
concentration is critical to all of humanity. Negative effects begin to
be felt below 19%, at which point thinking and attention becomes
impaired. As levels drop to 16 % there is reduced coordination,
decreased ability for strenuous work, at 14% poor judgment, faulty
coordination, abnormal fatigue upon exertion, emotional upset and
cardiac stress, while a volume of just 10-12% results in very poor
judgment and coordination, impaired respiration, heart damage, nausea,
fainting and even death.
The current global concentration is about 21%, however this figure often
dips to 19% over impacted areas and is down to 12%-17% over some
cities. In cities with many trees such as in Alabama, U.S.A it is 22%
-19%. In cities with very low greenery and heavy urbanisation such as
Mexico City it is 17% – 14%. As many will point out there is still a
huge stock of oxygen in the atmosphere. But the trends are disturbing.
The figure below shows the decline of oxygen concentration globally, but
the disturbing bit is how closely it matches the rise in carbon dioxide
concentration. This oxygen not only supports a human population that
uses about 6-7 billion tons per year to breathe, but also supports all
of industry, shipping, aviation and land travel and the only thing that
produces oxygen are the green matter in vegetation. We use this
resource without one penny’s worth of investment in the producer of
oxygen.
As previously mentioned, the term ‘fossil subsidy’ extended to fossil
fuels, including the cost of emitting NFOC’s (Newly Formed Oxides of
Carbon) and NFW (newly Formed Water). These new destabilising compounds
that mimic natural chemicals are adding greatly to the forces that drive
climate change. But the greater tragedy is that these compounds are
formed by using up the natural oxygen stock of the world which if not
replenished will rob the air that we will need to maintain our health.
To understand the real nature of what is being done to us, the
generalised chemical formula to describe the burning of fossil fuels is
very clear. So much so that it could well be termed the ‘Satanic
Formula’. It reads thus:
CH4f + 2O2l à nCO2 + nH2O + energy (heat)
where f = fossil, l = living, n = new to the atmosphere
Meaning that a molecule of fossil hydrocarbon, containing fossil carbon and fossil hydrogen (f)
that never belonged in the atmosphere. i.e. they were never in the air,
but always in the rocks, are combined with biologically derived oxygen (l) to produce, the destabilising new gasses (n)
into the atmosphere, it tends to lock up the biologically derived
oxygen away from living things. All these changes are created for the
production of heat to drive our motors. The Poet Blake when he wrote of
the “dark Satanic Mills” of the Industrial Revolution, may not have
known, but he very clearly pointed to the life destroying operation of
the Satanic Formula.
Oxygen is a primary material formed through billions of years of the
operation of life, it is replenished on a small scale by photosynthesis
but remains a primary material. Extracting primary materials is an
activity that is termed mining. “This includes extraction of any non-renewable resource such as petroleum, natural gas, or even water.”
The blueness of the sky is the result of sunlight scattered by tiny
oxygen and nitrogen molecules. They scatter short-wavelength light, such
as blue and violet light. As extracting primary materials is mining,
will those who mine our blue skies for their profits, think a little
about the effects of their mining and invest in assisting the
replenishment of that oxygen, allowing us to keep our blue skies?
Applying the Satanic Formula for development is destroying everyone’s future. Instead of mining that ancient buffer of oxygen can we not look at profiting from the supply of the ecosystem Service, oxygen in particular, as we invest in massive re-vegetation programs, to compensate for our consumption, given that oxygen is so crtitically important to human industry and human life?
Applying the Satanic Formula for development is destroying everyone’s future. Instead of mining that ancient buffer of oxygen can we not look at profiting from the supply of the ecosystem Service, oxygen in particular, as we invest in massive re-vegetation programs, to compensate for our consumption, given that oxygen is so crtitically important to human industry and human life?
Readers who enjoyed this article might find “After Sampur” and “Addressing climate change: COP 21 and Sri Lanka” enlightening reads.