IT'S two years since I brought you news of the last snippets about the planet we're abusing, so here are some more:
• April 2014 tied with April 2010 as the warmest April on record, and it was the 350th consecutive month above the average for the last century.
• While 1988 was then the warmest year on record it's now only 20th, and the 14 warmest years have all been since 2000, with 2014 leading the way.
• Over half the world's population has only lived in months that are warmer than the 20th century average. That's four billion people.
• When I started work in 1959 the atmospheric CO2 was only 315 parts per million - this year it's approaching 404.
• One part per million (ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere is the equivalent of over two billion tonnes, two gigatonnes, of CO2 - 2,120,000,000.
• One gigatonne of CO2 would fill Wembley stadium 450,000 times in a year.
• Ice core records, for the last 800,000 years, show the fastest rate of CO2 addition to the atmosphere was 20 ppm every 1,000 years – it's now 20 ppm every 10 years.
• Every cubic metre of the atmosphere contains 10 to the power 21 carbon dioxide molecules – 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
• There are now six kilos of CO2 above every square metre of the earth's surface and in 1900 there were just four.
• Deforestation, mainly rainforest, adds over one billion tonnes of CO2 each year.
• Peat dug in the UK for garden compost releases the CO2 emissions of 100,000 homes each year, that's around 500,000 tonnes.
• Almost half of the energy generated since the Industrial Revolution began has been consumed since the year 2000, and most of it's still from CO2 producing fossil fuels.
• The livestock sector is responsible for 18 percent of climate change gas emissions compared to 13 percent from all cars, lorries, shipping and planes.
• Halving the amount of meat eaten reduces CO2 emissions more than reducing the amount of driving by half.
• Driving at 70 mph uses 30 percent more fuel than at 50 mph, and so produces proportionally more CO2.
• Mobile phones produce three times the CO2 of landlines. Their individual manufacture produces 60 kg, and use for an hour a day produces 80 kg per year, with three times more from all the connecting networks.
• Flying from Manchester to Florida produces 750 kg of CO2 per passenger, and to Las Vegas it's 890 kg.
It's not surprising that scientists are about to rename the current geological period the Anthropocene, from the Greek word for man, because of the impact of such a greedy mammal.
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