The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Editor: Regarding: "Fuel efficiency laws needed, says group" I'd like to add an additional point to this very important subject. A far more important reason than "greenhouse gases" for more fuel efficient vehicles is simply conservation of the world's ever shrinking reserves of fossil fuels. I, and many others, believe that all the hoopla about greenhouse gases is based on bad stories. Here are a couple of facts (from Brian Mason's "Principles of Geochemistry"). 70 per cent of the greenhouse effect is due to water in the atmosphere. Obviously there is nothing we can do about this. Carbon dioxide is the next highest contributor, at about 10 per cent. However, the oceans contain about 20 times as much CO2 as the atmosphere. This means that, even if an equivalent of the present amount of CO2 (300 parts per million) were added, the ocean: atmosphere equilibrium would stay at 20 to 1, so that the atmosphere's CO2 would only go up to 315 ppm. These two facts clearly show that all the talk about greenhouse gases raising the temperature of the earth is false. However, conserving fossil fuel remains more important than ever. Yours respectfully, Tony McDonald
