First report / Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution
Date:
[1971]
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: First report / Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Accurate prediction will obviously also demand a precise estimate of future fuel consumption. In the longer term, the United States Council on Environmental Quality has suggested that if all the fossil fuel reserves of the earth were burned, and half of the resulting carbon dioxide retained in the atmosphere, the earth’s average temperature might increase by 2 to 3°C. Were this to happen consider- able areas of polar ice would begin to thaw, with a consequent rise in sea level. But such eventualities are not only remote: they are conjectural. Before they could ever begin to take effect new mathematical techniques, better observations, improved understanding of the carbon dioxide cycle in air and sea and more powerful computers should have allowed more precise predictions and a better appraisal of the real extent of the problem. 104. A strong case can be made for measuring the carbon dioxide in the air at more than the present two points and, because of the importance of the ocean as a repository for carbon dioxide, some of these additional sampling points should be located in oceanic areas. The W.M.O. has recently proposed that a widely-spaced network of baseline stations should be established in places remote from local sources of pollution in all the main climatic zones of the earth. The Meteorological Office has suggested to the W.M.O. that the existing observatory at Lerwick in the Shetland Islands might serve as one of these stations. We support this proposal and suggest that some of the meteorological stations which Britain maintains in the Antarctic and elsewhere in the world might also find a place in the programme. 105. The fundamental atmospheric chemical and physical processes involving the carbon dioxide balance are still inadequately known. Its natural distribution between the different climatic zones and, within each, between air, water and living creatures, requires further study. We need to know how far there are natural variations in the production of carbon dioxide and how far green plants, which remove it from the air in the process of photosynthesis, are likely to respond to its increasing concentration, thus possibly providing a compensating mechanism. More detailed basic research is also needed on how changes in the carbon dioxide level affect the penetration of radiation through the atmosphere. Possible effects of dust (including aerosols) released into the atmosphere 106. It has been suggested that the dust content of the atmosphere is increasing because of man’s industrial and agricultural activities. The air is certainly more hazy and dusty in and around urban and industrial areas. Forest fires (most of which are now due to man) can also release great amounts of dust and fine ash. But there is no firm proof that the haziness of the air has increased generally over the world. Only one series of measurements has been made at a point which is really remote from large industrial areas—the summit of Mauna Loa, Hawaii. This record reveals the ejection of great quantities of fine dust from volcanic eruptions, especially that on Baliin 1963. Also, during the later 1960s the records showed a rise in the general dust level which was thought to be due to pollution; by 1970, however, the turbidity of the air over Hawaii had returned almost to the 1962 level. Other measurements purporting to show a steady rise in the dust content of the atmosphere, made at Washington D.C., U.S.A. and Davos, Switzerland, are suspect because these places are not really remote from industrial areas. There is no convincing evidence that human activities have so far increased
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