It was going to KILL US ALL, wasn't it? Much Cressers-esque doom and gloom surrounded it, but I've not heard anything about it in ages.

So, what happened to acid rain, that great scourge that was due to hit us all?

Swine flu.

But, Danny, wasn't bird fly going to get us all first? 😉

Yeah, then the credit crunch.

The extra warmth created by global warming evaporated it before it got really started
Either that or the overdue ice age did for it – probably

Still happens i believe – more measures have been put in place to reduce pollution at source. An ex-vice president didn't make a mockumentary about it, so i guess nobody cares. There are only so many issues you can pay lip service to at any one time.

and glue sniffing – that seems to have gone out of fashion too. Couldn't watch the telly without seeing glue sniffers in the 80s/early 90s. Suppose drugs got too cheap?

The millenium bug killed it off.

Yeah, and whatever happened to the polluted Thames which couldn't support any fish life apart from atmospheric-oxygen breathing eels ?

Legislation, my dear boy, legislation.

didn't acid rain go the ame way as the hole in the ozone layer? It's still a problem, it's just that it's no loger a fashionable problem

& the reservoirs that would need 20 years of continuous rain to get back to normal levels

Low sulphur fuels producing less sulphuric acid.

and glue sniffing – that seems to have gone out of fashion too

Get with it, its all Hairspray and Milk these days.

The catastrophy lobby got converted to the Wicca/Gaia religion and are now trying to enforce their version of sharia law on us.

and cod as an endangered species

apparently you can now walk across the north sea from grimsby to stavanger on a sold carpet of the buggers

And Cressers – whatever happened to him? Did the Acid Rain get him before the Bird Flu?

Acid rain was relatively easy to fix:

(1) Flue gas desulphurisation in coal-fired power stations (one of the biggest sources)
(2) Low-sulphur fuels (i.e. strip the sulpur from fuel before combusion)
(3) The change-over from coal (high in sulphur) to natural gas (v. low in sulphur) as a fuel for power stations, brought about by 1990s exploitation of North Sea gas reserves

All this was brought about by a mixture of international legislation, economics and the general public will to get something done about it. PLUS – it was 'solvable' issue on a practical level.

It was never going to Kill Us All as some might have sensationalised, it was just going to cause widespread ongoing damage to forests, rivers, lakes plants, wildlife – as it infact did. Bjørn Lomborg a.k.a 'The Sceptical Environmentalist', advocates de-sensationalising such environmental issues, becasue it evokes the sorts of jaded responses as seen above. I'm all for that approach.

Climate change is a more thorny problem, because unfortunately at present our economies are directly dependent on emitting CO2 to the atmosphere as a byproduct of fossil fuel combustion as a source of power – and you can't easily 'strip' the CO2 from power station chimneys in the same way you can with SO2. So without an alternative power source – other than fossil fuels – if we reduce CO2 emmisions, our economies (and standard of living) will directly suffer. This is not politically, economically or even generally publically favorable at present. Hence, we continue to increase our CO2 emmisions annualy on a global scale – and thereby increase the associated risks of Global Climate Change.

Part of the problem is this notion of 'economic growth', whereby an economy is only seen as healthy if it is 'growing'. On a gross scale, therefore, an economy will only grow if it uses ever more natural resources (and equally produces ever more waste – entropy – as a result). Unfortunately, the Earth is a finite bubble, with a limited capacity to both supply resources and also absorb all that entropic mess. The Climate Change that is starting to take place now is the fallout from the limited capacity of the atmosphere to absorb all that CO2 (and methane, and CFCs etc., etc.).

THat looks like a copy and paste job if ever I saw one.

Nope – I'm an enviromental scientist. 🙂

Looks like you lured one in CFH 😀

No-eyed-dear, does the abbreviation CFC in your last line stand for "Captain Flasheart's Cr4p" ?
If not, it should. 🙂

Ive been spouting on about a growing economy being bad for rescources for ages – well put No eyed dear.

Perhaps this recession is good for us in the long run.

Dont try and deflect the mob with science facts whatever you do. Grab a torch and join in.

didn't acid rain go the ame way as the hole in the ozone layer?

Yes. International action and legislation got rid of it.

It was never going to Kill Us All as some might have sensationalised

You have allowed yourself to be trolled by Flashheart no_eyed_dear. No one 'sensationalised' the acid rain problem, and no one ever claimed that it was going to kill us all.

It's just Flashheart being silly because he doesn't like environmentalists – with their annoying suggestions that he drives a sensible car and doesn't spend his week-ends gallivanting round the British countryside looking for wildlife to slaughter.

Flashheart firmly believes that the World's resources were put there by God, for him to personally enjoy – he only needs to fill his pockets. I blame the parents myself.

No actually, I reckon that the acid rain problem was probably never been taken quite as seriously as it perhaps should have been. Because of course we very conveniently dumped most of the pollution from our power stations onto Northern Europe. Had we seen thousands of lakes and forests in the British Isles affected by acid rain due to Scandinavian power stations, I'm sure we would have seen it as a slightly more serious problem.

Can any experts say with any certainty how much impact to the environment Soda Streams have made?

Cressers had a big strop about people just taking the p out of him about a year ago and stomped off to DOOM other people somewhere else IIRC.

Yeah, it's like anything – the fashionable issues get the column inches.

It's like killer pet dogs – a few years ago, all of a sudden there were dogs going around eating babies in every other home.

Now it's all knife crime.

Now it's all knife crime

There's children on the street using guns and knives
Taking drugs and each other's lives Killing each other with knives and forks
Calling each other names like 'dork'

they just made up something else they thought sounded worse and might be able to scare monger a reaction to 🙂

I was thinking just the same thing this morning about Feng Shui…..

…….where did that all go?

Trimix – Member
"Ive been spouting on about a growing economy being bad for rescources for ages – well put No eyed dear. Perhaps this recession is good for us in the long run."

Aye and so had Thomas Malthus 200 yeas ago.

@uplink so only 17 years to go.

China is running out of fresh water. their northern aquifers are pretty much empty. when that happens the shit will really hit the fan. although it will be quite solid shit, what with the dehydration. They may go after Mongolia then for Lake Hushgvol…….