Global Warming

Also: Waterless Urinals

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May 2002

“Global warming. What have we got to do with it?” This is what someone asked me. It is what inspired this piece of writing, including readers’ views on the issue. I couldn’t quite figure out what the person meant. Is it that this part of the world is not contributing to it in any way? Or it isn’t a problem that is likely to impact the Gulf. Or that we, as individuals, have no role to play in it whatsoever.

“Don’t you drive a car? Use an electric kettle? Or air conditioning?” I mumbled, wishing I could have made him sit through the Emirates Environmental Group’s celebration of Earth Day 2002 - an Inter School Public Speaking Competition that I attended recently in Dubai. This was an occasion where 14 – 16 year olds presented, among other topics, a pretty thorough portrayal of global warming and the importance of ‘energy conservation and renewable energy,’ including what individuals should be doing about it.

  • December 1999: Three powerful winter storms wreck havoc in France. They are the most violent on record in the country.
  • August 2000: the discovery of open water at the North Pole by an icebreaker cruise ship stuns scientists.
  • 2001: Tuvalu, a tiny island nation in the Pacific, surrenders to the sea. As the seal level continues to rise, lowland flooding compels it to seek a new home for its 11,000 citizens. Australia and New Zealand decline to accommodate them.
  • September 2001: it turns out to be the earth’s warmest September since weather record keeping began in 1867; August and October temperatures of the same year are the second warmest.
  • January 31, 2002: a massive Antarctic ice shelf – a 720 billion tonne block likely to be as old as 12,ooo years – begins to disintegrate. Over the following month it collapses and splits up into thousands of icebergs.
  • Presently: Iceland gears up to becoming the world’s first hydrogen-powered economy and….
  • …demand for green electricity (from renewable sources), particularly in the west, spirals.


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Increasing surface temperature, melting ice, rising sea level, unusually destructive storms, solar / hydrogen energy economy, , , ,far from being disparate occurrences, these episodes represent the challenge of, and humanity’s response to, what is seen as the most disturbing environmental threat facing mankind: global warming.

The earth is warming up. Temperatures are rising because of the greenhouse effect – warming that results from the increasing concentration of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, principally carbon dioxide. We are helping make this happen by the excessive burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas). This itself accounts 75 percent of the increase in CO2. Deforestation – cutting and burning of forests that trap carbon, the base of carbon dioxide - accounts for about another 20 percent. Today, most carbon emissions on account of deforestation are from the loss of tropical forests.

Each year over 6 billion tons of carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are spewed into the atmosphere – up four fold since 1950. The chief contributors are an armada of 532 million petrol-burning motor vehicles worldwide, together with thousands of coal-fired power plants. What is more, with the loss of 9 million hectares of forest each year, the earth’s capacity to fix carbon is diminishing, since trees remove Co2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. When forests are burned, cleared or otherwise degraded, their stored carbon is released into the atmosphere.


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Say scientists, if carbon dioxide concentrations double pre-industrial levels by the end of this century (from 280 parts per million in 1760, to 370 ppm in 2000 – a 32 percent increase - to 560 ppm in 2100) the temperature is projected to rise by 1.4 – 5.8 degrees Celsius. And as the earth continues to warm, climate will alter in a manner that will seriously disrupt our lives, threatening our health, our cities, our farms and forests, our beaches, wetlands and natural habitats.

During the 20th century, the sea level rose by 10 – 20 cm (4 – 8 inches). If the earth’s temperature continues to rise, the sea level could rise by as much as one metre during the 21st century, in which case it is estimated, the coastline will retreat by 1500 metres or nearly a mile.

Can we do anything to slow global warming? Yes. Curb our consumption of fossil fuels, use technologies that reduce the amount of emissions wherever possible and protect the world’s forests. Governments, businesses and individuals need to work together to make a real difference.

URIMAT - THE WATERLESS URINAL

And now, a No Water, No Chemicals, No Stink urinal. Where flushing becomes superfluous and the water saved is 3 – 6 litres each time it is used.

That six litres of precious drinking water go down the drain to flush two deciliters of urine is something that Swiss development engineer, Hans Keller, could never get himself to accept. There must be some how, some way, that the callous wastage of so valuable a resource could be prevented. He decided to find a way.

The result is URIMAT of Urimat Swiss Ltd. Rueti, Switzerland, the innovative and worldwide patented product that is gaining market acceptance in leaps and bounds. The way it works is ingenious in its simplicity.

A stench trap (this is interchangeable) is dropped into the recess of the URIMAT to collect urine. From here it passes into a cylinder and then into the overflow chamber. The liquid causes the float to rise and seal the inlet opening that has a flexible sealing lip to trap odours. Once the liquid in the overflow chamber reaches a certain level, the urine is discharged into the drain by gravity. Before, during and after the urinal is used, a solenoid pulls the float down again to ensure that any residual urine is completely drained.

There are added benefits: as there is no water flushing, there is also no urine stone development in pipes. Then there is a backlit display window on top for advertising making the URIMAT urinals a profit center! This illuminates when a person is within a metre of the urinal.

The St. Jakobs Park sports stadium, Basel, Switzerland, has installed the URIMAT urinals and is saving 5 million litres of water per annum. McDonalds Switzerland has them in all their Swiss outlets. The saving is some 20 million litres of potable water each year. Frankfurt Airport, Novartis (Basel), Credit Suisse (Zurich), Daimler Chrysler Aerospace (Augsburg, Germany), Rosenberger Motorway Restaurant (Hohenems, Austria) are among the dozens of URIMAT urinal customers in Europe.

WHAT ON EARTH CAN WE DO?

  • Drive a small, fuel-efficient car around town
  • Reduce the number and length of the trips that we make by car.
  • Have the car properly serviced at regular intervals.
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