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Environment

A More Immediate Problem

December 24, 2007 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 85, Issue 52

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Information from the American Chemical Society's 2006 Form 990 is now available to ACS members on www.acs.org. To access the information, please have your ACS membership number handy and follow these instructions: Go to www.acs.org. In the upper right-hand corner, log in. If you are already a registered user, enter your user name and password. If you're a new user, follow the link and register (a process that requires your ACS membership number and takes less than a minute). Once you have logged in, you will see a link titled "Member Information." Click on this link, go to the heading "Your Organization" at the bottom of the screen, and click on the link titled "Access the Compensation of ACS Officers and Key Employees." You will immediately go to the introductory text; the Form 990 is available by clicking on the link at the bottom of the page titled "2006 Compensation Schedules." If you have any problems, contact webmaster@acs.org.

The discussion about global warming could be continued forever without any clear-cut results (C&EN, Sept. 10, page 5; C&EN, Oct. 29, page 3). This is understandable, because Earth's climate is a highly complex system that is determined by numerous parameters in a nonlinear way. Even today's models are not capable of simulating the climate in a completely satisfactory way.

The more immediate problem threatening our civilization is the Peak Oil problem. Peak Oil is the point in time when global production of crude oil reaches its pinnacle and then enters into a permanent decline. This problem, unlike global warming, is relatively simple and transparent. It depends primarily on three parameters: demand for crude oil, production capacity, and new discovery of oil and gas fields. All serious studies of this development indicate that humanity will be in great trouble because of a fossil energy shortage long before the climate change will become a real major threat.

Alex von Zelewsky
Brissago, Switzerland

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