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Historical Carbon Emissions From Dragons In Middle Earth
An anonymous reader writes "The climate of Middle Earth has recently been under the spotlight, with the current and future climate of Middle Earth simulated using the HadCM3L General Circulation Model. However, to the best of our knowledge, there has been little work investigating the historical carbon emissions of Middle Earth. Specifically, what impact has the demise of dragons had on carbon emissions? To shed some light on this question, we start by considering the carbon footprint of the antagonist, Smaug."
Smaug is surprisingly environmentally friendly.
Of course the dying off of dragons will result in a reduction of Smaug.
I'm far more concerned about the emission of methane gas by dragons
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...
Of course. He keeps the dwarf population in check, whose excessive mining wreaks havoc on the environment.
Even nerds and geeks need a little laugh now an then. Don't worry your little head - we'll all be back to the task of designing the next quantum computer as soon as we've had a chuckle, and another Mountain Dew.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Replace the denizens of an entire city with a single creature - check. Single creature spends most of it's time lounging about and doing nothing - check. Single creature reuses the work product of others instead of making their own emissions - check. Single creature eats far less than an entire city - check.
It's a no brainier - Smaug is good for the environment.
For most of the time, Earth was a very hot humid place with an atmosphere you wouldn't want to breathe.
Dragons might like that.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Middle Earth runs by Magic not science
The problem isn't all CO2. Of course, if we somehow magically removed all CO2 from our atmosphere we'd have horrible consequences. The problem is that there are vast stores of carbon that have been sequestered out of the atmosphere in the form of coal and oil. We're taking that carbon and putting it back into the atmosphere (as CO2) in massive amounts. The plants can't consume the CO2 as quickly as we burn it and even if they did, that's not taking the CO2 out of the system. You don't introduce a massive amount of something into the climate without having repercussions.
Nobody's saying that we should remove ALL CO2 from the atmosphere. Just that we shouldn't be pushing so much of it into the atmosphere from underground (*not* in the atmosphere for millions of years) sources. Just because it's natural for some to be there doesn't mean a ton more will have no consequences.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Glaurung
Anacalgon
Smaug
It's interesting that all were slain by Men, while the only ones who killed Balrogs were Elves or Maiar. In the original Gondolin myth the dragons were actually mechanical and basically giant troop transports, again highlighting the pastoral and anti-industrial themes in a lot of JRRTs work. Dragons were noisy, mechanical, destructive things, part of the mortal world of Men, while Balrogs were basically demons, part of the immortal world (Heaven/Hell).
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.