Does cremation (burning) of dead bodies increase the carbon in the atmosphere and speeds up the greenhouse effect? Shouldn't we bury the dead so that atleast the decomposition will feed the earth?
The major worry from cremation is actually heavy metals form things like people's fillings being released into the atmosphere. The problems with burial is we are fastely running out of space to put people and the creation of graveyards and the way people are buried is not an 100% ecologically friendly solution either.
Personally I don't know which method is the most environmentally friendly, I have never found any evidence to sway me definatively to one side. I do believe that some people are beginning to investigate and create more environmentally friendly burials.
I don't know how big a percentage of pollution cremation contributes but it is probably very small compaired to industry, cars, deforestation, cows and rice farming.
In addition to the above, burning of virtually any substance in the atmosphere produces carbon, of course there is a big debate as to what effect this is having on the enviornment. One volanco eruption can put more carbon into the air than years of burning things.
Of course one has to look at the exhaust using #3 diesel from the backhoe that digs the grave, The motors and exhaust of the equipment to make the casket and the vault. And in todays vault the body does not go back into the ground really,
Add to that the line of cars driving miles to get to the grave site.
Cremation has to have a smaller footprint. Besides all the things FrChuck mentioned, there's the mining and smelting of the metals for the casket, and the processes that make the cloth linings (I don't know but I bet they don't use natural fibers). And the bodies don't fertilize (can't f/ inside coffin unless it's wood or cardboard but those prod have own carbon probs).
Cremation releases carbon, and there is still the prob of cars to mausoleum or grave site for some.
'Course now I've spouted off, I'll have to check that site temp posted....
In addition to the above, burning of virtually any substance in the atmosphere produces carbon, of course there is a big debate as to what effect this is having on the enviornment. One volanco eruption can put more carbon into the air than years of burning things.
Wikipedia says the opposite, that volcanos today are a very small source of carbon dioxide gas.
Quote:
In the modern era, emissions to the atmosphere from volcanoes are only about 1% of emissions from human sources.[12][13]
The main source for this assertion (13) is a paper by a volcanologist with the USGS, the United States Geological Survey, a generally very reputable source of scientific information.
According to a pie chart at Wikipedia, the largest single source of carbon dioxide is power stations, followed by industry, and then transportation fuels (e.g., gasoline, diesel, jet fuel).
I didn't say that volcanoes put more carbon into the air than man, only that they can. Of course the big vocanoes don't happen very often-thank God! But when the caldera under Yellowstone National Park, to name one, erupts, as it has in the past, the carbon and other emmissions will have world-wide catastropic consequences.
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