Red Sky at Morning Trivia Quiz

Answer: Recycled in our food

A relatively-recent discovery, the effect of some ocean currents around the world is to corral floating man-made debris into a concentrated area. The Great Pacific garbage patch, lying between Japan and the west coast of North America, has been formed by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre. Man has played his part by supplying the rubbish.

Much of the material is suspended just below the ocean's surface and not obvious to the casual observer. The rubbish varies in size from the microscopic upwards and also in the type of material. It is the smaller pieces, typically of plastic, that end up in the food chain, sometimes killing the birds and fish, sometimes landing on our dinner plates.

Did you know plastic microbeads can be found in such products as skin exfoliating creams and toothpastes? These microbeads are too small to be filtered out by sewage works and so end up in rivers, lakes, the sea and therefore potentially the food chain. Reportedly, 90% of the plastics in the Great Lakes in North America are microbeads. The Netherlands is the first country proposing to ban usage of microbeads in consumer products from the end of 2016.

Answer: Heat wave

In the decade from 1992, over 2,000 people in the US died as a result of heat waves. The figures for the other weather events were 880 in floods, about 500 in lightning strikes (averaging 49 per year for the past 30 years) and 150 in hurricanes.

According to various studies, the frequency of heat waves has increased in recent decades with record temperatures a not-uncommon feature. Such heat waves saw at least 46,000 (and more than 70,000 by some estimates) die in the 2003 European heat wave. Power outages and violent crimes also tend to go up during these periods. If accompanied by low humidity, wild fires can also be a problem - examples of wild fires associated with heat waves are Portugal (2003), Greece (2007), Australia (2009) and Russia (2010).

Answer: CFC-12

Now banned in many countries, CFC-12 (a carbonfluorochloride) was typically used as a propellant in aerosols and as a refrigerant (often called Freon-12) in fridges and freezers. The others listed are also greenhouse gases with sulphur hexafluoride being the worst of the lot at over 22,000 times the potency of carbon dioxide in a 100-year period.

Common gases used in aerosols these days include propane and isobutane (which are flammable) or nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide (which are greenhouse gases).

Answer: Less than three percent

Of that three percent, about two percent is locked up in glaciers and the like, with half to three-quarters of the remainder in the form of groundwater and soil moisture. In fact only about 0.01 percent of the Earth's water occurs as fresh water in our lakes, rivers and swamps.

Demand for fresh water is fuelled by many things, the main driver ultimately being population growth. In the last two centuries, the world's population went from a billion to six billion in 1999. It reached seven billion in 2011 and continues to grow. According to the United Nations, water use has grown at twice the population rate. The competition for fresh water is affecting many of the world's environments with large-scale loss of fauna and flora the result, sometimes leading to desertification. Some foresee that water-related conflicts will be increasingly common.

The quote comes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner".

Answer: Holocene

An extinction event can be defined as the extinction of a large number of animal species over a short geological period. The background rate of extinction has been assessed in today's terms as two mammal species per 100,000 vertebrate species every 100 years. Based on this, since 1900 some nine species would be expected to have disappeared. A conservative estimate in a recent study puts the actual figure at 477 with man being the cause.

Although commercial hunting and fishing contribute to this, habitat destruction as a result of industrialisation, population growth and resource exploitation has been the main factor.

The largest extinction event, the Permian-Triassic event 251 million years ago, saw up to 96% of all life disappear and took vertebrates some 30 million years to recover from.

Answer: Munitions

Nitrogen is one of the main ingredients in explosives such as TNT. The nitrogen required for war-time production came from new ammonia-production facilities. When the Second World War finished, the ammonia-production facilities were used to make fertilisers.

There are some negatives to synthetic fertiliser use. These include: (a) fertiliser run-off causing eutrophication of fresh water sources (often seen as phytoplankton and algal blooms) and de-oxygenation of fresh and salt water bodies (killing aquatic life), (b) acidification of soil, and (c) production of three greenhouse gases during the manufacturing process and the conversion of some of the unused nitrogen to nitrous oxide (a greenhouse gas) by soil bacteria.

Answer: The Second Cod War

This was not the first nor the last time that the UK and Iceland have come to blows over fish. The First Cod War took place in 1958 after Iceland expanded its territorial waters from four nautical miles to twelve nautical miles offshore. An extension of this to 50 nautical miles triggered the 1972/73 dispute and, predictably perhaps, the extension to 200 nautical miles brought about the Third Cod War in 1975/76.

Although some shots were fired, tactics mostly involved cutting fishing nets loose and ramming vessels. Iceland got its way and some 2,500 British fishermen lost their livelihoods.

Answer: Brazil

The Amazon rainforest, sometimes known as Amazonia, covers some 5.5 million square kilometres, is the largest in the world and accounts for half of the world's remaining rainforest. Sixty percent of the forest sits within Brazil.

The rainforest is estimated to account for ten percent of the world's carbon stores. The biggest threat to the rainforest could be drought. Droughts in 2005 and 2010 affected large areas of the Amazon (1.9 million and 3 million square kilometres respectively), causing trees to die-off. The Amazon rainforest has been likened to a giant water pump, creating 'flying rivers' of moisture-laden air. It appears that the continuing deforestation, coupled with changing weather patterns, caused these 'flying rivers' to fail. The fear is that without these 'flying rivers', the land will turn to desert.

Answer: Britain

Britain and America collaborated after the Second World War on the development of herbicides for warfare. Some became commercially available as weed-killers. Britain was the first to use these in the Malaysian Emergency (or the Anti-British National Liberation War, depending on which side you supported) during 1950s. British use was targeted at food crops and potential ambush points along lines of communication.

The US also made extensive use of such chemicals in Vietnam during the 1960s. About 18% of Vietnam's forested areas were sprayed, with long-term effects on fauna and flora due to the persistence of such chemicals as dioxin. Heath effects on people (both American and Vietnamese) have been extensive.

Answer: Sulphur dioxide

Both sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide react with atmospheric water molecules to produce acid rain. Acid rain has a negative impact on fish populations, soil health, plants and trees, as well as man-made structures. Some of the worst affected areas are in Europe and North America. Vehicle emission controls and flue-gas scrubbing at coal-fired power stations have helped.

Air pollution can be both natural or man-made. Erupting volcanoes produce sulphur dioxide and lightning strikes can produce nitrogen oxide.