Climate change – “How did it get so late so soon?”

Abstract

I do not believe that Theodor Geisel (Dr Seuss) was referring to climate change when he wrote: “How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon….” 1950

“Suddenly” man-made climate change is impacting our world, and the understanding that everyone’s carbon footprint needs to drastically decrease, is a constant topic. In 1989, nitrous oxide (N2O) was the first anaesthetic gas implicated in the “greenhouse gas (GHG) effect and ozone depletion”. Halogenated hydrocarbon vapours (halothane, enflurane and isoflurane) were also mentioned at that time, but thought to be too shortacting to be significant.¹ However, in 2010 a landmark article by cosmologist Sulbaek Anderson et al. published in the British Journal of Anaesthesia (BJA), equated anaesthetic vapours to Global Warming Potentials (GWP).²