"Frank Reid" wrote in message
...
It takes a lot of fire to burn a corpse. It takes a lot more to burn it
cleanly......eliminate ickly smells and reduce particulate emmissions.
All
that burning produces a lot of carbon dioxide.....as well as consuming a
whole bunch of precious fossil fuel. Decompostion in the ground
sequesters
a whole bunch of the carbon that is otherwise released via combustion.
It
may not seem like a big deal where a single body is concerned, but think
big; six and a half billion human bodies is one hell of a carbon sink!
Moreover, humans are an easily an infinitely renewable resource......we
can
always make more of them to capture and hold more carbon.

We have "partial" solution for this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization
No, it doesn't hold the carbon, but rather makes use of it. I look at
it as a Soylent Green for our cars.

The technology (and the terminology) is new, but the underlying
principle.....biofuel.....is not. The British (and, I think, perhaps the
Germans and French as well) used a much more direct method over a century
ago. They simply burned mummies to run their trains.

Personally, I'm not much of a fan of either of these approaches. Either
way, you still generate a whole bunch of carbon dioxide and other
pollutants. Far better, it seems to me, to dump bodies in peat bogs, cedar
swamps, and the like. Cover tightly and simmer for about 265,000,000
years......presto changeo, COAL! Keep covered, increase heat and pressure
for another couple of eons.....presto onceagainchangeo, a billion tons of
engagement rings!

Wolfgang