I wish I had been Wrong - Part One Melting Ice Caps

I know that I have been ridiculed for my predictions of an ecological disaster regarding climate change, and I have stuck my neck out and said that it will be happening in the next four to five years. Even amongst friends and acquaintances, people have said in veiled terms, that I must be mentally ill, paranoid and delusional. But while I hate to say it, I told you so!

The latest projections from scientists are that by the summer of 2013 we will loose the sea Ice in the Artic. This will devastate the species that rely upon this habitat like ring seals and polar bears and we are likely to see them become extinct in the wild in the next ten years.

Even the IPCC in their latest report say that it its too late and climate feedback systems are now operating expanding the effect of global warming. In the case of the Artic that means the darker seawater is absorbing more of the suns energy, warming the liquid water and speeding the melting of the Ice.

That is not the only feedback system that is operating in the Artic, as the loss of the sea ice is also warming the air temperatures and this is melting the glaciers on the Greenland Ice shelf.

While scientists may not want to be alarmist and don’t want to make predictions of a massive sea rise, I will. As when these glaciers do slip into the sea, I do say when and not if, there will be a rise is sea levels of about seven meters.

While at grass roots level there are people who care and understand the dangers, our political leaders are still hoping that a technical quick fix can be found. The difficulty is that our whole economic system is flawed. Therefore while this sudden upward swelling of sea levels will be a disaster for many millions of people, it will also be the wake up call that the world needs. This rise is inevitable as even if we stop burning all fossil fuels today, the melting of the sea ice and the glaciers will still happen.

It will only be via a disaster like this can we get all the worlds governments to stop worrying about all the trivial matters in the world and start to really develop an economic and energy system that is fair to all the peoples on the planet.

For example if half the money that were spent on military expenditure were put in to developing, manufacturing and installing Solar Photo Voltaic around the planet many of the problems that cause the instability and insecurity would be solved. This would also help developing countries provide their peoples with energy and essential services. Clean water is often not available to many peoples because there is no electricity to pump the water. The health of peoples in developing countries can often be vastly improved by providing electricity to health clinics and hospitals. None of this is rocket science either.

We could go further and in parts of the deserts like the Sahara, we could install banks of Photo Voltaic panels, enough to provide enough energy for all the counties in north Africa and provide them with an industry that will earn their economies the revenue they need to develop as well as providing Europe with some of its electricity with a minimal carbon impact. While this would cost large sums of money, if the money wasted on the building of the International Space station had been used for this project, we could have done this three times over.

While there will be some that will think that this will damage the desert ecology, not so, as climate change will render extinct ninety-nine percent of the species in the Sahara. Additional, with careful engineering, the solar panels can have a duel purpose as they can help capture the small amounts of water vapour in the air, condensing it on the panels, thus providing some of the water needs for people in these arid regions.

Equally, we could use geo-thermal energy. Iceland has developed the technology and all around the Pacific Rim we could help those countries to build plants and power stations using this low carbon energy. Again it would help developing countries without causing them to go down the route of heavily polluting coal or oil. Further, this would help these peoples to stop relying on cutting down their forests as the only real way of earning export income.

With this type of energy generation, it is not just the developing world that would benefit, as countries like Japan could provide fifty percent of its energy needs via Geo-thermal electricity production. All around the world we could generate from ten percent to twenty-five percent of the global energy needs from geo-thermal. Incidentally, if industries like aluminium smelting were relocated to these geo-thermal power plants, then as aluminium smelting is responsible for three percent of all the Carbon dioxide released globally, we would save over two billion tonnes of CO2 pollution.

These are all solutions that could be enacted today if there were the will. The trouble is while businesses are taking climate change seriously, most of the effort is going into developing ways of making money from the situation. What we need is to share skills and technology as by helping the developing world we also help save our own environments.

Further Information on the Melting Ice Cap

I wish I had been Wrong - Part Two Saturated Oceans

While in the previous section of this post I have shown that predictions of devastating climate change is now inevitable. I have also shown that there are potential solutions if we can find the will to act.

While the attention has been focused on the atmosphere as climate change has been allowed to creep on, it is in the oceans that drive the climate where real damage has been allowed to become so polluted that we have created the situation where we cannot stop climate change.

The seas are now saturated with CO2 that it cannot absorb much more. If we don’t start to take real action today the effects that are already going to occur will only be the devastating beginning of the extinction of the human race.

Further Information on the Seas failing to absorb CO2

A Sea of Wind Turbines

On Sunday John Hutton, the business secretary, announced that the UK government was planning a major expansion of offshore wind electricity generation. The irony that on that day the UK is being battered by high wind was not lost on me. I was also pleased to see that it was not the environment minister that was making the announcement. I was going to write about it on the day, but as I started looking at the details I realised that it looked less a definite plan than an aspiration.

First, to have this policy announced by someone other than the environment minister shows that the UK government is starting to take the issues of climate change seriously and that environmental considerations are permeating all aspects of government policy. There are other aspects of policy that are far from environmental, but this does sound as if in part at least the UK government appears to be taking the issues of climate change seriously. I say appears as while this policy and plan has been announced, the government expects private investment to create this massive engineering project.

What has been announced is that all around the UK coasts around seven hundred new turbines will be constructed, expanding our generating capacity to 38 giga watts. Unlike the positioning of wind turbines on the land these will be in positions where the turbines will fully benefit from the wind.

One of the problems of the current situation is where turbines are placed on the land; they are frequently sited near the infrastructure, to connect to the grid, rather than placed where they will benefit from the wind. All this is purely because of government grants and tax breaks, which subsidise the manufacturing and installation of these turbines, hence the companies positioning them are not basing their positioning decisions upon the need the need to generate the maximum electricity to make the turbines pay as they would if this were a purely commercial decision. Therefore creating opposition to wind power.

The difficulty with pensioning wind turbines off shore is quite a technical problem because of the difficulties of servicing the modules once installed, as well as the difficulties of building them. But one thing our off shore oil industry gave us was the skills to work in this hostile environment. The plans to involve building enough capacity to generate enough to power for every home in the UK, and that will mean about 7000 of these windmills. This will have the potential to either damage or enhance the marine environment.

As with any construction in the sea, there is the potential to damage the delicate marine habitats, be it reefs or sand banks or the spawning grounds of a multitude of species that inhabit our waters. Therefore the exact positioning of each structure needs to be carefully planed. After all destroying one environment to try and save another would leave a bitter taste in the mouth of many. However, the towers that have been installed thus far have produced mini reefs allowing many marine creatures a safe and expanded habitat.

All this could dramatically reduce the carbon impact of electricity generation, while it is true that manufacturing and installation will generate a carbon footprint, at least the positioning of these turbines offshore will ensure the turbines will be placed where they will operate most efficiently. The will also be the need for other forms of generation as turbines only generate power when the wind is blowing. Also these windmills cannot generate power in very high winds.

However, on the whole all this could reduce the climatic impact and carbon footprint for future generations.

While I have reservations about the environmental impact of this on the marine environment, on the whole I am in favour of this plan if it ever becomes a reality.

Further Reading