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

Our impact upon geography of our planet

I hear in the media that George W Bush has said that he is concerned about climate change and the often-stated fact that he is not is an Urban Myth. (Oh if only George W were an urban myth) But seriously, the problem with climate change is that people and politicos have taken a long time to even grasp the science of our climate, and of the way we are changing it. Further, they cant get out of the old ways of thinking, and cant get beyond the real urban myth that climate change will just mean warmer weather.

The impact of the effect upon geography of our planet was illustrated by the publication of a new edition of the Times Atlas, where two (in the reports I saw) of the largest bodies of inland water, have shrunk to ten percent of their original volume. However, as we have yet to see a clear and dramatic example of climate change in the media, people like George W can still get away with burying their head in the metaphorical sand.

Even where action is being taken such as with the creation of wind farms, it’s frequently done more for media hype and to chase the government subsidies, than as attempt to really solve the problems we face. I will write more on this once I have more facts, but briefly as the companies that are building the turbines and wind farms get tax breaks here in the UK, these farms are not being sighted in the best places, thus not producing anywhere near the levels of electricity they need to, to actually be a green source of energy. While the government trumpets this as reducing carbon emissions, it looks as if they will be Carbon Neutral at best, and because of poor placement may even have caused greater CO2 emissions from their construction than they will ever save during their lifetime of use.

The real challenge we all need to face up to is our profligate use of energy. Unfortunately, we live in a society whose whole economy is reliant upon us consuming more. Whenever there is economic news it is always illustrated by the rate that the economy has grown by. Yet this growth is at a real cost to our environment. Every new product we buy, every new gadget we use, has an environmental impact be it via the natural resources that goes into the manufacturing of it or the energy required to make it, transport it and then dispose of it.

The more we consume the more emissions we produce and the more energy is wasted. We are like children at Christmas with our consumer products; we play with them for a while then forget them as soon as the new latest wiz bang gadget comes out. The biggest difficulty is that our whole economy is built upon us consuming more and more.

Well, there is a limit to what I can consume. I spend long hours of my free time out in the countryside, and that is nearly free. I take my own rubbish (and often other peoples) home with me. If I travel I use Public Transport, or a pony belong to shanks. I try very hard not to waste energy, my electricity bill for the last quarter was twenty-six pounds my Gas costs were thirteen. I don’t waste resources like water, nor do I generate that much waste. In fact I find it impossible to fill a standard wheeled bin in four weeks. There it’s more about refusing to buy overly or heavily packaged items, and only buying enough food to use and not wasting it.

If I owned the property I lived in, I would fit Solar panels. Photo voltaic and solar heating, possibly even a small wind turbine and that way all my energy needs would be carbon free, and in time even the energy and carbon emissions of the production of my consumer goods would be removed from the equation.

Each individual action has a small effect; as can be seen in our changing climate, thus we can also collectively make a very large impact for the good.