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A carbon bomb is defined as a project (mine, oil well or similar) which if allowed to go ahead will emit 1 billion tonnes of carbon over its lifetime. A guardian analysis suggests that there are around 200 of these so called carbon bomb mega projects around the world. This is the equivalent of 18 years of total global emissions.
There are still a large number of people with vested interests, who are arguing that climate change science is not settled and we need to wait a bit more.
How long should we wait?
Guy Callendar released a paper in 1938 – considered revolutionary at the time, which linked fossil fuel burning to the warming of the earths atmosphere. Indeed in 1896 Svante Arrhenius a Swedish scientist first predicted that increasing carbon emissions could significantly increase surface temperatures.
In other words it is now 126 years since a scientist predicted that global warming would be likely if we continued to release carbon emissions, and a paper was released 84 years ago confirming that Scvante Arrhenius prediction was correct.
So why are we still arguing about it? Does the free market truly allow profit to be prioritised over a scientific fact that was proposed more than a century ago, and confirmed nearly a century ago? Had the world dealt with carbon emissions back then we would be looking at a very different situation.
The USA has rather embarrassed itself. A large minority of the country has kept stating things that were obviously foolish. In particular, Donald Trump has spent the 4 years of his administration undermining all of the science and therefore the gradual move towards acceptance of the the facts that most of the rest of the world has already accepted.
In particular, while the Republican party has in the past advanced science, they have completely abandoned this position. Climate change needs universal support for dealing with it if we are to succeed.
Given all this, it is not a surprise that so many people in the USA actually believe it.
Continue reading “Only Indonesia and Saudi Arabia have a higher proportion of climate change denial than the USA”What are ghost flights?
These are flights that are totally empty. These flights took place because airports demanded that a certain percentage of take-off slots were filled in order for each company to retain ownership.
Why is this problematic?
The Average plane emits about 53 pounds of carbon per mile, and flies on average 500 miles. As a result, the average flight emits roughly 25000 pounds of carbon per flight. Roughly speaking, an empty plane uses 20% less fuel, so we can say that each ghost flight emitted roughly 10 tonnes of carbon. Over the 15,000 flights that flew empty, that is 150,000 tonnes of carbon – with no purpose except allowing airports to keep raking in the profits.
At a time when we are all trying to cut carbon emissions this is horrendous. Is it a large portion of our countries annual emissions? no, it is less than 1%. However, at a time when everyone is being encouraged to reduce their carbon footprint as much as possible this is an absurd waste.
Alarmingly, ghost flights are not only a British thing in many countries around the world they have been a far bigger thing. What is worse, is that this was belatedly recognized by the EU reducing requirements temporarily in the middle of the epidemic.
Things must change – if in the future we have an epidemic which reduces passengers flying to zero, we must also have a reduction in the emissions and flights to zero as well.
Australia seems to have a group of politicians that are totally anti renewable. Australia is perfectly situated to use renewable resources for all their power. When Keith Pitt was asked if he still believed renewables didn’t work – he gave this ridiculous statement. The junior partner in the government is demanding they work towards zero carbon by 2050.
Chartwell lectures needs to be careful. If it regularly hosts people like Matt Ridley and allows him to argue that there are more good impacts from global warming than bad, they are likely to lose their following.
In his lecture he identified the following positive outcomes of global warming, I will take each one and respond
Fewer winter deaths: it is true, that warmer winters could lead to fewer deaths. Unfortunately what has been shown so far, is that global warming makes the climate more changeable. As such, while as an average winters get milder there are more extreme cold periods. This inconsistency far from reducing deaths as is posited, is likely to increase deaths due to cold weather.
An increase in global plant growth: This is not as simple as made out. The accompanying increase in temperature is often a bigger impact on the plant – and in most tests, it has been shown that increasing carbon levels while initially having a surge of growth do not increase output permanently.
Fewer deaths from extreme weather: this is closely related to the first, and it is not true.
He then has the nerve to suggest that blame mainstream media from cherry picking.
It is alarming that these stupid views are still being given the space to be spouted. I hope that space for views like this are pushed out soon, as they are not true.
According to Xi Jinping, low-carbon ambitions must not interfere with modern day life! If this is true, then we are unlikely to get the cuts that we need.
Now, it is not unreasonable for a country to want to raise its standard of living. However, China is likely to be hit very hard by climate change. While you do not think of China as a low lying country like Bangladesh, 67,000 square km (about 26,000 square miles) lie 1m or less above sea level – and 67 million people live in this area. It is true that this only accounts for about 5% of Chinas population but given how crowded this country already is, this is likely to cause a lot of issues. More to the point Shanghai is only between 3m and 5m above sea level,
Around the world about 600 million people live close to the sea. Of course we understand that each country must look after its own citizens – but that includes protecting them from global warming. China currently accounts for 26% of global emissions, and the rest of the world cannot cut enough to make their emissions irrelevant.
Now, it is entirely true that the president may be trying to keep his own population on side, but we need the whole world to work on this problem. China accounts for 15% of the worlds GDP, then can not take a back seat.
One would think that during the height of lockdown. that no planes would fly. After all, few people wanted to travel, and many destinations were banned.
Unfortunately no such luck. Why do I say this? Well currently 2.1% of emissions come from aviation (in wealthy countries this is far higher as many poor countries have little or no aviation – in the USA aviation accounts for 3-4%).
So what happened in lockdown?
Continue reading “Carbon footprint of ghost flights during the lockdown”£145 million was earmarked in the March 2021 British budget for environmental spending. Let almost 40 billion is spent on polluting ones. Tax breaks to companies, to encourage investment in projects (that will damage the environment ) along with £4.5 billion lost from the fuel duty freeze (it has been frozen for 11 years).
Continue reading “UK makes a lot of noise about its green spending, unfortunately we are spending more on polluting ones”It is thought that at least 100,000 flights with empty planes have been flown during the epidemic. These are referred to as ghost flights.
These flights have had to go ahead for airlines to retain their landing slots in major airports. The issue, is that these empty flights are thought to have emitted at least 2.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. These rules by the EU commission must change. It is absurd to suggest that this emissions could not have been avoided.
Continue reading “Use it or lose it rules on airport slots are requiring hundreds of thousands of empty planes to fly around Europe”
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