Category: Climate change innovation

Posted on

Global warming is happening, and even with the cuts promised, we are likely to see significant sea level rises: what is this likely to cost

It is an unfortunate fact, all over the world, that people have chosen to live near the sea. There are many reasons for this, but the basic fact is that this is often the most productive land.

The problem now, though, is that all these peoples lives are liable to change. This is because small rises in sea levels could make them homeless. As much as 1 billion people live at low enough elevation to make this a threat.

Countries like Bangladesh are very flat, and it is estimated that as many as 20 million people within Bangladesh would become homeless by 2050 under current trends (this assumes that we meet our carbon cut targets. There would be many others that would be lost.

Forgetting the hundreds of millions of people in the developing world, there are famous buildings and places which should underline this issue in the west as well.

Buckingham palace would be under water up to the first floor if we fail to act. A temperature rise of 1.5 degrees C would merely bring the water level to the front door. Many other famous buildings such as the pentagon, the tower of London and Tokyo tower in Japan would all be lost.

This is all a long winded way of stating, that even with the dramatic cuts the world is hoping to make over the next few decades, many people on earth are still likely to loose their lives have their lives changed dramatically, in most cases for the worse.

Posted on

The former head of the British financial services authority has suggested population decline and smaller families are good for the Climate; and?…

According to Lord Adair Turner, population decline should not be feared. It is certainly true that if the population of the UK were to shrink, so would our carbon emissions. Of course, this suggestion might have come with more authority if it had been made while he was still in post.

We have, in the last couple of centuries, unfortunately set up the financial world in such a way as to need a growing population. An increasing size of financial market in each country is required (according to current expertise) yet while there are some gains to be had in efficiency by each person, it is not possible for people to become more efficient endlessly. Furthermore, by this metric, a falling population would be a bad thing, as this would necessitate a shrinking market – even if it were shrinking slower than the population.

Continue reading “The former head of the British financial services authority has suggested population decline and smaller families are good for the Climate; and?…”
Posted on

Will Cop26 over shadow Kunming?

Cop26 is essential, there is no doubt, however there is a similarly important threat that the world is facing, and if we are not careful we wont start fighting it until it is too late.

What is Kunming there to fight? It is there to fight loss of biodiversity. Biodiversity is essential for the well running of ecosystems around the world which can often collapse without enough biodiversity.

Indeed, it is actually a problem that Kunming and Cop26 have been split. What we need is for the two fights to be fought side by side.

I have written in the past, about the problems for the Congo rainforest that have been caused by the local extinction of forest elephants. Without many of the wild animals that exist in these landscapes the forests and peat lands and grass lands will fail, releasing their huge carbon stocks back into the air.

These two must be tied together

Posted on

Only 10% of the $17 trillion spent on Covid recovery went toward projects that would cut carbon emissions and restore nature

There is a constant complaint from vested interests, that the price of greening the world economy is just too high. Of course, when the world-wide economy needs a boost, these concerns go out of the window (until the emergency is over, then even these costs might be used to argue against saving the planet).

Continue reading “Only 10% of the $17 trillion spent on Covid recovery went toward projects that would cut carbon emissions and restore nature”
Posted on

A tesla plane? what impact would this have

Elon Musk has talked about creating an electric plane, I think that this is a fantastic idea, but not from a tesla fanboy point of view.

Electric planes are in their infancy. There are a range of extremely light weight aircraft for learning to fly. There are also an increasing number of island hopper jets, which can allow easy access for small communities – at prices that are affordable, and therefore long-term as well as the far more environmentally friendly setup.

The other big move in this arena, is Ryanair. They are a budget airline operating throughout Europe, but they are building an aircraft which should be able to carry 186 people (31 rows of 6 seats) that would cover 80% of their routes. My hope is that this is a move into them behaving in a more compassionate way – they have a reputation of treating people poorly (I have experienced that first hand but that is another story)

Elon Musk envisaged a vertical take off and landing aircraft, and one which would fly high enough to travel at supersonic speeds. He did state that he thought batteries needed to reach 400wh/kg and the batteries that run tesla cars are currently 260wh/kg, so were still some way off. Having said that, tesla has some of the best battery research going on, and they are confident that the batteries will be ready in the next 3 or so years.

So what impact would a tesla plane have? Well what Musk is describing is largely a private jet, not a passenger jet. Never-the-less Tesla cars started and high cost and came down. It is likely that a Tesla plane would do something similar. Certainly, with the weight Tesla can bring to bare, it is likely that any involvement by Tesla would push the electrical aviation market place to new heights.

Posted on

Could fusion arrive in time?

Fusions is the safe version of nuclear power, indeed it is what happens in the sun. Fision is much easier to get going – this is why it is able to operate in nuclear weapons.

We still aren’t at commercial point, but it suggests more and more clearly that this could power the human race in the future.

Fusion is the promise of limitless green energy in the near future. Cutting our electricity use, as well as making electricity in a greener way shouldnt stop, but it may arrive to help in the future.

Posted on

I wrote in the past looking at consensus on human caused climate change – new study

There is a constant argument that we should not be acting on climate change because we have not reached consensus. This really is not the case.

A look at 90,000 studies which looked at the climate found that 99.9% of them agreed that humans were the cause. The degree of certainty is now the same as that on evolution or on plate tectonics -the debate is over.

It is true that you can still find supposedly learned men and women who will disagree, but we are now at the point where it is akin to arguing the world is flat. Yes there are thousands of “flat earthers” worldwide, but those denying climate change should be put in the same category as those who deny the shape of the earth (and think that the millions of people who would have to be in on it are all dutifully keeping quiet.

This study has been compiled by Cornell University and shows that the miniscule minority still fighting against this truth, is now just a small number of noisy voices.

This is terrifying! In the USA there are 30 US senators and 109 representatives who “refuse to acknowledge the scientific evidence of human-caused climate change”.

It is now time for Facebook and twitter to stop giving an unchallenged voice to purveyors of falsehoods. Denying the science of climate change is likely are more dangerous for the future of the human race than denying the obvious facts about vaccines.

Posted on

The whitest white paint ever created

In an effort to help with cooling the planet, scientists have created the whitest white paint ever. In a similar way to the formation of Vantablack – the blackest black paint, this paint has a variety of uses.

This paint is so reflective, it can cool surfaces it is painted onto by as much as 10.6°C. This paint reflects up to 98.1% of light hitting it.

In a warming planet, being able to cool things without energy is essential.

The manufacturers estimate that painting a 1000 square foot roof in this paint will give you the cooling power of about 10kw – more powerful than the air conditioning used by most houses. Currently, around 10% of electricity is used for cooling. On current trends, this is expected to grow to 40% by 2050.

Currently there is a lot of effort going into reducing energy used for heating, but it is clear that this effort also needs to go into cooling.

Posted on

Could mammoth help us fight climate change

Roughly speaking, there is 3000 billion tonnes of carbon in the atmosphere. This is a huge number, but then we have to remember that this is higher than at any other time in human history. Before humans were on the planet, there were time periods where carbon concentrations in the atmosphere were dramatically higher.

While rainforest hold large amounts of carbon, so do bogs. Having lost most of its mega fauna, the colder regions of the planet do not function as they should, so these

However, the problem is that there is thought to be roughly 1600 billion tonnes locked in the permafrost around the world. If global warming continues, this permafrost will melt and release its carbon stores – increasing the carbon concentration by around 50%.

This is obviously a point at which a significant amount of planet warming will be inescapable.

So what needs to happen?

In the past great mammals behaved in such ways that it largely kept this carbon locked in the soil. There were far fewer trees, vast grasslands often covering bogs.

If mammoths were to return, perhaps alongside woolly rhinoceros and bison the same processes could return allowing a far greater quantity of carbon to remain in the permafrost soil.

Will this happen? Who knows, though with the increasing quantity of carbon known to be locked in the Siberian soil, it seems worth giving it a go.

See Animals Wild