Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

The on-going oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is an undoubted environmental disaster but it's other effects are only just beginning to surface.

For example, it could lead to a backlash from the public against offshore oil exploration in the States. This, after the President just opened the door to more of it round the U.S.

In response to this potential backlash, Republicans are already attempting do all they can to emphasise that a foreign company is to blame for the spill, even to the extent of referring to BP by their old name of "British Petroleum" at every opportunity, and claiming that corners were cut.

American oil companies, of course, are a lot more trustworthy, so no need to back-pedal on those exploration rights, or to bring in any more rules for deep water drilling, right?

The result of this battle will give us a measure of the power the oil industry has over U.S. politics. If BP get a good beating, legally, morally and financially, followed by token legislation on off-shore exploration, the oil industry still controls Washington.

If, on the other hand, the entire oil industry gets implicated in the inquiries, and a genuinely robust new system for controlling the drilling is introduced, the U.S. government will have shown it's independence.

There's also a remote possibility that this spill will lead to Americans questioning the price they are paying for their addiction to fossil fuels. Is it worth the environmental damage happening all over the country? And for what? The U.S. consumes 25% of the world's oil and yet they only have 3% of the reserves. Sooner or later they are going to hand their future energy security over to the likes of middle-eastern states and even the Russians, neither of which they get on with very well. Maybe it's time to plan for a more secure future through alternative energy sources?

Sadly, the U.S. government, of whatever colour, lacks the political will to do just that because of the lobbying power of the fossil fuel industry. That just seems like madness to me.

Living in Denial

The New Scientist magazine has done a special issue devoted to various types of denial including 'climate denial' i.e. People that refuse, and will always refuse, to believe that there is a climate change problem. Plenty to think about, including the difference between sceptics and deniers, why sensible people deny in the face of all evidence, how and why corporations create doubt, and why scepticism isn't a bad thing : See here.

Reducing CO2 Emissions on Holiday

I don't know about you but holidays always present me with a dilema where carbon emissions are concerned. These days it's fairly standard for people to look for ever more exotic places to go to each year. Partly for the thrill, partly so they can boast about it when they get back. Holidays in your home country are sooo last century!

But, when you consider that a long-haul return flight can add up to 20 tonnes to your annual carbon footprint, it makes you think.

So we've worked out a bunch of rules for our family holidays. Maybe you'll find them of some use yourself:

• Take the majority of holidays in the UK. Our country is beautiful and you can never run out of new places to visit. Over recent years we've done Devon, the Isle of Wight, Yorkshire, the west of Scotland, Ireland and Northern Ireland. All of them were wonderful places to stay and we were supporting our own tourist industry.
• Something Different? Drive there. L iving in the south-east makes it easy to reach much of western Europe by car. We've visited France, Spain, and even Italy that way, making the journey part of the holiday with stop-overs in interesting places.
• Too far to drive? Try a train. We've not actually done this one yet but it is possible to get a lot further afield by train and hire a car at the other end. Here's one of several websites that help you sort these sort of trips out. One classic break by rail is a 'snow train' for ski holidays (See here for an example). The holiday starts the moment you get on the train!
• Must fly? Make it as short as possible and carbon offset the flight. We try to keep the flights to a minimum (3 in the last decade) and close at hand (none out of Europe). Yes, there's a whole exotic world out there beyond Europe but it's pretty cool on our continent too. So much history, so many sights, & so much natural beauty. And, compared to the price a flight, carbon offseting the trip is small potatoes.

Of Car Sharing and Folding Bikes

Well, I've been doing the car-sharing-to-work/cycle-home thing twice a week for about 5 weeks and it seems to be working quite well.

It's saving me money, cuts my carbon footprint, helps keep me fit, and means fewer visits to the petrol station.

Unfortunately, only a third of my route is bicycle lane, so I'm at the mercy of car drivers for the rest. Thankfully, most of that part is fairly quiet, with only 2 short busy sections. Strangely, the bike journey is only slightly slower than by car.

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For those who are interested in such things, my bike is a Raleigh Swift. I've no previous experience of folding bikes but I can say it's not the sort that's easy to carry about! It's heavy (16kg), takes up a surprising amount of the boot in a family car, and it doesn't even have a convenient hand-hold for lugging the folded version around with.

On the plus side, it's quick to fold and unfold, is quiet to pedal, has most of the features of a regular bike like mud-guards and a stand, and has a prop to keep the folded version upright.

There are lighter and more compact folding bikes out there, but they seem to be far more expensive: I've seen ones topping £1000. Mine was 'just' £160, so I'm happy with what I've got.

When Climate Sceptics Meet

The World's climate sceptics met recently, but it sounds like it didn't go as well they expected: It seems like one or two of their star speakers got up and said they didn't like the way climate scepticism was going. In particular, they didn't like the way their side of the argument was becoming politicised. More detail here.

Yes, it's all getting a bit out of hand really. Some of the sceptics have perfectly legitimate views but their voices are being lost amongst the political rhetoric and just plain abuse that's spewing forth from most of the others.

It is very rare in science that any question is considered 'proven', you just get a state of 'general agreement amongst the scientific community'. You will therefore always have dissenting voices. This is a good thing, it keeps the other scientists on their toes, it keeps science moving forward.

So those climate scientists with sceptic views deserve to be heard by the rest of their community (which they are). There also needs to be a grown-up public debate free from hecklers shouting 'scam!!', 'hoax!', 'lies', 'nazis' and worse.

Climate change is an extremely serious issue, it's about time we sorted out what we're going to do about it, free from the influence of multi-national companies and their political puppets.

UK Supports More EU Emissions Cuts

The new UK government is giving it's support to those arguing for higher CO2 cuts (30% instead of 20%) by 2020. If the EU does go for the higher level, which seems increasingly likely now, it will be providing a strong lead to the rest of the world. There should be a decision over this pretty soon. Watch this space.

Hottest April on Record

April 2010 was the hottest April for the planet since records began back in 1880 (See here)

This comes on the heels of the warmest March (See here) and January (See my earlier post on 26th Feb). That's 3 out of 4 months so far. Worrying.

Chinese Puzzle

It's a little known fact that a lot of green technology, like wind turbines and electric cars, depend on rare metals. To be honest, a lot of ANY modern technology depends on these rare metals: Your PC and mobile for starters.

The problem is 90%+ of these metals currently come from China and they increasingly want to keep most it for their own industries. Whether they intend to monopolise the market in these technologies, or simply need them to sustain their own meteoric economic growth, is uncertain, but it's worrying. They could single-handedly stop the growth and development of the very green technology we all need to reduce CO2 emissions. Read more here.

Synthetic Trees

A company in the States called GRT is working on an 'atmospheric scrubber' or synthetic tree.

The idea behind it is that it removes CO2 from the atmosphere (like a tree) but up to 1000 times faster. It then either stores the CO2 permanently or is re-used (e.g. for growing veg or fire extinguishers). More here.

The artist impressions (see picture) look a bit like a camping site toilet block but ii's otherwise relatively compact.

In an ideal world, the possibility of such devices would be great news. Something to be wheeled out as part of the overall plan to deal with climate change. A genuine symbol of hope.

However, we live in the Age of Stupid, so it's a 2 edged sword. If too many of the wrong sort of people get the idea this is a quick fix, we'll end up doing nothing at all about the root causes of the problem.

We'll just get endless ranks of 'trees' marching off across the horizon on every continent and no way to deal with all the giga-tonnes of CO2 being captured. But we won't be able to stop because we haven't bothered to solve the underlying problem!

Too many people

Chances are you've never heard of the Reverend Thomas Malthus. He was a British scholar, born in 1766, who wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population, a piece that is said to have influenced Charles Darwin's Origin of Species.

Why am I telling you this? Well, what he had to say some 200 years ago, is a warning to all of us today:

Malthus' basic message was that the human population cannot continue increasing forever. It will always be limited by resources like food and land. To go beyond these limits, would reduce the population to 'subsistance' living and often bring about famine, epidemics, or war.

That Humanity cannot increase it's numbers indefinately seems fairly obvious really.... or is it? There have always been outspoken critics of Malthus' ideas. A recent BBC (Horizon?) documentary highlighted a good example of the modern view. In it, the critics said that the population had increased massively since Malthus' time (true), food production had kept pace with that increase throughout due to constant innovation (also true), and would always continue to do so (....really?).

Certainly, the way we're acting as a species, it looks like we'd agree with those critics. The reality is, most of us are unaware of the problems that are building up....

Back in Malthus' day, the world population stood at just 1 billion. It took until the mid 1920s, around 125 years later, for that to double. It took just 50 more years (mid 1970s) for us to clock up 4 billion, another 2 billion were added by 2000, and we're set for around 9 to 10 billion by 2050.

In other words, the population is growing at an exponential rate. That's going to cause us all sorts of problems in the coming decades:

• Our sheer numbers, will cause even greater food and water shortages.

• Raw materials like oil and metals will start running out, threatening economic growth.

• There will be mass extinctions for animals and plants (Did you know we've already lost 30% of all vertebrates [i.e. Backboned animals like birds, amphibians, mammals and reprtiles] since the 1970s?).

• The worldwide ecosystem we depend on will be seriously compromised.

• And, of course, we're already changing the climate for the worse.

Make no mistake about it, we're on the verge of proving Malthus right. However, we are not screwed yet. We just need to grow up, curb our excesses, live sustainably, and put long term survival ahead of short term self interest.

Scientists Fight Back

255 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences have written a letter to Science condemning the behaviour of climate sceptics and calling for action to tackle climate change.

Read it Here. I urge you to read it. It sums up the situation very well.

EU Carbon Emissions: Good News?

In my April 25th posting, I suggested that the EU needs to get more aggressive with it's emissions targets now that the recession has made it a lot easier to meet it's existing one.

Well, incredibily, they're looking at doing just that! They are seriously looking at outdoing their current target of 20% reductions by 2020 with a new one of 30%. The EU's climate commissioner is looking into it and feels it may be essential for driving the push for green technology. She argues we may be left behind and countries like China could be left to dominate this rapidly expanding market. More here.

In a similar vein, U.S. senators have announced a new climate bill. The intention is to cut 17% from emissions by 2020. Yes, it's not a huge amount but, considering there was no chance of ANY reduction under the Bush administration (He famously pulled out of the Kyoto agreement as one of his first acts on coming to power), it would be an encouraging start.

The problem is, the bill is going to be difficult to get through Congress even in it's watered down state. Don't expect any news on that for some months.

Ozone Hole and Global Warming (Part 2)

So why is it that the hole in the ozone layer got a fast and decisive response (See my last post for details) and we're still dithering over climate change?

There are number of factors at work here:

1) Imagery: The ozone hole was/is clearly there. It could not only be shown to be there, it could also be shown to be getting bigger. People could really relate to those images of the hole.

Climate change, on the other hand, doesn't have such striking imagery. Just graphs. Lots of graphs. Oh, and those climate models. Only scientists seem to like those.

However, the case for climate change is very nearly as good as for the ozone hole. The trouble is that climate sceptics have louder voices and roll out counter-arguments that sound plausible enough to muddy the waters. Consequently, there isn't quite the ground-swell of public support those that want to fight climate change would want.

2) Economics: Ozone depletion was a relatively cheap fix. Averting climate change will cost many billions.

Doing nothing will, of course, cost us a great deal more, even ignoring the human cost, but that doesn't make meeting the challenge any easier. What's more, it will need the majority of countries to agree on any action for it to work. Not just because we need everyone in on it to achieve the necessary reductions, but those who don't get involved will have a competitive advantage. Put simply, emissions cuts will be expensive to companies, so any competitors that don't have to make those cuts will make more profit.

Much of the dithering we see from the politicians is about this. The developed countries don't want to hand the companies in developing countries an advantage.

3) Complexity: Solving the climate change problem is a great deal more complicated than sorting out the ozone problem.

The latter was more or less about finding alternatives to CFCs and setting deadlines to bring them in. On the other hand, climate change requires a range of measures, including alternative energies, carbon capture, stopping deforestation etc. etc. Every single one of these measures comes with it's own set of problems.

4) Clear & Present Danger: Ozone depletion means huge increases in skin cancer and blindness due to increased UV rays. That's enough to grab anyone's attention.

Climate change means an almost imperceptible rise in temperature, with effects which we can only make educated guesses at. Not nearly as sexy.

5) Vested interests: The industry that manufactured CFCs was big but nowhere near as big as oil and coal industries. In addition, whilst the companies making and selling CFCs could find and switch to alternatives with relative ease, oil and coal producers have no such escape route.

Little wonder then that the level of resistence to change is far greater over CO2 than for CFCs.

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So, there you go. Solving the climate change is miles more difficult than ozone hole problem. It's enough to make you want to give up isn't it? However, we can't afford to do that, not if we want our children and the generations beyond to have a future.

Ozone Hole and Global Warming (Part 1)

There was a time when many of us were confused over the difference between the hole in the ozone layer and global warming. Some people even seemed to think they were same thing.

Nowadays, we've all been exposed to so much news coverage on climate change it's hard to believe there was ever such a problem.

Of course, the hole in the ozone layer is still there, but we're winning the war on repairing it. In fact, once the hole was recognised, it took just 2 years for the World to start phasing CFCs out. Today, they have practically been eliminated. Yes, the CFCs we've used in the past will continue to effect the ozone layer for up to a century, but the situation's been turned round by fast, unified action.

Ironically, solving the ozone problem is now threatening to add to the climate change problem: The chemicals they've replaced CFCs with, HCFCs, are thousands of times worse than CO2.

It's already been agreed to replace HCFCs with HFCs, which are less of a greenhouse gas (GHG), but HFCs could still be contributing between 9% and 45% of total man-made greenhouse effect by 2050!

There are now moves to replace HFCs with low ozone depleting, low GHG alternatives and, get this, that could mean the return of methods that existed before CFCs came along! It's a funny old world.

Australia

Just over a week ago the Australian government had to shelve it's climate change plans after the senate rejected them for the second time.

The government was hoping to making a start on cutting emissions by 25% after being elected promising tough action. However, since it didn't have a majority, it had to rely on the opposition to get the plans through. This wasn't seen as a problem because the leader of the opposition wanted the plans to go through too....but then he was deposed as leader by a climate sceptic, and that was that.

You'd think, in a country ravaged by extreme weather events, and forest fires, this would cause outrage but apparently not. Maybe because the sceptics portrayed the plans as a tax that would cripple Australian industry.

I can't say I know much about the proposed plans but they sound similar to the European Union's own Emission Trading Scheme, which has been in operation since 2005 and our industry is doing just fine.

Worryingly, Australians are the third largest CO2 emitters per head amongst developed countries at 19 tonnes per person. By comparison, we in the UK produce just 9 tonnes per head and my family are on 3.6 tonnes.

What with Obama struggling to get his climate change bill through in the States (who are on 20 tonnes per head by the way), these are depressing times. The climate sceptics must be loving it.