Climate Crisis and Solutions, an Intro

Returning to this moribund blog after more than a year. Why? Firstly climate change had gripped attention worldwide, even to the point of panic. The northern hemisphere has been extremely hot this summer, both in Europe and North America, (36C/97F is not much fun in London when nobody has residential aircon) while Eastern Asia has been even wetter than usual, with extensive flooding. The southern hemisphere winter has been unusually cold, but even this has a catch, as the southern jet stream is unusually far north and the Amazon rain forest is in the grip of a second year of drought.

The usual disclaimer that one year's weird weather is not proof of global warming is wearing a bit thin after yet another very hot year globally, and yet it is not an El Nino year. James Lovelock thinks we are past the point of no return but this lapsed Catholic still retains the conditioned belief that despair is a sin. Anyway as Dr. Pangloss' previous entries show, it is far too early to panic, the latter is only of use if it makes politicians sit up and listen. One has no hope with Bush, but even right wing evangelicals such as Pat Robertson are being converted to the reality of global warming by this summer's heat in the US, illogical and parochial perhaps but very useful. If America's hummer-loving classes start to think again, that just leaves the neo-communists who run China as an obstacle to action, and that is not insuperable. I have certainly been convinced in the past year that it is not a solar cycle, but really is human -caused for all or the most part: the sun's activity this century peaked in 1986, twenty years later it is still getting warmer and warmer!

OK, the debate should be over, but what to do about it? Technology is the key. There have to be carbon-free or carbon-neutral energy sources which are
- competive with fossil fuels on costs, no more than twice existing costs (that is within the level of market price variation of fossil fuels: they have more than doubled in the past three years)
- reliable and sustainable
- scalable enough to provide a lot of power quickly enough to make a difference, within twenty years max
- not too far out on the technological frontier

Another thing which is needed is a suitable energy transmission and storage medium to replace oil products and natural gas. There are problems with both long range electricity transmission and hydrogen, but an alternative (ammonia) looks very promising and can be used directly in internal combustion engines, in fact it is even better than petrol/gasoline.

Will explore all of the above on subsequent posts, but the promising thing is all the above should be achievable.