Earth Failed It's Health Check

Scientist's have given the Earth it's 4.5 Billion Years Health Check and found that it isn't in the best shape and is exceeding it's safe operating space for humanity which doesn't sound particularly good for those of us living on it.
Six of nine key measurements of its health are failing and two of the remaining three are heading in the wrong direction although it is doing fine in its Ozone layer after we punched a massive hole in it a few decades back.
The planet's climate, biodiversity, land, freshwater, nutrient pollution and novel chemicals (human-made compounds like microplastics and nuclear waste) are all off-kilter, according to the group of international scientists while on the downward spiral is the acidity of the oceans and the health of the air we breathe
which led the co-author Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany to conclude 'We are in very bad shape' and 'the patient is sick'.
All is not lost yet though as Computer simulations showed we can turn the Earth around by cleaning up its land and saving forests which would tick the planet back into the not likely to keel over any second clutching its chest portion of the Health Check.  
Carnegie Mellon University environmental engineering professor Granger Morgan said if we don't quickly cut back on how we are stressing the Earth, we're toast' which is true but not such a catchy phrase as that chosen by one Environmentalist scientist recently who summed it up more more colourfully with Not totally f$%@ed but far from totally unf$@%*ed!'

I Can't Think Of Everything!

Blimey, my idea of plastering the Moon with Solar Panels and firing the electricity generated back to Earth got complicated quickly because it turns out that the optimum heat for a solar panel is between 15°C (59°F) and 35°C (95°F) with the equator of the moon ranging from a sweaty 120°C (248°F) during the day to a chilly -130°C (-208°F) at night which leaves very little time for the slim range for the optimum heat.
Obviously the Space boffins will have special Solar Panels and not the bog standard ones we have on our roofs but i wasn't aware that there was an optimum range and outside of that the panels themselves grow less efficient.                                                             Solar Energy UK say that performance falls by 0.34 percentage points for every degree that the temperature rises above 25C although they also say that during Summer this is mitigated by the longer days so it's still in the positive column.                                             Solar power contributes 9.2% to the UK's electricity output and the electricity is stored in giant batteries or capacitors where the electricity is converted into another form and turned it back into electricity when you need it.                                                            Battery storage and Capacitors are the go to options but i'd be buggered if i understood any of it so Solar Panels on the Moon are still a thing and anyway, i'm the ideas person, actually making it work is for the big brains in the white lab coats to work out. 

Solar Power From The Moon

Look up tonight and see the moon and consider why we are not doing anything with it. Sure it is hundreds of thousands of miles away and nobody could live there but it does seem that while we have an energy crisis here on Earth, there is a massive rock a third of the size of the Earth being bathed in sunlight and we have the technology to collect and turn that into electricity so why are we letting all that solar power go to waste?   
There has been tentative talks about building some sort of Dyson Sphere around our star to harvest its power but it is 92 million miles away compared to the Moons 250,000 miles and as yet we haven't got anything that wouldn't become a crisp whenever it got close so when the Government today announced
millions of pounds of investment to develop new technology that generates solar power from space i assumed he was nicking my idea for solar panels on the Moon which would be far more efficient on the moon than on Earth but what he actually meant was solar panels attached to satellites which then beam it back to Earth using wireless technology which could generate a quarter of the UK's power needs.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think tank are asking why the Government is looking at Space rather than spending the millions developing more wind, tidal and solar in the UK and only they know the answer to that but as usual while we are still thinking about it the Chinese have put it into
practise with the Luna Ring Project.  
They plan to launch small solar power stations into the stratosphere by 2025 as well as install a line of solar panels around the Moons equator which is then transmitted to earth using a microwave laser beam which is converted to electricity in the earth-based energy conversion base and distributed to the power grid.
I did suggest doing this on this blog in 2009 but it seems only the Chinese reads Falling On A Bruise so we missed out again, people should really listen to me!  

Not A Silver Lining, But A Green One

The saying goes that every dark cloud has a silver lining and as hard as it is to see any in the Ukraine War, there has been one which benefits everyone on the Planet as Europe has turned to renewable energy to replace the gas and oil it previously imported from Russia.
Faced with having to replace its biggest supplier after Russia cut off gas supplies last year, the European Union put more coal power on standby to fill the gaps but it has turned not to such devastatingly polluting measures and instead went green and solar, wind and tidal power and are now generating more electricity than any other source.
Wind and solar generated 22% of electricity in the EU in 2022, overtaking gas (20%) and Coal (16%) and helped helped reduce the energy deficit although a milder than expected winter and concerns over the public concern over the environmental damage we are causing and climate change was a big factor.
The EU still remains one of the world's largest emitters of climate-heating greenhouse gases but the trajectory is for less dirty energy creation and more green power with the Senior Energy Policy Expert at Climate Action Network Europe saying that increasing wind and solar 'can replace fossil fuels' and
saying that it's evidently clear that coal has no future.
Obviously more green power and less pollution is a great thing, unfortunately it took a war and an energy shortage crisis to make it happen where people dying in their tens of thousands each year, sea levels rising and extreme weather events never.

The Green Levies Lie

The rising cost of gas and electricity has prompted calls from those sceptical of climate action, to remove the part of energy bills that help pay for things like renewable energy projects or home insulation to help lower bills.
One Conservative MP was on TV this morning repeating the line that green levies make up 25% of energy bills even when he was told that actually the green part of the bill is only 8% but he wasn't going to be put off his point by something as trivial as facts and ignored them, continuing to rant about Environmentalists and whatever other bee he had in his too tightly tied bonnet about people wanting to save the planet.
A UK government spokesperson later explained that: 'Energy bill increases are due to record-high wholesale gas prices and not green levies which represent a small fraction of bills' but again, that doesn't sit well with the anti-green lobby who wing on about wind turbines ruining the countryside and how coal and oil is the only solution.
Renewable sources generate 40% of the electricity produced in the UK so what we should be doing is pushing even harder to increase this percentage, we obviously have the technology in place creating the power to our plug sockets and the more we generate from wind, solar and tidal power, the less effect the wholesale prices have on our fuel bills.
The Good Energy website states there are 8,600 onshore wind turbines and 2,300 offshore turbines in the UK along with 500 solar farms and two working tidal power stations so if the Government can double what we have, that would account for 80% of the energy we need and we won't need to be subject to the whims of the energy companies profit margins.
The sticking point is that of the billions of pounds the energy companies make, more than a million of it has made it's way to the Conservatives coffers since 2019 so obviously they are in no rush to produce our own power as it would impact on their funding from those same companies so expect to hear the 25% Green Levies lie repeated again and again because if you tell a lie and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. 

Simple Solution To Lack Of Drinking Water

With what we have recklessly been doing to the planet now hitting home, one of the greatest threats we face is the lack of drinking water which for us humans, is pretty important.
It is estimated that 98% of the Earth’s water is too salty for drinking and one in 10 of the world’s population don’t have access to safe drinking water and almost two million people die from drinking unsafe water every year.
Of the 2% of water that is fresh water, two thirds is locked away in ice caps and glaciers while most of the rest is trapped in soil or underground aquifers which leaves a fraction available for us to use.
The answer so far has been desalination which is turning sea water into fresh water but the process is high energy intensive and very expensive and i have often wondered why the technology hasn't yet caught up with one of the greatest threats of our time and finally, news that it may have and it sounds so simple that i wonder how it has been missed, a sieve.
Scientists at the University of Manchester explains that water molecules are smaller than sodium chloride molecules and they have invented an ultra-fine sieve that allows water to pass but not the salt.
They say their sieve gets rid of 97% of the sodium chloride so part of me thinks brilliant, let's get these things made up and sent around the world while another part of me thinks hang up boffins, take another look because that sounds far too simple.

It Really Shouldn't Be This Hard

I once pitched an idea of running solar panels down the middle of every one of the 262,300 miles of road here in the UK, they are just laying there outside in daylight from dusk to dawn and 262,300 miles of solar panels contributing into the electric grid would make a massive dent in the amount of electricity the nation would need to generate but the idea was dismissed as too expensive and this is the UK so the sun putting in an appearance is unreliable.
It is amazing that we have three powerful natural sources but yet we seem to be looking at nuclear as the way forward to reduce filling our atmosphere with dangerous gases which it will although someone seems to have overlooked the waste material which has a half life of hundred of thousands of years which will have to be buried somewhere leaving that ground uninhabitable.
When it comes to Solar power, we are bathed in a constant and permanent source of solar energy, it has been calculated that a total of 173,000 terawatts (trillions of watts) of solar energy strikes the Earth continuously which is more than 10,000 times the world's total energy use. And that energy is completely renewable until at least the Sun gives up and blinks out anyway.
Every continent has access to a vast desert and deserts make up a quarter of the planet, bathed in more sunshine than you could shake a solar panel at but just sit there empty so why isn't that space being used for building large scale solar panel farms there?
The Earth is covered 71% by oceans, and due to the Coriolis Effect, that's tens of thousands of miles of water with tides and waves which could be used for generating tidal power, The U.S. Department of Energy's Marine and Hydrokinetic Technology estimated that the annual energy potential of waves off the coasts of the United States is estimated to be as much as 2.64 trillion kilowatthours, or the equivalent of 66% of U.S. electricity generation so that is a lot of potential going to waste.
Vast tracts of Ocean are there with nothing but fish in it and the odd ship sailing through it so why not build some tidal power stations in it, and as for the danger to shipping even the captain of the Titanic couldn't miss a whacking great power station.
As for wind power, in 2020, the UK generated 75,610 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity from wind which the Office of National Statistics advises is enough to power 8.4 trillion LED light bulbs or 7.25 million homes a year and as anyone who has ever been the UK will tell you, we do have a lot of wind here as well as brightly lit LED light bulbs and 7,723 miles of coast.
I get the argument that wind turbines are ugly and i would be the first to complain to the council if i woke up tomorrow and found one had landed outside my kitchen window but plenty of that is empty and could be utilised with wind farms.
With the promises made at the COP 26 meeting, we are heading towards a rise of 1.8C which is still not enough so we have to keep thinking of new ways to generate the electricity we need but we have the free sources and we have the technology to more than meet our needs, we just need to have the will to do it.

The Top 10 Historic Polluters

In total, humans have pumped around 2,500 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere since 1850 which has warmed the planet by 1.2C and an argument coming from smaller and poorer nations is that those countries which have added most to the CO2 into our atmosphere and therefore warming our planet and causing the accumulating problems today should take on the greatest responsibility in tackling it.
A study by Carbon Relief has put together a league table of the worst polluters since records began in 1850 and those who should be shouldering the burden of putting it right and comfortably top of the table is the United States who have pumped 509,111 billion tonnes of CO2 (20% of the total) into the atmosphere.
Second with 284,476 billion tonnes of emissions (11.4%) is China and their figure is alarming because most of that has come since the 1970's when China began industrialising in earnest and is now the Worlds ​​largest annual polluter.
R​ussia comes in third (172,432 bn tonnes), ​followed by Brazil (112,903 bn tonnes), Indonesia (102,559 bn tonnes), Germany (88,485 bn tonnes), India (85,668 bn tonnes), UK (74,294 bn tonnes), Japan (68,002bn tonnes) and Canada (65,501bn tonnes) rounding out the top 10.
Of the top 10 who have contributed to the warming Planet, six of the top 10 have yet to make new pledges to cut their emissions before the crucial UN Cop 26 climate summit in Glasgow this week.
Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for centuries and the cumulative amount of CO2 emitted since 1850 is directly linked to the 1.2C of heating that the world has already seen.
Mohamed Nasheed, ambassador for the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) called for justice for the severe climate impacts the nations he represents are suffering because of the emissions from big economies that have grown rich from burning fossil fuels by saying: 'Basic justice demands that those who have done most to cause the climate emergency should take the lead in addressing it. The responsibility lies principally with the US, China and Russia'.
Boris Johnson, a late convert to the Green agenda, agreed and replied that: 'We started the industrial revolution in Britain. We were the first to send the great puffs of acrid smoke to the heavens on a scale to derange the natural order'.  
An IPCC climate report compiled by 200 Climate scientists states that is Earth is warmer than it’s been in 125,000 years, before the last ice age, and the current path we are on will see global temperatures rise by 2.1C–3.5C and the last time the Earth temperature raised by that amount it happened over 11,000 years meaning we have achieved in 170 what it took nature 11,000 years to do dismissing the flawed and ignorant argument that the warming planet is a natural cycle and not man made.
The Paris agreement was to keep the temperature to below 1.5C, the World Health Organisation estimates that the current rise of 1.2C results in over 150,000 deaths annually so already baked in is the more frequent and widespread extreme weather events such as heatwaves, heavy rainfall, drought, wildfires and ocean acidification.
We are therefore committed to the deadly effects of the rapidly warming planet we have so recklessly warmed, our actions now will  determine how much of the more dire effects of climate change can be avoided, the future is literally in our leaders hands.

Stop Worrying, All Will Be Sorted At COP26

Boris Johnson has done us the honour of returning from his holiday and has repeated his claim that this Christmas will be better than last Christmas which he stopped so that boast is as trustful as...well...pretty much anything else he has ever said but we can squabble over the lack of HGV drivers, butchers and fruit pickers and the empty shelves in the shops and no petrol, books, paper, tennis balls, wine, bread, tuna, grapes, onions, chocolate digestives, turkeys, pet vaccines, coffee, light-bulbs, pigs, blankets and pigs-in-blankets because Michael Gove is on the case to 'save Christmas', although with that list it seems the one he is saving is the one in 1941 during rationing.
The reason Boris has palmed off the responsibility of 'Saving Christmas' to Michael Ho-Ho-Gove is because 1. He hates him, 2. He then won't get the blame when it all goes tits up and 3. He is far too busy saving the Planet.
A recent convert to human's not destroying the only Planet we have to live on, Boris has gone from calling it 'expensive, politically correct, bunny hugging' which 'is without scientific foundation' to saying at the UN that humanity 'must grow up to halt climate change' and then waffled on madly about Kermit the Frog for a bit but his gist was welcomed, even if it was decades too late.
I have been banging the 'STOP SCREWING UP THE PLANET YOU BELLENDS' drum since the 80's and it has been a long process to overcome the global warming denying cranks which means we have wasted a couple of decades in actually doing something and all it took was for everything to happen which the Scientists were saying would happen, the droughts, desertification, heatwaves, acidification of the sea, floods, extreme weather, sea rises, those type of things.  
So with the sea now lapping around their ankles and record breaking weather conditions continually breaking their own records, World Governments are absolutely determined to do something to stop it before it is goes too far so they are all coming to Scotland for COP26, so called because it is the 26th such meeting when they get together to absolutely do something to stop the Globe warming up even further.
As the COP1 in Berlin was in 1995 and the amount of the lethal CO2 gas into the atmosphere then was 350ppm while today, 25 years and 25 COP meetings later it sits at 413 ppm, the highest than at any point in at least the past 800,000 years, it hasn't been a raging success but we can only hope they do a bit more than promise to absolutely, definitely do something about it as soon as possible and then go back home and forget about it until COP27.       
Still, the Planet may be doomed because of the stupid people we have running it but at least we will get Christmas this year which is looking more like the kind of Christmas turkeys might actually have voted for.

Better Late Than Never I Guess

Each year, we foolishly throw billion of tonnes of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere and as we are seeing, that has terrible consequences for us living on Earth and as stronger hurricanes blow and the waves lap higher up in low lying nations, it seems we are already too late to stop the effects of Climate Change but while the most polluting nations countries seems to be doing very little about it, technology is lending a hand.
Iceland has began operation of the world's largest plant which will suck 4,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air per year making it the 15th such machine who altogether will capturing more than 9,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, according to the International Energy Agency.   
Global emissions last year were 36 billion tonnes, according to the International Energy Agency and i couldn't even do the math's for that on my calculator but Google reliably informs me that 36 billion divided by 9,000 means it would take 4 million of these machines to scrub out the CO2 we spew out annually.
While 9,000 will hardly make a dent in 36 billion, it's a start although depressingly it seems a case of too little too late for some, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated it causes over 150,000 deaths annually, while the rest of us and future generations are facing more extreme weather events as the global temperature creeps ever upwards.
The problem with Climate Change is that is was always something that was going to happen and it was easy to ignore or for the more gullible, deny, unfortunatley the going to happen is now happening as we literally reap what we sowed but at least we have made a start in doing something about it, many, many decades too late obviously but it's finally sunk into the thickest of skulls.

They Did Try To Tell Us

With the IPCC Climate change report making for some very uncomfortable reading about what we are facing, nobody can say we weren't warned.

1824 - French physicist Joseph Fourier warns of the Earth's natural 'greenhouse effect'.
1861 - Irish physicist John Tyndall shows that certain gases create the greenhouse effect.
1896 - Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius concludes that industrial-age coal burning will enhance the 'man made greenhouse effect' and raise temperatures by a few degrees Celsius
1900 - Swede, Knut Angstrom, discovers that even at the tiny concentrations of certain gases can produce greenhouse warming.
1938 - British engineer Guy Callendar shows that temperatures had risen over the previous century caused by CO2 concentration.
1955 - US researcher Gilbert Plass announces that CO2 concentrations could increase temperatures by 3-4C.
1957 - US oceanographer Roger Revelle and chemist Hans Suess state that 'Human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment'
1958 - Charles David Keeling begins measurements of atmospheric CO2 concluding that CO2 concentrations are rising.
1965 - A US President's Advisory Committee panel warns that the greenhouse effect is 'a matter of real concern'.
1975 - US scientist Wallace Broecker publishes a scientific paper warning of the dangers of 'global warming'.
1988 - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) formed to collate and assess evidence on climate change.
1989 - UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher warns in a UN speech of CO2 in the atmosphere and calls for a global treaty on climate change.
1990 - IPCC report that temperatures have risen by 0.3-0.6C over the last century due to humanity's emissions.
1992 - At the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, governments agree to 'prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system'.
1995 - IPCC Report concludes that the evidence suggests 'a discernible human influence' on the Earth's climate.
1998 - UN report that the average global temperature reached 0.52C above the mean for the period 1961-90.
1998 - Publication of the 'hockey stick' graph indicating that modern-day temperature rise is unusual compared with the last 1,000 years.
2001 - IPCC report finds 'stronger evidence' that humanity's emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause global warming.
2007 - IPCC's report concludes it is more than 90% likely humanity's emissions are responsible for climate change.
2008 - Keeling project shows that CO2 concentrations have risen from 315 ppm in 1958 to 380ppm in 2008.
2011 - UN Data shows concentrations of greenhouse gases are rising faster than in previous years.
2013 - The Mauna Loa Observatory reports that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has surpassed 400ppm for the first time since measurements began.
2013 - IPCC's report says scientists are 95% certain that humans are the cause of global warming.

We really can't say that we weren't warned.

Japan's Recycled Olympic Medal's Idea

The Olympics are underway and the medals have started to be handed out but the Gold, Silver and Bronze baubles hanging from around the necks of those who go higher, faster and stronger than the rest are not quite the same as those from over Olympics.
The clever Japanese, one of the technological hot-spots on the planet with companies such as Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Panasonic and Sony, noted that electronics contained the required three metals of bronze, silver and gold so invited it's citizens to donate their old and unused mobiles and other gadgets so they can extract the valuable metals and in a little more than a year, the project received 4.32 million used mobile phones and 34,000 tonnes of small electronic devices from which they have have retrieved 50% of the 30kg of gold required, 43% of the 4,100 kg silver and have already reached the 5,950 kg of the needed Bronze.
The United Nations says that we generate almost 50 million tonnes of e-waste each year but only 20% of that is recycled so making 5,000 medals won't make a big dent in that but it could be a start of something and anything that stops us polluting our planet has to be appreciated.

Climate Change Didn't Self Isolate in 2020

There was quite a lot going on during 2020 but something that didn't stop and self isolate was our warming Planet and unfortunately there is no vaccine for what is coming.
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere reached record levels in 2020, hitting 417 parts per million in May and the last time CO2 levels exceeded 400 parts per million was four million years ago. Humans have piled 100ppm in the last 60 years alone, an amount that it took Nature 10,000 years to increase it by at the end of the last ice age
The year 2020 was 1.2C hotter than the average year in the 19th Century, Europe had it's hottest year ever and the World experienced it's joint hottest year, tying with 2016 as the warmest triggering the largest wildfires ever recorded in the US states of California and Colorado, and the fires in eastern Australia which turned the sky black.
The temperature reached 38C in Siberia, the hottest ever recorded within the Arctic Circle which saw the sea ice area at its second lowest on record which has the knock on effect of less area of white to reflect the heat from the Sun back out into space, leading the Arctic to heat twice as quickly as the rest of the world and more sea means more absorption of heat, fueling global warming further.
Across the northern hemisphere, there was less ground that remains frozen all year round which has released billions of tonnes of CO2 and methane which is usually locked away in frozen ground, further clogging the atmosphere.
The United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in his State of the Planet speech that we are at the threshold of wrecking our own Planet but the Planet won't care because to be honest, without us, it's job would be much easier without us messing it up.
It isn't in the business of keeping us alive and stop us from doing stupid things like poisoning our own air and water, we are very low down on it's list of things to give a toss about.

More Reasons To Stop Destroying Our Planet

A few occasions the Climate Deniers, ignoring the mountains of evidence and agreement of 99% of climate scientists, say to me about green measures what if you are wrong and we do all this for nothing and my standard reply is that we end up with a cleaner healthier Planet and the 10 weeks of lock-down has shown that with the lack of humans messing up the place with their cars and industrial fumes, the planet is a healthier and cleaner place.
Rivers are cleaner, air pollution is decreasing significantly and the damaging CO2 emissions this year could be the lowest for decades from reduced airline flights, car and truck journeys and industrial activity falling.
As well as a cleaner, healthier planet, studies show that air pollution is linked to impaired judgement, mental health problems, poorer performance in school and higher levels of crime and worringly, the World Health Organization says nine out of 10 of us frequently breathe in polluted air and air pollution kills an estimated seven million people per year.  
One study by London School of Economics looked at students taking exams on different days and measured how much pollution was in the air on those given days and found that the most polluted days correlated with the worst test scores. On days where the air quality was cleanest, students performed better.
Another LSE study analysed two years of crime data from over London’s districts and found that more petty crimes occurred on the most polluted days, in both rich and poor areas.
This was backed up by US studies Massachusetts Institute of Technology who examined nine years of data covering 9,000 US cities and discovered that the cities that had the highest crime rates for manslaughter, rape, robbery, car theft and assault also had the highest pollution levels and the same results were found in a study by the University of Southern California who cross-checked the pollution levels in US cities with truancy, stealing, vandalism and substance abuse.
The research is ongoing but the initial thoughts are that breathing in polluted air affects the amount of oxygen you have in your body resulting in reduced 'good air' going to your brain and irritates the nose, throat, cause headaches which lowers our concentration levels.
Exposure to various pollutants also causes inflammation in the brain which affects the pre-frontal lobe which is the area important for controlling our impulses, our executive function and self-control.
King’s College London found that teenagers exposed to polluted air are at a higher risk of psychotic episodes, such as hearing voices or paranoia so plenty more reasons for our World leaders to do something more about what we are doing to our planet if seven million deaths a year was not already enough of an incentive.

The Moronic 2%

It may seem strange that 98% of the World Climate scientists insist that Climate Change is a growing and present danger but equal weight is given to the 2% who disagree, mostly by the people who have an interest in the denial of Climate Change and those useful idiots without the relevant amount of braincells to see what their own eyes are telling them. 
Since i first heard about the oncoming disaster back in the 80s, the science has become vastly clearer and the warnings more stark as this decade is the first where we truly have seen the effects, scarily just the introduction with far worse still to come which our children and their children can thank us for later.
Climate change is a slow process, day after day, the ice melts a fraction more, the sea inches closer to shore and the carbon count slowly ticks upward but the story always remains much the same.
Facts and evidence based arguments have never been the strong point of deniers and it wasn't until the mid-2000's that the United Nations started to come together top demand action with only a few dissenters. 
Climate protest is now a mass movement, with hundreds of thousands of people out on the streets demanding action and schoolchildren shaming their elders by going on strike.
The IPCC have given us just 12 years to reverse direction from a looming catastrophe but the climate deniers have taken a sudden lurch from denying it was ever happening to now saying it is too late do anything about it so why bother.
As i said, not the sharpest knives in the drawer as the forests burn, cities flood and draughts kill but finally people power is taking control and forcing Governments to take action.
It may be too late, all the signs are that we will miss that 12 year deadline and be looking at a devastating 3C or even cataclysmic 4c rise and future generations will ask why we never did anything when we had the chance and the fingers will be pointed at the morons in my generation and the tiny 2% of scientists who denied it was even happening.

Adults Should Be Thanking Greta

A year ago, a young girl walked out of school on her own and warned her parents and teachers she would not go back into lessons until adults began working to end the climate crisis.
Last week, Greta Thunberg spoke at the United Nations and inspired tens of millions of people to join her in her crusade to save the planet, a planet which the generations before her had done so much to wreck. 
For her success of inspiring her generation to fight climate change, she has drawn much criticism and abuse from adults ranging from frightening children who fear the end of the world to attacking her Asperger’s diagnosis to imply that she is deeply disturbed and mentally unwell.
It is quite simple why some adults, almost entirely men, feel threatened by her, this is a teenage girl telling them not only what they don't want to hear but she makes them uncomfortable for being the model of leadership they would like to be.
World leaders dance around the subject, they hold meetings and promise to do something, the more ignorant leaders refuse to even accept it as their land is struck by extreme weather but Greta cuts through because she doesn't use diplomatic language or dress up the imminent threat, she just speaks from the heart.
Summing it up in 22 perfectly chosen words which should shame the World's Governments, Greta said: ‘This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean'.
Very true and it has humiliatingly for our leaders, taken a 15 year old autistic Swedish girl to show more sense and dedication to our fragile Planet than they have ever done and Adults everywhere should be thanking her for caring enough to want to do something about it.

The Kids Are Alright

You have to give credit to the younger generation, they not only recognise the ensuing climate crisis but are trying to do something about it which is more than the pathetic generations before them ever did.
Despite being on the end of so much extreme weather, the second top polluter is run by a Climate Change denialist who isn't even turning up to the UN Climate Summit on Monday says everything you need to know about just how wilfully ignorant my generation and the previous generations has been about the climate emergency.
With an ever dwindling window for action the kids get it that something has to be done, now for the adults to show that they do also and even more importantly, do something about it.
Hopefully the thirteen year old Greta Thunberg has lit a fire under the backsides of a few Governments, even if one of the main polluters is just too dumb, misguided and ignorant to join them in the greatest emergency of our time.

Hurricanes And Climate Change

There is talk of Hurricane Dorian possibly turning up at the very Northerly tip of the UK as it passes between the UK and Iceland but by then it will be, as the weatherman called it, 'little more than a bit of a gust' and nothing like the 185mph monster which devastated The Bahamas last week.
The thing with Climate Change is that it doesn't mean there will be more hurricanes, it just takes the weather that is already there and ramps it up to 10 or in the case of Hurricanes, takes it to 5.
The Atlantic hurricane season runs from August until November on on average there will be six hurricanes in this period with three major storms, classified as category three or above
As Climate Change tightens it's grips on our weather, The National Hurricane Centre says the average number of major hurricanes per year is on the up with an average of two per year between 1930 and 1999 but since the turn of the century, the rate has increased to just over three per year.
The intensity of Hurricanes, measured by their lowest central pressure, five of the top 10 have come in the last two decades and hurricanes have been developing faster due to the warming Ocean's, rising from a Tropical Storm through the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale quicker, Wilma doing just that over a 24 hour period and ending up as a top Category 5.
As is quite wrongly sometimes said, Climate Change is not making the hurricanes but it is creating the perfect conditions for them to thrive when they do arrive due to higher water temperatures, warmer air holding more moisture and rising sea levels which increase storm surge and flooding.
Another consequence is due to the increasing warmth of the ocean and air, hurricanes are slower moving so, the  National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that hurricanes are 10% slower today and linger longer so they dump more rain over a certain area instead of moving on quickly.
As the climate continues to change, Ocean temperatures will continue to rise and the warmer the water the stronger the hurricanes become resulting in more rain, flooding and wind damage so Climate Change won't create more hurricanes but it will make the ones that we do have more powerful and we are seeing that today and scarily, we are only at the start of the big, dramatic climate changes.

Reversing Climate Change Ideas

By far the biggest and most important decision facing the Planet is how to deal with Climate Change and the recent announcement by the authority on all things Global Warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that we have as little as 12 years to save the planet have sent scientists taking a second look at some of the schemes they previously placed in the file marked 'barnpot ideas'.
The idea of deliberately fiddling with the Earth's climate to reduce global warming, Geoengineering, has long been seen as a preposterous notion due to the unintended consequences of blotting out sunlight to cool the planet but where we once dismissed it as an act of desperation, well, things are now getting desperate.
The idea is to put reflective particles in the atmosphere to block or reflect sunlight and plans considered include spraying sulfate particles into the stratosphere much like what volcanic eruptions do or surrounding the Earth with tiny mirrors or increasing the reflectivity of clouds by spraying seawater into the atmosphere to make clouds whiter and thicker.
These plans are considered too risky as the consequences are too poorly understood but other option up for serious consideration are pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere which would involve planting many, many more trees or inventing a machine that scoops carbon-dioxide directly out of the air and burying it underground.
With only 12 years and counting and any invention still at the blueprint stage it may not be quick enough but there is always the idea of piling iron dust into the oceans to promote the growth of plankton that absorb carbon-dioxide. 
We could always go back and have another look at painting all roofs of buildings white or
covering the Arctic ocean with white plastic to reflect sunlight back into space and let's not forget the idea of slowing the melting of glaciers by constructing a giant wall on the sea floor to prevent warmer water from coming into contact with them. 
My personal favourite and most window shakingly mad, is to block the Atlantic Ocean from entering the Mediterranean by damming the Strait of Gibraltar which would drain the Mediterranean therefore give us more than 1.5 million m² of reclaimed land to used for farming.
Desperate times call for desperate measures and at least these people are having a go and it’s better to do something right? I mean, if you fire trillions of tiny mirrors into deep space or fill the ocean with iron filings and it somehow doesn’t work out, we could always…erm.. we can...umm.
Well, i'm sure we’ll think of something.

Climate Change Hope Coming From Younger Generation

If blame is to be apportioned for Climate Change, then my generation along with my parents and grandparents should take the blame, especially as we knew what we were doing but carried on doing it anyway.
Across the country today, children left their school classes to protest against climate change which should lift the hearts of everyone that the coming generation are looking to do something about it even if the Prime Minister made a comment that the children should have stayed in school but that's why they did what they did, because people like Theresa May, the people actually in a position
to do something, have done nothing.
The next generation, those we will hand the running of the planet over to shortly, are looking at us and saying what we are bequeathing them is a poisoned, rubbish filled mess of a planet.
What i will say to our children is that some of us did try but we were met with shoulder shrugs by the uncaring and sometimes plain denial by the ignorant even as the flood waters rose around our ankles and selfishly considered a problem for their grandchildren to deal with. 
So sorry about the warming climate, extinctions, wildfires, droughts, heatwaves, floods, strengthened extreme weather and desertification but well done and thank you for being concerned about a problem that your older relations foisted onto you and hopefully you will have better luck forcing through government policies globally which can change the disastrous course we are set on.