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Just 85 days to go before COP 26

Helios

I am sort of excited , its like seeing what arrives at the Rainhill trials all over again (ok I don't time travel) , and we await the big government on heating , and the EV systems are still getting ironed out . I hope i have outlined in previous posts , why we need large scale efficiencies, particularly as we venture to green hydrogen new places , so is there anything new and exciting arriving yet … Well it depends where your start is , if you know who Rachel Carson is and her book silent spring , then your start is real ecology thinking , and your not tub thumping the bath asking for drill baby drill , the pollution problems are real , and we are finding stuff out about just how delicate and interrelated, the organic chemistry of life , really is , so I guess i am with the eco thinkers on pollution , if your an economic thinker and worried about not having a job , then you believe high tech will get us of the problem of impairment of the natural life systems of the planet , mmm which unfortunately i can only argue as such views being deluded , natural habitat loss , is just that, loss and all the fruit cakes who wanted sodium hydroxide trees removing CO2 , I think we are going to argue that . CCS has problems , both technically and in terms of trajectory , and even though George Monbiot has advocated nuclear , I dont really agree , and he hasnt explained the trajectory very well at all , but maybe hes hoping Fusion reactors work (which i dont think they do) , so its all getting a bit exciting in the tin foil hat and expensed wonk stakes , in technology choice awards , some bits can be nailed down but they are to do with infrastructure , and some quite massive changes can be achieved , with redesigning some aspects considering how the EV will work. The liquid fuels believers so called SAF fuels have appeared , and an interesting idea on electrifying HGVs by fitting them with a pantograph , to draw from an overhead line on the motorway , still a problem in HGV weight , and i think Sweden has looked at a centre rail in the road , mmm well problem there is stuff , roadkill getting washed into your concealed live conductor ,duct , still driving along and the kids saying , whats that smell as another bird or mammal is cooking on the centre again , had a biref fun moment . 

Anyhow been as I have designed some eco tech ,(starts rubbing hands feverishly) were reading for the wonk and tin foil hat market makers , the rules are you produce some (not necessarily perfect engineering figures , no more of this Hydrogen gas turbine hopey change thing ) , seems fair enough as alot of tax payers money will be going on some aspects of eco thinking , some are already self sustaining , for transport as LNG is doing well as a transport fuel .

Not happy with some of things the so called cop 26 climate ambassador has been saying so far , not the COP 26 panel (i am hard pushed to find any member truly knowledgeable on natural life system dynmaics and chemistry ) , but as they say only 85  days to go , and who knows anyhting could happen ? 

      

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    My dear friend, 

    everything you said I want to summarize.  When the technology of vehicles is at its peak one should also see that there are technicians with rich knowledge.  Unfortunately this does not happen fast, so a slow swing in relation to the professionals (the world wants us to live in a green world and less air pollution).
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    Unfortunately COP26 will be just as pointless as the previous efforts. What did the Paris agreement actually say? Business as usual for the developing world including India and China and demands for lots of money from the developed world. James Hansen, the father of climate change, saw through it immediately.

    “It’s a fraud really, a fake,” he says, rubbing his head. “It’s just incorrect for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/12/james-hansen-climate-change-paris-talks-fraud

    There is no change for COP26. Thousands (Tens of Thousands??) will fly into Glasgow for a big party. The developing nations and the climate scientists will demand yet more money, which may be pledged but won’t be forthcoming. Nothing will actually be committed to.

    There are two problems:

    1) To be successful, as with any project plan, there needs to be a plan with timescales, costs and benefits. 

    The time scales have been simply made up. There is no actual science behind 1.5°C or 2.0°C. There are some pseudo-scientific models used to predict temperature rise with CO2 levels that are drifting further away from reality as they move away from their calibration period (which happened to be during a fairly rapid ~1°C rise between 1975 and 2000).

    The costs in monetary and resource terms are completely ignored.

    Benefits???

    2) The focus is on the wrong subject. If we ignore CO2 as irrelevant and concentrate on actual pollution, reducing our consumption of finite resources and better management of our lands and oceans we might stand a chance.

    This is taken from the World Climate Change Organisation.

     

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    85 days gives Her Majesty's Climate Secretary time for - ooooh - at least 85 - more (return) flights… 

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    mmmm well it does look like some sort of , not really going to do anything conference , but unfortunately, the recent record breaking temperatures are making things a little more difficult for the power brokers of the fossil fuels status quo.

    Pretty much sure coal is finished  , and LNG moving into shipping , even cruise liners will have effects , we can make low energy steel now (just announced today trial in Sweden a success) , building materials (other than wonderful wood) still a problem , bricks could be lower energy and some interesting solutions for cement coming along . Packing has new paper bottle which if pepsi and coca cola adopt will be really useful (i am bit a puzzled about how a paper bottle works also with a pressurised liquid) , and this could be used in other consumer products. 

    Not too sure where nuclear is going to go , fusion is yet to show anyhting and that includes the 60yrs zip, zero nothing , nada  not one more MW has ever been attained out , than has been put in .

    Imagine the tax payer outrage if they come to believe , that the government has been not telling the truth about green /environmental engineering projects and they have wasted all the £ they give to the government , including any waffle and expense of COP 26.    

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    Even St Greta does not think much of COP26,

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    Crikey Helios, breathe! Use a full stop occasionally or you'll run out of air! :)

  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member

    Roger Bryant: 
     

    Even St Greta does not think much of COP26,

    Greta Thunberg is 18 now, an adult.  Time to grow up and start doing something about climate change instead of all her “blah blah blah”

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    Concerning Helio's list of things that might help, Bill Gates, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Allen Lane Penguin, 2021, has a summary of what he thinks is going to help and how far along it is. He also attempts to quantify the change of some of it (he calls it a “Green Premium”), and I found his discussion of the various Green Premiums enlightening. He also puts his money where his mouth is, through a vehicle called Breakthrough Energy Ventures. 

    Also, in contrast to some here, Gates respects Greta Thunberg highly, as do I. I suspect that respect comes from having actually met her and talked with her (which I haven't).

    Roger's right that action is needed. I would suggest taking his theories about CO2 not being the problem, as well as his theories about actual temperature rises in the last century, with a grain of salt. I have tried to discuss them with him and didn't get very far. Suffice it to say here that such suggestions go against well over 99% of the 88,000 peer-reviewed publications in reputed climate-scientific journals since 2012, as Mark Lynas pointed out two days ago, as well as what almost any textbook in the field says (if the two that I have are any guide). 

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    The real problem is is that there are just far too many people.

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    Rob Eagle: 
     

    The real problem is is that there are just far too many people.

    Actually, I think this is one global problem that doesn't have much to do with the number of people on the planet. 

    Rather less than a billion of us, largely in Europe and NA, have been pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere for 250 years. With a nod to Roger's dissenting view, let me say that that is where the problem of ACC arises which COP26 is supposed to help solve.

    It doesn't help, of course, that we have been joined in the last few decades by some 3 billion more, in India and China. They say, of course, that they are just playing catch-up (and indeed that is so). Meanwhile the Bangladeshis and Marshall Islanders are saying, as politely as they can, the pox on the lot of you: stop it. 

    It is hard to see how to sort any of that out without a radical change in international relations.

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