A pertinent question ...

As a new year is beckoning we should really start talking and acting to the problem of global warming. I am aware that I personally as I am driving a car, am also partly responsible for this, the warming of the polar areas and the heat-waves in Africa and Asia. Obviously I am not just on my own, in fact we ALL are! I saw a nice TV documentary, one of those made by Steve Backshall who was paddling along the receding North Polar ice-shelf. He could not really believe how far it has receded! I have quite a lot of admiration for old Steve but I think he ought to realise he too is responsible with all that travelling to and fro to virtually inaccessible places. There again, how would we otherwise know about these places that suffer the consequences of humanity’s careless ways? We are still living according to 19^th century’s attitudes towards politics, influence and power. The Russians show this without any doubt. The US of A is not much better. And let’s not mention here that bunch residing in the centre of London.

But are there any answers? Well, from my point of view, yes but they would be painful choices. Painful because there would not be enough to go around. Not enough money, not enough food, not enough space. There should be no doubt that the effort would be gigantic and would have to be worldwide. We would have to be realistic, for instance the Pacific Ocean low laying islands will have to be vacated. They are lost. Countries with sea coasts need to shore up defences or will be inundated by the sea trying to get as far inland as it can. Building more and more wind turbines sounds great but it too is not a real answer because it just transfers the production of harmful materials from one side to the other. Wind turbines are not carbon-neutral in any way. Neither are electric cars. Haphazard decision making, for instance the drive in the UK to install heat-pumps, that are very expensive both to the Treasury as well as the user. It is very debatable whether their use is actually as economical as said. On top of that they are not silent. Your neighbours sure will enjoy the continual day and night hum, as indeed you will yourselves.

I do however see the point as gas needs to be phased out as well as coal and wood. Obviously we need much more proper research into the transfer of power to create heat. I think it is as it has always been ‘There is no such thing as a free lunch’! Matter and energy are related. Mentioning the hypothesis that a lot of scientists think that if you add everything up in the Universe, the total energy is zero. Hawking said this – You need positive energy to pull things apart, as in you pulling apart Amazon packaging from an order you placed. You expend energy to do so. Also in nuclear fission, pulling apart the atoms. You need quite a bit of energy to start the process. And for a short period of time you will have heated up an area, destroying most of it.

From the ‘NewScientist’ we know this: Take the sun as an example. Its nuclear fusion reactions turn matter (think of it as concentrated energy) into visible sunlight and other forms of energy. The sunlight hits a green leaf on Earth and the solar energy is now transferred into a chemical energy store as oxygen is separated from carbon dioxide and water, leaving carbohydrate in the leaf. We eat the leaf and breathe in the oxygen. The respiration reaction in our muscle cells allows the energy to be used to move our arm as we hammer in a nail. The arm, nail, hammer and the air absorb the sound, get hot and radiate infrared heat to outer space. So the energy concentrated in the original hydrogen atoms in the sun is now scattered into the universe. Low-grade and almost useless, but still the same amount we started with. That’s it in a nutshell, just hoping poor Ed will read it one day sitting in his leather chair in the Houses of Parliament, Westminster, sipping his free whisky thinking about why his brother is so more successful than he is.