What do I think, What can I do?

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The other nuclear: Fusion Power

Some time ago I saw an interesting documentary in the TV about nuclear fusion. It was very nice to see and closely related with climate change. As it uses to happen in this program  the contents were built around a pre-eminent scientist. In this case the main character was Steven Cowley. He defended convincingly the future of this technology, explained very clearly the basic ideas and some difficulties and recognised without doubt the risk of climate change.

I was a pleasure to watch this program. I only disagree in one aspect, about the solutions to climate change. Of course, Steven was convinced that Fusion was an important part of the solution of energy production for our world, he also considered important an alternative mobility (electric car or similar) and solar power. My doubts arise basically in the first one, I can not deny nuclear fusion could be a wonderful solution for universal, cheap and centralized energy. In fact it is our main energy source as the sun is fuelled in this way and the sun is the source for fossil fuels, hidropower, wind mills, solar,…

But in the same way I doubt about conventional nuclear power, I am not sure of the short or medium term possibilities of this energy source. The expected times are always 20-30 years later and the very expensive projects are fully international (very respectable and positive but also showing a poor confidence in its profitability). It would be wonderful, maybe it will be wonderful sometime, but do we have enough time? In my opinion is wiser to act with easier or closer possible ways and not thinking too much in magic solutions. Because if you buy a house based in a possible but not clear future incredible job, you can loose this big house and the possibility of a modest one.

Anyway, I support employing public money for fusion investigation, but just in case lets act as if were not successful.

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2010 in one figure

I wanted to make a kind of summary of this year, the first year for this blog. It started as a trial, and I still are not sure about my energy to write periodically about climate change. But some post have been produced and some more are in drafts, so fpor the moment I do not give up.

The most direct way to make a kind of summary in this moment was to obtain new data for my climagechangemeter and show them. October was a very encouraging month with steep increments for total appearances and decrements for sceptics. But today this result is going exactly the other way: Scepticism is regaining strength and climate change loosing presence. Anyway those results are weaker than the previous gains so, global output from june is clearly positive. Is this a real index about global opinion? I am not able to say it but considering the moderate success of Cancun and some interesting results as the failure of prop 21 in California we may be getting in the right way.  The more difficult question is, are we driving at sufficient speed?


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Climate Change and Colesterol

My father used to get quite disappointed and a bit surprised when the cholesterol level considered dangerous was diminished. It happened at least twice in his last years. His point of view was quite logical, if I maintain the same cholesterol it can not be fair one day and too high the next one. The question was that maybe it was dangerous all the time but we did not have enough knowledge until the key researchs were developed and accepted.

Science goes in this way, there are not scientific absolute truths to be find in mysterious papers. Only hypothesis, measurements, data, checking, discussion, more hypothesis, data , measurements,.. and finally, after some time, several papers, strong debate and frequently arguments a general consensus about one theory. Latter, this can be surpassed by new more precise measurement, more refined theory,…

The climate data

Figure from last IPCC report. In my opinion the rising curves are quite clear, what do you think?

And in climate change there is a broad consensus among climatologists. The climate is changing due to our CO2 and Methane emissions. Many other issues are not so clear, for example the extent of the effects or the way to mitigate them. But the main fact is assumed by scientific community and denying it or taking partial data or particular opinions to make everyone doubt can be effective in the short term. And even credible for non-experts like me but it is irresponsible for humans in this time and more for our grandsons.

It is possible (not very probable) that some of our actual analysis change in the future, but we have to act with what we know now, because if we wait till everybody sees it clearly it might be too late. Anyhow it will be too late for many, our choice is to mitigate it for the rest.

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In the plane

As I mentioned in a previous post, I travelled by plane some days ago. It gave me an opportunity to test the “aeroplane mode” of my new small camera and to put images to some of the thoughts that came to my mind in one of the flights. It was a wonderful autumn weather over the Mediterranean sea, allowing outstanding views of sea and land.

The first sight shows one of my constant worries, a land totally defined by perfect squares for human use, are we leaving something for the rest? Is the climate change the most critical consequence of a development that forgets about limited resources and equilibrium?

But it was possible to find hopeful images too, those wind mills that are not any visual pollution in my opinion. Even moving ones generating clean energy.

And hopeless images as this thermal energy production unit (I think).

Or even mixed ones.

This is the world we live in, complex everywhere, and this is the world we want to improve or at least not worsen too much.

At the end you can say, did you really need to by a new camera having a nice but big one?

Or it was really necessary to make a plane journey? or using our recent investment in computers and fast broadband connections, a video conference would have fulfilled the same aims?

Sometimes even if I see a clear answer it is not easy to make it true, but the question remains important and could work slowly but strongly like water. The last question: do we have enough time for that?

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One day in Rome

In my comeback from the long blog-summer vacations I wish to mention my last week trip to Rome. I went for a business meeting and it was a two days journey in witch only the first one was in Rome itself. It was my first time in this ancient and full-of-history city and I really enjoyed walking along the remaining of the old empire, the lively squares and the renacentist buildings. Apart from the tourist enjoyment, two questions striked my, related to climate change:

The first one was the repeated advertising about a share holding operation on Enel company, the main Italian energy company. I do not know the real meaning of the advertisement or the company but everything was very green in the ads and main picture was about a field of photovoltaic panels. Ecology and renewables are considered closely linked and if they are regarded helpful to get good image. In my opinion this is essentially a positive progress in spite of its several drawbacks (“many not very greens pretend to be very green”, interesting subject for another post). So I got quite happy for that.

In the other hand,the second issue was negative, a repeating negative one. My Italian colleagues explained my that most Romans were firm car users, they distrust public transport for not being reliable or punctual. This makes the city more chaotic and of course produces several extra CO2 tons per year. Moreover, those attitude problems are difficult to solve and require time and patience, it is very easy to enter a endless loop: I do not use public transport because it is not good, public transport is not improved because is too expensive in part because it is not used, and so on. But who should break those dynamics? Governments with convinced politics, like in the case of public debt reduction? Or convinced citizens who intend to change the mind of their policy makers?

Like the old times in which all the ways leaded to Rome, I think any way is good but we have to be fast because we may have less time than we think.

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More spills and $/€ moving arround

One interesting point of view to embrace climate change struggle is the practical one. Instead of less widespread ethic or environmental criteria the practical point of view should be able to reach a wider spectrum of people living their own busy urban life without too much time to worry for far problems (far geographically, socially or in time). Because if this is something that may affect my own small life it is more likely I will find some time or effort to do something or change something in my behaviour, or, at least accept stoically an imposed sacrifice.

This way of thinking was mentioned in this blog before related with BP oil spill. And I have just recalled it after reading news from other not so famous spills. Or the not so far China spill . How much are we paying in many ways for all this spills? How expensive is really the petroleum dependence nowadays?

Sceptics will continue to explain carbon-free economy is too expensive, impossibly expensive. Are they considering all the cost in this moment?  And the future ones? And the risks? And the cost of the risks?

The eternal problem again: actual cost are “easy” to measure, at least some of them, while future ones are difficult to measure or maybe easy to forget.

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Nuclear, yes or not?

This is an old debate many times repeated. The interesting question about repeating a debate is that sometime new points of view appear and gain strength. This happened when James Lovelock claimed a “Climate Change point of view” to rediscover nuclear as the planetary energy solution for the present. I suppose that terrible discussions between ecologist followed this statement.

I have never been a nuclear supporter, even if I am physicist and know many supporter close to me. Maybe the main reason is subjective, related with my father point of view and campaigns against “Lemoiz” nuclear in my childhood. They are vague memories of complicate issues but the clear conclusions for me over the years is that most people here were against nuclear but they have used several nuclear Kwh during last decades from Garoña and French nuclear power stations.

I still think that nuclear power stations are risky in spite of the controls. I also have many doubts about their economical profitability considering the eternal residuals and dismantling cost of the power station itself. Nevertheless I agree in some points with Lovelock’s idea:

  • “Climate Change point of view” may be different from classical ecology, and Climate Change should be the priority in this moment because if we fail too much here the consequences will worsen many other ecological, social and economic problems.
  • It is true we need to act now and fast and change our minds in many aspects to address this challenging situation. Fossil fuels have to be substituted from this moment.
  • I also think there is no magic and perfect solution. We will have to sacrifice. I agree that reneweables alone are not able to maintain our energy thirst in this moment.

But I do not agree in the main idea, I do not think nuclear power stations are the solution for the following reasons:

  • Nuclear fuel is also scarce and I do not know how many energy is possible to obtain from it or how many time it can spare us but likely not enough to bridge to a renewable future.
  • Nuclear power stations are very expensive at the beginning and we-don’t-know-how-expensive at the end of their life. A total transition to nuclear in this moment would lead to add the cost of closing all stations and opening new ones. Would not be cheaper to research more intensively in renewables?
  • Widespread nuclear would increase the risk.

I do not believe nuclear is the magic card but I also consider very difficult to get ride of nuclear Kws in this moment, they will be something we have to live with for many years and I prefer to have new, safer and more efficient nuclear power stations instead of the old-fashioned ones, just in case.

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My own climatechangemeter

One of the targets of starting this blog was explaining my point of views to exert an influence in public opinion about this subject I consider very important.
Of course, the main index to measure this effect are the views, comments,. in the blog itself. In these first moments of the blog I am not doing anything to make it too public, so visits and comment are not too encouraging. I am not worried, I am mostly practicing.  But the real key question is not this blog or any other one, is public opinion, and subsequent actions.
I will try to measure it indirectly recording google result figures for two searches: “climate change ” and “climate change skeptics”. From some date in the second one I am trying also some orthographic possibilities , sceptic, skeptic, skeptics and sceptics to make it more general. This index is under construction like this blog, so it should be expected to evolve considerably in the previous stages. This climatechangemeter is really a measurement of interest more than any other feeling, but it is a beginning and I will informally continue doing it, just to see. Maybe the searches could be tuned, and suggestions are welcome, although I want to maintain it simple.

Here you have the fist figure. It is curious, but from initial measurement a month ago climate change has suffered a low peak but has recovered strongly in recent days. The skeptics in single form however suffered the same peak but a weaker recovery. We will go on checking the trend.

climatechangemeter

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Will lemons grow in my garden?, For the prof needers

My wife and me bought a small land to plant trees and maybe some vegetables,… We do not have time to take care of it too much but some trees are getting adoult enought to give us some delicious fruits.

Nevertheless we failed completely in some trials: the attempt to plant lemon tree was really tragic due to the winter cold and our lack of knowledge. However, our luck is about to change, a recent research has shown that many vegetables are NOW moving due to actual climate change. The strongest changes are about to come, next generation or perhaps later, but some are happening right now. The good part is that I hope to get wonderful lemons and oranges, the counterpart is that ecosystems maintaining 1000 million people are in risk. And we still go on discussing about climate change, or worse, about who should pay the economy/society change we need. Meanwhile CO2  continues to grow in our atmosphere and the change is becoming more inevitable and stronger.

The source of my information is this interesting spanish scientific blog, concretely this link http://neofronteras.com/?p=3163

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How expensive is to allow Climate Change?

One of the most used arguments against Climate Change action is that is quite “expensive”, and it will be, bnecause important changes will have to be made in many aspects of our economy and life. We will be able to get less objects and services with the same effort, so, in practice, we will be poorer in average.

However, Climate Change will be very costly too, even more than changing our cheap carbon economy as explained by Tony Blair.

And some costs are not so easy to account, for example a massive oil spill in the ocean. Who will pay all these destruction? Can it be paid

Nevertheless, the real problem is more about time than about total cost. Climate Change avoiding or softening strategies have to be paid now, at least start to be paid now and the consecuences will come later, some are just perceivable but the most severe and “expensive” are one or two generations ahead. And we are not used to save for so long.

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