Climate change - what to do?

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on 5 technologies which could provide a breakthrough:

"Over the next few decades, the world will need to wean itself from dependence on fossil fuels and drastically reduce greenhouse gases. Current technology will take us only so far; major breakthroughs are required.

What might those breakthroughs be? Here's a look at five technologies that, if successful, could radically change the world energy picture."

The technologies referred to are:

* Space based solar power
* Utility scale energy storage to enable a high percentage of solar and wind
* Next Generation Biofuels
* Carbon capture and storage
* Advanced Car Batteries

Also very interesting is a critique of this article at Next Big Future which puts these new technologies too far in the future and gives some alternatives which will impact sooner.

While most technologies above are nothing that we can implement or research here there are exceptions. Of particular interest, it seems to me, is that of biochar. Basically this means growing wood or woody material, charing it (making charcoal out of it) and burying it. This takes carbon out of the atmosphere and also can have a beneficial effect on the soil.

I should also mention that I saw no mention of the role of forests.

Carbon emissions and the economic crisis

Earlier this year I had speculated on the impact of the global recession on carbon emissions. The BBC has an item on this recently:

"The global recession and a range of government policies are likely to bring the biggest annual fall in the world's carbon dioxide emissions in 40 years."

Let us hope that the small respite gained will be used well before the economic recovery accelerates emissions again...

Some advice on using Power Point

Just came across an excellent and rather pointed article on the BBC site concerning the use and (often) misuse of Power Point. A couple of quotes are in order:

"If there's nothing but text on the screen, people will try to read and listen at the same time - and won't succeed in doing either very well."

"This highlights the biggest problem with slide-based presentations, which is that speakers mistakenly think that they can get far more information across than is actually possible in a presentation. At the heart of this is a widespread failure to appreciate that speaking and listening are fundamentally different from writing and reading."

"...we've known for years that audiences don't much like wordy slides and don't find them as helpful as pictorial visual aids."

Back to climate change

An article in New Scientist draws attention to the importance of methane in global warming and the fact that changes can be made faster for methane than with carbon dioxide. As a rice producing country there may be something we can do here.

The US Government has released a major new serious report on climate change which has much background information but is, of course, very focused on the US. See this article in Scientific American.

Another article in New Scientist notes recent revisions of the amount of sea level rise expected - more than predicted by the IPCC in 2007. Sea levels rose by 17cm in the 20th century. Estimates for the 21st century are now 100cm or more.

Alcohol and the drinking of it

An item on the BBC focused on a recent report on deaths and disability caused by alcohol:

"For 2004, the latest year for which comparable data are available on a global level, 3.8% of all global deaths (around 1 in 25) were attributable to alcohol."

And the problem is getting worse. According to an expert:

"We need an international framework convention for alcohol control, similar to that on tobacco, as soon as possible...".

Guyana needs to get serious about this... the recent introduction of new laws to control drinking and driving are a real step forward.