The United Kingdom’s economic stimulus ignores green energy

The penny is beginning to drop. The United Kingdom is not a powerhouse of green renewable energy; it does not lead the world in renewables, in fact it spends less on renewables per capita than virtually any other developed nation. Ignore the spin about the Climate Change Act – the government just does not understand the danger of climate change and energy security; if it did it would act very differently.

The latest UK greenhouse gas emission statistics

The United Kingdom Government has published its provisional estimates for greenhouse gas emissions in 2007. There are six greenhouse gases recognised by the Kyoto Protocol and these are the only ones to be counted, leaving the more recently discovered gases which have a greenhouse effect uncounted in the government estimates.

Visions of the past future in the present

Fifty years ago I used to read in comics and in books about visions of the future. Some visions frightened me; some could foresee a totalitarian control of people’s lives in western democracies where individualism and free though were sniffed out by the thought police, or books which had the wrong kind of writing were burned by the fire brigade and where all animals were equal but some, inevitably, were more equal than others.

Is opposing wind farms socially unacceptable?

In a curiously ill considered comment, the United Kingdom’s Minister for Energy and Climate Change suggested this week that opposing wind farms should be “socially taboo”. Mr Miliband has the wrong end of the stick. If he wishes to suggest climate changing things that should be socially taboo there are many of them which should rank well before opposing wind farms.

Filling the seas with iron

Oil that we find deep in the ground was laid down millions of years ago (it is thought by most geologists) by organic material, particularly algae and zooplankton which died and fell to the bottom of the sea. There over long periods of time the organic material was compressed and heated causing it to form into a waxy mud, and then with more heat the waxy mud turned to gas and oil.

Solar farms in the wilderness

California is a sunny place and the State has now decreed that by next year 20% of the energy used by the State must come from renewable sources. In the case of all such laws, the devil will be in the detail, but you cannot say that Mr Schwarzenegger is ignoring the imperative of climate change; he hopes for California to provide one third of its energy from renewables by 2020; again the devil will be in the detail.

Cold fusion

A few years ago I, with others, was invited to view an experiment that had been set up in a London hotel. The purpose of the invitation was to see whether I would be interested in investing in further research that the inventors thought that the results of the experiment justified.

Oh, no, yet another greenhouse gas!

Sulphuryl fluoride, also known as sulfuryl fluoride has been identified as another greenhouse gas by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The chemical is used in gaseous form for fumigation.

Technical improvements in solar systems

Modern solar systems are very different from those designed twenty or thirty years ago. The older systems absorb as much heat from light as modern systems. That will not change unless the laws of physics change because light energy at the surface of the earth has a finite amount of energy in a given area and solar systems absorb virtually all of it. New technology in solar systems has therefore had to concentrate upon other areas of the system’s performance.

Earth day and all the other days

I am giving you plenty of notice to prepare for Earth Day. It is a bit like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day and the rest except that Earth Day does not swell the coffers of the greetings card industry. In fact, you have the luxury of being able to celebrate two different Earth Days, no wait, not two but three separate Earth Days.