400 Parts Per Million and Rising

Those who measure the atmospheric carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa have recorded in March 2013 a monthly average concentration of 397.34 parts per million compared with  394.45 ppm which was recorded in March 2012.  The April figures are not yet our but in May the average concentration exceeded 400 ppm, which level of concentration the earth has not experienced for more than 5 million years. It is, in my view, certain that the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration will average more than 400 ppm by the end of this year.

We are, as humans, moving into a new place.

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/#mlo

Fracking Disappointments in Poland

In the United States of America and Canada fracking shale for natural gas has proved a profitable enterprise. In some parts of the US the price of natural gas has dropped significantly as a result of gas “fracked” and as a consequence of burning natural gas instead of oil or coal, the USA has emitted less carbon dioxide. This raised hope that fracking would produce the same results in Europe as it did in the USA and one of the best possibilities for fracking was in the shale deposits of Poland.

Acidification of colder sea water

From alkaline to acid is a natural chemical range; we can measure acidity and alkalinity and do so for many purposes, ranging from medicine to cosmetics, from food to solar water heating exchange fluids. We live in and environment and eat and drink in an environment where the acidity or the alkalinity of everything we contact has to be within a certain pH range to be safe for us to  eat it or touch it or live in it.

Emissions Trading – a triumph of hope over reality

The European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme was doomed from the start. I have always held that you cannot use the devices of the casino to reduce emissions. You can tax emissions, making them more costly to produce and creating an incentive to encourage ways of using clean renewable emissions, but to set up a system where emission producers can speculate on the price of carbon dioxide, which is a commodity that no one wants and no one can use, as a way of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, will make no difference to the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that are produced.

We shall force the future generations to make sacrifices for us…

As the United Kingdom and EDF are working out the final terms of the long term contract that EDF requires before it builds a nuclear power plant in Hinckley Point in Somerset, Tokyo Electric Power Company announced that the electricity supply to the cooling system at the damaged Fukushima power plant had failed for four spent reactor ponds at three reactors. Apparently a rat had bitten through the electrical supply shutting down some of the cooling systems.

Consumptions Devoutly to be Wished

The European Union is proposing regulations which will make cars much more efficient in their use of fuel. It is thought by research that if the average car consumption was 95g per kilometre of fuel, which is nearly 69 miles per imperial gallon, then consumers would save about a quarter of the money they spend in fuel. The cost of the changes that will make cars use less fuel will be recovered in three years of average driving.

The Plight of the Bumble Bee

When Arthur Conan Doyle retired Sherlock Holmes for the last time, he had the fictional detective spending his retirement keeping bees. It is, like coarse fishing, a most innocent occupation. Bees live in hives and serve for humans two purposes. They product honey, and everyone needs a little honey in their lives, and they pollenate plants.

Chris Huhne sowed the seeds of his own destruction

Almost no criminal commits a crime thinking that he or she would be caught. If one was to stop and imagine the certainty of being caught and consequences of being caught and punished for a crime before it is committed then I imagine there would be very little crime. Crime is encouraged by the lack of certainty of being caught.

Occam’s Razor Rules

It is snowing in London this morning and there is a bitter wind, more suited to January than March. Our economy is also cold and bitter. We cannot change the weather, although in the long term we can and will change the climate, whether we want to or not and whether we believe it or not. We can change the economy, although the way to change it into something that is more benign and brings more prosperity is not clear. As with the environment, politics interferes with doing what is right for the economy.

Drawing the Short Straw

If you look at a map of the world between Greenland and the Canadian and Alaskan mainland are tens of thousands of islands that form an archipelago, a cluster of islands mostly uninhabited except by seals, polar bears and wolves. Much of the land is covered with ice, permanent glaciers which as all glaciers do, move and flow although these glaciers tend to flow in many directions rather than in a single direction.  Although there have been many studies of Arctic sea ice cover until recently not much work had been done to understand what is happening to the glaciers on the Canadian Archipelago.