The Steps not Taken to Combat Global Warming
These days I'm more and more amazed at how the increasing alarming global warming rhetoric is not matched by a willingness to do the necessary thing to actually tackle the problem. And I'm not even talking about the difficult political questions of how massively lower our energy consumption - here I mean the research that we need to cope with Global Warming that is not funded because of ignorance or ideology. Let me elaborate the three most striking examples:
Nuclear Energy (from Thorium): Humankind's unprecedented wealth largely hinges on the availability of very cheap energy and - consequently - it seems tremendously naive to assume that a large scale revamping of our entire energy infrastructure around often volatile and more expensive renewable energy sources will be possible without making us all a lot poorer (shaking the very foundations of our societies in the process). For this reason it seems awfully negligent to pursue nuclear energy only half heartedly or (as in Germany) not at all - afterall nuclear energy seems to be the one CO2 free energy source that requires the least adoption of our entire infrastructure (except CO2 storage, perhaps). Particular puzzling is the little investment and attention that nuclear energy from Thorium is seeing, since even though it would require a very large initial investment, it offers a chance for nuclear energy without the risk or a catastrophic meltdown, the prolifiration of nuclear weapons, the problem of decreasing Uranium reserves and nuclear waste thats toxic for millions of years (almost all trash from Thorium reactors would decay within a few hundred years). Its really a technology that could be a tremendous help for the years to come - but you don't hear about it. You can learn more about energy from Thorium from the TechTalk below:
Geoengineering: Many ambitious plans for curbing greenhouse gas emissions only slightly slow down the increase in global CO2 concentrations - and even these plans are enacted only very slowly or not at all. And even a radical cut in CO2 emission will not lower CO2 concentrations - these will only come down over a long period of time. In short: cutting emission (while indispensable) offers no way to quickly combat Global Warming or its effects. Now this is a big problem: we are already seeing the ice caps melting faster than expected and it may yet turn out that Global Warming will cause a global emergency of tremendous proportions (even while we work to cut emissions). Or - even worse - that there really is a climate tipping point where increasing global temperature becomes a self-reinforcing process. And again: cutting emissions offers no way to quickly do anything about it. However, there are really good arguments that geoengineering (such as sulfur seeding in the stratosphere) could quickly, cheaply and effectively lower the temperature in such an emergency. There are also many problems with this specific proposal and geoengineering in general - but it seems downright stupid to not at least massively invest in exploring and understanding these methods and their drawbacks! Below I've embedded a great TED talk on this topic - should you be interested in learning more.
Global Carbon Accounting: Amazingly there is no real global network to measure CO2 emissions and - as a direct consequence - our carbon lifecycle models cannot explain our observations: roughly 20% of the CO2 created by humans is simply not accounted for, we simply don't know where its going. Now there have been attempts to somewhat close this gap by sending a carbon measuring satellite into the orbit but sadly, it just failed to reach the orbit. Luckily the Japanese Ibuki satellite launched at the end of January may also fill this role. These measurements from space are not nearly as precise as those using sensor stations at the ground but at least - for the first time - we may get a really global picture. There is a lot more on this problem in the TechTalk embedded below (the measuring problem is discussed explicitly around minute 15; the satellite he's talking about is the one that crashed):
Nuclear Energy (from Thorium): Humankind's unprecedented wealth largely hinges on the availability of very cheap energy and - consequently - it seems tremendously naive to assume that a large scale revamping of our entire energy infrastructure around often volatile and more expensive renewable energy sources will be possible without making us all a lot poorer (shaking the very foundations of our societies in the process). For this reason it seems awfully negligent to pursue nuclear energy only half heartedly or (as in Germany) not at all - afterall nuclear energy seems to be the one CO2 free energy source that requires the least adoption of our entire infrastructure (except CO2 storage, perhaps). Particular puzzling is the little investment and attention that nuclear energy from Thorium is seeing, since even though it would require a very large initial investment, it offers a chance for nuclear energy without the risk or a catastrophic meltdown, the prolifiration of nuclear weapons, the problem of decreasing Uranium reserves and nuclear waste thats toxic for millions of years (almost all trash from Thorium reactors would decay within a few hundred years). Its really a technology that could be a tremendous help for the years to come - but you don't hear about it. You can learn more about energy from Thorium from the TechTalk below:
Geoengineering: Many ambitious plans for curbing greenhouse gas emissions only slightly slow down the increase in global CO2 concentrations - and even these plans are enacted only very slowly or not at all. And even a radical cut in CO2 emission will not lower CO2 concentrations - these will only come down over a long period of time. In short: cutting emission (while indispensable) offers no way to quickly combat Global Warming or its effects. Now this is a big problem: we are already seeing the ice caps melting faster than expected and it may yet turn out that Global Warming will cause a global emergency of tremendous proportions (even while we work to cut emissions). Or - even worse - that there really is a climate tipping point where increasing global temperature becomes a self-reinforcing process. And again: cutting emissions offers no way to quickly do anything about it. However, there are really good arguments that geoengineering (such as sulfur seeding in the stratosphere) could quickly, cheaply and effectively lower the temperature in such an emergency. There are also many problems with this specific proposal and geoengineering in general - but it seems downright stupid to not at least massively invest in exploring and understanding these methods and their drawbacks! Below I've embedded a great TED talk on this topic - should you be interested in learning more.
Global Carbon Accounting: Amazingly there is no real global network to measure CO2 emissions and - as a direct consequence - our carbon lifecycle models cannot explain our observations: roughly 20% of the CO2 created by humans is simply not accounted for, we simply don't know where its going. Now there have been attempts to somewhat close this gap by sending a carbon measuring satellite into the orbit but sadly, it just failed to reach the orbit. Luckily the Japanese Ibuki satellite launched at the end of January may also fill this role. These measurements from space are not nearly as precise as those using sensor stations at the ground but at least - for the first time - we may get a really global picture. There is a lot more on this problem in the TechTalk embedded below (the measuring problem is discussed explicitly around minute 15; the satellite he's talking about is the one that crashed):
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