Copenhagen Can Open New Era of Clean and Economical Energies

Copenhagen Can Open New Era of Clean and Economical Energies by Klaus H Hemsath

Highly paid government bureaucrats will be descending in masses on Copenhagen in December of 2009. They all have instructions to defend the status quo and make sure that the world will follow the outdated and ineffective recommendations and provisions of the ill conceived Kyoto Protocol.

Only a few, if any, officials have any concept of the coming horrors that continuing overheating of our planet has in store for its trusting citizens.

For two centuries, coal has powered the rapid industrialization of many countries. These countries are enjoying the countless benefits and the increased wealth that advanced industrialization has bestowed on them.

Since the midst of the twentieth century, a potentially fatal flaw of accelerating industrialization has become visible. Planet Earth is heating up. This phenomenon was barely visible early on, but is now escalating at a quickening pace.

Physicists can easily explain this rather sudden rise in global temperatures. Oceans and lands were capable to originally absorb huge amounts of heat and carbon dioxide with only minor indications of global warming and acidification of surface waters.

This period is ending while combustion of fossil fuels is increasing at continuously accelerating rates, caused by the explosive growth of energy consumption across the world.

China has become the most prolific user of coal for generating electricity and for supplying energy to its extremely rapid and successful industrialization efforts. This growth will accelerate further. Other countries are following the example of China and are beginning to produce and import more and more energy for powering their quickly growing economies.

Europe and Japan have been trying to reduce energy use and limit greenhouse gas emissions. Such efforts are rarely successful in creating wealth and economic growth. Adhering to Kyoto Protocol provisions seldom makes economic sense.

Several countries may continue to follow Kyoto concepts. Others like the BRIC countries, made up of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, will be better off to abandon Kyoto and continue with their intensifying energy utilization. Following the axiom of "do as they do, not as they say", these countries are entitled to imitate highly industrialized and wealthier nations.

But will such advice not accelerate global warming even further? Yes it will. However, as long as the major industrial countries cannot find the will to stop fossil fuel burning altogether, it is hypocritical to prevent less fortunate countries from joining the establishment.

Instead, the most prosperous countries can and must be the first to establish a concept and a plan for saving Earth from continuous warming. World energy supplies must be changed completely from fossil fuels to renewable and economical energy sources. Otherwise, the Earth will overheat severely long before the end of the twenty first century.

The consequences of severe overheating will be devastating. Climates will change and will spawn more violent windstorms, more destructive floods, and more severe droughts. Most dangerous and most damaging will be the indefensible rise of sea levels. Low-lying coastal lands will be submerged, precious and irreplaceable infrastructures will disappear, and large populations will have to flee to higher grounds.

Does the world really have to watch helplessly as it is being destroyed by the greed and stupidity of its most powerful nations, its clueless corporations, and its powerless governments?

The world's most dominant economies, the USA and the European Union, have all the resources, the infrastructures, and the skilled workforces that must be mobilized to improve and deploy those advanced energy supply technologies, which can still rescue our Earth. A few, critical technologies are still missing but can be fully developed within one single decade.

World economies can continue their essential growth into the next century only, if the US and the EU decide to act decisively and soon.

It will be scandalous, shameful, and contemptible if the two, industrially most advanced, and wealthiest superpowers will wait for China to snatch the world from otherwise inevitable economic collapse.

It will be a moral disaster if the Earth's wealthiest nations cannot agree to leave a better world for future generations!



Dr. Hemsath's books, Climate Change-Gold Rush or Disaster? and Clean Energy For Centuries, offer a comprehensive plan for saving Earth from overheating. He is now writing a follow-on book, Petroleum Substitutes From Biomass. For fifty years he has worked on advanced energy technologies as scientist, engineer, inventor, Corporate R&D Executive, CEO, entrepreneur, and author. He holds more than 60 US Patents. Go to http://www.thermalexpert.com


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Why worrying about climate change is missing the point

Why worrying about climate change is missing the point by Sam Deane

Are you worrying about climate change and oil? The media would have us believe we are nearly bankrupt in both areas. It's no surprise if you are worrying. Every news paper and television news program is portraying imminent disaster.

A long time ago, media and sales agencies came to the conclusion that 'fear aids the sale'. There can be no better way to have people rush to the shop than to fill them with fear of what might happen if they don't buy that product today. Scarcity is commonly known to be one of the best sales aids. Buy it before we take it away. Get it now before it all runs out.

Yes, but is it true? Are we undergoing a major climate change? True, false or don't you know, are we are running out of traditional fossil fuels like petrol and gas?

Well what is true is that more than 95 percent of all scientists who have looked at this issue have concluded that, yes, we are in the process of significant climate change. If you watch Al Gore's harrowing film An Inconvenient Truth, you will no doubt recall the shocking statistics of just how far into the process of climate change we actually are.

It is of little consequence to me whether the climate change is man made or not. What is important is to know that if we reduce the amount of carbon dioxide we emit into our environment, we will reduce the effect. What we know is that, by using renewable energy sources like solar power, wind power, hydroelectric power, biomass and the like, we will radically reduce the level these emissions.

What is also the case, according those who study these things, is that our supply of petrol is finite and as such, it is running out. The popular view is that we are talking a 50 year maximum. Of itself, that is not a problem. The problem lies in the belief that we are not prepared for this. We are concerned that we do not have the infrastructure to energize the modern world without the input from the oil industry.

However, developments are happening all the time in and around the new renewable energy industries. For example, in the car industry, those with 'cleaner' credentials are the ones who are staying in profit, while the older gas guzzlers are losing money badly. This is not some weird coincidence. The automobile industry as a whole is moving towards a new green agenda. Electric cars are not a thing of the future. They are with us now!

With the election of Barack Obama, you could say that this is also the case with politics. People are turning to cleaner options as their solution. Undoubtedly, solar power is one essential part of this solution.

Now the question is, 'Should we be worried about the future?' 'Will we get by without traditional fossil fuels?' Our answer at Go Solar Power For Homes Dot Com is simple. We have enough resources to get through this, to turn it around, to set up a world for everyone with no one left out, and we don't have to strangle the life out of the planet to do it.

Still sceptical? That's fine but please consider the following:

What if we were to give one percent of our income towards preventing further climate change?

Using figures from the UK, according to government statistics at statistics.gov.uk, the average wage in the UK for full time employees per week is £479. So, the average annual wage in the UK works out at £22,992.

One percent of £22,992 is £229.92 which works out to £4.79 per week.

So, investing one percent of earnings towards stopping climate change would cost the average person in the UK £4.79 per week, or £19.16 a month (the equivalent of £229.92 per year).

Now, this is where it starts to get interesting.

Again according to official statistics (this time from www.cia.gov, figures for July 2007), the UK has a population of 60,776,238.

If everyone were to invest one percent of our earnings towards addressing the issues relating to climate change, we would raise roughly £291 million per week. Now, let's take one third out to account for old age pensioners and children and we are still left with £194million per week.

This is an amazing figure and could really help tackle climate change. Investing £20,000 in wind or solar power for homes would maybe not take the average home completely off-grid, but it would certainly massively reduce our use of traditional fossil fuels.

So, if we were to invest that amount per home, we could give roughly 10,000 homes per week wind or solar power. Within a very short time, we could have the whole country fully invested in renewable sustainable clean energy.

Persuading industry of the need to use renewables will always boil down to finance. Can we provide insustry with enough incentives to go green? Well, all the signs are that we already are doing so. We talked about the automobile industry earlier. the whole industry has recognized that it is 'Adapt or die', and they are acting accordingly, investing in new cleaner technologies.

If we keep going in the direction we are heading we will get to our chosen destination. So, now that we have established the fact that we could easily resolve the climate change issue using solar power and other renewable energy sources, here comes the kicker.

Would you be willing to pay one percent of your income (on average roughly £4.79 per week) to help tackle climate change?

Individually, you may say 'Yes', but what about everyone else living in your street? ... in your village, town or city? If we can enrol everyone into this, then we would have no problem left to solve. However, there is a significant number of people who would be reluctant to do that, saying it is a government tax and they object to taxes as a knee jerk reaction.

So now you can see we have a different problem from the one we started out with.

Can we get by? With just one percent of earnings, we could easily get by. That is not in question. There is no need to worry about climate change. We can easily resolve it.

Do we have the will to resolve it? That is the question.



As a travel magazine editor and publisher, a life coach and trainer, Sam Deane has seen the world. Nowadays, he dedicates most of his free time to maintaining the well-being of this precious, miraculous planet on which we live. Sam runs an important and lively blog about solar power. http://www.gosolarpowerforhomes.com

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A-Z of Global Warming: Biofuels

A-Z of Global Warming: Biofuels by Simon Rosser

This second article from The A-Z of Global Warming deals with biofuels, which will undoubtedly become a phrase that will be heard a lot more often over the coming years, but what are they?, where do they come from?, and what is their significance in relation to global warming?

Biofuels can be described as any fuel that is derived from biomass ie living organisms or their metabolic by-products. For example, crops such as corn and dung from living animals

Although there is still somewhat of a scientific debate going on over the advantages of biofuels, it is thought that the main advantage over fossil fuels (coal,oil and gas), is that the burning of biofuels to release energy does not cause a net increase of CO2 levels in the atmosphere. This is because the source of the biofuel, crops for example, have already taken a corresponding amount of CO2 out from the atmosphere during their growth cycle when they photosynthesise. When this occurs, plants/crops release oxygen and retain the carbon to use as energy.

The carbon is then released when the crop is eventually burnt in order to release its energy. As long as new crops are planted in place of the ones that are burnt, there will be no overall increase in the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere. So, whilst crop based biofuels don't reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, they are thought to be more or less carbon neutral.

The difference with fossil fuel deposits such as coal is that the coal deposits have been formed in the earth over millions of years and are therefore considered to be energy deposits rather than part of the energy cycle. The burning of fossil fuels on a scale required to satisfy mankind's energy needs, over a relatively short period of time, hundreds of years as opposed to the millions of years it has taken the deposits to form, means that the burning of such fuels, adds considerably to the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. This in turn adds to the greenhouse gases already present in our atmosphere, and contributes to the warming of the Earth's climate.

Forms of biofuel

Biofuels can either be in solid form or liquid form.

Solid biofuels such as wood or even manure (dried cow dung) can be burnt to heat water which can then be used to power a turbine, which can generate electricity. Liquid biofuels, such as ethanol can be used as a substitute or be mixed with traditional fuels in automobiles.

Biofuel uses

The major benefit however probably comes from liquid biofuel, for the creation of Ethanol or biodiesel. Ethanol, a substitute for fossil fuel based petrol, and biodiesel, which is just diesel made with crops in place of oil which is a replacement for traditional diesel fuel in diesel motor vehicles. Whilst diesel cars are more fuel efficient than their petrol counterparts, biodiesel vehicles produce even less carbon dioxide. Neither are as efficient however as vehicles running on mostly ethanol-based fuels.

To run on fuel which has a greater than 10% mix of ethanol however, vehicles need a flexi-fuel modified engine.

The USA grows mainly corn crop, which can be converted to ethanol. In Brazil sugar cane is grown, and in the UK rapeseed is used.

Brazil is at the forefront of biofuel use, using it as a fuel in automobiles which have the flex-fuel engines needed to be able to run on pure ethanol.

Environmentally friendly or not?

Despite the benefits of using biofuels, there is a drawback however, which is the amount of land required to grow the crops necessary for the biofuel in the first place. There are already concerns that vast tracts of tropical rainforest like the Amazon in Brazil, are being cleared to plant sugar cane and other crops for biofuel production. Another problem is the cost of corn, an essential ingredient for basic food is also escalating causing further problems as the cost of certain products become unaffordable to many. It would clearly be counter productive if such a situation were to develop where the CO2 absorbing tropical rainforests were being destroyed to plant crops to turn into environmentally friendly biofuels!

There is also a concern that as a by-product of growing the corn or other crop used for biofuel production environmental damage is caused by the fossil fuelled tractors, processes, fertilisers etc used in the growing process, meaning that they are not truly carbon neutral at all.

Recent research indicates that prairie grasses actually take out more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during their growth than they emit when being converted to biofuel, meaning that they may well be truly carbon neutral.

It would seem more research is needed into biofuel production and use, but if grown responsibly, i.e not on land cleared of rainforest, a benefit may well be had for the environment by their use.


Copyright (c) 2008 Simon Rosser



A lawyer by profession,I felt inspired to write a book called The A-Z of Global Warming, published in May 2008, after viewing Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth in Nov 2006. Based on the most upto date scientific information, this Biofuel extract gives a flavour of the books content. To see unique colour illustrations from the book on various gift items, please visit the following link - http://www.cafepress.com/globalwarmin


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