CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

[Tizer]

I'm glad Trump's Irish wall is being resisted. He thinks walls are the answer to everything. We ought to build one around him!

[Stanley]

Quite!
I saw this in PE and thought it was worth sharing.

[Tizer]

Very good!

[Stanley]

I thought so as well Tiz. The terrible truth is that it is an exact comparison.

[Tizer]

One benefit that might come out of this pandemic would be the realisation that nations need to work together and not against each other and this could then influence negotiations on tackling climate change. The pandemic is more evidence that everything now happens on a global scale, not just national. We all live in the one world and have to get used to it.

[Stanley]

I have been saying the same thing but in a different context on Politics Corner Tiz. Our air is cleaner already due to the fall in travel......

[Stanley]

I become convinced that I can detect a difference in the air quality even in Barlick. What must the effect be in large cities which regularly failed to reach guideline levels? It would be interesting to see air quality reports.

[Tizer]

Yesterday, with cloudless blue skies we saw three vapour trails over about an hour. Normally there would be about one a minute!

[Stanley]

Same here Tiz, I use Flight Tracker now that Wendy has alerted me to it and the skies are relatively empty. I suspect that the long-haul flights are mainly repatriation. Canada still seems to be operating normally and the number of private light aircraft swanning around has been quite astonishing. I wonder whether lock down will affect them?
On the whole, we are getting a bit of respite because of the decrease in activity of all kinds. I think I am right about the air being cleaner.

[Tizer]

`Climate change: 'Gob-smacking' vision for future UK transport' LINK
`People in the UK need to shift from cars to public transport to address the challenge of climate change, the government says. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said: "Public transport and active travel will be the natural first choice for our daily activities. "We will use our cars less and be able to rely on a convenient, cost-effective and coherent public transport network." Transport campaigners have been astonished by his comments. They are made in the foreword to the government’s De-Carbonising Transport consultation. The document has been quietly published without notifying the media, and the veteran cycling campaigner Roger Geffen told BBC News: "It’s absolutely amazing. "This makes Grant Shapps the first government minister in the UK to talk about traffic reduction since John Prescott tried (and failed) to achieve this aim in the late 1990s. “There are some holes in the document, but it suggests that the government really does seem to be taking climate change seriously."'...

[PanBiker]

They only need to sort the railways out and re-instate the thousands of bus routes that have been lost through more than a decade of cuts. Easy to say, a lot harder to implement. They could start by Nationalising the railways and chucking a few billion into transport systems outside of London, (not including HS2) and it might be a goer. Oh and they need to build proper cycle ways away from the main carriageways they have been doing that on continental Europe for all new road builds for decades.

Oh, and all wagons and delivery vehicles need to be electric.

[Stanley]

How does that policy square with building more roads?

[Tizer]

`Coronavirus: Lockdowns continue to suppress European pollution' LINK

[plaques]

Here's the solution and the problem in one photo.
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Sinclair c5.jpg

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Small electric cars just don't mix with the six axle juggernauts that are swamping every road in every town. Isolate these from small domestic traffic and people may think more favorably about moving to small shopping cars.

[Stanley]

I've been looking at the satellite data Tiz and it's remarkable how pollution has fallen already. Mind you I think that anyone who takes notice when they are outside doesn't need a satellite to inform them. The air is always good in Barlick but it's been even better this last coupler of weeks. Clouds and silver linings come to mind.

[Whyperion]

I am told low level Ozone increases as NOx and similar tailpipe emissions fall. I understand for health this may not be a good thing, how was it dealt with in the past - did the horse and bullock prime movers output react with Ozone and change the atmosphere benifically?

Of course if you crowd people into Public Transport inappropriately disease can spread easily without full and proper cleaning.

[Tizer]

A reminder that coronoavirus isn't the only thing needing attention...
`Climate change: US megadrought 'already under way'' LINK

[Stanley]

That doesn't make for comfortable reading does it! I think about the way the aquifers are shrinking in Australia and the phenomenon of the 'cap' that builds on the soil surface that actually makes it waterproof when irrigated with the heavily mineralised ground water. When I first went to Perth I wondered why everything in the parks looked rusty and was told it was the iron oxide in the irrigation water that was being used to allow the grass to survive.

[Tizer]

` 'Bath sponge' breakthrough could boost cleaner cars' LINK
`A new material developed, by scientists could give a significant boost to a new generation of hydrogen-powered cars. Like a bath sponge, the product is able to hold and release large quantities of the gas at lower pressure and cost. Made up of billions of tiny pores, a single gram of the new aluminium-based material has a surface area the size of a football pitch. The authors say it can store the large volume of gas needed for practical travel without needing expensive tanks..'. Abstract in Science journal

[Stanley]

The same (or very similar) technology was used in tanks of acetylene gas, once used for oxy-acetylene welding but now obsolete

[Tizer]

`Mark Carney: 'We can't self-isolate from climate change'' LINK
`The former governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has added his voice to calls for industrialised nations to invest in a greener economic recovery from the Covid-19 crisis. He shared his comments in an online discussion about climate change with the former Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull. Both called on nations to accelerate a transition to cleaner energy. The event was organised by the Policy Exchange think tank. Mr Carney said that the pandemic was "a terrible situation, but there was also a big opportunity" at the end of it.
"We have a situation with climate change which will involve every country in the world and from which we can't self-isolate," he added.

[Stanley]

Can I see a trend where the more developed countries seem to have the greatest percentage of deniers? Over reliance on technology as the saviour?

[Whyperion]

They only need to sort the railways out and re-instate the thousands of bus routes that have been lost through more than a decade of cuts. Easy to say, a lot harder to implement. They could start by Nationalising the railways and chucking a few billion into transport systems outside of London, (not including HS2) and it might be a goer. Oh and they need to build proper cycle ways away from the main carriageways they have been doing that on continental Europe for all new road builds for decades.

Oh, and all wagons and delivery vehicles need to be electric.

It has oft been said that it takes a Tory Govt to implement what one might expect to be Labour policies. I suspect Road Pricing might be introduced - it will pay off over time the massive recent borrowings, is not an increase in other taxation and the cloak of increasing cycling as a transport means ( please give one to someone and ask them to cycle from the south side of Croydon to Waterloo and see how knackered they get)

[PanBiker]

cycling as a transport means ( please give one to someone and ask them to cycle from the south side of Croydon to Waterloo and see how knackered they get)

But if they do it regularly they will get a lot fitter.

[Stanley]

Recognising the difficulties of crowded commuter transport and more importantly badly ventilated public transport, also the late improvements in air quality, there are some interesting suggestions being made about modes of transport and attitudes to commuting. Perhaps some good may come out of the present crisis.