9. In Praise of Plastics

"T'ain't What they Do (It's the Way That You Dispose of them)".......

This very poor hark back to the words of the band, Bananarama, from the 1980’s introduces us to the opportunity as well as the problem with plastics. Plastics generally get a bad press - but happily not in a recent article in the Financial Times by Sam Knight on 26/4/08. I’ve looked closely at what he said, which was very informative indeed, and taken a little of it for use in this post.

Plastics are designed to be disposable....
If you buy something expensive you generally expect it to endure and work for a long time -  it consequently is rarely made of plastics. If a plastic item goes wrong you either decide to ‘make do and mend’ or eventually replace it. Objects made from plastics are generally cheaper and will deteriorate over time (this is called ‘ageing’), but they normally do outlast the use we put them to. They are then generally disposed of - herein lies the difficulty. We are hopeless at coping with plastic waste. We have not applied anything like the same creativity we did in the design, to what we should do with them once they’re ready to be thrown away.

Glass isn’t designed to be disposable, but it is.....
The position is made even more nonsensical by our predilection for glass (see post 8). Glass is extremely heavy and requires a lot of energy to move it around the globe. In the UK plastics represent 53% of the packaging we use, but only 20% of the weight of packaging we use, transport and dispose of. Glass, on the other hand, represents 10% of the packaging we use but, at 20% of the weight, is equally burdensome on transport and disposal. Simplistically glass is five times less efficient, gram for gram, than plastics as a packaging material. Australian winemakers - the real innovators in the wine business - have worked this one out, and are now using PET bottles to export wine to the UK, as it's more economical in energy terms.

In praise of plastics again....
In the FT article the Packaging Foundation claim that ‘modern life’, for better or worse, is only possible because of the highly creative design and use of plastics - they describe it as the ‘forgotten infrastructure’. Some interesting illustrations of its wider effect are:

• Plastics packaging has enabled us to source and distribute foods from many parts of the world and keep it in good condition, thus defying the local seasons and giving enormous variety to our diet. So for example, thanks to laminated plastics packaging, fruit juice from Brazil can be kept palatable for nine months in a Tetrapak. It also enables us to buy pre-prepared meals which can be made presentable and edible in just a few minutes.


• In India, which uses much less packaging, 50% of the food in the supply chain is lost, compared to the UK’s complex supply chains which lose only 3%. All this good food going to waste is bad enough but the energy to distribute it needlessly must also be put into the emissions equation.


• The film wrapped cucumber is taken as an icon of needless packaging. The Cucumber Growers Association argue that the film, weighing in at 1.5g per item, doubles the shelf life to two weeks, and makes the product more durable in transit. So for a very small investment in plastics film we reduce waste and all its additional associated disposal and distribution costs.

Sensible disposal of plastics....
Given then that we have invented a brilliant way of reducing waste throughout the pre-sale supply chain, but acknowledging that it does cause a challenge for us to dispose of, let’s look at this from first principles. The disposal problem could be very simple if we return to the waste hierarchy:
Reduce - yes, that is a light possibility, although plastics manufacture only uses 2% of the crude oil produced. If we are talking about plastics packaging, there are good reasons for continuing to use it.
Reuse - there is little we can do to reuse plastics because of their tendency to deteriorate. Who wants a yellowing, slightly cracked PC monitor?
Recycle - this is generally very difficult because there are so many different types of plastic which are difficult to differentiate and then separate, or are tightly juxtaposed in laminates. There are over 20 different types with very specific properties. When mixed up they lose their specific functionality.
Energy recovery - has definite possibilities. At high temperatures many plastics will burn reasonably cleanly but they will produce CO2, from the carbon in them. As that carbon is derived from crude oil extracted from the subterranean sphere (see post 5), it is adding to the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and thereby contributing to climate change.
Landfill - or disposal at sea could look like the most likely option. When this occurs, there is very little nature can do with plastics, unlike vegetable waste, for example. It just remains as unbiodegradeable rubbish - unsightly and offensive on the eye. In the sea it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces as part of its natural ageing process and due to the violent movement of the sea’s surface. Eventually it looks like plankton and is ingested by marine life, where it has no nutritional value. The presence of non-biodegradable plastics in the sea has also caused quite a stir in environmental circles with the reporting of large quantities of plastics ending up in the Sub Polar North Pacific Gyre - a natural marine vortex. Not only is this unsightly and disrespectful to other creatures in the biosphere it is also a significant waste of an opportunity. These plastics have plenty of energy and chemical structure left in them - it is simply a matter of using these productively without producing greenhouse gases. We haven’t found a viable way of doing that yet.

‘Well-fill’....
This landfill conundrum is still an opportunity. Think of landfill as ‘well-fill’, or ‘mine-fill’. Let us fluidise or compress this stuff and put it away, fully acknowledged and recorded, deep down beyond any degradation agents such as light or microbes, or dissemination forces such as the wind or water. Here it can remain, immobile and inert, until perhaps 30 years when we have had time to invent the technology to make prudent use of its energy and chemical structure. When the fossil fuels begin to run out we will have a store of low grade hydrocarbon material ready to be pumped up again. There is a great symmetry to it: we extract hydrocarbon, turn it into something useful which does its job, and then return the hydrocarbon whence it came, for the next generation if they choose to use it.

Making it happen....
Assuming that we have got the design right for the post sale supply chain and then built it, we will need to get those people who are earnestly recycling in one way to do so in another. This is not easy but is an inevitable price for making an ill considered false start. But let’s face up to it, agree on the mistake and get on with it straightforwardly. There is no time to lose. The plastics wine bottle is a good example, like the cucumber, of the received wisdom being wrong. As a result populist governments enact legislation which is misguided and influence populations and major corporations like supermarkets to behave in totally counter-productive ways - this is perverse in the extreme, and extremely serious as it is leading well-meaning collective human effort in the wrong direction. The FT quotes one of the Prime Minister’s sustainability commissioners, Tim Lang, as describing the situation as a ‘mess’.

Plastics, particularly in packaging are thought of as an environmental threat - the iconic disposable carrier bag - typifies this:

• What for one person is a non-biodegradable blight on the landscape, for which legislation on their issue by supermarkets is being considered,


• For another, it is a brilliant bit of design arriving at a extremely low cost way to help customers get their purchases home in one piece and avoid waste from damage, and


• For another, like me, it is a piece of material with fossil fuel carbon sequestered away within it, which could be taken out of the biosphere.

The earlier ‘minefill’ suggestion satisfies all three points of view. Perhaps if this were viable, then the post sale supply chain needs designing with similar ingenuity as the pre-sale one. Finally people need to understand it and ‘buy into’ it, as they have done, for other domestic and commercial waste streams.

Addressing a nagging doubt....
In their praise of plastics, the FT quoted the modern lifestyle. Plastics are serving our desire for the modern lifestyle admirably and if we learn to dispose of them sensibly, what’s the problem? However, what about this modern lifestyle that we feel impelled to adopt - is it providing satisfaction and fulfilment? If we honestly ask the following questions of ourselves, what does it reveal?

• Are we really finding happiness living this modern style of life?


• Does happiness increase with increasing consumption?


• If so, if we push even harder will it get better?


• Does it matter if we deprive others elsewhere in our quest for greater happiness?


• What do others think of our enormous propensity to consume?

Amongst the people of around my age (53), I detect quite a bit of ambiguity and enquiry. On the one hand, as we have advanced in age, our careers may have made us richer, we probably possess more than our parents and can, for example, afford several foreign holidays, but on the other hand we still hark back to a less complicated, slower life, in our childhood. I, for one, am coming to see climate change as an alert, a symptom of a profound problem about ourselves. We seem not to see the big picture - where this might all rather end up. Perhaps it’s not plastics, nor cheap air travel, nor my next mobile phone that’s the actual problem, but it’s our unthinking hunger for them which is going unbridled.

As in many of these posts, when you step far enough back to see the big picture, the view changes and the solutions can seem more profound and lasting. My next post will consider some excellent and optimistic thinking from Adair Turner in the book, ‘Do Good Lives Have to Cost the Earth?’.

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8. Our Waste

Out of order.......
I've been compelled to write my next post at a different point in the intended order, both because of recent news articles and also in response to the virtual dialogue following post 7.

It is not as fully researched as I would like, so please pitch in, as always, if you see flaws.

Waste is an inevitable consequence of life. Before the industrial revolution waste was mainly bio waste and was manageable although not well managed. In other words, biologically produced waste materials could be handled by biological processes, and give or take a few urban excesses were kept in balance. Much of today's highly organised effluent processing relies upon these self same processes in sewage farms, septic tanks and digesters.

Today's challenges are very much greater for the two reasons mentioned in previous posts.
Firstly the level of activity and consumption, populations in the West, and increasingly the East, feel the need for, is increasing the level of waste they also produce. This results in, for example, at the UK domestic level in;

• less time to cook and therefore the need for pre-prepared, pre-packed, near instant meals,


• the need to be slaves to fashion and throw out perfectly functional garments or gadgets within months of purchasing them?

Secondly the global population is higher than ever before and continuing to rise very fast at 200,000 per day. These incremental new populations aspire to the needs of the established cultures and add to the demand for goods and services and their associated waste.

Waste
I am going to avoid the cliché of how many earths we would need to manage the waste stream of the world if the world consumed at the same rate as the EU?, but it is more than one. The developed world is profligate and its current habits are not sustainable. However from my blog’s perspective I’m concerned about what this is doing to the climate. The carbon cycle keeps the consideration very simple. If we consume carbon from the biosphere and process it into useful things and/or waste within the biosphere then it is neutral, as it has always been. If we dig up subterranean carbon and introduce that to the biosphere then every atom is a net increase to the biosphere. Every time each atom cycles through the carbon cycle and spends time as a greenhouse gas it is making the climate warmer. So, given the fact that we are currently still extracting carbon from the subterranean layer what is the wisest thing to do? The waste hierarchy helps, as it shows where the most benefit comes from. If we can have an effect at level 1, then it has obviates the need for work at the lower levels. There is also an article in the Financial Times (26/04/08), which placed an acute eye upon the plastics and packaging industry, and shows how they can be considered at the various parts of the hierarchy. There will be an analysis of the article in the context of the hierarchy below in my next major post. The waste hierarchy is becoming more complex as novel technologies blur the edges of neighbouring levels, but it is still a useful way of looking at waste.

The Waste Hierarchy
1. Reduction.
is probably the most fertile ground, and yet is the most difficult as waste reduction returns us to the question of what we really want and involves changing habits which are in themselves on a fast path towards ever greater excess (see post 4). For example, my children’s generation can easily become heavily influenced by ‘cheap chic’ fashion from shops like Primark and H&M which turn over ranges and ‘seasons’ remarkably rapidly. They may only wear a garment once before disposing of it. At best that garment gets reused in the UK and eventually through a ‘clothing recycling bank’ gets sent to the third world, probably whence it came, which is an irony in itself. For baby-boomers, who were brought up with post war rationing still having an effect, this is very difficult to understand and accept. The current western life is full of desire and the need for instant satisfaction – “I want it, and I want it now. If I’d wanted it yesterday, I would have told you yesterday….” Where does moderation, temperance, ‘make do and mend’ and self-sacrifice fit into this? In the words of Harold MacMillan in 1957, who was urging for restraint and common sense, “most of our people have never had it so good”. Is this not today’s problem too but magnified by another 51 years of increasing wealth, expectation and consumption? The material world has expanded enormously and made ‘once in a lifetime’ type purchases, mere commodities which get consumed and disposed of in rapid succession. This concept of succession will be referred to again in a later post. All this is fired by a national need for increased economic growth. In the book ‘Do good lives have to cost the earth?’ Adair Turner puts a strong case for a change of thinking here. Again a later post will look at my take on his very interesting thoughts. If we can’t manage to reduce our need for goods then we must drop down to reuse where the overall gain is less but the ease of implementation might be easier.

2. Reuse.
has great virtue and many of us from the UK babyboomer generation still have an instinct to use it, if we can. The clearest example of it was the pinta - a glass one pint bottle sealed with an aluminium lid containing one pint of fresh milk delivered to our doorstep from an electrically powered milk float. An unwritten rule of the dairy was that each customer left their 'empties', washed out emptied bottles, ready for collection by the milkman at the same time as he delivered. So in theory if he started his run with 1000 'pintas' he would return with 1000 'empties'. The dairies would then clean and sterilise the bottles and reuse them to distribute more pintas to peoples doorsteps, and so the cycle continued. I'm not sure what the attrition rate of bottles was, but despite there being no financial benefit to make the bottles available for reuse, most did get preserved and recycled out of a sense of duty and a desire to keep the process economical.
This process is reflected in northern Continental Europe where many carbonated drinks are bought in strong reusable bottles for which there is a significant charge made. There are both financial and legal incentives to bring the bottles back to a shop for eventual return to the bottler to reuse.
No doubt there are arguments to suggest that today's milk supply chain allows a far better, long lived product to be sold and so less milk is wasted and the consequent carbon footprint is less, and these may well be right. However it is unarguable that if we still had the pinta delivered in glass bottles it would seem ludicrous for the perfectly serviceable empties to be smashed into pieces in a bottle bank. At best, this is what we in the UK are doing with our glass containers, whether it is wine and beer bottles or jam jars. In other words we are needlessly dropping down a level in the waste hierarchy and 'recycling' glass which, with enough imagination, could be reused. A consequence of moving our waste down the waste hierarchy is that it becomes less useful, less valuable and more likely to be dumped at level 6 in the hierarchy.

3. Recycling and composting
The term for broken glass is cullet. It has virtually no utility at all except perhaps as deterrent to intruders when embedded in a cement topping to a wall. In order for it to be recycled to make it useful it has to be worked on. If ground down, it apparently can be mixed with sand, which has does a have an absurd irony to it, if you think about it. Ground glass can also be dispersed within other building materials to provide some functional advantage but this is all pretty low grade in comparison to the shiny, fully serviceable receptacle from which it was derived. To make useful glass receptacles again, the cullet has to be sorted by colour, have impurities removed, and then heated to very high temperatures to melt and remould it. This does seem absurd too. I have read at http://www.glasscullet.com/ that part of the rationale for recycling cullet (level 3) to make glass containers is that it requires less energy than producing new glass. I don't disagree with that narrow view, but is that the only alternative? Why not preserve that glass container and reuse it (level 2), and only resort to level 3 when the receptacle has lost its utility?
Returning to the pinta. Many a jam jar was 'reused' (level 2) as a receptacle to collect the aluminium caps to the milk bottles which were then ultimately recycled (level 3) back into the aluminium supply chain. The motivation for this purely financial - it was a fund-rasier for our school.
Composting, in my opinion, has been elevated above its station. Yes, it produces a useful natural fertiliser and mulch, but it also produces CO2 and some methane, which contribute to greenhouse gas emissions for relatively little gain. Energy recovery can be a better option for the biosphere if the vegetable waste does not have to be transported too far.

4. Energy recovery
This is a posh way of saying incinerate rubbish and use the heat it produces in some way. Starting at the smallest scale first: garden waste often ends up on a bonfire where it is partially burned to produce ash, half burnt wood, lots of smoke, water, CO2 and some clear space where the bonfire pile was. On an individual scale this does little harm but a community's waste disposed of in this way does a lot of harm and, more importantly for this analysis, misses a major opportunity to recover the energy provided to the biosphere by photosynthesis in the plant life being burned. If the gardener were to put a kettle on the bonfire he might eventually boil enough water to make a thirst quenching cup of tea, which would have recovered a small part of the energy locked up in the garden rubbish and avoided him boiling an electric kettle.
The real problem however is that the bonfire produces low grade heat which is very difficult to harness. There was a special design of mini-stove marketed that could recover the energy from one newspaper which would be sufficient to boil that kettle in a few minutes. This combination of good design matched with excellently prepared fuel was best described to me by an expert supplier of logs for use in Swedish wood-burning stoves. If the stove was stoked with logs which had been split and allowed to dry out completely the natural temperature of combustion was so high that they were self cleaning and the combustion so complete that a smoke flue was not required. This 'clean burning' recovers the most amount of heat possible and makes the most use of the carbon within the biomass burned. If you return to post 7, you will see that this is the near perfect means for energy recovery of biomass. It is this matching of the fuel to the method of incineration which is so importannt.
Unfortunately the incineration and energy recovery of the general waste stream is not so easy - the waste is far less well defined and contains materials which do not burn cleanly. Much is made of the threat posed by dioxins which are a very harmful byproduct, but recent technology advances are ingeniously minimising this.

5. Landfill with energy
Taking most of the general waste stream and burying it in the ground is unsightly and space intensive and is an obvious sign of man polluting the biosphere and makes landfill look 'unenvironmental'. Nonetheless microbial and chemical processes within the rubbish do eventually break much of the waste down into simpler products which eventually settle and produce a base upon which topsoil can be placed. For example a local landfill site close to us is now a park with playing fields.
From an energy point of view however, the heat released from breaking down the waste (the warmth naturally produced in a compost heap for example) is not recovered - it is effectively wasted. Of even greater significance is the by-products of this partial degradation of the waste - these are hydrocarbon gases such as methane and CO2. Methane is highly combustible and could provide plenty of energy if harnessed. This is not easy, as the gas is volatile and dilute and would escape easily - it is therefore not widely applied.
A variant of this which is far more promising is the controlled biological digestion of waste streams in purpose built self-contained units.
A further variant of this which is a hybrid with energy recovery (level 4) utilises two sequential chemical processes, pyrolysis and hydrolysis, to breakdown carboniferous material partially into higher molecular weight hydrocarbons which can substitute for gasoline - ie biofuels.

6. Landfill
If all else fails waste, as has always been the case, can be buried in the ground or dumped into water, both of which look terrible and have major negative consequences on the biosphere. Whilst I have seen how domestic waste is disposed of on the idyllic Greek island of Trizonia - simply pushed over and down a cliff eventually tumbling towards the sea only for some of it to reappear on the appropriately named 'Bottle Beach' soon after - of greater significance is the gases produced by landfill sites. These were mentioned in level 5, where at least they were captured and made use of. In a simple landfill site these will be CO2, which is a greenhouse gas, and methane which is also a greenhouse gas with 500 times the initial effect of CO2. So not only are we not using the calorific content of the methane we are wantonly allowing it to increase global warming.

In summary:

1. In considering the waste hierarchy, a focus on the framework with the carbon cycle at its centre, does provide incisive insights into how best we should manage the waste borne of ever increasing consumption.


2. The higher the level, the easier it is to practice the wise thing, if we really want to, and achieve the greatest gains. How hard do we want to do the right thing?


3. It is very tempting for us to drop down a level to make the practice easier and pass on the responsibility to someone else, but can we really continue to offset our responsibilities?


4. We have got very confused between recycling and reuse and a return to 1950's thinking may well straighten this out.


5. Energy recovery could be a highly beneficial way of reducing how much new carbon we introduce into the biosphere.
   

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7. The Carbon Cycle - how it can help our understanding

Natural CO2 emissions as part of a closed ecosystem.
The main product, along with CO2, from the right hand side of the cycle is energy. If we consider ourselves, Homo sapiens, 'being alive' means our bodies are respiring and producing energy. To do this carbohydrates are effectively being burned in a very regulated way. The energy produced keeps the body functioning, acting and moving. That's life. By living we therefore cause CO2 emissions - all six billion of us within the biosphere. The same applies to every other living being in the biosphere. CO2 emissions are therefore an inevitable consequence of life. However the carbon cycle makes good use of the CO2 as we have discussed previously and maintains an equilibrium. It has worked well as a 'closed ecosystem' - an ecosystem that can regulate itself.

Extra-ordinary emissions in an inflating closed ecosystem
The increasing activity of our increasing population is challenging this closed and self regulating equilibrium. Our population is expanding at 200,000 per day; on top of this our increasing activity requires more energy and raw material consumption per capita. Let's take this issue in two parts:

1. A human community with an increasing population can continue to grow as long as it has a food supply and has a means of dealing with its waste. (This is leaving to one side the other biological and sociological needs such as a place to breed, room to function and some form of governance.) Both of the food supply and the waste treatment require complementary communities of organisms living within the ecosystem being sufficiently active to keep the ecosystem in balance. Left to Nature, once these complementary activities fail to keep up the population growth will be restrained by starvation or pollution - both these are tough options and immensely challenging for the leaders of a human community.
   
2. Even a static human community with an increasing activity level consumes more energy and raw materials and produces more waste. In our search for ever greater well-being this is exactly what is happening in the West. Again this only remains sustainable if the complementary communities of other organisms, through the carbon cycle, can become more industrious and keep providing us with the food, raw materials and energy to give us the goods and services we desire, as well as dealing with the waste we are producing.

Faced with these two forces, increasing population and the desire for greater well-being through increased consumption, the highly resourceful human race has spent the last two centuries exploiting non-biological means to generate the energy we need - we have been digging up fossil fuels, which contain carbon from outside today's biosphere. The biosphere therefore is no longer an entirely closed system. There is carbon being introduced with no complementary process for getting it out of the system. It is introduced as dense, tangible and measurable fossil fuels but is converted into an invisible and elusive waste problem - carbon dioxide. The fact that the level of CO2 is rising in the atmosphere is clear evidence that neither we nor nature is coping with this waste stream.

What is the carbon cycle suggesting we can do?

There are four new features on the carbon cycle diagram - three sets of orange dots reflecting where the regulation of carbon consumption could be applied and a green arrow depicting a shift from the biological process to the chemical process.

1. Changing the masses.
   The upper set of orange dots on the biological and chemical processes. These represent each of the 6 billion human carbon emitters, with 200,000 more each day - from people at only subsistence living through to powerful large consumers, such as most of the western world. Pretend you are the Prime Minister. How difficult do you think it would be for you to stop emitting so much? How easy would it be to persuade your children to reduce? How easy would it be to make your friends and neighbours reduce? How easy would it be to make your constituents change their habits? How easy would it be to change the habits of your country? How easy would it be for your close allies to change? How easy would it be for your past and present enemies to go with you on an emissions reduction campaign? And how easy would it be to persuade a subsistence farmer not to have the level of well-being we have in the West? Looked at this way most people would think this approach is nearly impossible and yet this is what the West is attempting to do. I think there is a novel glimmer of hope and I will return to this in a later post.
   
2. Changing the many.
   A set of three orange dots on the chemical process. This represents the big 'institutional' consumers of fossil fuels - the utilities, heavy industry, transport and so on. At least there is a finite number of these, they are organisations, they can be spoken to, they are regulated to some extent. If there were a global need to apply restraint it would easier to achieve using this option. There is currently considerable hope for carbon dioxide capture at these points but I think there are major drawbacks and limitations for this approach but we have been investigating other ways of reducing carbon consumption and CO2 emissions in this area by looking again at the old technologies of wood gas and charcoal production. This will be dealt with in a later post.
   
3. Changing the few.
   An orange dot on the arrow depicting fossil fuel extraction from the subterranean. There are definitely a finite number of coal mines, oil-fields and gas rigs, run by a small number of energy companies and these are large and visible sites. Yes, they are powerful now, but for how long? Yes, their interests need to be respected. If you were Secretary General of the UN, with an urgent mandate to reduce emissions, where would you start - at 1,2 or 3?


4. Making the most of our emissions.
   The green arrow depicting a shift from the biological process to the chemical process. At first sight this may appear counter-intuitive - you would probably consider me mad to suggest that you should burn your compost heap rather than let it moulder away. However this choice needs looking at carefully in the context of the diagram. A well managed compost heap takes biomass and produces mulch, carbon dioxide and heat. The heat is not made use of, other than to accelerate composting, so your mulch has caused CO2 emissions. If that same biomass was naturally dried and then effectively incinerated or processed into fuel, then mankind debatably would gain more benefit from your compost.
   There are considerable efforts going into processing biomass, specifically grown for bio-fuel.
   There is less but very interesting research into how to process large scale agricultural waste biomass into fuel.
   There are also valuable initiatives to rid landfill sites of biomass. In a landfill site biomass does not produce usable compost but produces methane which is a greenhouse gas of fifty times more power than CO2.

To summarise the argument, thus far, we will return to the Framework Diagram from post 4.

The biosphere
Life on earth takes place in a delicate and isolated ecosystem called the biosphere which relies entirely upon the unique chemistry of carbon. This biosphere is no more than a film on a tiny planet and extremely delicate. It is in constant movement and supports various cyclical processes which are highly balanced and interrelated.
The carbon cycle and the energy cycle
The carbon cycle is life's provider and the framework puts a renewed understanding of the carbon cycle at its very centre. Mankind needs sources of energy to exist and to be well (well-being) In its recent proliferation and increased activity levels it has found carbon-bearing fuel outside the biosphere to meet its energy needs. In burning these fuels the carbon cycle is no longer in balance. This is leading to the biosphere increasing in overall temperature due to the greenhouse effect. By understanding the carbon cycle it is possible to evaluate which measures are likely to be the most efficacious.
Economics and Politics, Philosophy and Moral Values
The ownership of energy production bestows enormous power on the few - however this situation can be seen as potentially our saviour. The framework finally recognises that all this energy fuelled activity is dedicated to what we really want - our desires and aspirations and what we are prepared to sacrifice.

The next two posts look at some secondary threats to the carbon cycle involving oceanography, climate science and demographics. That will then complete the initial analysis and from this a framework for effective action will be proposed which will draw upon, in part, the findings we discovered along the way.

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6. The Carbon Cycle - revolutionary industry

The picture so far....
describes the biological aspects of the carbon cycle. To recap, on the right hand side of the cycle, respiration in living cells releases the energy locked up in the carbon based molecules in a regulated and measured way. One byproduct is generally CO2, in turn produced in modest, measured quantities. There is a corresponding powerful chemical process which uses carbon and generates heat and carbon dioxide. In nature it generally takes place in an uncontrolled and fairly destructive fashion in the form of forest and heathland fires. If their scale is large enough they do have a short term impact on the atmosphere both from the smoke they cause and also the CO2 they generate. The counterbalancing forces do allow balance to return eventually. However, it is Man's continuing use of fire on a massive scale which is having a lasting and worrying effect on the biosphere. This takes two main forms: deliberate deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels. Both are important but it is the latter which is of greatest relevance to this stage in our investigation of the delicate biosphere which relies on a well-balanced carbon cycle.

The Industrial Economy
The quite extraordinary arising of the industrial economy over the last two centuries in the West and its spread to the East represents the biggest threat to the balance. In very general terms it would be true to say that the nineteenth century played host to the coal-fired industrial revolution and the twentieth supplemented coal with oil and natural gas. The inconceivably large amounts of CO2this produces, in comparison to the small regulated quantities needed to sustain biological life is pushing the carbon cycle out of balance - hence the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is not only rising but accelerating - this indicates that natural counterbalancing mechanisms are not working. The challenge for the 21st century is to bring control to the increasing CO2 levels and deal with the consequences of this increase in CO2 from our past and current actions and lifestyles.

Returning to the diagram, the additional arrow on the right hand side represents these new man-made chemical combustion processes which use fossil fuels to generate the goods, services and energy we demand. It also can include the energy required to fire the conversion of limestone to quicklime to make cement for the construction industry and its by product, carbon dioxide. The key point about the diagram is that there is no complementary arrow on the left hand side.

All the biosphere has to counteract these increased emissions are two factors of limited effectiveness.

1. The first of these is increased activity on the left hand side of the cycle. It has been shown in the USA (Duke Forest Experiment) that plants can grow more quickly in the presence of higher concentrations of CO2 and thereby 'fix' more carbon. However this does not remain fixed for all that long and is likely to end up being decomposed or digested by other organisms in the biosphere. For example a conifer tree in a remote forest may grow for fifty years locking much of the carbon it fixes. However it will die and fall to the ground where it will be digested as food by insects, fungi and microorganisms which will expel the carbon as CO2 and methane.
2. The second is natural sequestration enabled by organisms using carbon to produce skeletons containing calcium carbonate. Most typically this will be marine organisms with exoskeletons or shells. For example a mollusc builds a large shell over its lifespan and despite eventually dying or getting eaten the shell will remain chemically intact and will sink to the sea bed with its load of carbon. The carbon therein effectively has been removed from the biosphere - this is sequestration.

The next post looks more closely at the implications of digging up fossil fuels from the subterranean layer.

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5. The Carbon Cycle - the three spheres

Three spheres....
This diagram is split into three sections: the subterranean, the biosphere and the atmosphere. At this stage in the explanation, we can ignore the subterranean but we will return to it. The atmosphere extends 50 miles above the earth's surface - travellers beyond that limit are described by NASA as officially astronauts! The biosphere is minute in comparison and extends about 100 metres into the atmosphere and a few metres down into the subterranean. It is like a thin film spread across the surface of the earth and is immensely complex and extremely delicate. It is in constant movement supporting life from the scale of a single celled organism to a complex creature with 30 trillion cells, immeasurable numbers of which colonise this thin space. A curious 'world order' has kept this inconceivably complex layer of life reasonably harmonious.

The role of carbon....
Absolutely intrinsic to life is the element carbon - it provides the structure and energy for virtually every living thing. For life to exist in this particular place in the universe it is the only element in the periodic table capable of doing the job.

The role of the carbon cycle....
The diagram is describing the equilibrium between atmospheric carbon dioxide and 'fixed carbon' in the biosphere - these two forms of carbon are in constant exchange. The cycle turns anticlockwise. As living beings, and occupiers of the biosphere we, along with virtually every other form of life, emit CO2 every time we breathe - this is depicted on the right handside of the diagram. CO2 remains in the atmosphere until plant life ensnares it during the process of photosynthesis, which with the aid of sunlight, chlorophyll and water, turns it into energy-rich carbohydrate and pure oxygen. The oxygen is returned to the atmosphere and the carbohydrate enters the food chain to support virtually all living beings. This is depicted by the left hand side of the diagram. As stated in an earlier post, the carbon cycle is life's provider. Not only does it provide us all with nutriment it also restore the oxygen consumed in respiration to the atmosphere - within certain limits it maintains an equilibrium. In other words if one side of the cycle produces more CO2, then the other side will be induced to work harder to restore the balance. There are also large 'sinks' by which any ups and downs on either side of the cycle will be smoothed out - in much the same way a set of shock absorbers dampen the springiness of a car's springs.

The physical effect of CO2 in the atmosphere....
Unlike nitrogen and oxygen there is relatively little CO2 in the atmosphere - only every 2500th particle in the air is a CO2 molecule, and yet it has a major effect on our existence. Without it the planet would be uninhabitably cold, and in overdose it would be impossibly hot, like Venus. It has greenhouse gas properties which allow light radiation through from the sun but absorbs and retains the 'warm' infrared radiation from the earth's surface.
When I was born in the 1950's there were even fewer CO2 molecules - about one in every 3300 particles. In the last 50 years the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by 30% and this is having many different types of impact on the biosphere. Unlike the carbon cycle most of these impacts do not have compensating counterbalances, and so the situation is tending to run out of control. The delicate biosphere is getting disrupted and could soon be beyond any possibility of self repair.

The next post will examine what is causing this rise in CO2.

(The chemists will have spotted a deliberate mistake on the slide - CxHy is not the generic formula for a carbohydrate. but bear with me, you'll see why I used it on the next post) Read more!

4. First view of my climate change framework

Going to the answer....
I was intending to get to this much later on in the series of posts. After reflecting on the initial comments where I keep promising more posts but not giving much away, I think I'm in danger of frustrating you patient readers. So here it is.

Future Posts....
I'm intending to take this down to one more level of detail over the next few weeks.

Intended way of working....
If you subscribe you will be automatically notified of each post. By the time you read the notification the original post may well have been adapted in response to early comments so do go to the site itself. By clicking on the title of each post (or its link in the table of contents on the right hand side of the home page) it will appear on a separate page with any comments flowing from underneath the main body of the post.

Your comments....
are invaluable to me at this stage - I'm simply testing out something, which I have introduced to others in private and public meetings, and may be helpful to Mankind. What I do know for certain is that it will be wrong, but with your help it may improve sufficiently to be of use. It would be most helpful to the writer and other contributors if you placed your comments under the most relevant post.

The Framework Diagram....

1. A delicate and isolated ecosystem....
   Before looking at the square, please consider the first picture on this blog, of the earth, viewed from space on the last ever Apollo Mission. It shows that in cosmological terms our earth is minute. Most life takes place on the surface of this minute orb and extends a few 100s of metres above and below its surface. This biosphere is no more than a film on a tiny planet and extremely delicate. It is in constant movement and supports various cyclical processes which are highly balanced and interrelated.
2. The carbon cycle is life's provider....
   The framework is centred on a renewed understanding of the carbon cycle, which many met at GCSE or O-level sciences. Organisms on the photosynthesis side of the carbon cycle consume CO2 and in so doing provide the living world with most of its nutriment. The living world, in turn, consumes that nutriment, during respiration, and returns the CO2 into the atmosphere. As I will demonstrate in my next, more detailed post, mankind, in its recent proliferation of the earth's surface has found carbon-bearing fuel outside the biosphere to meet its energy needs. In burning these fuels the carbon cycle is no longer in balance. This is leading to the biosphere increasing in overall temperature due to the greenhouse effect.
3. Man needs energy to survive....
   The framework acknowledges that mankind needs sources of energy to exist, but recognises that Mankind might well be profligate in their use. Using carbon bearing fossil fuels is already disrupting the balance in the biosphere upon which life depends.
4. The ownership of energy production bestows enormous power on the few....
   The framework recognises that energy production is part of very powerful economic and political system which is difficult to influence. This enormous power however is recognised by many potentially our saviour.
5. What do we really want and what is the wise thing to do...?
   The framework recognises finally that all this energy fuelled activity is dedicated to what we really want - our desires and aspirations. What those are? Whether they are sustainable? Whether they should be sustainable? are all fundamental philosophical questions for us all. These large questions can appear daunting and too big to handle, but can be made highly practical. It is only then that members of Mankind - that's you and me, can make a difference.

The next post therefore will be on the carbon cycle, the very centre of ther framework....

Read more!

3. Should we do something about Climate Change?

I'm indebted to.....
the author of http://www.wonderingmind42.com/ for this analysis which he demonstrated on white boards in his lab with a video camera running. 'CD' is climate destabilisation - he uses this term and I also tend to use it rather than 'CC' as it conveys a future picture of unpredictable results, rather than everywhere just getting a degree or two warmer but otherwise everything carrying on as normal.

The slide, when it isn't a picture on a blog, is animated and the smiley faces come in afterwards. I will therefore have to fill in the few words you can't read.

The basic argument....
goes as follows. Is mankind confronted with a looming climatic disaster of its own making or not?
The orthodox approach is to ascertain scientifically whether we are the authors of our own climate change problem or whether it is caused by Nature. Having done that we can then decide whether there is any point in changing how we are conducting ourselves right now. He says that there will always be debate about that, because science can never be 100% sure about anything and therefore we will never decide whether to act or not.

He therefore suggests looking at it from the other end of the telescope, as it were. Let's look at the possible outcomes based upon the best advice available around at the moment and perhaps that will help us decide what the best way to act would be. Hence the use of the matrix on the slide - the choices down the left hand side represent the two possible answers to the first question is CD man-made or not? The two choices across the top represent the two ways to act - do something, or do nothing.

1. Top left: We act, only to find that CD is not man-made. We've therefore wasted a lot of money and caused a lot of economic upheaval achieving nothing more than nature would have resolved - bad news.



2. Bottom left: We act, and it turns out to be a good job we did, as the problem was caused by human beings. So we did what we had to do and bequeathed a sustainable planet to our children, which is great news although it did cause a lot of economic hardship along the way.



3. Top right: Now, we decide not to act and because CD is not do with our effect on the planet we save a lot of money and the problem goes away - the perfect scenario - everyone happy, the planet safe.



4. Bottom right: We ignore the doom mongers, decide not to act and find out we're wrong. CD kicks in and we have continual climatic disasters, inundation by the sea, potable water supplies polluted causing epidemics, mass deprivation, economic turmoil etc etc.

Now imagine you were running the world....
and needed to make a decision about what to do. How would you decide? Wondering Mind42's argument follows basic risk management. How can we avoid the 'red risk' in the bottom right hand corner? There are two ways: one is a bet against unknown odds, and the other is a near certainty.

• the former is to put your faith in the judgement of some of the scientists and do nothing.



• the latter is to decide to take action and thereby keep out of the right hand column. Yes it will be painful but avoids the ultimate pain. of the bottom right corner.

Most people....
I've spoken to would act - wouldn't you? Wondering Mind42 then goes on to cite recent opinion from eminent scientific bodies which is tending to the view that CD is man-made. So the odds of being caught out by taking the right hand column are increasing. If anything the political debate, thanks to Al Gore and others, is virtually won. Wondering Mind42 then expresses considerable optimism that Mankind's creativity will find a solution, but he does not give any. Herein lies the next problem area - deciding what to do. The framework, which I keep referring to has helped several of us come to an appreciation of some approaches that are likely to be most efficacious, and certainly some current practices which when scrutinised carefully seem worse than useless. I mean that seriously - to make people feel good, that they are making a real difference to the environment / CC by throwing and smashing perfectly good glass bottles into a bottlebank is worse than useless. There will be a post on the waste hierachy in due course. However there are a few steps I'd like to take with you before building up the framework.

Look out for the next post which describes the current big picture.........

Read more!

2. A brief history - through my eyes.

This is a sporadic history....
of the last two years which started considering 'global warming' at quite a challenging time. There seemed little consensus on whether there was even a problem.
On the one hand, those who believed there was looked like amateur doom mongers and many scientists were sceptical and dismissive. On the other hand, politicians at all levels of government were 'going green' but this was not in specific response to global warming which, at that stage, was a relatively new thing. It was more a result of a vociferous and longstanding general environmental lobby.

The initial step.....
was quite daunting. I could not answer simple questions like:

• what do we mean by a global climate?
• what do we mean by it changing?
• how could we measure any such change?

I needed help. I was very fortunate in having many acquaintances who could provide some pointers and we happened to be on a week long philosophical retreat together in May 2006. Most of what will follow in subsequent blogs will still be based upon those initial discussions and suggested lines of enquiry. The most compelling outcome of this was that Man had to stop digging up fossil fuels - not before they ran out - but before we seriously disturbed the small and delicate levels of CO2 and other more powerful greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Even my O-level understanding of the carbon cycle made this clear to us. This did not appear to be clearly enunciated in the world at the time. You will hear a lot more from me on the difference between 'emissions' and 'extraction' (also described as 'stop digging') in later posts. This is a most unpalatable message to the economic world and therefore probably impossible, which continued to niggle for me. Some recent ideas of ours have suggested a new angle on this, which I'll be posting up in due course.

And subsequently....
as time has gone by, the disciplines listed on the left hand side of the slide have needed to be employed.

First early conclusion....
well, if there is a man-made problem, then there sure is no effective global leadership on it. Everyone's opinion is as god(sic) as the next. In June 2006 I confronted a 'Friends of the Earth' rep on my doorstep on whether they had a consolidated view on what the truth of the matter was. In the end he resorted to saying that as long as we all do something, it's better than nothing - I was shocked. I immediately visited their web-site and then felt very sorry for the guy - there was no definition of the problem, let alone a coherent response. I also concluded that my early curiosity was not going to be easily satisfied and I had better carry on.

Second conclusion....
By August 2006, I had blagged my way into speaking on Climate Change to a group of amateur economists from across the globe on a similar retreat, to the one I was on in May. I hastily put together a presentation and laced it with pictures of polar bears, melting icebergs and ice retreat. Whilst some of the ideas were reasonable to the audience I got marmolised for using 'factoids' and having a very blinkered understanding of deforestation in Africa and Brazil. I concluded that I had to be far more careful to work from original thought and research each point as best I could. This was an important lesson to learn, for which I remain grateful, as I do to all the people I pepper questions at.

The more recent history....
Al Gore's film (and book, which I bought the day after), "An Inconvenient Truth", Sarah and I saw early, before most of our friends in Autumn of 2006. I was struck by the persuasiveness of his brilliant displays and oratory and thought that this was a powerful force for good.
On getting the book I was disappointed by the paucity of ideas about how to solve the problems so beautifully depicted. Less than 10% of the pages at the back of the book were devoted to a mish mash of ideas, very much like the aforementioned Friends of the Earth. Sorry, Mr Gore, but the other 90% has done a great job in waking up the world to the problem.

James Lovelock and Gaia....
In January 2007 we heard James Lovelock being questioned by Claire Gilbert, and old acquaintance and leading thinker in the Church of England, in St Paul's Cathedral. My main memory of that occasion was his reluctant acceptance that nuclear power was a large part of the solution, being the lesser of two evils. I was both depressed and excited. A partial solution, at best, from a combination of a wise man and the Church - was this the best they could come up with?

More confusion....
Channel 4's programme in Spring 2007 which persuaded a large number of my associates that the crisis was not man-made and therefore was little effect from moderating our behaviour on the planet. Note to ed: I must watch my DVD of this.

Stern words....
for the world from Sir Nicholas Stern in his Stern Review in Summer 2007. He basically gave credence to the widening view that climate change (CC from now onwards) was inevitable and would have large scale consequences, but that if we acted now its cost to the global economy seemed quite palatable in comparison to the predictions of even quite optimistic models.

Next speaking occasion....
was lined up for August 2007 in London. I had to hedge my bets on whether Al Gore was right and C4 were wrong by ignoring the question and stating in my advertising that 'irrespective of whether it was a man-made phenomenon or not was there not an opportunity for mankind?' That, along with the 'Kyoto Protocol' being effectively dead meant there was merit in starting to look at what might both make mankind happier and make it less ignorant of the effect of its excesses. The 'stop digging' message also seemed to be quite a good wake up call for the audience.

A sagacious science teacher in the American mid-west....
in October 2007 solved the "is it; isn't it" debate for me and many others, as to whether climate change is the result of man-made action or not. He put a 'global risk management hat' on and quickly concluded that the only reasonable course was to stop debating whether the cause of CC was Man or not and to act decisively to mitigate its effects. This was the best use of a 'Boston Matrix' I had ever seen. You'll find his arguments beautifully explained at http://www.wonderingmind42.com/. I will be devoting a post on this shortly.

Still no real solutions though....
despite the Bali roadmap and Al Gore receiving his Nobel Prize in December 2007. Our work on the framework was developing it further and it is around Feb 2008 that some of the disciplines on the left hand side of the screen started to become important. That's about it for now on this post.

I do look forward to your comments.

Oh - and those curious icons across the top of the slide? - there is one of those for each big topic to follow in subsequent posts.

And so to my next post, which will be shorter, I promise...............................................

Read more!

1. If climate change is caused by human activity, then what?

The human race now needs to do something(s) significant – actions that will really make a difference on the global scale.

Watching the debate over the last two years move the general consensus from 'sceptical about ‘Global Warming’' being a manmade phenomenon to being 'fairly convinced' has been most interesting. You can see all the sources of influence, listed below, at play. However this was bipolar debate – yes or no. And in my and other peoples' opinions, if treated as a risk management issue it is a ‘no brainer’ – we have to act even though it is the lesser of two evils – to act and bear the cost of acting, or not to act and face the risk of human and global disaster.


The imperatives now are:

• to act quickly
  
• those actions have to be effective


• the global population has to execute them willingly


• we have to be right first time – we can only run this experiment once as we are in the test-tube.

The really big questions now are:

What actions and behaviour changes would make a significant difference and be achievable?

Human creativity can provide a virtually infinite number of ideas and opinions on this’ what?’. However which are the winners likely to be - the most efficacious, or the most popular? It requires wisdom to make the right choices, particularly if they are tough choices – I think of the Solomon story. My thesis is that mankind does not seem to have a framework by which to judge the options. I have investigated some of the most popular according to my framework and I'm left confounded as to their efficacy. The framework will start to be described in my next post.

How would the actions be executed willingly?
Anyone with major influence can achieve a lot by getting people to work in a concerted way. The question is who or what brings about that unity around a cause.

• Corporates directly control the conduct of their operations


• NGOs can influence and in some cases (the UN) mandate.


• Democratic governments can mandate changes in behaviour where it is vote winner – they have to gain political consensus where it might not be a vote winner


• Local government can encourage us to do things


• Individuals when united by a commonly held cause can achieve the most but that is difficult to attain. This likely to be the subject of a later post from me, but please say what you want to say now.

Read more!