Has Copenhagen missed the point?
14 December 2009
Not the city, but the summit. Should the focus be on replacing carbon emissions rather than the unrealistic drive to simply reduce them.
There have been a few voices raised recently doubting the validity of global warming claims. In the past these doubts have typically been put forward by those with a vested interest – oil companies and oil producing nations, car manufacturers, scientists with egos that can only be satisfied by publicity etc. The ’corporates’ in general seem to have backed off from this stance as the scientific evidence makes it unsustainable, but it doesn’t stop a few rogue voices shouting their defiance whenever anyone will listen. And during the Copenhagen summit on climate change there are plenty of people willing to listen – if everyone agreed it would make for very dull news coverage.
But my take on the situation is that it ultimately should not matter who is right or wrong as long as we all act logically now – which of course we won’t!
That global warming is happening is indisputable and its consequences open to debate, but the most likely effects appear to be that the ice caps will melt, sea levels will rise causing flooding and displacement of populations in low lying countries along with stormier weather as there is more energy in the system. So for people around the world and many natural environments, it will be, scientifically speaking, rubbish.
The question moves on to the more debatable one of how much influence man has on this climate change. For the record I remain convinced by the majority of the scientific community that we are at least contributing to, and possibly largely responsible for, global warming. And if we stop using fossil fuels and chopping down the rainforests then this phenomenon will not spiral out of control and all will be well. I was thinking about this as I drove in to work this morning, waiting in a traffic jam with all the other cars pumping out their fumes.
One product of the Copenhagen get together is that EU countries are to pledge €6.5bn to developing countries to make sure that they are not going to be irresponsible with fossil fuels and there will also (probably) be some treaty on cutting emissions that hopefully all world leaders will agree to. While I think this is important, it is also not THE most important thing, because the problems we face as a human race now are only the problems we would have to face anyway within half a century.
Fossil fuels are a one-use only resource. We will run out and by the time we do the debates about the effect they have on global warming will have long since become irrelevant. Now is the time for the next stage in energy provision and yet there still seems to be many technological barriers to overcome before renewable energy sources can be used to replace more traditional forms of energy generation. Taking a step back from the purely practical, we can look at the ferocity of some of our weather systems, the enormity of the tidal shift and, most of all, the unimaginable force of the sun and we can see that we are surrounded by limitless energy. And yet we are not yet in a position when we can tap into this energy in a meaningful way. Apparently it is now a myth that it can take decades for a windfarm to become ‘energy neutral’ (the point when it supplies more energy than it has consumed in its manufacture). In fact this can (according to figures produced by the BWEA) be as little as six months. But the sheer quantity of windfarms needed to make up even a small amount of a country’s energy requirement mean that it will always be no more than a makeweight in the overall solution.
But wind, like tidal, wave, geothermal, hydroelectric and solar will inevitably be the future as far as energy generation for the human race is concerned and so we need to get better at them. People often view harnessing these sources as a mechanical problem. However there is also the challenge of transferring this energy efficiently into electricity and this is where the electronics industry has a huge role to play – not just in developing energy efficient products, but also in this key role of producing renewable energy efficiently. Clever design that uses all the power generated rather than suppressing it into a manageable DC output is one example, another I came across recently was using a positional controller with advanced algorithms to maximise the efficiency of a solar panel array.
My rather laboured point is that either with or without global warming, traditional fuels sources will soon have had their day. Now is the perfect time to invest in what comes next and the key to that will be in the power management electronics. That €6.5bn from the EU could therefore be used more productively than simply by using it to check the emissions of other countries. Having said that, it could turn out that the short term drive to cut emissions is imperative for the future of human beings on this planet, so I do not want to sound dismissive of the progress that is being made – I just hope the focus for the future is not only about dealing with current problems, but also funding future solutions!
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