Big Coal will be one of the unlikely winners in 2005, as China, India and the U.S. prepare to build over 800 new coal-fired power plants. These plants are expected to emit as much as 2.7 billion tons of C0² by 2012. What about the Kyoto protocol? Will this help balance the equation? Hardly. The Kyoto protocol is only expected to cut emissions by some 480 million tons in the same period.

So, whilst a majority of the nations in the world pursue reasonably small C0² reductions, these three nations alone will emit almost 5 times the amount of C0² that Kyoto is expected to save! In the end, all the talk about cutting C0² emissions comes down to money. Coal is plentiful. Coal is cheap. Even if it kills us all, at least we'll have saved money...

Global warming and earthquakes

As I write this, the death toll from the tsunami produced by an underwater earthquake off Sumatra has risen to over 80,000. This follows less than a week after an earthquake, measuring 8.1 on the Richter Scale, hit the Macquarie Rise in the Pacific Ocean, just 800km off the coast of Tasmania, Australia. Are earthquakes and global warming connected? At least three climate scientists think so.

Jeanne Sauber of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Bruce Molnia with the US Geological Survey in Reston, Va., both believe that melting glaciers and earthquakes are interconnected. The premise is simple; the weight of glaciers stabilise the mountainous areas of the earth -- so removing the weight of the glaciers will upset the balance. Could this melting produce earthquakes in distant areas, such as Sumatra? No-one knows for sure.

Simon Winchester, writing in the New York Times, notes that "the geysers in Yellowstone National Park started to erupt much more frequently in the days immediately following a huge earthquake in central Alaska in 2002. There turned out to be a connection, one hitherto quite unrealized, that intimately linked places thousands of miles apart. Geologists are now looking for other possible links -- sure in the knowledge that if real geological connections can be determined, then we may in due course be able to divine from events on one side of the planet indications that will allow us to warn people on the other -- and so perhaps allow them to prepare, as those in today's Indian Ocean communities never were able, for the next time."

Chances are we should add earthquakes to the list of "side-effects" caused by global warming...

Study shows electric cars better than hydrogen cars

A study by Patrick Mazza and Roel Hammerschlag of the Institute for Lifecycle Environmental Assessment in Seattle has found that cars, powered by Lithium ion or Lithium polymer batteries, are more efficient than those powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

To cut a long story short, it is more efficient to transport electricity than hydrogen, and more efficient to charge a hi-tech battery than make hydrogen. Of course, we could run out of Lithium. But the authors believe that we have enough "lithium on the planet to power between 2 and 12 billion cars". I would feel a lot better if they could decide whether it was 2 or 12 billion cars...

Same study reveals Big Coal as villain

The study also revealed that coal-fired power plants generate more C0² emissions than any other form of power production. Coal power is even dirtier than petrol power, with emission levels higher than that of America's enormous road transport system. The study concluded that a sane priority would be to "eliminate demand for coal-fired electricity".

Little chance of that, with China, India and the U.S. ramping up the construction of around 800 new coal-fired power plants. Remember, when a freak storm flattens your home and the insurance company refuses to pay, that your government was trying to save you money on your electricity bill, and keep their mates in business...

2005 -- a record year for the polluters

It's impossible to imagine that our respective governments are blind to the perils of global warming. So it stands to reason that they are aware of these perils, yet have decided to ignore them, in the interests of their sponsors -- Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Energy.

Now, we all know the economy is important -- money makes the world go 'round. And if we don't pay our debts, our comfortable existence comes to an end. But I fail to see how anyone can profit from a broken planet. Turning to coal for our energy needs will bring that broken planet one step closer...

Iraq

Well, what can I add? A British parliamentarian recently estimated that U.S. and U.K. occupation forces would be tied up in Iraq for the next ten years. At a cost of around US$100 billion a year, and goodness knows how many more deaths on both sides, will our children appreciate this legacy we leave to them? I doubt it very much. Chances are they'll eventually view our government's love of resource wars, and its denial of global warming, as crimes against humanity. Who could blame them?

The end of an age of plenty

Our generation is probably the last to live in this "blip" in the timeline. An era when energy was super-cheap, and the consequences unclear enough to be denied. This era is drawing to a close, and 2005 is a watershed year.

In an effort to save money, lower reliance on imported fuels, and remain competitive with the emerging economies of China and India, the U.S. government has opted to ramp up coal-fired energy production. Struggling to deny the overwhelming science on global warming, this administration has quietly moved in a direction that could annihilate us all.

It is imperative that an agreement be reached between the U.S., the E.U., China and India on reasonable C0² emission reductions that they can all live up to. The Bush administration's "head in the sand" attitude may be saving the fossil fuel industry billions, but it's costing the earth's inhabitants much more.

How many more tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, storms and natural disasters will we need to endure before we get the message? Cheap fossil fuel energy is self-destructive. It's not a long term answer. It's destroying the atmosphere, which is changing the planet for the worse. We all need to do something about it.

Happy New Year

With government and corporations hell-bent on destroying the planet for short-term profits, it can be a little hard to remain optimistic :) Yet I have enjoyed the Christmas break, and the simple pleasure of just catching up with the family. Pretty soon now, though, it'll be back to work for me :(

Happy New Year, and all the best for 2005, from the land down under...