Slow burn solution

2009 according to meteorologists all over the world was the hottest year since 1850. In fact the last decade was the hottest in the entire history of our world’s existence. This is not all, from now on wards to 2025 has been deemed the critical make or break moment as far as catastrophic climate change is concerned. We have all been witness to more and more natural disasters occurring due to the atmosphere heating up over the last few years. Who among us was ever concerned about a Tsunami 5 years ago? Or for that matter knew what a Tsunami is.

Climate changes like the ones taking place over the last decade do not just occur on their own but are caused by a large imbalance in green house gases in our atmosphere. Normally the Earth’s atmosphere combines a mix of greenhouse gases which keep the heat inside thus making the temperature feasible by this entrapment to sustain life in its myriad shapes and forms. So why has the balance become tilted now? Well the answer is available at the closest smokestack in view. Our industrial monstrosities are belching out more and more Co2 or carbon di oxide in the atmosphere day by day and this is leading to the problem at hand.

To solve this problem the industrialized nations of our world have gotten together on the platform of climate conferences like the recently held one in Copenhagen to little or no avail. The only meek result coming out of these seminars of boredom has been loosly knit “voluntary” accords made which call for a cut in emissions of the industrlized world by 30% till 2025 and 80% till 2050. The apathy of the situation in real terms is such that even to fulfill the just described call to action the transportation and electronic manufacturing industries of these nations would have to go to zero emissions by 2050 to achieve the desired result. We all know what chance there is of that.

The largest producers of deadly green house gases are the two current economic monoliths China and the U.S, both of whom would rather play political mind games at these accords with vetos and time stalling smiley faced techniques then get down to the actual crux of the matter. They know there is no way they can slow their economies down, why that would be major catastrophy in the race to be king wouldn’t it? Not to mention the “developing” countries like India and Brazil who are chomping at their bits to get into the super economic mode themselves and in doing so destroy whats left of our atmosphere.

We here in Pakistan on the other hand are just content at being lumped in with the rest of the “still to be developing” nations bloc which has been deemed by the grand masters of industrialization to be on permanent handout from them to the tune of a 100 billion usd a year as compensation for not growing. Yes dear readers you heard me right, we are goingto be paid off for not growing now. Not that we care as long as the money keeps rolling in but should we not be raising our hand and saying err Master what about our people, do they not have the right to enjoy the fruits of economy like your populace does?

What if we did something even worse than that? What if we somehow came up with an alternate energy source for our economy which could be used the world over with an input which is found aplenty around us all.

We could not dream of doing that by the way, not just because of the slap on the wrist we would get but the Khadims of the two holy mosques would be in a tizzy over our actions would they not? As they are the producers of the main culprit behind our economies systematically raping the atmosphere, namely the precious black gold or oil. Which they have openly admitted to cost them about USD 2 a barrel to pump out in the millions a day. At the current rate of USD 75 a barrel in selling price could we even begin to fathom how many fingers in how many pies would be stark raving mad at us? The U.S alone imports about USD 200 billion worth of this oil to feed their gas guzzling economy ever year. If indeed a cheap green alternative were found it would not just mean an end to the greenhouse problem by invention rather than conservation but it would also mean a curtailing of the power these people hold over the world, the giant oligarchies they have formed with the sheikhs would crumble and the world would be free.

So why should this invention come from the “still developing world” Well its critical it does just that because it has already been invented in the west but never allowed to leave the inventors shelf because of some of the hurdles mentioned above. There is just too much surveillance and control in the civilized world for a tech green revolution to take place and Stanley Myers is a prime example of what could go wrong if someone tried. Mr Myers allegedly invented a “splitter” in 1980 which could be used to feed a car with hydrogen which it would split from plain old H2O or water. Hydrogen as we all know is pure energy and so henceforth the car would be running on just water. Well as fate would have it first the US patent office sat on his application for a full 3 years before granting him a patent for it, then he could not find anyone to financially back him. Even though “allegedly” he received several clandestine offers to just sit on his technology and not talk about it. He died in 1988, poisoned at a meeting of investors he attended. The guy had the solution to all our fuel addictions and he died without ever putting his invention into production. Hmmm must have been his time i guess eh?

If anyone wishes many of his diagrams and videos are available on youtube, rumor is that India and China are already way ahead of the rest of us in pursuing this green technology. However the key is for someone to invent it and then instead of selling it to some military which would use it just to conquer the world release it to the rest of us, just share the information and we would have a green revolution underfoot. No more need for climate conferences or hefty debate, we could just hook our industry into the forces running this world and do away with so many evils with one stroke. I believe it should be someone here in Pakistan who does this, we are the land of the green aren’t we? Why do we not then spur the beginning of change.

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as published in The Friday Times on 26/2/2010

7 comments
  1. Another one, It was in 1996 when the electric car was made (Remember GM EV1) and through the hard battle by the oil giants all of ’em were brought in and destroyed ..

    and Yes the solution would come from developing world, but would Oil giants let it spill on the world, I doubt it!

    Yes world is getting hotter but colder as well, shifting of plate tectonic has created a shift of climate, heavy snow in UK to name one example ..

    Prediction is that there will be a small ice age in Europe (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report)

    Though developed countries might get away from the rapture, but it is the developing world which will suffer.

    Let me remind you the spread of greenhouse gases must be stopped now, not in 2050 or in any other year .. which looks mere impossible..

    Though I hoped some brave one could solve this problem ….

  2. Not many people in Pakistan show much concern over green house gases and environment at all. A very small percentage actually knows about Green technology. Its good to see a blog raising awareness in the people on the environmental issues and encouraging people from the developing world to actually take the initiative and do something about it. I would like to add that General Motors produced and leased the first electric car EV1 from 1996 to 1999.(http://bit.ly/IQsYH ) Then it mysteriously disappeared from the market. The award winning documentary ‘Who killed the electric car’ http://bit.ly/aCLGfI released in 2006 gave more or less the same reasons which you have mentioned in your blog about its controversial discontinuation and rather merciless crushing. And now very recently Bloom Energy has developed a clean & cheap solution by generating electricity via a new kind of fuel cell. Google, Ebay and many big companies are already using these boxes for their buildings http://bit.ly/b7WDST I sure hope something like this survives the wrath of Moguls of the world and such a cheap source of electricity could save us from endless loadsheddings in our country.

  3. The author has given a shallow analysis of catastrophic climate change. In the last three words, “catastrophic” is the invention of some politicians headed by Al Gore and some IPCC scientists. Two reports of IPCC conferences have been organized by none other than United Nations, each having more than 700 pages. It is surprising to note that the concluding part (summary) has been written down by non-scientists of the panel and many scientists of the panel disowned the summary on the reason that it was not in conformity with their works, research, peer review and data. Manhattan Declaration (with another body of eminent scientists) has totally rejected IPCC report. They say “climate has changed, is changing and shall continue to change independent of human activities”. NASA GISS: Temperature Release 2000-2009 index shows there has been an increase in Earth temperature by 0.2 degree centigrade, meaning thereby in 100 years or so, the Earth temperature might rise to 2 degree centigrade. By any stretch of imagination we are NOT heading towards “catastrophic” climate change. The whole game is with malafide intention of politicians. Every government wants to broaden her tax base. However, there is a lot of hue and cry in assemblies if new tax is proposed. Taxes on Global Warming were passed in Congress (Carbon Credit, Carbon tax etc.) smoothly because before that the whole world was informed that we are heading towards “Catastrophic” Global Warming. The emission of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by industry and vehicles does make an impact on global warming but that impact is very nominal. Climate as a whole is controlled by mother nature and not by humans. However, period however, we should keep our house Earth clean from pollution as much as we can.

    Regarding Hydrogen being considered as an alternative to fossil oil, this great idea is already in active research by scientists. On a small scale they have succeeded but it is a long way to prepare and market. Huge plants (numerous) are required that break up the sea water into Oxygen and Hydrogen and thereafter, mass storage of Hydrogen as fuel. Wind energy depends on wind (unpredictable) and solar energy is still on its baby stage. Thus, Hydrogen is the obvious choice, I do agree.

  4. Hello,I love reading through your blog, I wanted to leave a little comment to support you and wish you a good continuation. Wishing you the best of luck for all your blogging efforts.

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