The Joy Of Global Warming
Bjorn Lomborg likes to provoke and this article in the Sunday Times certainly does. He starts the article like this.
As I fly into a snow-bound Britain, I realise that you might be asking where global warming has gone as you shiver in the coldest March for 50 years and wonder what you will do if gas has to be rationed. I have been involved in the climate debate for more than a decade, but I am still amazed at how wrong we get it. Let us try to restart our thinking on global warming.
Yes, global warming is real and mostly man-made, but our policies have failed predictably and spectacularly.
He then goes on to say that Kyoto has failed.
But he does produce a solution that could be a win-win situation for everyone.
He says that we should spend money on research!
He is right!
Just look what has happened to products like computers because money has been spent on research!
I have heard some wacky ideas to generate energy and cut carbon dioxide emissions over the last few years. Some of them might just be the things we do to save the planet.
But then engineers and scientists have a track record in digging us out of the holes that politicians and others have got us into.
Where for instance would Britain be today without the genius of Henry Royce, Lord Hives, RJ Mitchell, Alan Blumlein, Alan Turing and Sydney Camm. Under a Nazi jackboot perhaps?
But they and others answered Churchill’s plea and gave the country the tools to finish the job.
A similar massive effort today on a world-wide basis would I believe solve the problems of global warming and create a world fit for our descendents.
The same approach could be used on all of the major problems of the world like cancer, providing clean water, housing and food production.
Is This The Next Antibiotic?
Read any paper or web site this morning and the doom-sayers are saying that growing resistance to antibiotics is a big risk to us all. Read about it here on the BBC web site.
The BBC News tonight did talk about a company called Phico. I looked at their web site and although I know little of pharmaceuticals, I do feel that this company may have the look of another success out of Cambridge.
Let’s hope that for everyone’s sake, they’ve got it right!
Note that, because of the backing of the Wellcome Trust, they shouldn’t be lacking in resources.
The European Extremely Large Telescope
It may sound it like it was named by Blackadder, but the European Extremely Large Telescope has just been backed by the Government.
I’m all for this level of support for science, provided it’s done correctly.
Many might think that it is a pity the telescope is to be built in Chile, but then the weather and atmosphere there is so much better. The biggest telescope in the UK; the Isaac Newton Telescope was actually moved from Sussex to the Canary Islands for this reason.
I suppose the name isn’t as good as that for the proposed Overwhelmingly Large Telescope, which wasn’t built, as it was probably too difficult.
Call For The Dulux
We may have had a couple of near misses with asteroids lately, but I like the call from Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnett of Oxford University to use a giant tin of Dulux to make the asteroid white and thus make sunlight deflect it from the collision course.
Who needs Bruce Willis?
Everyday Units
They are talking on the BBC about an asteroid passing the earth tonight as being the size of an Olympic swimming pool. There’s more here.
Why are objects always Olympic swimming pools, London buses or football pitches?
Incidentally, an astronomer has said that this asteroid is possibly about the size of the one that landed in Tunguska in 1908. Although of course no-one can be sure.
Celebrities And Science
Sense About Science, has published a article called 2012 Celebrities and Science.
There are the usual wacky ideas, but it is good to see that s0me celebrities have asked Sense About Science to help them get their facts right.
George Backs Graphene
This report says that the Chancellor has found £21.5 million for research into graphene.
Some of the applications of graphene are listed here on Wikipedia. This is the first paragraph.
Several potential applications for graphene are under development, and many more have been proposed. These include lightweight, thin, flexible, yet durable display screens, electric circuits, and solar cells, as well as various medical, chemical, and industrial processes enhanced or enabled by the use of new graphene materials.
Of all the possible applications they list, graphene’s properties as a filtration membrane, may lead to some of the first widespread applications. This link points to an article about research at MIT, which shows that graphene may offer new ways of water desalination.
Graphene may seem to be a wonder material and the money for research is very much to be welcomed.
In the 1960s, there were two areas of research, for which great hopes were held out.
The first was carbon fibre, which when tried as fan blades for the RB 211 helped to bankrupt Rolls-Royce. But now, it is a ubiquitous substance, that appears in many applications, from golf club shafts to almost complete aircraft, like the Boeing Dreamliner.
A scientific curiosity at the time was the laser. Every university had one and would proudly show you their expensive example, generally doing nothing, except emitting an eerie green light. But now lasers are everywhere and most homes have at least one in a CD or DVD player.
Who will accurately predict what the uses of graphene will be in fifty years?
My only questions are.
1. Are we putting enough money and resources behind the researchers?
2. What other ideas are there out there with the potential to change the world for the better, that need proper backing?
Combining Science And Art
I like sundials and this was a magnificent one.
It was a pity there wasn’t any explanation in English.
Clever Tricks Improve Breast Scans
I like this story from the BBC’s web site.
One of the keys to fighting cancer is good diagnosis and the article shows how being clever with scientific, engineering and mathematical tricks, X-rays can be improved.
We’ll see a lot more of this type of innovation in the next few years and it’ll help in all sorts of fields and not just medicine.
