What chance does Joe Public have in reaching any reasonable conclusion on what is really happening in the energy, climate and green sustainable solutions space?
Personally I´ve become a You Tube energy guru in my effort to gain a balanced and reasonable knowledge and perspective. But its hard, very hard in fact, even with my systems engineering and sales & marketing background.
Some of my personal tips. Customise the discussion to your audiences knowledge and awareness, but keep a theme of why we are doing this.
Why are we doing this.. ?
To protect the rights of the children of the world to breath fresh air.
Whether it is transport, industrial processes or electrical generation be sure to bring this benefit out. Most will want, understandably, to discuss the financial benefits of which there are many, but it can can get complicated and confusing, but ´´protect the rights of children to breath clean air´´ is simple and unambiguous and appeals to emotions on which most humans base their decisions.
How? When renewing your boiler or car or gas cooker having considered this prior to the usually urgent need to replace replace with one using electricity rather than fossil fuel. Also, in the meantime please just drive slower.
These principles can equally apply to industry - when replacing you blast furnace move to electric heat.
When discussing emissions use a common unit of measure,
Humans create around 40,000 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
Of this, for example, 800 million is created by all aviation, steel manufacture 3,200 million, hydrogen 800 million, electricity generation 8,000 million (although rapidly falling due to solar and wind generation).
I´ve had a long felt feeling that this is probably low. Particularly, in part due to the underestimate of Methane. (Methane is, so they say, 28 times more polluting than CO2 over a 100 year time scale BUT 100 times more polluting when measured over a 30 year time scale - Confused yet? Seems the 30 year one is most relevant as its a now problem).
Oil and Gas wells seem to be a big culprit. It is necessary to burn off gasses as part of the process with no alternative. The well safety is intrinsic to this. There seems no standard means of methane leakage reporting, it relies on the well owners to report it, authoritative bodies do not seem to be able to agree on the size of the problem and any punitive remedies seem seem sporadic and often small compared to the consequences. The fox really does own and look after the hen house.
Here is a great in depth you tube interview that tries very hard to get to the ground zero of this difficult issue from two very well informed individuals, Texan , Grant Swartzwelder who daily is dealing with these issues in the field and Michael Leibriech host of cleaning up. Be ready for a 1hr 30min data fest, a few TLA´s (three letter acronyms) and you can draw your own conclusions. I´m off for some relief at confused. com!
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