Going Green

With the new year in sight, we thought it is good to go back over the course of the year and look at all the climate stories that happened. A lot has happened over the last year with 2022 beating several records. it has provisionally been the -on average- hottest year to date and as well as a decade of increasingly bad weather

A white Christmas is a Christmas celebration that is characterized by the presence of snow on the ground. An "official" white Christmas is defined by the Met Office as "one snowflake to be observed falling in the 24 hours of 25 December somewhere in the UK", but formerly the snow had to be observed at the Met Office building in London.

However, Climate change has brought higher average temperatures over land and sea and this generally reduces the chances of a white Christmas. additionally, with the average yearly temperature rising, one might think that the chances are reduced however what we are seeing is that the range of temperatures is increasing, aka when it's cold, it's colder than usual.

Fusion power has the potential to be a major source of clean, safe, and abundant energy in the future. A new break though has been discovered by a team in America, the team managed to get more energy out from the enormous amount of energy that was required to start the fusion reaction. Fusion occurs when atomic nuclei combine to form a heavier nucleus, releasing a large amount of energy in the process. This is the same process that powers the sun and other stars. Unlike nuclear fission, which is the process used in current nuclear power plants, fusion does not produce dangerous radioactive waste and has the potential to provide a nearly limitless source of energy. However, fusion is extremely difficult to achieve and control, and significant technical challenges must be overcome before fusion power can become a practical reality.

This year Earthshot prize took place at Boston, USA. The Earthshot Prize was designed to find and grow the solutions that will repair our planet this decade. Each Winner of the 5 categories will get £1 million to regenerate the place we all call home in the next ten years. 

Black Friday is a day of consumerism so why dont we make it green. We all know that the "throwaway culture" of Black Friday "is bad for the environment" and people should instead consider recycled products and think what they can do for the environment but is it really the consumers that are bad or is it the producers not making things green for the sake of profits

we should be updating the old rhyme Plant a tree in '73; plant one more in '74 to "plant a tree in '23; plant one more in '24 "
National Tree Week starts Saturday the 27th which marks the annual winter tree planting season and welsh government is offering every household  a free tree to collect from over 50 locations in Wales. So what's the point of why everyone should plant a tree in the year 2023, we could reduce the severity of global climate change by removing excess carbon from our atmosphere 

However Climate change is making trees bigger, but weaker, it is found that Wood in Central European forests are 8% to 12% less dense than a century ago, making the lumber less reliable building material.

This year's COP has been about the Economic Impact 
of Climate Change on the world Economies we thought we go through some of the Economic challenges that countries are facing.
Stunning revelations came out about how the host of COP 27, Egypt are Burning more Coal so that they can sell there Gas Imports to Europe for a profit, 
Short term Economic Gains have apparently out weighted the climate imperative. Now what they do with that money we shall wait to see, if they use it for green investment, no harm, no foul, right. unfortunately that is unlikely meaning that climate change is on the bottom of the agenda

With COP 27 happening this week, we thought we should give a round up of what has happened.
COP 27 is taking place at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in his opening speech "We are on the highway to climate hell, with our foot still on the accelerator"
He also proposed Debt-for-losses swap as a way for developing countries to recover from climate disaster.

Additionally Russia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia pull out of the Reforestation bill that was signed last year at COP 26.

This week Ofgem made a statement about how the UK could potentially run out of gas. Creating a  shortage, and that in a emergency there could be a rolling power cut if the UK due to lack gas supplies had to turn off gas turbines that produce electricity, if we get a cold and server winter. The last time this happened was in the 1973 when the Gas supplies switched off for hours due to gas rationing and Electricity rationing was done as well.

How did we get here, Russia stopped the gas flowing to Europe and so Europe has been buying up all the Norwegian gas. Meaning less supply. Additionally France's Nuclear power stations are offline due to maintance, so there is less electricity in Europe so France has been buying (and burning) gas to meet its consumption, meaning less supply. 

The UK has Approximately 7 days of Gas Stored up, but The government has been urged to set a target to slash household energy demand by 20% through Covid-style measures increasing how much gas the UK has stored to 8 days  to avert potential gas shortages in winter.

Recently the UK Government halted the moratorium on Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. leading to questions To Frack or not to Frack. Fracking is a technique for recovering gas and oil from shale rock. It involves drilling into the earth and directing a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals at a rock layer in order to release the gas inside. The injection of fluid at high pressure into the rock can cause earth tremors - small movements in the earth's surface. The problems with fracking is that the gas is hard to extract. The total amount of gas produced by Cuadrilla from Lancashire could be enough to provide heating and water to 508 3-bed semi-detached houses for 18 days. According to experts, this will do nothing to ease energy prices this winter, however, since it would take many years for an industry to develop and it remains unclear whether a significant amount of gas could be extracted, however it is being seen as part of a new domestic energy security push.