Environment and Climate

Environment & Climate: The race against natural climate change.

April 22, 2025 April 22, 2025

The climate is always changing.

The good news has been that Earth’s surface went from molten rock to now supporting the bloom of visible life we see today as the Phanerozoic Eon, but the bad news is the bloom, and current wonderful conditions are just a brief moment, as the surface will naturally return to being too hot for any life to survive. Plus, as watching a volcano shows, things have cooled little inside Earth and while Earth currently has a relatively cool thin crust, relatively no thicker than an eggshell, it is still almost entirely a very hot planet.

V2G, V2H, V2L, bi-directional EV / EV-Hybrid charging: Solar or not, it changes energy bills!

March 19, 2025 March 19, 2025

This is a look at the V2-GHL technologies, how they work, and how they are going to impact EVs & future energy and energy prices for not just EV, EV-PHEV EV-Hybrid owners, but for everyone. Its 3 years since the March 2022 “The electrical grid, V2G and EV Home Charging” web page was published on OneFinitePlanet.org website, and now in 2025 its all happening.

Environment: We shouldn’t be cast as the bad guys.

October 29, 2024 November 25, 2024

And yes, environment and climate are always changing.

Even though we are creating quite a mess right now, realistically it’s nature and natural environment and climate changes, not us humans, that will end all life one Earth. This look at the big picture of the history of environment and climate reveals while “Mother Earth” does seem quite nurturing right now, this planet is normally hostile to all life beyond “just slime” made up of microbes like those we kill we must kill to sterilize medical equipment. What we are enjoying is the equivalent of the brief bloom of life in the desert after rain.

Yes, our technology brings risks and may “poke the bear“, but without technology, when that “grizzly bear of natural climate change” wakes from its current short hibernation, we, and the species we cherish could perish. Following “the flip” not just us but all other complex life and even the microbes, eventually are doomed. For us humans, the threat is real and immediate.

Or is it that, natural changes to climate, like “bears”, are part of nature and nature would never harm us?

2023: On all paths, disruption is imminent & proactive beats reactive.

August 27, 2023 June 21, 2024

The question is, do we seriously disrupt an economic system transitioning too slowly from fossil fuels, or wait until the system is disrupted by extreme weather. Most likely, we deal with a mix of both disruptions.

We are living through many trends that are unsustainable for even another decade, and while it is not certain which trend reaching its tipping point will cause the greatest disruption, the environment and rising CO₂ levels will play a key role by at the latest 2033.

While some righteous environmentalists protest for everyone to embrace austerity and simply just stop burning fossil fuels, the action required is putting in place alternatives. In practice we can’t switch off without alternatives, and progress on alternatives is progressing too slowly in a failing effort to avoid disrupting economies and the establishment.

Reality is both the extreme weather events that further motivate action and those actions themselves will cause disruption, which will both combine with the disruption from AI and the collapse of economic Ponzi schemes.

Cost of coal power vs renewables: China expanding coal while the suckers go green?

July 19, 2023 July 20, 2023

If coal fired power can no longer compete on price, then why is China building two new coal power plants per week? Is China somehow able to use coal fired electricity to gain a competitive advantage against western manufacturing which increasingly relies on “clean green” but more expensive energy, with the result that emissions and jobs are simply transferred to China?

The current politics of climate agreements encourage rich countries to offshore some emissions to those countries often forced to be more reliant coal and with higher emissions. Could we fix the problem of China syndrome emissions if there was the political will?

Righteous environmentalism: an opium for the people concerned about climate.

May 20, 2023 July 27, 2023

There is a real need to protect the environment, and advocacy for the environment is great, but that advocacy can acquire traits of a religion, which at the extreme can even result in far-right eco-terrorism, and more in the mainstream can result in righteous environmentalism and embracing austerity and sacrifices as “an opium“.

The “righteous environmentalists” preach this austerity as necessary life of the future to an audience that just see the rich becoming even richer. This blindly serves an alternate agenda and needlessly alienates and disenfranchises much of the population. The result is do-nothing politicians to get re-elected instead of motivating voters for real action on climate change and electing leaders who will act.

COP27: Climate change action sabotage?

November 16, 2022 March 30, 2023

Reports from COP27 seems indicate the key initiative this year to make wealthy nations cover the cost of the damages poor nations will incur as a result of emissions that have main originated from those wealthy nations.

The proposal as it stands has a missing an essential piece, and trying to cover for that essential piece, appears most to likely to increase emissions, and move COP away from a focus on solving the climate crisis and instead toward just fighting over the cost.

This is a troubled look at the key flaw in what has been put forward and the real solution that should be in place.

Did Al Gore nail it: Is climate change merely inconvenient, or is it an existential threat?

November 16, 2022 November 16, 2022

Claims that +1.5^oC warming would be ‘catastrophic’, and that climate change represents an ‘existential threat’ can be quite vague as just what is ‘catastrophic’ or an ‘existential threat’?

This webpaper, seeks to translate ‘catastrophic’ outcomes and ‘existential threats’ into more concrete outcomes.

“We recognise climate change is a serious problem and are committed to net zero by 2050 in order to prevent the disastrous consequences anticipated to occur by around 2026”

Typical government position: Is it ok?

The Power struggle in Australia.

November 1, 2022 November 1, 2022

From “the biggest corruption scandal ever” in Brazil, problems in Venezuela, human rights in Saudi Arabia and Iran, to the problems caused by lobbyists against action on climate change, an abundance of fossil fuels is a source of political power, yet rarely force for good, and Australia, with a wealth of coal and gas, is not spared.

The current crisis in Ukraine not only drives up energy prices globally, but it also creates a dilemma for gas producing nations.

Decades long EV transition with no green quick fix.

June 9, 2022 February 5, 2024

Despite many claims that EVs have a dirty secret in that they are not really green at all, the real secret is how long it takes for the green payback. The claims are based on two realities: 1) the driving of EVs still results in emissions when EVs are charged from our current dirty electrical grids, and 2) the building of EVs also creates emissions, and sometimes increased emissions over building ICEVs.

However real data from critical studies shows that even in the worst case, overall, an high build emission inefficient EVs charged from a dirty grid still result in less emissions than ICEV. Just in that extreme case, only a marginal reducing in emissions!

However, already not all grids are “dirty grids” and as vehicles have an average lifespan of over 20 years either dirty grids will improve during that 20 years or we may have bigger problems. Build emissions from EVs largely track EV prices, and Wright’s law dictates both EV prices build emissions will soon fall below those for ICEVs.

The real conclusion from examining this question, is there is no quick fix green EV transition, but any delay in reducing production of ICE vehicles is creating a problem for the future!

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