Deepwater Horizon – Could this be the end of BP?

It’s been almost impossible to ignore the news headlines concerning the ongoing Deepwater Horizon oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico these past few weeks, and the situation seems to be going from bad to worse, with more oil escaping each day. President Barrack Obama has this week addressed the US nation concerning actions plans and responsibilities, held private meetings with BP bosses, and Tony Hayward, CEO of BP was put directly under question and scrutiny this week by members of the US congress, amid claims of negligence and the shortcutting of safety advice and guidelines.

And this is as it should be, and should have been from the very beginning. I have no sympathy whatsoever for this self-serving corporation or its unsympathetic management or even for its shareholders. What we now have is an unprecedented ecological disaster and an even more enormous task faced to clear up this mess, or rather BP has this responsibility. Yet will it be able to cope by itself? I think not, as the situation as proved so far, BP appear almost as incompetent to even realise the enormity of the breach they have caused, and appears to have little or no contingency for tackling this crisis.

Which leads me to believe that oil companies may not yet be ready to commit fully to these types of venture of offshore and deep water drilling?

Stated as “America’s worst environmental crisis” to date, and compared in terms of enormity and importance with the 911 terrorist catastrophe by the president himself, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is set to benchmark a point in the oil industry history concerning ethical conduct and to question their environmental responsibilities, and may even ultimately affect the entire industry philosophy and strategy towards deep sea drilling.

As for Tony Hayward himself, his poor performance this week in front of the congress committee merely proves his position is now becoming untenable. Both with his previous insensitive comments regarding the enormity of the catastrophe, and with his rather insincere and minimal comments regarding responsibilities at the committee, this only serves to add to his predicament. It may be time for BP to look to make some amends for this poor public image, yet is this what Hayward wants? Does he want to wash his hands of it all now and “get his life back?” No doubt his written contract with BP permits him a nice big slice of pie even when he finally does get the golden boot?

Quote – “In the 59 days since the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, Hayward has been transformed into one of the most hated men in the US, and the ferocity of the encounter between him and the House of Representatives committee on energy and commerce was much-anticipated. As one committee member noted: “The anger at BP is at fever pitch. It’s almost palpable.”

Read more here..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/17/bp-oil-spill-tony-hayward-congress

Earlier this week President Obama met with BP chief Carl-Henric Svanberg, and their lengthy meeting resulted in BP’s concession to a $20bn compensation fund for victims of the spill. Yet this is by no means the speculated final bill for compensation payouts, which could end up somewhere in the region of $34bn, and that is assuming that the crisis will be mitigated by the end of August.

Quote – “The payout is only the start of BP’s pain. The White House was insistent that the $20bn (£13.5bn) was not a cap, and the company’s chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, announced that BP would not be paying dividends this year. Svanberg’s appearance at the White House was calculated to mollify public anger in America at the chief executive, Tony Hayward, who is due to testify on the spill before Congress tomorrow .

Obama said the $20bn – equivalent to two years of dividends for BP – may not be enough to honour all the economic claims against the company.”

Read more here..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/16/barack-obama-bp-dividends-compensation

Will this be the nail in the coffin for BP? There has been much speculation this week to this effect, as the compensation bill is set to rise still further, and which highlights that either BP has grossly underestimated the tremendous damage and the increasing price of this environmental disaster, or perhaps was maybe looking to see exactly what they could actually get away with? After all we are talking about experts in their industrial field discussing daily and maybe even hourly the consequences of these failures and compensations. I find it difficult to believe that BP had not already forecast such heavy compensation claims and speculated already these calculations for themselves?

One thing is for sure the entire oil industry is taking note of the lessons to be learned from BP’s mistakes, and all of the big oil players will be looking to ensure that the same fate does not befall them; as well it might if shortcuts such as the ones described and highlighted below are not so unusual as we would be lead to believe?

Quote – “But as the size and scope of BP’s liabilities grow with each passing the day, it is now no longer a question of whether BP can or should pay its dividend. It is increasingly whether it can survive.

On Sunday, 54 Democratic senators demanded that BP pay $20bn into a ring-fenced account to make sure it met all its obligations for the clean-up and damages. The figure stunned the company, which backs most analysts’ estimates that these costs are likely to be nearer to $5bn.”

“The thing is, no one – not BP, not the US senators – knows how much this will end up costing the company. The fishing industry in the Gulf brings in $660m revenue each year. This pales into insignificance compared to the $65bn-a-year tourist industry in Florida, which has already been hit as oil pollutes its beaches, leaving them deserted. Tourism and fishing could suffer for years.”

“BP says nothing has changed to justify a $20bn bill, but this is disingenuous. In less than a month, the size of the size has gone from 5,000 barrels per day to between 20,000 and 40,000 barrels. If BP estimated that the clean-up and damages would cost around $5bn, but the size of the spill has at least quadrupled, then the $20bn demanded by the US senators does not look unreasonable.”

Read more here..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/14/bp-survival-fears-oil-spill

And this is amid an increase in BP share price following the meeting! Work it out..I can’t?

Quote –”The City has welcomed BP’s deal with President Obama over the Gulf of Mexico oil slick, sending the company’s shares to the top of the FTSE 100 leaderboard.

BP shares rose 23.5p, or 7%, to 360.6p in early trading, even though it has agreed not to make any dividend payments for the rest of 2010.”

Read more here..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/marketforceslive/2010/jun/17/bp-shares-dividend-oil-spill-compensation-fund

“The five accusations levelled at BP by the committee are:

• That it adopted a cheap design for the well, choosing a single casing rather than a more sophisticated design, despite the fact that its own analysis found strongly in favour of the latter. “The decision appears to have been made to save time and reduce costs,” the letter says.

• BP went with the cheapest option of using just six “centralisers”, which hold the casing in the centre of the borehole, despite being advised by its contractors Halliburton to use 21. Halliburton warned that the well had a “SEVERE gas flow problem” and that using six centralisers would risk the success of the procedure.

• BP decided not to carry out an acoustic test designed to measure the efficacy of the cementing of the well to block off gas flows. The test would have cost $128,000 and taken an extra 12 hours. An independent engineer who gave evidence to the committee said it was “unheard of” not to perform the test and slammed the decision as being “horribly negligent”.

• BP failed to check the proper workings of the new well system by circulating drilling mud from its bottom to the surface. Halliburton suggested the lack of a full test was due to BP’s desire for speed.

• The firm did not install a critical piece of equipment that locks the wellhead and the casing at the level of the sea floor. The absence of the “lockdown sleeve” has been identified as one possible cause of the explosion.”

Read more here..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/14/barack-obama-oil-spill-speech

Should we let BP go under? Quite frankly who cares? Not me the least. The way I see it is BP are a private company that took unqualified risks with the environment, and must pay to correct these mistakes and clean up. And even when they have cleaned up their act, this in no way excuses their responsibilities for these gross lapses in judgment for the sake of pursuing increased revenues and profit.

We all too readily accept these lame excuses and this high-handed indifference by modern corporate and governmental bodies, with their philosophy and culture whereby any mistake, no matter how great the consequences, can be diffused by simple apology and idle promises that it won’t happen again. This is no longer acceptable!

There are lessons to be learnt here by all parties, and lesson #1 is – do not trust the future of our ecosystem with corporations and profit mongers.

This environmental disaster should serve as a warning to us all that the use of Carbon fossil fuels is unsustainable and that where our oceans are concerned this is becoming more hazardous the deeper we go. Should we be drilling the ocean floors to sustain our reliance upon fossil fuels at all or should we be focusing our attentions on renewable energy sources?

Despite the rhetoric of our governments and of the G20 nations towards the aims and goals of reductions in Carbon emissions and of fossil fuel usage, it appears as there is still no firm commitment and fundamentally agreed political philosophy guided towards these reductions.

Are our governments really serious about renewable energy sources or not?

Are we living under the pretence that money and profit are not driving market forces in our pursuit of more and more reliance upon Carbon fossil fuels?

Where is this serious investment and monies in solar and wind energy to serve the planet?

Where are these Hydrogen fuel cell cars and the infrastructure to support them, which the market forces predict will support this guidance away from the reliance upon Carbon fossil fuels and oils?

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No consensus on geoengineering..

Furthering the debate concerned with the clouded controversy of Bill Gates’ support of geoengineering via private enterprise, here is a little more information pertaining to the international participation and cooperation, (or rather lack of it?) and regarding the dialogues related to geoengineering.

The use and benefits of geoengineering techniques to mitigate “global warming” is highly debatable and there is much speculation as to the success and the long-term effects of such projects. Would we in fact do more harm than good? Would we seriously alter or damage the planet’s delicate Eco-systems that have evolved over thousands of years?

Advocates would say that there is urgent need to mitigate and offset natural global warming, and that the use of geoengineering would give us valuable time to deal with the associated problems of carbon emissions and other issues concerning climate change? I tend to agree that we may need to instigate some use of technology to offset the lack of swift progress with CO2 emissions, so long as this does not deter us from the goals of emission reductions.

We should at least be open minded enough to contemplate the possibilities and need for geoengineering and to debate the issue seriously. And if it is proven that the need to take drastic action is real, then we must at least be ready and prepared now to contemplate any solutions for swift action in the near future. Some of the ideas concerning CDR and SRM here do seem rational, yet are they really feasible?

The paperwork here is lengthy and endless but does it really tell us anything? Well I’m not too sure, I am still digging. Once again it goes without saying that an internationally agreed policy is required to discuss and debate this issue further. It would be foolish to undertake any project without international cooperation.

Carbon Dioxide Removal – CDR (CO2 absorption techniques)
Solar Radiation Management – SRM (Sun-ray Reflective techniques)

 

ASILOMAR INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CLIMATE INTERVENTION TECHNOLOGIES
March 26, 2010

Excerpts from… Statement from the Conference’s Scientific Organizing Committee

“More than 175 experts from 15 countries with a wide diversity of backgrounds (natural science, engineering, social science, humanities, law) met for five days (March 22-26, 2010) at the Asilomar conference center in Pacific Grove, CA. The participants explored a range of issues that need to be addressed to ensure that research into the risks, impacts and efficacy of climate intervention methods is responsibly and transparently conducted and that potential consequences are thoroughly understood.

The group recognized that given our limited understanding of these methods and the potential for significant impacts on people and ecosystems, further discussions must involve government and civil society. Such discussions should be undertaken with humility and recognition of the threats posed by the rapid increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

Participants reaffirmed that the risks posed by climate change require a strong commitment to mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, adaptation to unavoidable climate change, and development of low-carbon energy sources independent of whether climate intervention methods ultimately prove to be safe and feasible.

We do not yet have sufficient knowledge of the risks associated with using methods for climate intervention and remediation, their intended and unintended impacts, and their efficacy in reducing the rate of climatic change to assess whether they should or should not be implemented. Thus, further research is essential.”

The Climate Response Fund

The Climate Response Fund was founded in 2009 to foster discussion of climate intervention research (sometimes called geoengineering or climate engineering) and to decrease the risk that these techniques might be called on or deployed before they are adequately understood and regulated.

http://www.climateresponsefund.org/

Further links of interest…

Climate scientists convene global geo-engineering summit
Meeting in California in March will discuss possible field trials of schemes that would tackle climate change by reflecting sunlight or fertilising the ocean with iron

Royal Society launches major study on the governance of geoengineering

Published Date: 18 March 2010

“A major new initiative to ensure strict governance of any plans for solar radiation management (SRM) geoengineering (counteracting global warming by reflecting a small percentage of the sun’s light and heat back into space), will be undertaken this year by the Royal Society, in partnership with the TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world, and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

The first output of the Initiative will be a set of recommendations for the governance of geoengineering research, to be released late in 2010.

Proposed geoengineering techniques that reflect the sun’s light and heat back into space may offer valuable opportunities to reduce global warming, and could do so quite rapidly, but it is likely that their impacts would also affect rainfall, regional weather patterns and ocean currents.

These impacts would not be restricted by national boundaries, so actions in one country could have highly significant effects in another, for example by changing rainfall and so affecting agriculture and water supply.”

House of Commons (UK) Science and Technology Committee
Fifth Report ~ The Regulation of Geoengineering

“Here you can browse the report together with the Proceedings of the Committee. The published report was ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 10 March 2010.”

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Cameron promises “greenest government ever”

Now this is a very welcome initiative from the UK newly formed coalition government. David Cameron (PM) has pledged to cut central government emissions by an impressive 10% within a year. This pledge should not be taken lightly, and I do believe that Cameron has the integrity and tenacity to make this happen.

This is a prime lesson in leading by example, and I’m now asking myself, If the UK government can do this, then all governments and businesses around the world should also be able to do it? In fact it is something that we can all do if we take time to be “mindful” and think about the consequences of non-action regarding climate change.

Now just take a moment to contemplate the possible results from this kind of action. Imagine 25% or 50% of the world taking this initiative to cut their consumer emissions by 10% – every year? Imagine eventually 100% of peoples around the world cutting their emissions by 10%?

Read more here.. http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/5

“Central government will cut its carbon emissions by 10% over the next year and individual departments will publish energy use on-line in real time, Prime Minister David Cameron said today.”

“Mr Huhne said: “Climate change is, in my view, in our view, the greatest challenge for mankind.”

Mr Cameron said: “This is transparency in action to drive forward the cuts in carbon emissions. It’s a new way of doing climate change, it’s a new way of doing politics. It’s in the spirit of our age and I think it will make a very big difference.”

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Megatons to Megawatts Program

Why my interest in this topic? I feel that this strategy makes absolute sense and should be extended as widely as is possible between nations. In turning decommissioned weapons stockpiles into useful nuclear fuel for reactors I see this as a most sensible solution in helping to offset and mitigate the use of carbon fuels and CO2 emissions. Anything that decreases the reliance upon carbon fuels must be of benefit, and although nuclear fission may not be the most favoured option, it is still the most efficient viable option available as compared with carbon fuel at present.

However, indications are that Russia would only be interested in any further deals where negotiations for them would prove more lucrative than in the past. I’m sure that this will be the case, as this idea has proven very successful and it would be a shame not to see it extended further.

If I find any more information on this subject and it’s future, or indeed why this is not such a good idea, then I will post it here.

By Andrew Newman

“Thanks to the Megatons to Megawatts program, half of U.S. nuclear energy comes from dismantled Russian nuclear warheads. Andrew Newman is a Harvard University research associate with the Project on Managing the Atom. This article appears in the February 2010 issue of eJournal USA, A World Free of Nuclear Weapons.”

“Who Benefits?”

“Megatons to Megawatts provides financial incentives to dismantle thousands of warheads, destroys hundreds of tons of weapons-grade material, and employs thousands of Russian nuclear workers all at very modest cost to the U.S. taxpayer. Without this deal, the proliferation risks from Russia’s nuclear complex during the 1990s would have been far greater.”

“Beyond 2013”

“While Megatons to Megawatts is a nonproliferation success story, it will come to an end in 2013, and Russia still has hundreds of tons of HEU beyond the stocks needed for its military program…”

“There are, however, ways to restructure the agreement that would allow Russia to make billions of dollars in profit and support its strategic objectives of expanding nuclear power and nuclear exports by blending down more of its excess HEU. Ultimately, both Russia and the United States should declare all HEU — beyond the stocks needed to support small future nuclear weapon stockpiles and their naval programs — to be excess, down-blend it to reactor fuel, and keep the material in monitored storage until the commercial market is ready to absorb it.”

Read the full article here ~ http://www.america.gov/st/peacesec-english/2010/February/20100222183504ebyessedo0.2598644.html

 

Status of program as of 2009

WikiQuote..

“In December 2009 USEC announced that the Megatons to Megawatts program had reached a new milestone ; 375 metric tons of Russian HEU warhead material, equivalent to 15,000 nuclear warheads has been eliminated. From 1993 to date 375 metric tons of Russian warhead HEU have been diluted and converted to LEU–low enriched uranium–fuel for nuclear power plants. The fuel is purchased by USEC for use in many of America’s 103 commercial nuclear power plants to produce electricity. Approximately 20% of America’s electricity is generated by nuclear energy.

Nuclear warheads that were once on guided missile ICBMs aimed at American cities are now providing 50% of the nuclear energy produced in the United States–one tenth of America’s overall electric power production. The U.S.-Russian agreement and the commercial implementing contract will be completed in 2013. At that time it is expected that a total of 500 metric tons of warhead HEU will be converted in Russia to LEU and purchased to fuel U.S. nuclear power plants. The Megatons to Megawatts program will have eliminated the equivalent of 20,000 nuclear warheads.

Completion of the Megatons to Megawatts agreement will leave a considerable gap in the supply of uranium fuel at a time when the global use of nuclear power is increasing. In the United States, there are 103 nuclear power reactors currently operating. New construction and operating permits for 15 nuclear power reactors are under review by the U.S.NRC. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. According to government and industry sources, seventeen companies are preparing license applications for as many as 31 new U.S nuclear reactors. Since the Megatons to Megawatts program is scheduled to end in 2013, demand for other sources of uranium supply will be necessary to meet current and future demand..^“

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program

…

CO2 and Global Warming

I came across this very informative blog article on global warming and would like to share it with you. It is a short piece yet a very interesting read, and gives a basic yet respectable understanding of how CO2 affects the atmosphere, and also points to the hypothesis of global warming through CO2 as far back as 100 years ago!

It explains clearly in layman’s terms the Earth’s natural cycles of warming due to the Sun, and why our actions due to industrialisation and global emissions appear in effect to be almost transparent throughout the Earth’s “little ice age” cycle.

It points to the issues that are causing the major contradictions concerning climate changes and also to the misdirection and confusion. And this explains why the climate sceptics continually profess that the Earth is naturally warming, and that there is nothing we can do or that we should worry about. This is obviously the wrong position to believe.

Yet the most remarkable part of the article is the part quoted below. Now does this ring any bells with you? Here in the UK there has been a decisive policy change by our previous government to opt for new nuclear power plant constructions despite protestations from both our Liberals and Green parties. Please note that I am not making a political point here, only highlighting that the reasons for policies may not always be apparent – what do you think?

The article is dated and I cannot confirm its age, only that it may be at least a decade old. The link to the author’s website at the end of the quote no longer exists. I cannot trace it any further as yet. I hope he will forgive me posting the large quote here, yet it is a major point to reflect upon and to absorb.

Please read the entire article here … http://www.bigissueground.com/scienceandfuture/blair-co2andglobalwarming.shtml

Excerpt taken from – CO2 and Global Warming
By Jim Blair

The twisted politics of energy – nuclear power

 “There is a strange political component to what should be a technical- scientific question. The Left believes in the green-house effect and the Right doubts it. But the Left opposes nuclear power while the Right supports it. When the dangers of CO2 are understood, the greenhouse effect is a compelling argument for shutting down coal and gas power plants, and only nuclear ones can replace them – at least in the short run.

Solar or wind is not yet capable of replacing the coal plants. Steam turbine natural gas (ie methane) has been proposed as an alternative, but although methane releases less CO2 per kilowatt of electricity generated, it still burns to CO2. And the more it is used, the more will leak or spill into the atmosphere, where it is much more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO2.

Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the three major objections to the use of nuclear reactors to generate electric power were the mining of uranium, the safety of the reactor operation, and the disposal of the reactor waste products. No one seems to realize that it is a different world today.

The former Soviet Republics have about 28,000 nuclear warheads, and the US about as many. They contain enough uranium and plutonium to supply the worlds electricity, probably until solar or fusion becomes practical. Whatever the risk of a state-of-the-art nuclear power plant, it is certainly safer than a nuclear warhead. And reactor waste presents less of a disposal problem than weapons grade uranium or plutonium. See ‘GREENHOUSE GAS & THE ECONOMY’ (on my web site) for my plan to deal with these problems.”

http://www.bigissueground.com/scienceandfuture/blair-co2andglobalwarming.shtml

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Putting the Future Back in the Room

By Alex Steffen

www.WorldChanging.com

Quote -“That’s why, if we care about the planet, the most important thing we can do is start showing how good a future we still can have. That’s why, right now, optimism is a political act, and a radical one at that.”

Quote – “We need millions of people ready to put the future back in the room. We need millions of people ready to demand that their governments, their companies, their communities and their cultural institutions confront the reality of the futures they make every day.”

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/steffen20100429/

This recent article at IEET.org is another call to action and describes the possibilities for the positive view, (right intention), and for positive action concerning the pursuit of policy changes. Please read it and add to the comments if you can.

There are many other articles at IEET concerning environmental issues and the ethical challenges concerning new and emerging technologies, as well as many articles that contemplate other existential risks to humanity. Indeed, it is currently one of my favoured sites, and you will also find it listed in the links section.

http://www.ieet.org/

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“Enjoy life while you can”

James Lovelock paints a dismal picture of our future. Is it all too late for us? Are his omens correct? Well his predictions have been mostly reliable so far. This is the guy that invented the device to detect CFCs in the atmosphere and established his Gaia hypothesis of the Earth as a living super-organism. His predictions are as bleak as they come.

I still see this as a call for awareness, and even more reason for us all to do something to change policies and mindsets, whatever that may entail? This does not change my view of the need for a call to action awareness at present. I’m hoping my further investigations will not change or reverse my optimism?

OK… this is scary stuff, checkout this brief interview with James Lovelock here.. >> “Enjoy life while you can”

Quotes…

“Enjoy life while you can”

“It’s just too late for it,” he says. “Perhaps if we’d gone along routes like that in 1967, it might have helped. But we don’t have time. All these standard green things, like sustainable development, I think these are just words that mean nothing. I get an awful lot of people coming to me saying you can’t say that, because it gives us nothing to do. I say on the contrary, it gives us an immense amount to do. Just not the kinds of things you want to do.”

” This is all delivered with an air of benign wonder at the intractable stupidity of people. “I see it with everybody. People just want to go on doing what they’re doing. They want business as usual. They say, ‘Oh yes, there’s going to be a problem up ahead,’ but they don’t want to change anything.”

“There have been seven disasters since humans came on the earth, very similar to the one that’s just about to happen. I think these events keep separating the wheat from the chaff. And eventually we’ll have a human on the planet that really does understand it and can live with it properly. That’s the source of my optimism.”

“What would Lovelock do now, I ask, if he were me? He smiles and says: “Enjoy life while you can. Because if you’re lucky it’s going to be 20 years before it hits the fan.”

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Climate change – A call to awareness..

The problems we face today concerning climate change are enormous. Some believe it is already too late, others like myself believe we can act to limit further damage to our environment. Yet this whole issue of climate crisis seems to be overwhelming, and governments are sceptical and slow to act. International politics is causing barriers and complications and this is no surprise. It is no surprise that humans create the politics that stands in the way of change, and that which may even stand in the way of our survival? It is this procrastination that is becoming as dangerous as the consequences of climate change itself.

It appears to me, that what is required is “mass awareness” of the importance and depth of the crises that hangs over us all. Sure most people around the world know that there is serious climate chaos looming, yet like myself we are resigned to non-action for the most part as the problem appears to be too difficult for us to contemplate or rectify. We leave it all in the hands of our elected governments and scientific experts and place faith and hope and trust in their wisdom to figure this stuff out and to act on our behalf.

But this is the problem, little or nothing seems to be happening with urgency, decisions and policies appear slow to emerge and progress is hindered. For this reason I believe we need to stimulate awareness of the consequences of non-action and that we all have a part we can play to help to guide policy change through our communication.

It is not important that each of us needs to know what to do, or how to rectify climate problems and issues. The importance is that we “think” about the consequences of doing nothing. That by simply “thinking” about climate change and its consequences on a daily basis and thus talking to others and sharing comments, I believe we can encourage widespread and universal acceptance of the need to change our philosophy and act with urgency. In this way our media and thus our governments will recognise our concerns and be prompted to act to promote change in policies as quickly as possible, and to guide us in solving these climate issues.

How can we encourage change in policy and decision making?

The idea is to create a “wave of conscious awareness” around the globe to get everyone “thinking” about climate issues, including the Asian continents. The recent student demonstrations in Iran has hinted at the effectiveness of Twitter and tweets, and thus I see this as an ideal tool to join hands and awareness around the globe and to get people thinking about climate problems. The aim is to also stimulate participation in a philosophy towards protecting our environment, through whatever means possible.

This goal is to stimulate “thinking” about the implications of non-action towards climate change. It may provoke more reading on climate issues and strategies, or in pursuing policy change directly with your local politicians or even the government directly, or more simply stimulate thoughts towards waste recycling, or wasting energy?

So what’s the strategy?

The method is simple, you simply “join hands” or rather share communications and use your twitter account, or blog, or website to link and create a following to others that are interested in climate issues. Once there is a high enough volume, or ideally the greatest volume of content linking climate awareness using tweets and blogs, then the media and government will have no other choice but to acknowledge the need for urgent action and policy changes, and be guided by our “want” to change policies to avoid climate catastrophe?

Maybe you already do this? Maybe you already highlight climate issues and use your blogs or twitter to link to articles and news? If so then all you have to do is to link or “follow”, or even create a “following” to link to other climate tweets and blogs so that eventually all twitter accounts “will include some link or discussion on climate issues”. By eventually linking users to nodes and even hubs of tweets and blogs, the content of the Internet will be so overwhelming that there will not be a single account that does not feature a climate issue or an article at any time in cyberspace.

Thus the message that the ultimate or most important focus around the globe on these mediums of communication will be that of climate issues, that will then be noticed by the international media, and thus noticed by our governments and politicians to stimulate policy change and action.

The idea is NOT to hijack twitter with climate chatter or to serve only climate change content. The content of your tweets and blogs need not focus entirely or even any more than usual on any climate issues or articles, and need not deter you from your usual tweets and agenda. Once again, the idea is firstly and primarily to “stimulate awareness” of climate issues and the need for action, and to get everyone “thinking about climate change issues”. I believe the rest will take care of itself.

And the beauty of this simple strategy is that twitter and tweets are free, and it will also serve as yet another boon for twitter and also to stimulate global awareness and publicity – and further add towards the goal of climate awareness? You need not even read an article or blog that is linked to a climate issue, as the most important statistic for the purpose and goal is the “hit” that is associated with the link. As we all know, it is “hits” which are the stats that drive Internet content success.

Security and spamming…

Sure this increase in climate awareness and inter-connectivity of links will encourage freeloaders and more serious security risks. Yet I believe this will be no more than is usual, and that individuals are smart enough to notice spam bots and insincere climate links. If you notice a strange tweet or link that begs attention, then simply ignore it in favour of a more trusted tweet from someone you know. The most important point is to “think” about climate issues everyday, and spread your own links to articles and blogs that you may find interesting so eventually the mass volume of content on these mediums becomes overwhelming and cannot be ignored by the media and world news.

Organisation of Nodes and hubs to focus on climate issues…

How can we link Twitter and tweets and blogs to maximise efficiencies?

By linking and adding followers and tweets together into nodes and then nodes into hubs, (see twibes also), I am presuming there may well at some stage be a saturation or maximum number of linked twitter followers in each twitter account. For example Tom, Dick and Harry may all promote climate issues and be both followers and following each other. Imagine eventually hundreds of followers all following each other causing saturation in each account as each twitter user follows each other?

Yet this need not matter at all and can easily be corrected and more efficiently presented to form nodes and hubs that are linked together as the experience between twitter users decides to eliminate circular or closed links? As long as there is still at least two twitter followers linked together who may each form a node then a more efficient connection between the different users is created. This may also appear to work best and more efficiently with three nodes linked rather than merely two nodes?

In other words, Tom’s climate followers may include a hundred twitter users interested in climate issues, and Harry’s climate followers will eventually include a hundred different users, and Dick’s climate followers will include yet another different hundred users. The need is that only Tom, Dick and Harry need to be linked as followers and following to create three nodes of three hundred different twitter accounts sharing climate interest, content and issues?

Eventually twitter users will delete following’s from their own accounts as they notice there is no gain to a circular reference and create new links and following to pursue their own interests in climate issues. The connection between individuals, nodes and hubs of users interested in climate issues will be fluid, and the links need not be static at all?

Will this prove successful?

I am not at all sure of the success of this methodology or whether it may prove to be a success amongst users of twitter and blogs etc. Yet I feel it is well worth trying to “promote awareness of climate issues”, and it is merely the simplicity of adding regular links of tweets to comments, articles and blogs concerning climate issues, and action towards climate change. And how much effort is required to do this? If you are concerned about the urgent need for action to climate change and other environment issues, even local issues, then it takes little or no effort to use your twitter account and blog to highlight this, and most importantly to share links to others of like mind?

As I say, I believe the rest will take care of itself, and the Internet will eventually expand to include and absorb greater amounts of content regarding awareness of climate issues and communications. Maybe then, media sources will help us focus in on the need for less dithering and indecision and help guide policy changes?

Yours sincerely

CygnusX1