Re: 'The "New" Chemistry'

As I mentioned in my previous posting, "The New Chemistry", my Alma Mater, the department of Chemistry at the University of Sussex (then called the School of Molecular Sciences, and now part of a Faculty hybrid of chemistry, biology, biochemistry, psychology and others, which in its heyday could boast of 2 Nobel laureates and about...as I recall..7 Fellows of the Royal Society (FRS), including some of the world's most renowned authorities on organosilicon and organometallic chemistry), has announced its almost certain closure or rehybridisation to that end. There is a real problem in the physical sciences in the U.K., borne by the decline in manufacturing industry - which is in any case doomed by the prospect of "Peak Oil" - and by the fact that "science" is expensive. In a former life as a professor at one of the "new" universities, I was insisted that arts post-graduates should be funded - or their departments, in reality - at the same rate as science post-grads. I did indeed make the point that since we had to run the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR; and in "NMR Imaging" an adaptation of it, now called MRI, because uninformed people get understandably worried by the term "nuclear"), mass spectrometry and other facilities, compared with just needing the library (not a cheap resource either) a pencil and a pad of paper, this was nonsense.
However, it is the case that universities other than the lofty towers of the Great and the Good can't afford to run a chemistry department any more unless the government props it all up. This is no surprise, given the lack of industry - where I joined as a 16 year old school-leaver and then went on to study part-time at Croydon Technical College for the ONC and HNC, before attending Sussex University where I did my B.Sc and D.Phil (the same as a Ph.D, but being unofficially called "Balliol by the Sea" it had adopted that designation according to the Oxford traditions of those initially appointed to derive that institution). Having been on the receiving-end of the consequential years, I have occasionally felt a pang of envy at the idea of being appointed to a permanent academic post without the requirement of a formal interview - on a wink-and-a-nod, in the Great British Tradition - you were "one of the chaps" and that was that. You were in.
But science costs a lot of money. There is no level playing-field (a lovely expression based on the public school playing fields of again the Great and the Good).
In some institutions there has in all likelihood been a stage of arrogance and complacency - that surely "we" can't go to the wall as the Poly's and Colleges have, but a rude awakening has stirred the entire academic system of this country. It is a matter of simple economics, but is this a deliberate purpose or a consequential shadow of government will? Are "they" really "out" to slim-down the academic science system into a few "chosen" departments? Given the destruction of the (e.g. British coal) industry of the United Kingdom, I guess there is no perceived need for the quantity of scientifically trained people in the workforce any longer. However, to keep the numbers of young unemployed down, which would be a political thin-edge, we have to do something with them and hence education and training is the euphemistic alternative to the dole. I have heard and reprimanded students for saying something along the lines of "Oh I suppose if I wasn't here I'd be on the Dole". Great! What kind of an attitude is that?! But it is an attitude of no alternative or solid prospects.
The HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) has been quoted on the following remarks which are self-emphatic in explaining the current situation and nor are they particularly consoling that it will change. Even the Royal society of Chemistry has stated that we might be left with just 6 out of the hundred or so departments offering chemistry a decade or so back, when we had more industry - fuelled by oil, let's not forget that essential source of everything: The HEFCE had not been given enough "powers or political support", but had encouraged a "market" within which vice-chancellors were very powerful. Indeed, a vice-chancellor is now Chief Executive Officer of a multi-million pound annual turn-over organisation, and has to balance the books.
So, do we need or want science, or not? I think some determined and solid decision should be made beyond lip service and supplications to the future, and as with all other aspects of human society this must be balanced against natural and human resources. Where are we going as a human society? I would love to hear some clear guidance on this matter, otherwise we will simply trot-along in ultimatum to an outcome that perhaps we should have prepared for.

Gorbachev goes Green about Chernobyl.

As noted in previous postings, the 20th anniversary of the explosion at the Unit 4 reactor in the Chernobyl nuclear power station has now recently passed. In commemoration of this fact, and more poignantly its aftermath, the former U.S.S.R. president, Mikhail Gorbachev, who is also the Founder and Chairman of "Green Cross International" has called the leaders of the G8 nations to commit to the future provision of energy by the use of renewable sources and its more efficient use. This was sent along with a personal letter from Gorbachev in an "Energy Security" brief to leaders of G8 parliament countries and their heads of state (so presumably Her Majesty The Queen received one? Or Prince Charles, perhaps, who is highly committed to "environment" issues).
Fronted by Gorbechev, Green Cross International and "Global Security", its American Sister body, have urged the G8 to support sustainable energy, in part to the sum of $50 billion to create a "Global Solar Fund". I would guess that Jeremy Leggett CEO of Solarcentury, the UK's leading solar photovoltaics company would applaud this instigation, since Leggett is furthermore a director of the world's first private equity renewable energy fund, Bank Sarasin's New Energies Invest AG and serves on the UK Government's Renewables Advisory Board. Hopefully the two funds if placed upon the market together will not come into confrontation.
There is the separate issue of just what proportion of the world's current electricity usage might be provided even by $50 billion worth of "solar panels", however. I have heard it said that the entire U.S. electricity could be provided by covering one tenth of the area of Arizona with solar panels. I live in the village of Caversham in the U.K., not there, but from my travels in America I recall that Arizona is a pretty big place, so covering 1/10 of it (or that scale elsewhere in America, which by European standards is in total extremely large) would be a considerable undertaking. Would it even be possible to fabricate sufficient of them on a world scale - I doubt it very much, unless the other edge of Gorby's sword is used to smite the vast and rising energy use both in the developed and developing world, into something more realistically manageable.
Gorbachev believes that the Solar Fund would help the developing world in their rise as industrial powers and could be installed so to prevent "black-outs" (or "brown-outs", as in the infamous novel "entitled "Brown-out on Sunset Boulevard", brown-outs being somewhat less protracted and less extensive abrupt electricity shortages) in major cities with huge electricity and other energy requirements.
It is undoubtedly true that humanity is facing massive issues of energy security and supply - the societal consequences of failing to manage this task being practically unthinkable. An exponential expansion of renewables in general and solar, according to Gorbachev, is required to provide "clean" (i.e. non-polluting) energy in perpetuity, but I doubt the Heyday can be sustained. Once the crop is cut, unlike "hay", it cannot be grown again. Once the oil and gas are gone then that is probably that, and the scale of generating hydrogen by water electrolysis using renewably (solar?) generated electricity that would be necessary, along with a storage and supply infrastructure of a scale that no government or scientific advisor has dared even mention, as an alternative to that entirety is more than likely out of the question.
Once we have exhausted our existing resources, how will we have enough energy to fuel the fabrication of solar panels or indeed any other kind of sustainable resource.
Gorbachev argues on economic grounds that nuclear power is not the answer either, pointing out that the industry is kept running to a large extent propped up by government subsidies, in the U.S. to the extent of $260 billion in the years 1947 through to 1999. The same commitment to renewables was a meager 2.1% of that during the same period. The provision of nuclear is only a long-term option in any case if we convert the precious world resource of uranium to plutonium in fast breeder reactors. India is less immediately reliant on uranium, with its huge natural resource of thorium, an element that can also be "bred" into a fissile form (uranium 233) by injecting a neutron into the nucleus of thorium 232 (similar to creating plutonium 239 from uranium 238). However, even resources of thorium are ultimately exhaustible, hence the issue persists.
I'm all for renewables in principle, but remain unconvinced that they can substitute for the colossal and rising overall energy demand that humankind is placing on the limits of the globe. If we make a truthful commitment to cutting that first, we may be in with a chance of "sustainable humanity".

China Climate Change.

China is a rapidly industrialising nation and from the late 1980's it has changed from a producer of surplus energy to a net importer. In consequence it is now the case that China is the worst emitter of CO2 other than the United States. Since China is a developing nation it is not bound to hold-back its emissions by the Kyoto Treaty, and would probably be reluctant to do so as it works to industrialise itself out of poverty. The government there is nevertheless in possession of the facts about climate change and the nation is making efforts to find alternative sources of energy - including solar and wind-power - in an effort to reduce its emissions. In 2005, a report was published which reviewed the whole picture about China's energy and climate change and concluded that similar effects are to be expected in China as pertain everywhere else: for example, sea levels have risen by between 1 and 2.5 mm per year, and temperatures during the same period on average increased by 0.6 - 0.8 degrees C. Given its geography, climate change will render the China at risk of damage from sea level rises, drought, flooding, sand storms (e.g. from the Gobi Desert), tropical cyclones and periods of excessive heat (heat waves).
China is made up of different climatic zones and physical landscapes: the north west of the country is arid and semi-arid, and is particularly susceptible to forces of erosion; in contrast, a warmer climate might prove a driver for increased agricultural output in the north east. In the central and eastern regions, winters tend to be cold and summers are hot, and it is here that a booming building industry is demanding ever increasing amounts of energy to fuel it. The coasts of the south and east are densely populated and could be damaged economically by sea level rises, especially in the Zhujiang and Yangtze areas. It is China's large dependence on coal, which pays 75% of the national total energy bill that lies at the root of the problem of rising emissions, coupled with booming industry and rapid urbanisation. In the year 2000 China contributed about 15% of the worlds anthropogenic CO2, while America produced about 21%, but according to an analysis by the Pew Centre in the U.S., China will exceed America within 20 years.
In 1960, China's industrial sector burned around 300 million tonnes of coal equivalent, which doubled by 1980, and by 2000 that had more than doubled again; in 2004 the quantity accelerated to almost 2 billion tonnes, and exceeded the county's production output of 1.85 billion tonnes coal equivalent (tce). Hence in just a decade, China has shifted from being a net exporter to a new importer of coal.
There seems little doubt that the demand will continue to ascend as China is now a "developing giant" with a propelling economy, but the same problems that we see in more developed nations, of pollution and energy supply are now paramount there too. Can we really continue to "fuel the dragon", as I read a headline the other day, who's hunger grows unabated.
Although China has never been in denial about climate change it has maintained the view (quite reasonably) that it is developed countries who must bear responsibility for past emissions, and that they should also limit future emissions, helping developing nations such as there's to do likewise in the future by providing new technologies to assist them to that end. On the international stage, China considers that negotiations over climate change as central to foreign policy and that it and other developing countries need to defend their rights in regard to any treaty's and decisions.
Although China has refused to limit its emissions during international negotiations, on its own soil, China is working to diversify - to find ways for energy efficiency and new sources of it, including renewables. The reasons, however, are not mainly a desire to comply with the developed world's global climate policy but primarily matters of society and economy. That issues of security of supply and pollution are paramount, as they are in the U.K., and elsewhere. To this end, there is heavy investment ongoing in hydropower, nuclear, solar, wind and biomass - the whole portfolio that the U.K. government has also envisaged with which to provide energy up to 2050, as I wrote about in my very first of these postings. Impressively, south-west China is thought to be capable of producing 40 gigawatts of hydropower by 2020, which could supply dozens of cities with populations of around half a million.
As the negotions unfold in the wake of Kyoto, many are of the opinion that China will need to cut its emissions beyond 2012, but given the levels of poverty there, with mean incomes below $110 in 2004, there is still much development required before a significant elevation of living standards can be expected. It is in China's best interests to participate in the world efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change both internationally and in their own back yard. It seems likely that China will not so much reduce its emissions especially, but will provide some of the additional demands of its surging economic expansion using renewable sources.

Coal is the new "Green".

Is seems that coal is back on the agenda as a means to avoid troubles of energy supply, i.e. of "oil" from the Middle East. Some even claim that it will protect against global warning, although this is hard to believe as coal is by definition a carbon-based fuel and if you burn it surely CO2 will be released into the atmosphere, just the same as when oil or gas are burnt. Interestingly, in about 1900, when the population of the U.K. was about 40 million (now it is nearer 60 million) the per capita energy consumption overall was greater than it is now, so we have got some things right in terms of energy efficiency, and everyone has heard of the smogs of the 1950's, one of which is thought to have killed 4,000 of the population of Greater London - a "pea-souper" as such events were called in the amusing Cockney analogy of the air being about as non-transparent as pea soup. "The Clean Air Act" largely eliminated this phenomenon.The main problem was that particles were released into the atmosphere, coated with sulphuric acid generated by burning sulphurous coal, of sufficient smallness to be inhaled into the deep-lung. The ingestion thus of this material is believed to trigger heart attacks and brain aneurysms (similar to strokes but worse since the iron in the blood actually destroys the brain tissue).
But coal, once literally the black sheep of the energy family, is now being welcomed back into the fold. It was the burning of coal that provided the majority of the U.K.'s energy before the Second World War, hence the higher rate of consumption in the "good" old days. Coal is traditionally associated with "filth". Its extraction leads to slag-heaps. As a boy, growing up in South Wales, I well remember black-faced men emerging from the "pit", and coming home to strip-wash at the kitchen sink before eating their dinner ("tea" we used to call it), and maybe off to the pub for a few pints of weak, warm Welsh beer...or maybe off to Chapel, as the Methodist religion is known as colloquially in that area. "Bible Black" Dylan Thomas described the night as in the fantasy village of Llareggub in "Under Milk Wood", the name being "Bugger All" spelled backwards. Llareggub was reportedly changed to Llaregyb by the B.B.C. censors when the play was first broadcast. I also remember well the "Aberfan Disaster" in 1966, when a slag heap suffered a land slide and engulfed a school, killing off practically an entire generation of that town, Aberfan. My father helped-out in the rescue operations, afterwards.
In the first posting of this "blog" I mentioned that a commission by "The Royal Society" has determined that coal should be an important component of the energy mix that it has concluded to be essential for providing the U.K.'s energy to 2050. We may have changed some of our minds by then...who knows? Gas is no longer a cheap and seemingly inexhaustible source of energy, as it was in the 1990's when the nation switched to gas from coal in the follow-on to the decimation of the United Kingdom's coal industry in the mid 1980's. Effectively this was the end of the power of the Trade Unions, and to post an emphasis to that end, some of the pits were sealed up with concrete, which will need to be blasted back open if we are to ensure a domestic supply. Indeed, security of supply became a households phrase regarding gas when Russia cut-off its supplies to Ukraine last winter.
Richard Budge, who has been dubbed "King Coal" has been reported as saying that he has garnered sufficient cash (from a Russian businessman) to re-open a Colliery at Hatfield in South Yorkshire. This was indeed in the heartland of the industrial conflict overdriven by Arthur Scargill in 1985, as I remember it. Budge has also announced that he wants to build a carbon capture and sequestration plant in situ there, thus making the process cleaner and more "green" than in the bad old days. Presumably too, the technology for coal extraction has improved and is a less labour intensive and dangerous practice than is infamously remembered, especially by those of us who knew the mining villages back then, in my case in the South Wales of my childhood. In analogy, two German giants, RWE and E.ON have reported their intentions to run similar "clean coal" plants.
I believe that we still produce about 17% of our energy (that is the total budget) from coal, and this proportion looks set to rise. As far as the argument about CO2 emissions goes I'm not sure that burning coal makes much difference - indeed, we looked good in the U.K. in this regard when we switched from coal to cheap gas - however, it is the element of carbon capture that is key here, and could be applied to any carbon fuel driven plant, whatever its source, be that coal, oil or gas. I do have some reservations about the safety of this untested technology though - what would happen if a "well" of stored CO2 were to become suddenly released? I would reckon that the impact, both on local animal and human life - since CO2 is a suffocating gas, and is responsible for most deaths in the beer brewing industry - and longer term global warming could be catastrophic.
President George Bush proclaimed this year that America is "addicted to oil". Well, so are we and the rest of Europe, and the developing nations especially China, India and Brazil, so all in all, devising another source of energy is paramount, and coal of which there is plenty available around the world is a likely option for that. Coal provides something near to 75% of China's energy, and as the developing nations advance their process of industrialisation it will almost certainly prove a heavy source of electricity to enable that outcome. The developing countries, however, are less concerned with CO2 emissions, and so our best efforts will be drowned out by atmospheric CO2 contributions from elsewhere.
It would be false to think that the U.K. coal industry had died out, and indeed we produce about 20 million tonnes of the 50 million tonnes we consume every year, the missing 30 million tonnes being imported more cheaply from elsewhere (e.g. Germany) than we can dig it up on these shores. However, this may change, and with rising gas prices our coal may be the more profitable option. As ever, it is economic drivers that change behaviour, and I suspect that carbon capture will take a back seat ride in the longer run, while we await the results of the great "climate change experiment" that each and every one of us is taking part in and will, or subsequent generations of us will, witness.

"Peak Oil" has just Arrived.

At $75 a barrel, the age of cheap oil is over, and its consequences are about to unfold upon us all. So hang on to your seats! I wrote about "Peak Oil" in an earlier posting so entitled, explaining the analysis by the pre-eminent petroleum geologist M. King Hubbert which indicated that the peak in production from an oil-field should occur about forty years after the peak in discovery of new wells. Despite Hubbert's detractors at the time, his prediction proved spot-on (to within a year) for U.S. oil production in the late 1960's. If Peak Oil is applicable to other fields, e.g. in Saudi, where the peak in discovery occurred in the early 1970's, we must be approaching "Peak Oil" production any time now, especially with more efficient drilling and extraction technologies introduced in the last decade or so, and I have spoken to some in the oil industry who are of the opinion that it is already with us.
Once the peak is past - the half-way point at which according to Hubbert about half the oil originally present is left in the field - production then falls with a consequent rise in the price of oil, and hence the cost of everything that depends on it, either as a raw manufacturing material or as a fuel, or both, i.e. everything we rely upon, including food, most of which is grown using chemical fertilizers made from gas or oil. World "Peak Gas" is expected to come later, probably between 2050 and 2100, depending on how fast we use it up.
In a recent interview on Radio 4, the U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown has spoken of a "moral duty" to fight climate change (echoing the urgent words of the Archbishop of Canterbury), meaning that we should burn less carbon-based fuel, especially oil and gas, to limit global CO2 emissions. This, along with the plain limit in quantity of a unique and precious resource that is available, would auger on the side of cutting back our profligate use of it. However, if we are sliding over the peak and onto the downward span where production falls and oil becomes more expensive, an economic driver might be expected to apply a brake on the rising demand and even to send it into reverse. Mr Brown has opposed calls for higher taxes to be imposed on fuels since he feels that overall economic needs must be balanced against environmental requirements, and he has warned that global economic stability could be compromised by rising fuel costs.
Mr Brown explained that the record high of $75 a barrel could be attributed to the growing demand for oil to fire the developing economies of China and India. He stressed further that it is the poorest nations who will suffer from the effects of climate change, and that individuals have a personal responsibility toward them. Mr Brown believes that the correct course is to freeze fuel duty in an effort to restrain oil prices into check. Meanwhile, motorists were warned to brace themselves for petrol costs of £5 a gallon in the U.K., but the AA (Automobile Association, not Alcoholics Anonymous) has urged them not to panic-buy fuel as this will make the problem of supply even worse. The £5 gallon is a predicted consequence of oil process hitting the $100 a barrel threshold; however, it would bring in an additional £8 billion to the treasury from the North Sea oil revenues alone. Since oil prices have roughly trebled during the past three years, establishing both stability and sustainablilty of supply is superlative; yet the resource is not sustainable.
The aviation industry is not exempt from the fall-out of rising fuel costs and British Airways have recently increased the fuel surcharge for long-haul flights by £10 to £60 per passenger. The hiked-up prices can be put down to fears over security in the supply of fuel, ranging from the impact of hurricanes on the oil fields off the eastern coast of the United States (e.g. the Gulf of Mexico, which has lost 300,000 barrels worth from the market) to political issues in the Middle East including a reduced supply from Iran if there is military action imposed upon this nation by the West.
If a supply crisis were to occur, petrol rationing and the use of military convoys to distribute fuel would be imposed. In other words, "The Army" would be put in charge of the whole fuel distribution network of garage forcourts, petrol tankers, oil-refinaries and oil-tankers. Mr Brown has asked the G-7 countries to unite in finding a solution to the volatility in oil prices by stabilising supplies of oil and to develop alternative sources of energy. Ironically, he also urged a boost in oil production which surely will drag the world more rapidly down the down-side of Hubbert's Peak and is a short-term solution at best, if it is a solution at all.
On first reading, a call on the World Bank to invest in developing a financial framework (whatever that means in truth?) so that developing countries - mainly China, India and Brazil - might provide for their (rising!) energy demands using low carbon emitting sources sounds like a good idea, but we come back once more to a sheer density of energy production which is probably impossible to meet by renewables, at least on the enormity of the scale required. The whole show is simply unsustainable, and the G-7 nations should put their heads together to revamp global society into a less energy consuming and sustainable means: this would be a serious commitment both to global CO2 emissions and surviving beyond "Peak Oil".