Einstein and Human Survival

“We Shall Require a Substantially New Manner of Thinking if Mankind is to Survive” (Einstein 1949)

I observe that, whatever people say about global population falling, the truth. is that it is still expanding.  So is pollution, especially from pharmaceutical residues and microplastics (not to mention GHG’s). The GHG’s from armed conflicts round the world is larger than any other single cause. Global warming is limiting food security. The landmass available for agricultural production is shrinking. Einstein was right BUT we still do not change fast enough.

However, there is good work going on.  We do have, or are already developing the technology to survive.  BUT, we do need to stop wars, stop population growth, start limiting pollution and start thinking survival.

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Food and Farming  Bill Butterworth, Land Research Ltd, 22 April ’24

Aviation fuel and CO2

How to tackle aviation fuel use and emissions.

I do know only a little about making alternative, “renewable” fuels from plant oils, but here is some common sense. Some years back, I set up a group of farmers who recycled urban wastes, via composting, to farm land. After a few years of doing this, some of them were able to stop buying manufactured fertilisers and yet still had better crops and a little less use of chemical sprays. Two of them grew oil seed rape this way and used the oil to drive their tractors. So, we know it can be done. Is it likely that we could do aviation fuel this way? Well, technically it is possible and, indeed, it has been done. However, most people who have done more research on this than I think that scaling it up is extremely unlikely and for a number of reasons. Firstly, it does appear that the efforts so far are just an attempt to say “we are trying” but there is no real commitment to scaling it up. In other words, it is a publicity stunt to put off the day of actually doing it at scale.

So, how to move forward?

Well, the United Nations (UN) could start a program where countries agree to collect a tax on aviation fuel (made from fossilised hydrocarbon reserves) and pay the revenues to the UN. Do this against a time scale and then shorten the build up of tax.

 

Difficult? Yes it would be – very.

 

Any alternative? Catastrophic, yes, catastrophic for our kids.

 

There is over 300 pages on this in https://www.amazon.co.uk/2030-Year-Civilisation-Will-Die/dp/1789821134

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Farming and Forestry Bill Butterworth  Land Researach Ltd 30 January ’24

Gaza war CO2

Militaries may be responsible for 5.5% of the annual greenhouse gas emissions fuelling climate change – more than all the civil aviation flights and shipping voyages combined.

Earth-Stress is catching us up. All living things can stand stress, it is part of the definition of being alive. All living things can stand one stess. Now add another. OK. Now add another and another. At some point, the organism will crack and declinne. That is happening on this Earth right now. It is not just about climate change, nor pollution, nor a host of other stresses. It is about climate change, AND pollution, AND over-population, AND a host of other stresses.
By the way, researchers at Lancaster University have doen some homework on the one-sided war in Gaza. The energy taken to manufacture, deliver and use the munitions put his as the fith largest emitter of GHG’s on this Earth right now. If we ever get round to rebuilding what the Israelis are destroying, that will just about double the emissions.
It is not just bad for the Palestinians, it is killing the rest of us.

Part of the solution is at https://lnkd.in/eUjH7VeK

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Farming and Forestry Bill Butterworth, Land Researcj Ltd 28 Januaary ’23

How to free public transport

We have to reduce fuel use globally, starting with every individual.  It cannot be volutary. It has to start now for everyone together.

Here is a sugestion as to how to manage the political issue:

1.  Issue a statement of intent to develop a 10 year plan to make public transport free.
2. Within 6 months of that statement, pass a law binding local authorites and the rail network to making their transport sector free withing 10 years.
3. Within the first 12 months of the initial anouncement, issue a statement that road tax for individuals will double within 2 years, and do that.
4. Progressively bring forward free public transport dates and increases in road tax and fuel duty.
5. Progressively bring forward to target to deliver within 7 years of original anouncement.

Are there serious problems for individuals and businesses with this sort of plan? Yes, very serious.  There will be serious casualties. There will be serious difficulties politically and economically.

Think about the alternative.

(Look out for the next post on how to reduce emissions form aircraaft – and it isn’t to use “renewable” fuels. )

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Farming and Forestry.  Bill Butterworth 24 January ’24

Free public transport

There is just beginning to be a discussion at government level, in the UK and Europe, maybe globally eventually, about the logic of free public transport, probably funded by increased tax on running aiprovate car.  If you take the threat of climate chage seriously, and ALL the top scientists in th eworld do, then the emissions from transport is unavoidable. The question is when. The likelyhood is that the politicians will be frightened that they might upset their voters and not do it soon enough. If you vlaue your children’s future, this is worth thinking about and telling your MP what you think.

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Farming and Forestry Bill Butterworth, Lane Research 9 January ’24

 

 

Happy Christmas for 2024?

One of my news feeds said:

“COP28 ended with a historic agreement to “transition away” from using fossil fuels in energy systems, the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions altering Earth’s climate. So why did the companies plying coal, oil and gas have a good summit?  As we reported last week, the failure to include stronger language in the final text (including the promise of a definitive “phase-out” of fossil fuels) was condemned by climate and energy researchers.”

I choose to conclude, on evidence, that we have the technology to head off the worst results of climate change, pollution, over-population and insincer politicians who promise much but, with the aid of global businesses, deliver little.

The conclusions I come to, and have published in the books that I write, are that the success in combating these multiple and combined threats, will come from small companies, individual innovators, ordinary people, who scale up making money out of doing things that solve these problems, or finding ways to spend less money on the things that cause these problems.  At the end of the day, combatting climate change and all the other problems that threaten the human race, it is all about cash.

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Farming and Forestry                                             Bill Butterworth, Laned Research 22 December ‘23

House building target is suicide

 

 

Consider the following.

1 tonne of wheat will sustain 5 people. (UN and World Bank guidance)

1 acre in UK produces, on average, about 3.5 tonnes of grain and around 10 tonnes of drymatter.

1 tonne of dry matter contains about 0.58 tonne of Carbon which, if oxidised, would produce 2.1 tonnes of Carbon dioxide, or to put it the other way round, that 1 acre and 10 tonnes of dry matter will have taken 21 tonnes of CO₂ out of the atmosphere.

Go back to the grain produced – that 1acre and 3.5 tonnes of wheat produced, would sustain 17.5 people for a year.  Now, if we don’t produce that grain, we can afford to buy more off the world market. So, for each acre not producing in the UK, 17.5 people somewhere else die of starvation. Yes, they do.

Now, the UK government is targeting 300,000 new houses a year and, as a general rule of thumb at 10 houses per acre, that would be 30,000 acres per year go out of producing food and get covered in bricks and concrete.

So, achieving that target would mean that;

• Over 52,000 people die of starvation somewhere else, every year for ever!

and

• 630,000 tonnes of Carbon dioxide which is currently taken out of the atmosphere each year, is not taken out every year for ever!

You can argue about the exact figures but not the principle. If you care bout the next generation, and indeed yourself, forward this to your MP and newspapers.

 

Seff – Soil, Environment, Food and Farming Bill Butterworth 30 November ‘23

 

 

UFOG Biological release N

 

The fertiliser being mixed here is insoluble in water. So this is a suspension that will settle out if left standing. It holds 22% N nutrient which will not wash out when in the soil, however much it rains..  It will only be released when soil conditions are right for crop growth and it will, even then, only be released into the crop roots by the soil fungi, the mycorrhizae. This is what Land Reseaarchis currently working on.

Suicide

 

This morning, around 7 am, I looked East and saw this.  I counted 40 contrails and then lost count – there were certianly more.  That is just one place and one time. Each one, as they are all over-flying Heathrow, would be long haul and burning at least 40 tonnes of fuel on average in just this one trip.  Each tonne of aviation fule will produce 3 tonnes of CO2. So at is 4800 tonnes for just this one place and one time. There is an average of 9,728 planes carrying 1,270,406 passengers in the sky at any given time.  It is over-simplyfieing the situation but, as a guide, multiply 4800 by 9728, and that is around 50,000 tonnes of CO2 from trips currently, right now, in progress.

SEFF Soil, Environment, Food and Farming Bill Butterworth  Land Research Ltd 10 Oct’23

Braverman’s Hurricaneof Immigration

I am definitely not right wing in my politics but, I have to accept that Suella Braverman is spot on with her assertion that we face a hurricane of immigration.  If we keep burning fossilised fuels, it will continue to accelerate climate change and that migration certianly will become a hurricane. If you want to know how to stop it we have to reduce the number of cars and planes we use and, yes, we can reclaim the desert and make it easier for people not to migrate. See the picture on your right – click on it and you can download a copy of over 300 pages for less than a half pint of beer, sometimes we put it on for free.  Proceeds when we have any go to charity.

SEFF – Soil, Environment, Food and Farming 

Bill Butterworth, Land Research Ltd 3 October ’23