Its energy stupid

Climate change is happening, this is without doubt. Temperatures are rising, ice is melting, storms are increasing, seas are rising. All this is well documented.

And the simplistic view is that CO2 is responsible. But CO2 is not so much responsible as it is a measure of what is happening.

Climate change is an effect on our atmosphere. And there are many causes, not just CO2. Methane, Water vapour, Aerosols, changing Nitrogen cycle, changing phosphorous cycle...

So to use CO2 as a measure of climate change and attempt to reduce our emissions of only it, is foolhardy. We have to tackle all the issues we have so far discovered. So the simplistic idea of carbon rationing, or carbon credits, is not justified.

A better approach is to look at the historical correlation between the industrial revolution and climate change. And the elements which are the driving forces behind the industrial revolution, energy.

It is the abundant source and use of energy that has revolutionised the world. Staring with coal, then oil. What is now facing us is that we are over-exploiting these resources. Resources which have taken millions of years to build up we are using in a few hundred years (about 150 years so far).

So it follows that we need to look at our sources of energy, and how to get that energy to where is is needed. There are lots of types of energy, from low heat to oil, to coal to electricity. Some are easily converted to other forms that we need, some are impossible to convert. For example cool heat - like the sea, cannot produce warm heat without some other energy input in the form of a heat pump running on electricity. At the top of the pile is electricity which is convertible into almost all other forms of energy. That's why we make so much of it, and use so much of it.

So electricity is most useful. Where can we get it from? Currently we get most of it from coal, oil and gas burning, to boil water, to drive generators. But this has to change if we are going to look for alternatives to these fossil fuels.

The whole world is facing this challenge, by using waves, wind, hydro, tides, and solar. And as it turns out far the best is solar. Basically the sun is our only power source, and we should use it not waste it. The only drawback to solar is that the sun does not shine all the time. So in addition to solar panels we need batteries once the proportion of power we generate rises. Not much visible effort is currently being made to have efficient low cost (economic and environmental) batteries.

So forget Climate Change, per se, and lets focus on clean energy generation. This is what we have to finance, not CO2.