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I make my living building scientific Instruments – at the interface between the business and science worlds:
The build-up of CO2…. and other greenhouse gasses … is my major concern for the long term lives of my children [also see 1]…. rather than terrorism, or minor local & current matters such as BREXIT. Coming from the science rather than arts world, it it behoven to people like me to help with technical solutions. I do not hold the view that is politically possible to either cut the Earth’s population to a fraction of its current level or to reduce everyone’s living standards to a fraction of current levels – to get CO2 emissions down. So, if we can’t get off fossil fuels shortly, we may need some form of Geo-engineering [2]
Inter alia, the businesses I try to run make instruments to measure both the weather and the climate from space. Accurate measurements, which are hard to dispute, are vital for policy-makers. Thomas Keating Ltd is engaged in making the next generation of weather satellites, which have the ability to measure global atmospheric temperatures to minute fractions of a degree.
EUMETSAT/ESA’s MetOP-SG Microwave Sounder’s On-Board Calibration Target
At the local level, we have installed solar panels on the roof of our manufacturing factory. On a good day around noon it is producing 50 KW – more than half of the electricity we use.
I thought it would be fun to try to fly the Earth 6 that came my way over the panels. This provided to be harder than I thought…. the DJI Spark drone could carry the mass, but the anti-collision sensors altered the flight-path…. and it vanished. A replacement Drone and Globe (Thanks, Ronnie) was procured…. and the video is below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1-JaeQEBZk
The Globe will now head off to the Yucatan, where I map the underwater caves:
Fred Devos in the Actun Chen system, near Cenote Dune – heading east
All the rain landing in the jungle passed through underwater tunnels – beautiful but stark places, like mountain tops: My cave-diving-instructor colleague, Fred Devos, is devoting much of his life in the defence of these aquifers, against the effects of Man…. Hotels and Golf Courses extracting and re-introducing H20 …adding pollution in the process to this pure water .
Richard Wylde FREng
The other worry is atomic weapons…. see
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/14/enlightenment-now-steven-pinker-review
For a balanced view, see Oliver Morton’s book on geo-engineering