Open Water Swimming At RWSABC

The Economist | Land-shackled economies: The paradox of soil via @theeconomist

Photos from Lanzarote February 2017 #lanzarote (at Costa Teguise Lanzarote)

I was down at the Boat Club today. David Jenkins and I did a 500m swim in around 16 minutes without wetsuit. Water temperature 9 degC. Highish tide going out. After our swim I needed to get more steps. These birds were sitting on The Esplanade railing across from the Old West Kirk. (at Greenock Esplanade)

WHERE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO VISIT ON YOUR PLANET?

The place I would most like to visit is Patagonia.

(33 cities chosen from) more than 1,000 registrations and nearly 400 formal applications from cities around the world. Each city was asked to present a clear and compelling description of how they are approaching and planning for resilience to decrease vulnerabilities, and after careful review of the applications, a panel of esteemed judges, including former presidents Bill Clinton and Olosegun Obasanjo, recommended the first set of 33 cities for the 100 Resilient Cities Network.

It wasn’t easy to choose only 33 – we had so many passionate, vibrant entries. Among the winners: One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world wrote of the city’s history withstanding shocks for the past eight millennia. One African city wrote of a resilience plan as harmonizing climate change adaptation, biodiversity, planning and management and water security. And a city in South America finds itself dealing with landslides and forest fires, all while sitting in the shadow of a volcano.

Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)

Europe

Bristol (UK) Glasgow (UK) Rome (Italy) Rotterdam (Netherlands) Vejle (DK)

Links to the rest of the cities, here. What’s surprised me most was Oakland, California(!) made the final cut. Also, Bill Clinton and Olosegun Obasanjo were on the panel. Bizarre stuff.

Yum Yum Helen's made pumpkin pie 😊

Conditions at my swim at RWSABC yesterday (11-Mar-17 @ 16:00). Calm, low tide, water temperature 8.3 degC. Swam 480m in 18 min. #rwsabc #greenock #openwaterswimming #scotland #theesplanade (at The Esplanade Greenock)

My thoughts on the summer budget

I read the full Budget speech that George Osborne gave today.

I think that from a public relations point of view it has been a good budget for the Chancellor.  I found myself thinking, "I agree with that" when watching the news and hearing the headlines.

Now that I have read the budget I am less pleased.

I am disappointed in his Infrastructure plans to increase productivity.  

He said -

“Four fifths of all journeys in this country are by road, yet we rank behind Puerto Rico and Namibia in the quality of our network. In the last 25 years, France has built more than two and a half thousand miles of motorway – and we’ve built just 300. In the last Parliament I increased road spending, even in difficult times, and set out a plan for £15bn of new roads for the rest of this decade.”

I was disappointed in this because it makes no mention of public transport, it makes no mention of improving streets and paths to allow and encourage people to walk and cycle.  Roads and streets are important and are a good place for investment, but I am concerned that the Governments plans will see more roads built, which will then fill up with cars and lorries, leading to no net improvement in productivity or happieness.

At one point in his speech he said -

For Britain is home to 1% of the world’s population; generates 4% of the world’s income; and yet pays out 7% of the world’s welfare spending.  

What a meaningless statement!!! It may be factually correct but it is not illuminating.  We should really be proud that we spend 7% of the world's welfare spending because there are lots of places that spend zero.  

I was disappointed that the budget didn't set out any proposals to increase the affordability of housing or energy by increasing supply.  This is the other side of the tax cut coin, making peoples money go further.

A search through the budget statement shows that equality or inequality was only mentioned once.  He stated that - "In the last fortnight we’ve seen independent statistics showing that since 2010, child poverty is down and so is inequality."  I do not see this as a strong budget to reduce inequality.

I was pleased to see that non-dom status is to be phased out.

I see that corporation tax will be reduced to 18% by 2020.  I would have liked to see that a reduced tax rate associated with less unequal pay structure within corporations. Rather than just taxing high earners companies should pay more tax if they have highly unequal wage structures.  One way to assess wage structues within a company would be through the use of the Gini Coefficient.

I understand that there is going to be further tightening of the rules concerning taxation to close loopholes and I support this.

I find that the discussion of tax credit and minimum wage confusing.  I see that Ian Duncan Smith was cheering the increase in the minimum wage and I am prepared to trust his judgement.

In conclusion, I see this as a budget that was well crafted from the political point of view for middle England.  I think the Budget will not play so well in Scotland.  I am disappointed because I do not see this budget as making Britain a happier place to live.  The Chancellor and the Government don't seem to want to promote more equality, or if they do, they are limiting themselves to only a few tools.  The Budget will not improve affordability which is the other side of the tax coin when it comes to improving peoples lives.  

I hope you find these views interesting.

If you want to read the full budget statement for yourself the reference is:

Osborne, G. and HM Treasury, (2015). Chancellor George Osborne's Summer Budget 2015 speech - Speeches - GOV.UK. [online] Gov.uk. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/chancellor-george-osbornes-summer-budget-2015-speech [Accessed 8 Jul. 2015].

Geo-engineering with Nuclear Power - Biorock

Geo-engineering to me means man as a species doing something to change the whole world.  It is of interest because it has been suggested that perhaps we could use geo-engineering to either mitigate or delay the impacts of climate change caused by our proliferate use of fossil fuels.  Proposals range from the simple such as painting all roofs white to reduce the earth's albedo. To the grandiose of deploying large mirrors in space to reduce the the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth.  

In this blog I wish to suggest nuclear power be used to undertake geo-engineering.  I would like to think the proposal contained in this blog is at the simpler end of the geo-engineering scale.  The proposal is to use a nuclear reactor to produce electricity that in turn would power Biorock coral reef growth and restoration.  From Wikipedia - "Biorock, also known as Seacrete or Seament, is a trademark name used by Biorock, Inc. to refer to the substance formed by electro-accumulation of minerals dissolved in seawater."  The nuclear power plant (NPP) would be the source of the electricity in this process.

In this proposal, a NPP would be located near the coast and provide electricity for the electro-accumulation.  The wikipedia article suggests "that one kilowatt hour of electricity will result in the accretion of about 0.4 to 1.5 kg (0.9 to 3.3 lb) of biorock, depending on various parameters such as depth, electrical current, salinity and water temperature."  The main components of biorock are mainly calcium carbonate and magnesium hydroxide, again as provided by the Wikipedia article.

The chemical formula for limestone, a major component of biorock is Calcium Carbonate (CaC03).  Therefore one mole of CaCO3 weights (40g + 12g + 3*16g) = 100g.  I don't know the typical ratio of calcium carbonate and magnesium hydroxide in biorock but let me guess it is 50% calcium carbonate and 50% magnesium hydroxide.  Assume that  1 kw-hr of electricity will produce 0.4 kg of biorock which converts to 0.2 kg Calcium Carbonate.  Therefore each 0.2 kg of Calcium Carbonate contains 24g of Carbon (Chemical symbol "C").

Now assume we build a NuScale SMR which has a nominal output of 45Mw electric with 90% availabilty and  typical carbon lifecycle output of 16g CO2 per kw-hr which converts to 4.4g Carbon per kw-hr (4.4g = 16g *12/44).  Therefore each kw-hr of electricity can remove 19.6g (24g - 4.4g = 19.6g) of Carbon from seawater.  The NuScale reactor produces 45,000 * 0.9 = 40,500 kw electric over the life of the reactor.  Therefore each year a NuScale reactor would remove (40,500 * 24 * 365)kw-hr * 19.6 g per kw-hr = around 7,000,000,000 grams or 7 million kg or 7000 tonnes of carbon per year.  It is also expected that the new or repaired reefs will sequester further Calcium Carbonate by biologic means as corals reestablish 

Is this worth doing?  It turns out that according to Tesco the average British person has a carbon footprint of 15 tonnes of CO2 (around 4 tonnes carbon per year).  Therefore, 1 NuScale plant will offset the carbon emissions of 1750 people.  On this basis this doesn't seem a very sensible idea.  That seems to me to be a large effort to offset the emission of 1750 Brits or 0.003% of the population.  This shows just how hard it is to remove carbon from the world once we have dumped it by burning fossil fuels.

On the other hand some low lying topical islands might consider this a reasonable idea if it were to make their communities less vulnerable to storm surges or rising sea levels.  The NuScale reactor would allow the production of around, 40,500 * 24 * 365 * 0.4 / 1000 = 141,912 tonnes of biorock per year.  The typical density of limestone is around 2.5 tonnes per cubic metre.  I will assume that biorock has the same density. Therefore, the NuScale reactor would allow around 56,000 cubic metres of biorock to be produced in a year. If the biorock were grown in a strip 100m wide and 1m thick each year around 560m of coastline could be protected.  

The above is a very simple calculation with simple assumptions.  I recognise that the above has not considered the carbon input required for the metal used to make the initial structure.  It is my understanding that the biorock process can continue for many years as the biorock accumulates.  There are probably other carbon inputs that I have missed. On the other hand some of the assumptions above are conservative.  Two conservative assumptions are the production of biorock per kw-hr and the availability factor of 0.9 for the NuScale reactor.  Both numbers could well be larger. 

The next time I write about geo-engineering with nuclear power I will look at biochar.

Have a nice day.