August 2009 Archives

When I actually calculated what the land and sea areas of the Earth have been and might be in the future and when I considered the amount of time it takes for the sea level to change (even with our current high usage of energy and fossil fuels), I had a better perspective on the issue. It is a far more serious matter that, for example, in my lifetime the population of the Earth has more than doubled and a large fraction of the population has living standards that would generally be considered unacceptable.

A conference entitled Sustainable Energy and Environmental Protection takes place from tomorrow, 12th August, 2009, at Dublin City University and I am putting the final touches to my presentation, which I will deliver on Friday 14th August. My presentation is entitled 'The Very Basics of Sustainability--an Alternative Viewpoint'. I am in favour of continuing to evaluate all of the options that are available to humankind. I favour allowing the best technologies to win out in the marketplace, but subject to global coordination and regulation that would ensure safety and would prevent exploitation of the common environment by some in a way that would be unfair to others who share the environment.

On Saturday 1st August, 2009, I visited CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, near Geneva http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/About/About-en.html. I looked down, in awe, into the Large Hadron Collider http://lhc-milestones.web.cern.ch/LHC-Milestones/year2008-en.html.