Comments related to global energy use, the presumed-to-be-impending energy crises, and related impacts on people, the economy and the environment. Global warming and other environmental issues.
When I started my research into telework my goal was to reduce the time and energy spent in the daily commute to work in a world where commute distances and times were steadily increasing. As global warming accelerates it is time to look at the bigger picture: energy tradeoffs in a distributed world.
At the heart of this concept are distributed networks as initially developed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense (now called DARPA). Their core idea was that, to avoid being shut down by attacks on key facilities, distribute and interconnect the facilities so that removal of one or more won’t affect the operation of the whole network. The system just works its way around the damage point. The Internet grew from that start.
Here’s a brief look at four types of network-related tradeoffs in the world’s growing dominance of electricity.
Now that we’ve arrived at a new year it’s time to consider what might be coming up with respect to telework and climate change. The short answer is that the future of telework looks rosy while the future of the climate continues to be grim. Further, although telework is looking good some of its disruptive side effects are definitely appearing. While global warming continues pretty much unabated, reductions in the rate of increase appear on the horizon.
Here are some details.
Telework
A major side effect of the Covid pandemic was the almost instant rush of office workers from downtowns to home offices. Now that Covid is essentially over in the United States and Europe, if not in China, many tradition-minded executives demanded that their employees return full-time to their central urban offices. That usually didn’t work. Those millions of workers who have experienced working from home for more than two years are resisting going back to the old ways full time.
The 27th United Nations Conference of Parties has limped to a close with results that are disappointing at best. The delegates did agree to provide some forms of help to the countries most affected by climate change but nothing about the gorilla in the room: climate change itself. It was little bit of this (help), but none of that (serious change in emissions). So another year has passed without a serious international effort to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, the sources of climate change.
Here are some details plus a bit on the other Conference of Parties, COP15.
This year’s international conference on the climate, COP27, begins on Sunday, November 6th at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. The previous conference, COP26, resulted in a number of promises to reduce the production of greenhouse gases (GHGs) with the objective of limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. COP27’s goal is to see how well the world has been doing so far and to plan what must happen next.
The key issues are: is global warming better or worse than it was in COP26; how fast is global warming changing and in what direction; how close are the facts to what was promised last year and what must be done to reach the 1.5C goal?
It’s time to check the evidence so far and think about alternative futures.
Summertime is here. In many places it’s here with a vengeance. Heat waves are roasting Europe and North America. It’s clearly time to consider telework in summertime. Here are some comments.
Britain breaks heat records
In mid-July British authorities published “red” heat warnings for the first time ever. An overheated Summertime. Temperatures reached 100F in London, the Midlands, the south of the UK and Wales. Records were broken in several cities.
Now, for Texans, this doesn’t sound too unusual but consider the infrastructure in the UK. Houses and offices are built to retain heat not get rid of it. Ditto for subways. Neither are adapted to hot summers. Consequently the traditional commute to/from work is enervating as is much time spent in an non-airconditioned office.
Now that Summer has arrived in the Northern hemisphere it’s time to check the changes in global warming since COP26. It seems that the answer is: very little change, most of it negative. The promises I wrote about in April last year are still mostly promises. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere continues to steadily rise. One new factor has altered the future for the worse: the war in Ukraine.
What follows is a sorry summary of recent events, their consequences and some opportunities.
Thanks to the pandemic, acceptance of telework has become a tide that is changing many other things. It has washed out the status quo antes in many industries that once were highly centralized. A full return to that status quo, highly prized by many senior executives, is becoming less likely every day.
And then there are the side effects, some of which I have touched on in earlier posts. Some may be revising the shape of cities and transportation practices. Hopefully, one side effect is a decrease in global warming. Here are some thoughts.
Although much of the focus in talks about global warming is on carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) may be even more important in the near term. The reason methane is important is because it is much more effective than CO2 at increasing warming. Even though it doesn’t last as long in the atmosphere. So while atmospheric CO2 may be around for hundreds of years, methane is a powerful factor now. Here are some facts and suggested steps to combating global warming by reducing methane production.
It’s that time of year when it’s useful to look back on what has been accomplished and consider what may lie ahead. In particular, it’s time to discuss the progress of two important transitions related to climate change: COP26 and teleworking.
COP26
The 26th annual United Nations Conference of the Parties, recently held in Glasgow, Scotland, was a potpourri of hopes realized and crushed. For many attendees, the hope that finally, finally some concrete action on climate change would happen turned into more frustration. There was, at least, a general agreement among the attending countries to eliminate methane production by the late 2020s, although Indonesia had second thoughts about its agreement.
On 31 October 2021 COP26 begins in Glasgow. Hopefully, COP26 will act as an inflection point in the efforts to decrease global warming. With its success the climate countdown will continue. Hopefully, more nations will sign on and make quantitative commitments to end their emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Otherwise, greenhouse gases will continue to flow, the air will become warmer, destructive weather events will become more frequent and intense and humanity will increase fragmenting. All because Mother Nature will adapt to our mischief whether we like it or not. The earth will survive whether or not we do.
