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Pitch

A UN Climate Action Program, promoted worldwide, is essential to delivering the combination of actions capable of rebalancing the climate.


Description

Summary

The proposed UN Climate Action Program is to be promoted in banks and post offices' media outlets worldwide, with requests for donations from corporations, businesses and individuals, these being forwarded to the Green Climate Fund.  

The Program's administrative panel - the Panel, constituted of government, academic, corporate and NGO representatives, is intended to direct regional officials, working with local governments and groups to progress the actions:- .

Retrofitting coal fired power stations with sluicing mechanisms, and treating the flue gas residuals to ensure productive and safe recycling and disposal.

Contributing to large scale solar power and offshore wind farms, tidal and geothermal energy plant, and metal-air fuel technologies.

Propagating good practice in the use and storage of zero carbon energy.

Vacuuming the higher concentrations of ambient greenhouse gases and, if necessary, 'historic' gases in the upper troposphere.

Employing the poorest people to plant edible trees and shrubs, and conserve wildlife - renewing and shading the soils, materializing the sun's energy and sequestering carbon.

Installing shading frames to cover drought sensitive ecosystems, water courses and farmland.

Sustaining ice by spray painting an area of ice bereft  rock equal to that lost in the last 50 years with chalk based solar reflective paint, that way reducing daytime rock temperatures by as much as 15C, and re- establishing night  temperatures at -5C this freezing rock surface water, cooling the mountain breezes and beginning re-glaciation.

Selectively painting roads and roofs white.

Installing solar assisted airborne shading frames to cover potential fracture lines in ice shelves buffering certain glaciers, and ice rims supporting glacial lakes.

Adapting tankers to desalinate sea water using renewable power, and to convey clean water to communities in arid coastal regions, enabling continued habitation, re-vegetation and reforestation, and reducing economic migration. 

   

 

 

 


Category of the Action

Integrated action plan for the world as a whole


What actions do you propose?

The preparatory action includes a Security Council resolution requiring Member States to authorize banks and post offices to use their media outlets to promote the proposed UN Program, and request donations from corporations and wealthy individuals to the Green Climate Fund.

This DVD, banner and poster promotion will also educate people everywhere as to why the climate is changing, what can be done to stabilize it, and how their donations and actions can contribute to recovery.

The donations will be distributed by the Panel, who also define what is to be done, where it is to be done, how it will be done, the timeframes, and who will coordinate the work regionally and locally.

The preparatory action also includes contracting companies to manufacture the climate technologies, and arranging for the installations with the relevant governments.

The Program will also include adapting existing carbon technologies to be emission free, creating large scale renewable (including geothermal) energy acquisition plant, renewable powered desalination and water purification technologies, solar assisted low altitude shading and reflecting technologies, high altitude reflecting frames, and manual, UAV, and helicopter assisted spray painting of ice bereft rock, with specific focus on the Arctic Circle, and on significant mountain ranges with diminishing ice cover and at risk from glacial lake outbursts and glacial disintegration. 

The impact of the above adaptations, installations and mechanisms includes significantly reducing carbon emissions, massively increasing reflectivity, providing increased shading and sequestration by re-vegetating and reforesting vast areas of denuded land, reducing temperatures in the Arctic Circle, and on certain mountain ranges, sustaining ice shelves, glaciers and glacial lakes, capturing Arctic shallows' sub sea and ambient methane, and also historic CO2 in the upper troposphere, enabling people to remain in their ancestral homelands, planting coastal hinterlands and desert edges, and arranging considerable employment wherever these activities occur.

The physical transformations will necessarily require new social policies, the most significant being a renewed intent for eradicating poverty.

Most poor people living on city pavements, in isolated villages, slums and refugee camps, are descended from farmers. Many of them have been forced to leave their ancestral homelands because of drought and drinking water shortages, or because tree cover is scarce, making soils unproductive and incapable of supporting them or their animals.

City life often limits their life expectancy, estranges them from their cultures and even their language, and, being absent from their ancestral lands, the infrastructures there deteriorate, with the loss of crop yields and often increased desertification.

Properly employing these people in edible shrub and tree planting, forest farming and wildlife conservation, and ensuring they and their children are housed in self sustaining communities, with the essential health and educational services, and with added financial support until they are able to survive independently, will be the greatest turn around in our social history.

It will also be an additional incentive to donate to the Program, meaning there will be sufficient funding for all the work needing to be done.

Those who are frustrated with not having enough to do and with governments tolerating extreme poverty, will be able to learn new skills and be part of the new communities.

This assurance of employment will also limit the numbers of economic refugees, and hopefully make a difference to the dreadful statistics on human trafficking.

Extending this aspect of the Program to political refugees is intended to provide finance and occupations for those living in the camps, and to regenerate the adjacent environments.

Employing the poorest people in lower altitude spray painting to sustain ice, snow, and therefore reflectivity, is also part of the UN Program. 

In the Andean Mountains, local farmers, deprived of glacial water, are engaged in re-glaciation, that is painting mountainous rock with lime paint. The painted rock's night time temperature falls to -5C, with ice again reforming on its surfaces.

The painted rock is 15C cooler than the unpainted rock in the daytime.

The Program will replicate this approach in mountainous regions worldwide, and, on ice bereft rock close to melting ice sheets and glaciers, giving enough time to progress the transition to a zero carbon world economy.

Rethinking attitudes to poverty is essential to the Program's success, including recognizing poor people's abilities and skills, and their wanting to work to give their families and themselves a better quality of life.  

The above essential actions are the basics of the proposed Global Plan. The UN Program, unlike the existing and disparate projects, expresses the timeframe. The Panel, intermeshing with the UNFCCC officials, will coordinate the work. 


Where will these actions be taken?

The donation status of the Program's funding is politically unassailable, avoiding past aversions to taxation or GDP related fixed contributions, with the donations coming through banks and post offices worldwide to the GCF.

The regional coordinators will identify opportunities for renewable power, for example - water courses in temperate countries, and focus on additional contributions from governments to replicate renewable schemes like the Saharan Desertec and the Finnish geothermal projects, and to develop emerging energy acquisition technologies.

Desalination tankers will deliver potable water to communities in all arid coastal regions, enabling reforestation and re-vegetation.

The poorest people will be properly paid to plant edible shrubs and trees, to increase food production and to protect forests and wildlife habitats.

Retrofitting classic coal fired power stations will be funded where governments have a low GDP, with some combustion waste products treated and used to increase plant growth and renew forest soils.

Retrofitting buildings and motor vehicles, installing solar clad and ambient CO2 capturing pylons, and giving financial incentives for better use of energy will be similarly funded.

Regional coordinators will identify mountain glaciers and glacial lakes at most risk of disintegration, and provide solar assisted shading frames during the hottest months. These frames will also shade Arctic glaciers of a similar size to the Gulkana Glacier in Alaska.

The coordinators will recruit paint spraying teams, and organize helicopter crews and UAVs for high altitude painting, and local people for painting more accessible surfaces.

The Arctic Circle will be singled out for specific cooling measures, including spray painting of rock adjacent to glaciers. 

Methane capturing mechanisms are to be positioned over significant plumes in the Arctic shallows and on the 'at risk' permafrost plains.

Hydrogen supported reflectors will be deployed in the stratosphere if required. 


Who will take these actions?

Firstly, this proposal must win the contest, and that way be brought to the attention of the world's politicians, corporations, academia, NGOs and the Press.

Secondly, it is essential for at least one government to bring the proposal to the Security Council, and for there to be a resolution to set up the Program, promote it in the banks and post offices' media outlets worldwide, and request online and over-the-counter donations.

Thirdly,  'the Panel' is to be constituted to oversee the Program within the existing UN infrastructures.

Corporations and businesses are to provide information and contacts to manufacture the climate technologies.

The academics will provide research information on what needs doing most urgently and where.

The NGOs will contribute to the environmental and humanitarian fact finding, and arrange much of the employment and relocations, with independent monitoring of the financial transactions in the banks and post offices, and with the businesses.

The government representatives on the Panel and in the regions are to be answerable to the Security Council for the Program's progress, and it is likely that the promotion is of such a standard that the public response ensures the Program becomes THE GREATEST INTERNATIONALLY COOPERATIVE EVENT EVER, gaining momentum as the press publicize its achievements and the donations accumulate.

The public are ultimately responsible for the Program's success as only they have sufficient weight to demand actions at the local level, with the Press backing up their demands.

Most people now know the climate is changing, have experience of extreme weather conditions, and it is their intrinsic right to have the opportunity to contribute to creating a sustainable future for themselves and their children, the right to protect themselves from damage.

The Climate CoLab's role in this contest is to publicize the proposal so there is the best chance of success, of ensuring that right is fully realized.  


What are key benefits?

One desirable outcome for the environment and society is that people will no longer exist in a state of anxiety that they or their loved ones or the farm animals and the planet's wildlife are about to be damaged or killed by extreme wind speeds, excessive heat, flooding or wild fires.

Another outcome will be that never again will there be the pain and sorrow experienced by those without enough to eat and at least some quality of life. 

The planet will again have sufficient tree cover, trees being essential to soil renewal, sustaining wildlife, reducing temperatures and maintaining the carbon and hydrological cycles.

Re-vegetating the seas and shading corals will add to this regeneration.

Creating a sustainable future together will enable us to see what we are capable of if we amalgamate our skills and focus on getting along with each other.

When most of us start looking after the planet, start a new era, it is likely we will also welcome opportunities to help each other.

 


What are the proposal’s costs?

One 2014 estimate for recovering from damage resulting from the Arctic's decline is $60trn, that is recovering from storms, flooding. landslides, sea level rises, drought and wildfires, so any preventative measures costing less than this are obviously worthwhile.

The preventative measures are as follows:-

Retrofitting classic coal fired power stations, industrial combustion, and transportation to be emission free, and developing zero carbon fuels.

Manufacturing and installing non-domestic climate action technologies, including shading and reflecting, and gas capture mechanisms.

Reforestation and re-vegetation, clean water delivery, soil renewal and wildlife conservation, and employing about 800 million people.

Restoring reflectivity by spray painting ice bereft rock, roads and buildings.

The individual estimates require greater research, so they and the total are unavailable. The total is unlikely to equate to even a fifth of our savings accounts. There are no other negative side effects.

 

 

 

 


Time line

The extreme weather, continuing ice loss and increasing methane emissions require immediate responses, and the Program (in itself a timeframe) defines some completion between 1 - 5 years. 

Restoring reflectivity is essential to lowering global temperatures, and much of this must be achieved by May 2015.

Manufacturing and installing climate technologies - the solar assisted shading frames, the hydrogen supported reflecting frames, with the spray painting, should also be completed within a year because melting mountain glaciers and glacial lake outbursts are dangerous, and without mountain glacial water, many communities cannot survive.

Greenhouse gas capture mechanisms should also be installed, including solar clad pylons extracting ambient CO2, and sub sea and surface methane emission vacuum technologies.

Desalination tankers also need to be operating within a year to provide irrigation for the Program's coastal reforestation projects. These, with the REDD schemes, are 5 - 50 year actions.


Sub-proposals

The Panel Members administrating the UN Program are to be responsible for choosing which technologies and mechanisms are appropriate.

This means their decisions should not be preempted by creating a Global Plan that also defines technological inclusions as more than possibilities.

The technologies and mechanisms introduced here are a response to the whole scenario rather than to the emission problem alone. Their relevance has yet to be acknowledged mostly because of the present failure to look at the whole scenario.

Only when inventors are able to directly present their inventions to the UN Program, and avoid being rebutted by the establishment, will the climate problem be solved.

As it is, confining the official line of climate action thinking almost exclusively to emission reduction largely accounts for the catastrophic extent of present warming.

Such thinking is so prevalent that, at the time of writing, there are no Climate CoLab proposals other than this one, which indicate the sort of mechanisms capable of solving the loss of reflectivity, despite such loss fast becoming the major cause of warming.

Many of the proposals submitted to the CoLab are very relevant to reducing emissions (solving the initial cause) so it is important that the proposed Panel identifies those that are practical, easy to implement, appropriate to many areas, described in language that most people can understand, and which encourage local and national government and local people's involvement.

Linking with this proposal, the sub-proposals relevant to energy acquisition and its uses include:-

Phase out extraction of carbon based fuels from public lands.

The increase energy production and reduce greenhouse gas project.

Democratic finance: using rooftops' solar energy.

Stack exit gas turbine generator (Until sluice retrofitting is completed)

Industrial waste heat management.

Coal miners for geothermal energy production.

Carbon capture in the city.

Hydroponic carbon capture at source for industry.

Promote and subsidize small windmills and gardens on every rooftop.

A nationwide transportation system. (Until vehicles use metal - air derived fuels)

Harnessing the energy of the wind as we drive. 

Feeding grid with already abundant moving cars in the cities.

 

The sub-proposals relevant to reforestation, re-vegetation, sequestration, soil renewal and shading include:-

Synergies of afforestation and community empowerment in Kenya.

Promote agro-foresty technology for farmers.

Earthworms for waste management.

Ocean healing seaweed forests.

River blankets to cool river water.

 

Sub proposals relevant to the built environment include:-

Recycled debris for climate change.

Model homes.

Solar panel architectural design.

Retrofitting buildings.

 

Sub-proposals relevant to engaging people and local and central governments everywhere in climate action include:-

Using natural systems principles to transition towards a sustainable future. (Though this needs the UN Climate Action Program to synchronize with the statement 'What is missing is a coherent and cohesive framework to hold it together)

Climate change is elementary.

Climate leave.

Youth action for climate change awareness, education and research.

Creating responsible energy consumption habits in the enterprises' employees.

Small businesses and consumers co-creating sustainable growth.

GreenUp: engaging communities to build green and resilient cities.

Travel guides.

Calorie currency.

Climate change without frontiers.

Society for climate action.

Inspiring mainstream commitment to solve climate change.

 

The sub-proposals are compatible with each other, to the extent indicated, and and reflect a widespread recognition of the need for practical solutions, and also for people coming together to progress them.

But, public engagement of this magnitude is not possible without there being an international program and its coordinating panel, and this undeniable fact, and the many noteworthy CoLab contest proposals, justify an organizing framework which is operational and already recognized worldwide as belonging to all of us.

Without international organization and promotion, disparate climate action projects will continue to be underfunded and under subscribed, and the CoLab's proposals will be overlooked. That is many excellent proposals but no investment in them.

Furthermore, without fresh thinking, the present inadequate-to-the-task responses will continue to be the order of the day, and despite worsening warming statistics and increasingly severe catastrophes.

Had the responses up to now been more effective, and had the One World Survival Plan, I put forward in May 2007, been implemented, we would not be in the state we are in now. 

That plan was rejected on the grounds that disparate internationalized projects, market economics, business philanthropic involvement and the many international charities contributing to climate action were sufficient to halt the temperature rises. 

If they had been sufficient, it would have shown by now.

It is likely that the charities did not want to subsume their individuality to the UN's authority, though they have amalgamated their efforts somewhat since my request.

Perhaps now, as circumstances further deteriorate, they will rethink that rejection, and especially as the CoLab proposals show the necessity of our working together for full climate action implementation.

For all our sakes, please do not dismiss as inappropriate what is essentially a more widely organized, better promoted, time framed and therefore essential extension to the UNFCCC/UNEP CTCN. Please do not accept the reasons a similar plan was rejected seven years ago.

A global plan needs a global organization to progress it.

A CoLab email of 24.07.2014, expresses that 'there isn't any one organization that could take such a vision and enact it'. But is that fact or rather subscribing to what are most likely now baseless fears, and which originated from the earlier aversions to one world collective actions and the corresponding taxation ? 

A Global Plan must be about avoiding some of the most horrific situations people and wildlife can be confronted with.

Undermining my proposal on the grounds that a UN Climate Action Program is an impossibility cannot be taken lightly lest the Climate CoLab Team suffer huge remorse as more and more disasters unfold on their television screens because of a mistaken assumption, inadequately researched.

Please ask yourselves 'What greater expression of respect for the planet and future generations is there than setting up a UN Climate Action Program to timeframe the biosphere's recovery, and what greater expression of respect for humanity is there than properly paying the poorest people to do much of the work ?'

Unless other proposals have the potential to prove more comprehensively efficient at solving the climate problem, please give this one a chance. 

 

 

 


How do these sub-proposals fit together?

The assumption on which almost all the proposals are based is that the planet is warming solely because of increasing greenhouse gas emissions, therefore the efforts essential to rebalancing the climate are all to do with reversing this increase.

As explained earlier, this assumption is incorrect, and if all emissions were halted today there is still the unsolved problem - how to prevent runaway warming.

The identified sub-proposals are important to solving the greenhouse gas emission problem, but only those to do with reforestation and re-vegetation contribute to restoring reflectivity and shading to 1960 levels.

This is because plant growth involves materializing the sun's energy and that way reduces its heating influence, essential because about half of the present warming results from un-reflected and un-materialized sunlight

The loss of Arctic ice alone accounts for 25% of present warming.  

The proposals particular to sequestration, though fitting with each other, are primarily focused on temperature reduction by reducing the GHG concentrations in the troposphere, and therefore miss the significance of shading and photosynthesis.

Similarly, proposals on energy acquisition from solar panels miss the point that using them massively, massively retains the heat of the sun's energy within the biosphere.

This amount of sunlight, if reflected, would not add to the warming problem.

Where there is a choice of using surfaces to reflect or capture the sun's energy, such as rooftops, roads and runways, solar energy acquisition for grid purposes may not be the best answer.

Where solar energy is captured for domestic purposes, for example on urban balconies, its best use is to power air conditioners, detracting from the warming processes.

Proposals to do with engaging people and governments in climate action are very relevant to a UN Climate Action Program, and will be prioritized in the Program's promotional material in the media outlets of banks and post offices everywhere.

 

 

 

 


Explanation of model inputs

One assumption justifying this proposal is that loss of reflectivity is about 50% responsible for increased global temperatures, and another that cooling measures are best achieved if integrated into a UN Climate Action Program.

Also, that greenhouse gases in the upper troposphere do not prevent sunlight reflected off chalk based solar reflective paint from leaving the biosphere, and therefore spray painting ice bereft rock with this paint is appropriate.

Another assumption is that the present individual national, international and the international UN responses to the climate crisis continue to prove inadequate.

As the effects of sustaining ice and therefore reflectivity are not covered by the Model Tab, and there are wide variations in the limited research findings to date, it is not possible to correctly estimate them, only to say that it is necessary to restore ice and snow surfaces to the 1960 levels, which is achievable during the course of a year. 

The Model Tab does not work with my computer, and there is no identifiable 'view model run' button, so the results appertaining to carbon use and sequestration, come from other research.

The total electric power generation and transport carbon use in 2010 produced 27,715 million metric tons of CO2, of which the transport component is just over a fifth. Retrofitting classic coal fired power stations and industrial units, and replacing petrol use with metal-air technologies, should halve that amount in five years, provided the donations to the Program are as expected. The process should be completed in ten years.

The logging and burning of approximately 25 million hectares of forests annually releases up to 200 tons of CO2 per hectare. Young forests absorb up to 2 tons of CO2 per hectare.

The Program will ensure a shift from the former to the latter, and in the first year prevent billions of tons of CO2 reaching the troposphere.

Sapling growth may be increased by as much as 41%, by injecting CO2 into enclosed nurseries.  

 

 

 

 


References

Websites and other references are listed as follows:-

 

1.The Extent and Effects of Climate Change.

www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg2

www.newscientist.com/special/worse-climate

www.nrdc.org/globalwarming.

www.eia.gov/emissions

 

2.Energy Acquisition.

www.phys.org/technology.energy.greentech

www.scientificamerican.com/articles/us-coal-fired-power-plants

www.MITEI.MIT.EDU.publications-reports-studies/retrofitting-coal-fired...

www.power.eng.com/coal/coal-retrofit-upgrade

www.carbonengineering.com/air-capture/energy.columbia.edu.2013/07

www.alstrom.com/power/coal-oil/carboncapture-solutions

www.smmt.co.uk/CO2report(vehicle emissions)

www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles

www.magpowerrsystems.com/technology

 

3.Reforestation and Re-vegetation.

www.sinkswatch.org

www.howstuffworks.com/nature/climate/trees-affect-weather

www.wwf.org.uk/theamazonrainforest

www.thesizeofwales.org.uk/rainforest

www.greenbeltmovement.org

www.worldbank.org/bangladesh-climate-resilient-afforestation

 

4.Sustaining Ice.

www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard2013

https://royalsociety.org/events/2014/arctic-sea-ice

www.nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews

www.nichols.edu/departments/glacier/lowseaice

www.terranature.org/glacierreduction-alaska

www.iwmi.cgiar.org/2013/08/mountainmeltdown

www.phys.org/news/2013-11-southern-alps-glaciers

www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/peru-painting-andes-white

 

5.United Nations - Climate Solutions.

There is to be a UN Climate Summit in New York in September 2014, and the Secretary General is asking for Big Ideas. Could this proposal feature at the Summit ?

The UN has yet to commit to fully organizing climate mitigation, its climate action programme website does not indicate a program in the usual sense of the word but rather a series of suggestions with requests for feedback, and without a timeframe for when what needs doing should be done.www.climateactionprogramme.org

Similarly withwww.un.org/climatechange/big-idea-2014and the relatedwww.un.org/climatechange/take-actionthe problem being that the UNFCCC/UNEPCTCN side of things has yet to include advancing technologies other than those coming from the scientific establishment.

This means the Secretary General's initiatives are mostly restricted to emission reduction and (maybe) ambient gas capture.

Also, the environmental NGOs have mostly rejected geo-engineering on the grounds that it would inhibit the incentive to cut carbon emissions.

But there are changes. The US now appreciates the UN's mitigation role:www.state.gov/documents/organizations/219038pdf/under-the-UN-Framework-Conventionon-on-Climate-Changeand Germany has just donated many millions to the Green Climate Fund.

Once the mechanisms and technologies suggested in this proposal are better known, it is likely that sustaining ice will become an immediate priority, and considered worth the huge effort and application costs.

 

Miscellaneous.

www.atlantiksolar.ethz.ch(solar uninterrupted flight, and relevant to positioning and stabilizing solar assisted shading frames)

www.UNHCR.org

www.humantrafficking.org