Hot Planet

On this new BBC production(*), Professors Iain Stewart and Kathy Sykes take a timely look at global warming and the possible technological solutions that could help us humans ameliorate and hopefully reverse the heating of our planet and its potentially ominous consequences. The presenters tell us that many scientists believe that our planet will be two or even three degrees warmer by the end of this century. The temperature changes have started to affect inhabited parts of the globe.

According to the growing scientific evidence, the increasing levels of carbon dioxide emitted by our factories, cars, planes and home appliances and central heating systems, is the major contributor of global warming. Transportation alone accounts for one quarter of greenhouse gases.

With nations such as Brazil, China, and India catching up with industrialization, the worsening of global heating may be a likely scenario, with catastrophic consequences for future generations.

But it’s not all doom and gloom according to our two presenters.

Amazing emergent technological solutions - that are starting to look more like inventions we might have read in a science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov or Iain Banks - are being developed by scientists, with the support of national governments in the UK and elsewhere.

These ‘prototype’ technological solutions range from injecting vast masses of carbon dioxide into deep rock in the Grand Canyon, to mile-long solar-panel power stations in Spain and wind-farms in the UK, and natural steam turbines and hydrogen-powered cars in Iceland, super fast floating electromagnetic trains in Shanghai, and entire new clean cities such as of Masdar, thus reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

These new technologies require, however, the sorting out of additional technical hurdles and demand huge capital investments.

With the clock ticking fast which, then, are the mechanisms that could accelerate the uptake of these candidate technologies into society?

In a future blog entry, I will be revisiting the history of the uptake of internet technology and what are the lessons that could be applied into these emergent sectors in the UK.

(*) Date originally shown on BBC: 9th December 2009. Available on BBC iPlayer.