Can we turn Global warming around? ...and how?

The World is facing a few major threats: (Picture above: The world with no ice left)

1. Global warming due primarily to a much higher volume of CO2 released than what the plants on Earth can consume by photosynthesis. This makes the global warming accelerating. Once the two biggest countries in the world China and India start to consume energy at a rate approaching the one in Europe and North America, the situation will be out of control.

2. Global pollution. By 2000, the world’s chemical production had increased 400 fold since 1930. Chemicals have made much of modern life possible, but they’ve also contaminated landscapes around the world. They can travel great distances by air or accumulate in the bodies of animals and humans who absorb chemicals through the skin or ingest them in food or water. While some chemicals may be harmless, others can cause damage. Increasingly, there is particular concern lately about three types of chemicals: chemicals that persist in the environment and accumulate in the bodies of wildlife and people, endocrine disruptors that can interfere with hormones, and chemicals that cause cancer or damage DNA. Nuclear waste is an example of a persistent chemical. Currently, the plans for safe long-term storage are not convincing, neither technically nor economically.

3. Pandemics and antibiotics resistance. In 1918, a strain of influenza spread worldwide and killed between 20 and 50 million people—more than were killed in all of World War I. With a larger and larger population and more and more resistant bacteria a Pandemic could come sometime soon. NB. A Pandemic can also be engineered by humans.

4. Artificial Intelligence. Already now we entrust computers to run our stock markets, land our planes, correct our spelling, Google our trivia, and calculate our restaurant tips. In development are robots that look like us, talk like us and recognize our facial movements. How long before they are us, as we download our thoughts and memories into our hard drives, the so-called “singularity”? How long before these machines are self-aware? Futurist and author Ray Kurzwell believes computers will be as smart as us by 2029, and by 2045 will be billions of times smarter than us. What then? I choose to see AI as an opportunity rather than a threat but I can easily say I am not sure.

5. Nuclear war: With increasing numbers of unstable countries like Pakistan and North Korea in possession of atomic weapons, the availability to terrorists seems only a matter of when and not if. Some large nations have populistic and possibly mentally unstable leaders.The United States and Russia have a combined arsenal of 14,700 nuclear weapons, and there is an estimated total of 15,700 nuclear weapons in existence worldwide.

The "giant" among the threats is Global warming

Among the five above Global warming has, according to many scientists, the highest risk of ending our presence on Earth. As we burn carbon and oil, more and more greenhouse gases are building up in the atmosphere.

Many environmentalists think we have already passed the point of no return. Once we pass a certain threshold, Earth will continue warming even if we do manage to cut our CO2 emissions. What we do know is that, if we don’t begin reducing the amount of CO2 we are releasing into the air, and at least minimize the damage, a planet-wide disaster is assured.

The rescue?

Will the humans want to drop their standard of living? I think not. I think waiting for that to happen and it will be too late. I believe the rescue will come from three things:

- Technology companies coming up with more and more innovations that produce green energy with zero CO2 emissions

- Consumers putting pressure on the big companies to really take the lead in being green

- Governments accelerating the turnaround by creating laws punishing CO2-emissions, making the use of fossil fuels very expensive.

Technology?

On the technology side there are innovations in a few major areas:

- Solar power (Chinese Trina Solar, Chinese Yingli Solar, American Tesla Solar etc) is growing at double-digit rates and is continously reducing its costs.

- Wind power (Danish Vestas, German Enercon, German Siemens, Chinese Goldstar and American GE etc) enjoys steady growth, increasingly also off-shore

- Heat Power (Swedish Climeon, American Ormat, Italian Turboden, American Calnetix etc).

Heat Power: More than 50% of all energy in the world is lost as excess heat. Most or this excess heat is lost in the temperature range of 50-120 degrees Celsius. This excess heat is coming from areas such steel plants, aluminum plants, ship engines, power plants etc. Heat is also available from renewable sources, especially geothermal heat, allowing electricity production based on the heat found a few thousand meters down.

Your thoughts on the top list of global risks? ...and your thoughts around the suggested rescue?