Almost a year ago my daughter woke me up to the fact we really need to get going with solutions for climate change / global warming and yes I needed to lift my game... especially using my chemical engineer's hat! So here's a quick overview of some things we have been up to...
Project G-R-A-C-E = Global Recognition Action Climate Engineering
As the name suggests we are interested in who is doing 'good' things, developing an understanding of what climate engineering means (!?!?), and taking action, e.g. "if we could only do one thing right now, what would it be?"...more on that soon.
Flying our flag and Exploring Recognition of Climate Aware Products & Companies with Deakin University Masters Students
We've taken a fun 'entrepreneurial approach'. From our zero base we've flown our 'zero flag' and sought help from those around us for zero dollars, largely staff and students at Deakin University, who kindly have helped develop and explore concepts for a 'simple product identifier' using a 'Blue Halo' (all this so presumably at somepoint i'll easily know what to buy next time i'm shopping!), started to look at what a 'circular carbon economy' might mean, and been investigating 'what actually cools the planet?'... all this as a would be not-for-profit (we explored what a GRACE NFP might involve too!). ...note this is not my day job.
What I love about this work is we have glimpsed a great overview of what's happening globally, helped students develop their professional skills, and worked with a great mix of young and enthusiastic people from around the world. Very inspirational! From this we have heard lots of hopeful stories that need to be shared (i'm happy to chat!) and believe there are some awesome products and people out there in need of more recognition (maybe using a common identifier like our 'Blue Halo' concept...for a laugh i've awarded myself a digital one for this year and am using it in my linkedin pic above and other social media! Even been playing with an augmented reality version... I'll leave AR for another time maybe).
Ok. Now for a taste of hardcore 'climate engineering' for Plan A - Albedo Action (how reflective the planet is) ...from a kids perspective you might think of clouds as our protective reflective shield (kind of fun). This work is the "if we could only do one thing right now" it would be "Understand Albedo = how it varies, what influences it, and then what might it do for us?". Why? because occasionally the planet does cool (e.g. when a big volcano goes off!...not always ideal) as the planet is more reflective. Anyway, its an angle for us to begin asking questions and I have to admit it's very early days though I've been lucky enough to hear first hand from senior experts at CSIRO about some of their latest climate models (happily from some mechanical engineering alumni from The University of Melbourne toying with complex Navier Stokes equations and the like! ... fascinating stuff!). So we have begun our own literature review and decided to toy with the 'Education Global Climate Model (see http://edgcm.columbia.edu/ - you can play with this at home if you like!) to see what we can learn working with a small team of engineering students at Deakin University. What we know is Albedo and Insolation certainly control planetary heat flux and that certain events shift us between a net positive and net negative planetary heat flux and that it is certainly different for differnt planetary heating or cooling scenarios. Questions arise as to 'where and when our albedo is 'out of control' ?' and 'if we could dial up a climate what decade is best?' (1970s?...dunno...flairs back in fashion?)... and 'how might that be achieved?'. At this point i should note that GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emissions are part of 'albedo control' and emissions control is 'climate engineering' of a sort that will take many decades to see effects. At present i think we are doing 'uncontrolled' climate engineering / albedo management (whether we like it or not) by living how we live and altering the terrain and composition of the biosphere. At some point 'Engineering' is all about tolerances and acceptable variation so it all just works day in day out... we need to know what this looks like for prefered sustainable 'climate' engineering ...e.g. not reflective enough we overheat / too reflective we freeze.
Picture of grace earth balance' hachimaki, blue circle on white background with characters to represent commitment and desire for sustainable climate
Finally, we're also having a lot of fun with creative 'branding' ideas for a common climate identity (I've always wanted to make a 'hachimaki'), playful road testing of 'circular carbon economy' practices (patch up my gig jeans!), and we've brought all this fun together in a 'musical scale of key actions ' (more on that another time) and presented this to my daughter's key stakeholders (her class at school = inspire the next generation to go to school and learn learn learn!!). Actually this notion of maintaining an optimistic outlook and a common commitment to learning and action seems to be what we need - and I note a common commitment is required for say a price on carbon emissions which is key to any market linked approach to emissions regulation.
All this fun and learning for $0 (and a lot of my not so 'free time' for 'free'). ... and yes i traded my 2003 Volvo XC70 for a brand new hybrid (Yes overdue). My back of envelope calculations suggest that relative to the Volvo the new vehicle should pay for itself and more than half my transport emissions ... c'mon aussie's c'mon...get ya game on! (i suspect this car will reside in the aussie fleet for more than a decade and possibly reduce others emissions too)
With grace we can work together to solve the climate challenge - and maybe even have fun doing it! Many thanks to all our helpers, especially those kind staff and students at Deakin University who were willing to journey with us !! Be safe