Woking Awake

In March 2011 I made a five minute video clip about our town called Woking Awake and put it on Youtube to publicise James Hansen’s view that if we burn all the fossil fuels, including the tar shale and tar sands, the result would be runaway global warming, making earth’s surface hot enough to melt lead. All life on earth would come to an end. James is a leading planetary Scientist, and has been Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in America since 1981.

If you think the video has merit, then anything you can do to publicise it would be appreciated. Thank you, David F Pennant

No part of the video is copyright. The website referred to is www.easyaccesstospace.com.

The text of the video, with relevant links, is as follows :

Welcome to Woking, a town of 80,000 inhabitants twenty-five miles South West of London, where I have been teaching piano for fifteen years.

Woking has been leading the way on reducing Carbon emissions. The first Combined Heat and Power plant in the country was installed in Woking Park, to heat the swimming pool and Leisure Centre. The council has also installed photovoltaic panels on the roofs of a number of properties, and on the canopy outside the station. Cycling has been encouraged, especially for the many people who commute by train to London. We have even opened a shop in the precinct where people can go for advice on how to make their homes more energy efficient.

I take a deep interest in this subject. I have read a number of books, some of them several times over, trying to get my head around the facts, which are truly alarming. I have reduced my own emissions by not flying by plane any more, keeping the house on the cool side in Winter, not over-filling the kettle, trying to burn logs rather than gas, and all that. I also cycle to reduce car use, aiming to save 100 litres of petrol a year. The recent upgrading of the canal towpath has made this easier and a pleasure, and cycling helps keep me fit as well.

However, the fact is that all this is insufficient. I reckon I have saved this much oil by my cycling over the last year. But the amount of oil the world uses in just one day would require a line of these barrels stretching three quarters of the way round the globe**. You don’t need me to tell you that we have a huge problem.

Perhaps we could all cut our energy usage? It would not be easy. Despite all my efforts, we still spend £120 a month on gas and electricity in this house, and even though I travel by bike and train when I can, there always seems to be a reason for starting the car. And I am not alone. The buses to Heath Row pass my house every thirty minutes, and the planes taking off from there every forty-five seconds can be seen from our garden. Even though trains are better for the environment than other forms of transport, the sheer number of them operating out of Woking must add up to a considerable use of energy. We all heat our houses in Winter, and the cars never stop passing. Woking’s carbon footprint is sizeable.

So if this is what is happening despite our best efforts, when we consider the national picture, what can we expect to happen over time? James Hansen, one of the world’s leading planetary scientists, writes, “If we burn all reserves of oil, gas, and coal, the ice sheets almost surely will melt entirely, with the final sea level rise about 75 metres.”

This problem has crept up on us with the coming of the industrial revolution, from 1750 onwards. This portrait is of my great-great grandfather who was born in 1749. He was a penniless curate, who fell in love with the Dean’s daughter and succeeded in marrying her against all the odds. I’m so glad he did. If we look ahead, my great-great grandchildren will not be able to live in Woking, as our house is only 49 metres above sea level. Even though we are 35 miles from the sea here, the whole area will be deep under water, as in the film Waterworld.

But that is not all. To quote Hansen again, “If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale, I believe the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty (p 236).” So looking ahead again to my great-great-grandchildren’s great-great grandchildren… well, there won’t be any, as the surface of the Earth will be like that of Venus, hot enough to melt lead, and with the pressure of the atmosphere ninety times that of today. All life would be extinguished.

I think our one hope is to use our brains. If we could develop easier access to space, for example, and get heavy industry and power generation into orbit, that would be a real help. The one thing we can not afford to do is to be relaxed about this matter. Please educate yourself in these things, and join in trying to change the way we live!

Thank you for your attention. May you and your loved ones enjoy life in the remaining time before the human race comes to an end.

-oOo-

** Here's my calculation. The world uses around 86 million barrels of oil a day. The water butt holds fifty UK gallons, which is 1.43 barrels. So a day's supply requires 60,139,860 water butts to hold it. The butt is exactly 50 centimetres wide, i.e. two to the metre, or 2000 to the kilometre. The line needed for a day's supply therefore stretches 30069.93 kilometres. The circumference of the earth at the equator is 40075.16 kilometers. Hence the line of water butts stretches three quarters of the way round the globe.