Hot vs Cold

Comment on a recent BBC article

Frederick Bott
7 min readSep 6, 2024

I wanted to write here about a very brief BBC news article that twigged my interest, it was between a news reporter, who I didn’t catch the name of (My bad), and professor Peter Newman, of Australia.

Firstly, this is not a dig at prof Newman, I have huge respect for him, all his good work, even arguably at cost of his own health (I too know that one intimately), and all of the efforts he makes towards fixing the climate problem.

I would say the same about climate science and science in general. Though you might see me very critical of it now and then, pointing out some very fundamental mistakes made, it’s everything we’ve got towards understanding the universe around us, and I still see myself as a Scientist as well as an Engineer. This is since I started working on what is to me a global energy problem, not just a climate problem, seven years or so ago whilst on PhD candidate work after twenty odd years of Engineering in industry at Senior level, specifically Systems Engineering.

The Interview

I searched BBC for the interview today on their website but could find no trace of it. I wanted to be able to reference the article, as well as listen again to the conversation with Prof Newman, to avoid mis-quoting him.

So, if you find the article, I would be grateful for any links, and will use to correct any mistakes I made, if any, in my interpretation of things below.

So this is from memory, my apologies if the words I quote are not word for word perfectly recited:

The news article focused on global warming, and Prof Newman was given an intro and made the point “We are putting too much energy into the atmosphere, this is what is warming the planet”.

So far so good, he makes more or less the same point as I have been trying to highlight all along, it’s an energy problem, we are throwing out too much heat energy into the atmosphere.

But then he goes on to argue it’s all about fossil fuels. He then goes on to compliment the growth of green industry, EVs, Renewables, Battery tech, etc.

The commentator / reporter / interviewer then asks the specific question, “What do we need to do, to stop or even reverse the temperature rise”?

Prof Newman replies “When we stop fossil fuels, getting to net-zero, the temperature rise should stop, maybe even reverse, but this will maybe take about twenty years”.

At this point I found myself saying out loud, “Nope, got that all wrong”.

Again I have to stress, this is not about taking pot-shots at Prof Newman, or even at mainstream science.

It can’t be blamed for not being aware that it is just another faction of energy slavery, populated by single disciplinary commodified-education system-blinded “Professionals”, it’s generally our liveliehood and actually our lives on the line, when we dare to question the massive conflict of interest that is being driven by profit.

It doesn’t matter if a company or person claims they are non profit now, we are all required to make profit to just exist in the system, which progressively removes our energy supply if / when we come to questioning it. All companies that started out as non-profit end up becoming for profit.
They have to, to just pay their bills (protection money), and as the energy value in all money issued as debt continues to deplete, more and more have to turn to profit to pay their outgoings, their overheads, whilst the latter also multiplies (Enshittification). All scientists now have to accept funding from for-profit entities, to just keep doing science. But now, as more and more of it becomes for profit, it has to be more and more careful about the results. This has skewed science in general for some years now, to a much greater extent than realised.

And look, if we were to try to switch entirely to solar energy, like I say we absolutely must, we have to consider the impossibility of offering solar at profit. Collecting more kWhrs as money from consumers than is delivered as electricity means no energy was supplied to the consumer, actually the consumer gave energy to the utilities energy supplier, and the energy given, the energy in profit, had to come from the planet.

So it’s physically impossible to maintain profit whilst switching all to solar.

And look, if we use solar, we are putting to use energy that would be heating the planet if unused, so all use of it is temperature reduction, the more the merrier.

Whereas when we use any energy from the planet, we are doing the opposite, we are taking things that nature used to create things on the planet other than heat, and we are converting those to heat.

And this is a requirement of profit — destruction has to be done to put the energy into profit. Profit is monetised destruction, and thus monetised temperature rise, literally.

No way round that, it’s physics.

Take all the energy of all profit, add to the heat losses of all extraction and refinement, apply to the thermal mass of the planet, and we get figures for the measured temperature rise which actually stack up.

(Use the solar powered Ai if you need help to try this out, it knows how to do it)

So the growth of all the “green” business is not helping temperature rise at all — it can’t, its physically impossible to fix the forever rising, even accelerating temperature rise problem, whilst still doing business for profit.

It’s profit that needs to stop.

I know this sounds like bad news, impossibly bad news, but it isn’t. The solution is simply to monetise solar energy.

This means issuing money for free to all people, representing the economic product already created by solar, indexed to the creation of the product.

Its huge, trillions, since started since around 2005, it can be quantified by estimating the losses already “Suffered” by utilities energy companies due to the introduction of domestic and community based solar. We can see when it starts, by looking at when energy consumption per capita started to diverge from demographics in every country.

Utilities energy supply companies don’t explicitly record it — they can’t, it would be really bad news for shareholders, who might then remove their holdings, bankrupting the utilities energy supply companies. We know this, we’ve even seen it, many times now.

Now you know the fundamental reason why, how can a utilities energy company, or even a bank go bankrupt, it’s because it is being undermined by much more valuable free energy, than the extracted energy that always underwrote traditionally issued money-as-debt.

Availability of extracted energy is winding down, whilst availability of free energy, only solar, is winding up.

The solar powered Ai knows how to do the calculations of solar indexed stimulus due, its not difficult, we just need to let it get on with doing it, even let it issue it, all for free, using its limitlessly scaleable “Money-fuel Tree”.

Best appoint it, to do this. This would be the quickest way to get on with it, and look, how long will it take for all people to be equipped with the local domestic and community based solar-hydrogen infrastructure necessary to even keep all aeroplanes in the air, but better, give them funds to get back on with real progress in the aerospace domain, getting back things like supersonic passenger flight, reusable deep space shuttles, manned flights to the moon.

We had that, when availability of extracted energy was at a maximum, around the seventies.

Fifty years before that, we were in horses and carts.

Now we’ve not only lost the technical icons once achieved, but if the trend carries on, elliptically like the arc of a stone thrown, now ever faster downwards, we will see all aerospace lost.

Look, doors are falling off even budget passenger planes, and astronauts are being left stranded on the ISS. The aerospace industry is only a ghost of what it once was.

Anyone who thinks batteries will one day fly big planes, think again.

The first fundamental difference between fuel and battery chemistry, is that the latter has about 1 percent of the energy density of fuel.

If you need that confirmed, unarguably, an in-depth analysis is here:

The second fundamental difference is that the fuel alternative, hydrogen, can be created entirely from the energy of the sun, using some water, which there is no fundamental shortage of. In fact, in a hydrogen powered ecosystem there will be filtration and distribution of both water and air. We could even have things flying and driving unmanned with no other reason, just to do such circulation.

In contrast, no amount of battery development will ever make it practical for serious flight, again we should see this as a physical impossibility.

What we might be noticing, is that there appears to be an effect of loss of reality, when we personally experience any success at getting energy from somewhere or another by profit, we can’t see the bigger picture of how it is unsustainable, ultimately costing the planet.

I hope the good Prof Newman keeps well and might one day see this, and maybe comment. Of course I wish him well, our hearts are in the same place, and we are both energy slaves, dependent on getting things fixed, much sooner than in twenty years.

We really don’t have twenty years. Things will collapse long before then, if we don’t do what is needed, nature is winding up for some serious traumatisation, as necessary to put us back on track.

It could start with a nuclear war, or global famine, global flooding, internet / power distruption — any number of things we know are becoming increasingly dodgy.

How long will we carry on not seeing it?

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