Alistair Owens http://www.keen2learn.co.uk
We are taught at school to regard the oceans in awe. These mighty seas can ultimately devour rock, smash a ship on rocks with consummate ease and exert biblical levels of energy during hurricanes. But our misunderstanding, commercial ignorance or criminal activity is failing the world dramatically. Despite the educational programmes we play games with the sea and fail to understand or choose to ignore its inability to devour innocuous man made materials; our waste. In this capacity it is struggling badly.

The litter culture unfortunately permeates many classrooms, schools and streets. Often based on the premise someone else will clear it up. A viewpoint endemic in modern society it would seem, and to an extent it is true. Someone else will have to pick it up but at phenomenal environmental cost to us all. Boosted by incessant and elaborate over packaging to sell goods, incorporate tamper proof seals and a culture that prefers to replace that repair, we are building a mountain of rubbish. Recycling has helped but the amount is minuscule. Perhaps a rule that packaging cannot exceed a product’s mass or dimensions by more than five percent could temp designers to become more ingenious and environmentally friendly.

In the meantime we have a massive and growing problem with rubbish that has been inadvertently or deliberately dumped at sea. The winds and current creates vast ocean surface currents or “gyres.” These immense systems circulate predominately in five locations in the oceans of the world causing rubbish to gyrate around the system like leaves in wind vortex. Despite the destructive power of the seas the rubbish continues to mount. One sobering thought is apart from the very small percentage of plastic that has been recycled or is biodegradable, every item of plastic that has ever been made in the world – still exists!

The inability of the seas to consume this rubbish down is a huge concern. But whoever said that it should. The rubbish comes from a man made source somewhere, where our educational standards have failed. Examples of the durability of the rubbish can be seen from the time it takes for the rubbish to dissolve at sea: *

Paper bus ticket      2 – 4 weeks
Cotton Cloth        1- 5 months
Rope             3 – 14 months
Wollen cloth        1 year
Painted wood        13 years
Tin can         100 years
Aluminium can     200 – 500 years
Plastic bottle         450 years

One of the profound consequences of this marine pollution is the junk fed to adolescent seas birds by the unwitting parents. Dead albatross chicks has been found in the nest to have stomachs stuffed with plastic waste. If we are to change our habits we need to ensure every child’s education features the urgent need to reduce and recycle waste of any kind. It may take a generation to resolve which is possibly all we have left before serious and irreversible damage occurs if we do nothing.

*Malcolm Riley, Public and Marine Officer for the Bureau of Meteorology in Hobart Australia. See a video on this subject at www.afloat.com.au/afloat-magazine/2009/july-2009/weather
* Hellenic Environmental Protection Association ( Helmepa)

Alistair Owens www.keen2learn.co.uk
Constant reminders from departmental stores, shoe shops and outfitters plague every child’s  holiday. A downside of the educational challenge, the end of the summer holidays result in the return to school, a change of class, year and perhaps school itself.

Did I say that out loud?  Perhaps it was just me then that loathed the return to school. The grey gloom – didn’t actually matter what sort of day it was; the leaden skies, weary heart and  heavy satchel. But has anything changed over the years? They may be the same classmates from last year but we’re bound to have new teacher and we’ve just got to like the last one. Strewth this new school is massive. Must be at least the same size as our whole town! Where is everything, why do the teachers look so big. I don’t know anyone or anything, some of the children look like grown ups. Why are some called prefects. Hey that’s the awful kid who used to go to the other school. What does double maths mean? And what on earth are GCSE’s?

Moving up to a new secondary school is perhaps the biggest step change in the educational journey of a child. Subsequent moves to college or university will be tame in comparison. This is hell in a school uniform. But we do get to learn to spell national curriculum!

Mums, and occasionally even some Dads drop the fledgling school children off. Ignoring tears, tantrums and mysterious instant stomach disorders as best they can parents too leave the school gates with equal dread. But around 3:30 pm. all will be well. We will have somehow survived the first day. Everything will be easier tomorrow; now it’s home for TV and the family. Unless of course it’s a boarding school. Here the first day is literally 24 hours long. The novel routines last beyond those covered by the national curriculum. The school day moves into overtime where the organised approach extends to homework and basics such showering and shoe polishing. Maybe not the last one! I recall black shoe polish being dispensed from a vast Kiwi brand tin the size of a bucket. The craze then was to adopt the military spit and polish technique. Small figure of eight movements with a damp duster, polish and a couple of hours produced a patent leather shine, but only to the toe cap – beyond that was the sign of a real pleb with nothing better to do.

The learning process can be arduous as well as enjoyable. The guy who wrote the words “school days are the best days in your life” probably wrote them in retrospect. If it is true he obviously didn’t mean the first day back at school. But it does get better.

Alistair Owens http://www.keen2learn.co.uk

We are all involved in a massive educational programme to promote renewable energy and climate change. But will conflicting information on the merits of the options serve to reduce the impact and create apathy?

Wind, solar, marine and fuel cells are heralded as the saviours of the world, providing energy that is clean and renewable. Yet whilst there is a massive push to increase awareness and commitment of these green energy systems there are cracks appearing in the renewable energy camps which could have a hugely negative effect on any educational programme. Where would this leave the impact of the curriculum with teachers on the children who will bear the brunt of the crucial role of renewable energy in the future?

The conversion to renewable green energy promoted through concerted educational programmes could fall foul to the Luddite tendency in us all. Our natural reluctance to change could be reinforced by negative publicity suggesting an easier way out. Early adopters of the technology could feel misled if the “lets do nothing brigade” gain a foothold in the equation. We are at a dangerous crossroad.

Government departments, keen to stimulate educational learning can suffer a huge setback if high level concern over policy is voiced by leading specialists. The commitment to wind energy, heralded as a leading exponent of renewable energy, suffered a recent knock from Dieter Helm, Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Oxford. He claims the UK 100 billion pounds investment programme into wind power would be better spent on elsewhere to save the planet.

So far, our achievement in the carbon reduction programme is minimal. The world’s energy demand continues to grow and many emerging economies relay heavily on coal to produce electricity. Whilst the UK invests in renewable energy, China and India are building coal fired power stations that will swamp these savings. The central issue is the geographical transfer of demand. We may look good in the UK by reducing local emissions but we buy vast quantities of manufactured goods supplied from China and India. And we export waste materials to China to be recycled. This shift of demand has to be taken into consideration when calculating the effective release of carbon by each country. This needs to be straightforward without the usual of carbon offset games.

As China and India have vast reserves of coal we cannot expect them not to use it to fuel the demands of their economy? The UK and USA have been using oil and coal for decades without a murmur from them. If we accept coal is an unassailable element in the carbon emission shouldn’t we be investing the scientific and engineering wealth of the UK in the development of high efficiency coal powers stations?

Not as easy as it sounds. The private owners of the power stations will look at profit as the driving force. Perhaps a massive tax on the emissions will increase their commitment. But we cannot expect overnight success. There is an underlying inefficiency in the use of steam as the power source to generate electricity. The cycle starts with the coal being used as the heat source to heat water to turn it to steam. The steam is reheated to produce super heated steam to increase its thermal efficiency then expanded through a turbine coupled to an alternator. Electricity is produced by the spinning alternator, but we are then left with “dead steam,” large volumes of low energy steam exhausted from the process. And here lies the inefficient bit. We need to get the steam back into the high pressure boiler to start the process again – but you can’t pump steam.

You first need to turn it back to water. Vast towers and a copious external water supply spray cooling water and air over pipes carrying the steam to condense it back to water. The process wastes enormous amounts of heat seen as vapour emerging from the cooling towers. Easily seen on a winter’s day it accounts for 25 per cent of the energy produced from the coal. And it all goes up with the smoke (and heat) from the boiler exhaust.

Whilst we look to reduce the fall-out from burning coal through carbon capture we are also increasing the amount of water used in the generation process. Seen as a critical effect in the hotter countries the capture process will increase water consumption. Not such good news in southern Australia where water supply is already an issue. In Melbourne 25 per cent of the total annual water consumption is already used to operate the five local powers stations. The carbon capture process will increase this demand by an additional 33 per cent

The law of conservation of energy revealed the impossibility of destroying energy. It can only be converted from one form to another. Maybe we need a breakthrough in science that will discover a way of converting heat directly to electricity bypassing the heat to steam loop. This would make coal fired stations hugely efficient and open the way for nuclear stations to become more acceptable. Would this be possible? It would need the brainpower of top scientists and engineers but wasn’t this the way electricity was discovered in the first place?