Brian's Musings
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    • Brian's 2020 Newlsetters >
      • 28th June 2020 – Mulling a Covid Afterlife
      • 31st May 2020 - Unlocking your mind while in Lockdown
      • 19th April, 2020 – More stimulants for lockdown contemplation
      • 3rd April 2020 - PLanning Ahead in a Time of Plague
      • 19th March 2020 – More to Mull on in Splendid Isolation
      • 24th February, 2020 - The Corona Virus and Much More
      • 24th January 2020 - What changes likely in the new year?
    • Brian's 2019 Newsletters >
      • 23rd November 2019 - Another fascinating mix from around the world
      • 30th October 2019 - Where are we headed now?
      • 10th October 2019 - Another tour of the issues
      • 27th August 2019 -Brighter than usual
      • 2nd August 2019 - Mostly more gloom and doom
      • 5th July 2019 - Not much improvement anywhere
      • 19th June 2019 - Better late than neverNew Page
      • 27th April 2019 - More to make you think about the future
      • April 2019 Letters to the Editor of Business Day
      • 2nd April 2019 - Another Month of Mixed News
      • 27th February 2019 - More good news than bad
      • 4th February 2019 - Trying to make sense of it all
    • 2018 >
      • 29th December 2018 - Preparing for 2019
      • 3th November 2018 - Death by Hot Air and Other Cautionary Tales
      • 26th October 2018 – The Case of the Treacherous Till Slip and Other Interesting Tales
      • October 2018 - Feedback on Draft Integrated Resource Plan for South Africa
      • 21st September 2018 - The Information Flow Continues
      • 31st August 2018 - Reading for the first weekend of spring / autumn
      • 31st July 2018 - Watching the World
      • 13th July 2018 - Energy Update 2018
      • 31st May 2018 - Grime and Punishment
      • 20th April, 2018 - The Equaliser Conspiracy
      • 3rd April, 2018 - More Fascinating Facts and Figures
      • 28th February, 2018 - World Update
    • 2017 >
      • 29th November 2017 - Guessing Our Future
      • 29th July 2017 – Basic Income Grant
      • 26th July 2017 – Ideas for a Brighter South Africa
      • 3rd July 2017 - Another Energy Update
      • 8th May 2017 – Trucking and Selling
      • 12th April 2017 - False News Today
      • 22nd March 2017 - Predicting Speed of Change
      • 27th February 2017 - Growing Inequality
      • 11th January 2017 - Medical Data Mining
    • 2016 >
      • 13th December 2016 - American Irony
      • 25th November 2016 - Global Decision Making
      • 30th October 2016 - Climate Changes
      • 11th October 2016 - Musing Investments
      • 19th September 2016 - The Inexorable Five
      • 2nd September 2016 - Driving Forward
      • 17th August 2016 - Innovationv Update
      • 19th July 2016 - Powering Along
      • 4th July 2016 – An Eye to the Future
      • 10th June 2016 - Reverse Education
      • 20th May 2016 - More Minding P's and Q's
      • 5th May 2016 - A Leisurely Future
      • 17th April 2016 - More Food for Thought
      • 29th March 2016 – America’s Digital Colonisation of the World
      • 11th March 2016 - Measuring Life
      • 26th February 2016 - Growing Older, Growing More
      • 12th February 2016 – Retirement Reflections
      • 29th January 2016 - Just Four More Years to 2020 >
        • 15th January 2016 - A Taste of Red and White
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Trying to make sense of it all

4th February 2019 – Brian’s Musings – Trying to make sense of it all
 
People Change:

The Green Book of Population and Labour published by the China Academy of Social Sciences predicts that China's population will peak at 44 billion people in 2029 and then decline.

Climate Change

 
Arctic ice loss has tripled since the 1980s. Antarctica is losing around 219 billion tonnes of ice a year, a trajectory that would contribute more
than 25cm to total global sea level rise by 2070. Glaciers in western North America, excluding Alaska, are melting four times faster than in the previous decade. Greenland is melting faster than scientists previously thought, with the pace of ice loss increasing four-fold since 2003, with the largest ice loss occurring in the southwest region of the island, which is largely glacier-free.

The level of climate-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is forecast to rise by a near-record amount in 2019, according to the Met Office. Levels of the greenhouse gas have not been as high as today for 3-5m years, when the global temperature was 2-3C warmer and the sea level was 10-20 metres higher.

A Rhodium Group analysis calculated that U.S. carbon emissions from energy increased by 3.4% in 2018 after years of declines.
 
Delhi’s state-run Central Pollution Control Board’s air quality index, which shows the concentration of PM 2.5 particulate matter, was measured at 440, about 12 times the US government recommended level of 35.
 
The European Chemicals Agency is proposing a ban on the use of some 90% of microplastics.
 
Low Cost Renewable Energy
 
In January 2018, Hitachi cancelled a Welsh nuclear power plant project on which is had already spent more than US$ 2 billion.
 
TrendForce predicts the world will install another 111 GW of solar this year, following a record 103 GW in 2018. pv magazine estimates that American solar generation capacity could increase from 34 GW at the end of 2018 to 173 GW by end 2019.
 
China installed 43.6 GW of solar in 2018 taking the total to 174.63 GW. Solar Energy Corporation of India has invited solar power developers to construct 7.5 GW grid connected projects in Jammu and Kashmir under a competitive bidding process. Indian Railways plans to tender for 4 GW of solar.
 
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance Global clean energy investment totalled US$ 332.1 billion in 2018, down 8% on 2017. Although solar commitments declined 24% in dollar terms even there was record new photovoltaic capacity added as prices continued to drop.
 
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, corporations around the globe purchased a record 13.4 GW worth of clean power through Power Purchase Agreements in 2018, more than double the previous year’s record.
 
Wind, solar, hydro and biomass produced just over 40 percent of Germany’s electricity in 2018, overtaking coal’s 39 percent share, according to the Fraunhofer Institute. This was a result of an almost 20 percent increase in solar capacity, the shuttering of older coal plants and favourable weather conditions. Germany is proposing to close all its coal fired power stations by 2038.
 
The US Government’s Energy Information Administration, whose forecasts are widely relied on by government policy makers, has conducted of its forecasts over the past ten years and found that coal consumption has been consistently over estimated, often by as much as 70%.
 
Arizona State University researchers have set a new record for solar efficiency, 25.4 percent.
 
A consortium made up of renewable energy developers from France and Saudi Arabia, EDF Renewables and Masdar, successfully won the tender to build the 400MW Dumat Al Jandal wind farm at a record-low price of 2.13 cents per kWh – a project that will be Saudi Arabia’s first wind farm and the largest in the Middle East.

The Indian government launched a universal household electrification project in September 2017 and subsequently announced the electrification of all villages in April 2018 and more than 90% of households by end 2018.

The government of Bangladesh is to legalize around 100,000 electric three-wheel vehicles currently operating on its rural roads.

Uganda-based off-grid solar installer SolarNow has received US$ 9 million in funding from Sunfunder, responsAbility, and Oikocredit to fund 17,500 off-grid solar systems, amounting to around 2.5 MW of new off-grid solar capacity.

Mass Data Mining and Storage

 
China’s Social Credit System announced a new app allowing Chinese to identify anyone on a debtors blacklist who is nearby.
 
Automation Based Unemployment
 
According to a study from the Brookings Institute, around 25 percent of U.S. jobs are at “high risk.” Roles in transportation, food prep, production and office admin are among those at highest risk, with robotics and artificial intelligence threatening to automate some 70 percent of tasks. Automation is expected to have an outsized impact in certain regions in the country, and among less well educated workers.
 
Sears is preparing for bankruptcy as a result of Amazon.
 
Finland has launched an online artificial intelligence education program aiming to teach 1 percent of the country's population the basic concepts at the root of artificial technology initially and gradually build on the number over the next few years. (There is a free English version available)
 
Autonomous Electric Vehicles

A new report from Deloitte predicts there will be 21 million electric vehicles on the road by 2030 and price parity with ICE vehicles by 2022.

After a record year for EV adoption in 2018, the report forecasts that the transition will continue, doubling the number of EVs worldwide from 2 million in 2018 to 4 million in 2020. By 2025 there will be 12 million electric cars on the road and all-electric car sales will account for 70 per cent of EV sales.

Sweden has passed legislation banning the sale of new ICE cars after 2030.
 
Google’s Waymo is to open the world’s first factory dedicated to making autonomous vehicles in Michigan later this year. The company launched its first commercial robotaxi service in Phoenix in December 2018.
 
Daimler Trucks will invest EUR 500 million and create more than 200 new jobs in its global push to bring highly automated trucks to the road within a decade.

Boeing has completed the pilotless test flight of its electric autonomous passenger air vehicle.
Rolls Royce in partnership with YASA, the Aerospace Technology Institute and Electroflight plans to launch the world’s fastest all-electric plane in 2020. The plane will be able to reach speeds of at least 480 km per hour with a range of 360 km.

Israel’s Eviation is building the first of its nine seater, all-electric passenger aircraft with a range of 1,000 km in France and plans to launch the aircraft at the 2019 Paris Air Show.

Increasing Inequality

 
India’s main opposition Congress party plans to implement a variation of a universal basic income (UBI) targeted at the poor if it wins the country’s upcoming election.
 

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  • Home
  • Brian's Blog
  • Musings
    • Brian's 2020 Newlsetters >
      • 28th June 2020 – Mulling a Covid Afterlife
      • 31st May 2020 - Unlocking your mind while in Lockdown
      • 19th April, 2020 – More stimulants for lockdown contemplation
      • 3rd April 2020 - PLanning Ahead in a Time of Plague
      • 19th March 2020 – More to Mull on in Splendid Isolation
      • 24th February, 2020 - The Corona Virus and Much More
      • 24th January 2020 - What changes likely in the new year?
    • Brian's 2019 Newsletters >
      • 23rd November 2019 - Another fascinating mix from around the world
      • 30th October 2019 - Where are we headed now?
      • 10th October 2019 - Another tour of the issues
      • 27th August 2019 -Brighter than usual
      • 2nd August 2019 - Mostly more gloom and doom
      • 5th July 2019 - Not much improvement anywhere
      • 19th June 2019 - Better late than neverNew Page
      • 27th April 2019 - More to make you think about the future
      • April 2019 Letters to the Editor of Business Day
      • 2nd April 2019 - Another Month of Mixed News
      • 27th February 2019 - More good news than bad
      • 4th February 2019 - Trying to make sense of it all
    • 2018 >
      • 29th December 2018 - Preparing for 2019
      • 3th November 2018 - Death by Hot Air and Other Cautionary Tales
      • 26th October 2018 – The Case of the Treacherous Till Slip and Other Interesting Tales
      • October 2018 - Feedback on Draft Integrated Resource Plan for South Africa
      • 21st September 2018 - The Information Flow Continues
      • 31st August 2018 - Reading for the first weekend of spring / autumn
      • 31st July 2018 - Watching the World
      • 13th July 2018 - Energy Update 2018
      • 31st May 2018 - Grime and Punishment
      • 20th April, 2018 - The Equaliser Conspiracy
      • 3rd April, 2018 - More Fascinating Facts and Figures
      • 28th February, 2018 - World Update
    • 2017 >
      • 29th November 2017 - Guessing Our Future
      • 29th July 2017 – Basic Income Grant
      • 26th July 2017 – Ideas for a Brighter South Africa
      • 3rd July 2017 - Another Energy Update
      • 8th May 2017 – Trucking and Selling
      • 12th April 2017 - False News Today
      • 22nd March 2017 - Predicting Speed of Change
      • 27th February 2017 - Growing Inequality
      • 11th January 2017 - Medical Data Mining
    • 2016 >
      • 13th December 2016 - American Irony
      • 25th November 2016 - Global Decision Making
      • 30th October 2016 - Climate Changes
      • 11th October 2016 - Musing Investments
      • 19th September 2016 - The Inexorable Five
      • 2nd September 2016 - Driving Forward
      • 17th August 2016 - Innovationv Update
      • 19th July 2016 - Powering Along
      • 4th July 2016 – An Eye to the Future
      • 10th June 2016 - Reverse Education
      • 20th May 2016 - More Minding P's and Q's
      • 5th May 2016 - A Leisurely Future
      • 17th April 2016 - More Food for Thought
      • 29th March 2016 – America’s Digital Colonisation of the World
      • 11th March 2016 - Measuring Life
      • 26th February 2016 - Growing Older, Growing More
      • 12th February 2016 – Retirement Reflections
      • 29th January 2016 - Just Four More Years to 2020 >
        • 15th January 2016 - A Taste of Red and White
  • Books