This channel seeks to understand the issues that face our civilisation in the 21st Century and focusses on the potential solutions that will save as many lives as possible and hopefully bring about a greater level of equality in the world. The channel is not a debating forum about whether Human Induced Climate Change is a real phenomenon or not. If that’s what you’re after then I can highly recommend chat forums on Social Media, where people on both sides of the argument go round and round in circles achieving precisely nothing at all.
That is a mug’s game. And it’s not my game.
Anyway, outside of those caveats, I do try to keep it light and humorous wherever possible, so I hope you enjoy the content.
Oh..and me… Dave Borlace. Born 1969. BSc in Technology from the Open University in the UK. After a 30 year career in People and Project Management, I now work full time on the channel thanks to the amazing folks who support me on Patreon http://www.patreon.com/justhaveathink
From Just Have a Think. Perovskite and silicon appear to be the dream combo for improved efficiency in solar PV technology, with the potential to more than double the performance of anything you may have on your roof today. If you live in America, you can now buy perovskite/ silicon solar panels manufactured in Europe.…
From Just Have a Think. Wind power is becoming an ever more dominant force in global electricity grids. But it’s ‘dirty secret’ is that the turbine blades are currently almost impossible to recycle. Now a team at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) claims to have used plant-based biomass to create blades that can…
From Just Have a Think. Artificial intelligence is transforming our lives every day. Internet of Things devices now control building temperatures, humidity and lighting, and even know what each of us is doing. It’s all designed to optimise energy efficiency and minimise the carbon footprint. So, should we let Artificial Intelligence take over the job…
From Just Have a Think. Arctic Sea ice reaches it’s minimum extent each year around the middle of September. This year is one of the lowest in recorded history. Ocean temperatures have been so ‘off the charts’ in 2023 and 2024 that scientists fear those waters have reached their capacity to mop up after us…
From Just Have a Think. Power to the people!! The old fashioned, centralised energy monopolies are crumbling to make way for distributed smart grids enabling us consumers to run appliances, energy storage, and electric vehicles while contributing to overall grid stability. Here’s how it works… Help support this channels independence at http://www.patreon.com/justhaveathink Or with a…
From Just Have a Think. Plastic pollution is a huge problem on every continent, and increasingly in our oceans. Land based microbes have been discovered that have learnt how to digest certain plastics, but new research has now discovered that nature is at it in our oceans as well! So has evolution gifted us a…
From Just Have a Think. Biomass is touted as a sustainable, ‘net-zero’ alternative to fossil fuels. It’s even recommended by organisations like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UK Climate Change Committee. But environmental groups and scientists have disputed this claim for many years, and now new research shows that burning biomass releases…
From Just Have a Think. According to UNICEF, one in four people globally doesn’t have safe drinking water in their homes and nearly half the world’s population lacks safely managed sanitation. And according to the World Bank, in many of the hottest and driest regions across a hundred and fifty countries, desalination of seawater is…
From Just Have a Think. Electric Vehicles are coming our way from China like a tsunami over the horizon. But in some kind of misguided collective homage to King Canute, both the European Commission and the US Government believe they can keep back the tide simply by applying very high tariffs on those imported cars.…
From Just Have a Think. Battery technology is developing at breath-taking speed all over the world, but China still leads the way. Now they’ve created batteries with such high energy density that they’re using them to develop a commercial aircraft with a range of 2,000 miles – enough for most commuter flights in the US…
From Just Have a Think. Polymetallic Nodules. Never heard of them? Well there are trillions of them on the deepest sea beds of our oceans. Mining companies want to scoop them all up for the valuable elements they contain, like manganese, cobalt and nickel. But new research has demonstrated that those metallic constituents are causing…
From Just Have a Think. Solid State batteries…BLAH, BLAH, BLAH! Sick of hearing about them? Well, that’s understandable. They’ve been ‘on the horizon’ for far too long, haven’t they? But the big dogs of the battery industry are now telling tell us they’ve come up with a neat solution to get these things onto the…
From Just Have a Think. China is often held up as leading the way in renewable energy, but it’s actually the USA that has most enthusiastically embraced battery energy storage to help stabilize the electricity grid, and in some surprising locations. But is it all about the noble effort of decarbonisation or are we seeing…
From Just Have a Think. Living off grid is a dream for many. But if you want to combine that lifestyle with an electric vehicle, then charging that vehicle up at home is going to be a headache. At least it was…until now. A US start-up has just started taking orders for a DC to…
From Just Have a Think. The ability to charge an electric vehicle in just a couple of minutes is the ‘game changer’ that car makers and car drivers are all waiting for. Batteries will always take time to charge up, but capacitors can store charge instantly. The challenge is creating one with enough energy density…
From Just Have a Think. You might not want to think about this one, but our scientists tell us if we carry on the way we are now, the global food system will have completely broken down by the time a child born today hits retirement age. The good news is, it can be solved.…