Month: March 2022

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Re-wilding in the UK

Currently, 70% of the land in the UK is given over to agriculture. Of this, just 15% is used to grow crops for human consumption. A further 22% goes towards feeding livestock. The rest is given over to livestock grazing.

This means that we give over 44% of the country to livestock, and a further 15% of the country to feed the livestock.

If growing food in a lab does indeed take off, 59% of the UK would suddenly be freed up – lab grown meat done properly could have a near 0 carbon footprint, and can be created in close proximity to the shop that will sell it -further reducing or eliminating the transport carbon footprint of food.

Now, assuming that this is to happen we would still need to keep some livestock. This would be needed to harvest cells. Never the less, we could still see a reduction of more than 99% of the livestock and land required. I do not believe that I am the only person who would be far happier satisfying my desire for meat, without the climate implications or indeed the fact that animals have to die to satisfy it (I am not a vegetarian, but over the last few years we have made efforts to reduce our meat footprint).

This would free up more than 50% of the country. What could we do with this?

Well my argument is that this land could be given over to rewilding. With this amount of land, we could suck up vast amounts of carbon a year. 50% of the UK is roughly 120,000 square kilometres. Now roughly speaking, forest suck up 500g per square m per year, or 500 metric tonnes per square km. Therefore, the UK could suck up 60 million tonnes a year. Now it is true that this is not huge compared to our emissions and we might have some other uses, never-the-less I am sure that I am not the only person that is frustrated by the lack of wilderness in the UK. Even just 10% of the gained land being given over to rewilding could make great progress in returning wilderness to the UK.

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Much of the Amazon deforestation will cause destruction of the land that is being taken

In much of the Amazon rainforest destruction is in order to increase the amount of land that can be farmed.

There is not mass starvation in Brazil, in fact to the contrary most of the crops grown will be sold abroad. Never-the-less if is irrelevant as the land will not be usable for crops for very long. The area will rapidly switch to desert

Great areas are being deforested in order to grow crops.

The problem is, that the rainfall is largely caused by the rainforest. Therefore, by cutting down the rainforest you remove this rainfall.

Not only is rainforest destruction a dangerous thing for the community, but the land will be worthless within a short time of it being deforested.

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Chimpanzees medical treatments seen again

I hope all the people reading this are aware of the intelligence of chimpanzees. Indeed, this intelligence has been known for some time. Altruistic acts have been recorded in studies – going back to Jane Goodall’s seminal first study in Gombe stream.

This time, scientists have observed chimpanzees in Gabon applying insects to each others wounds – in the same way that we would use medicine. Now while medicinal uses have been seen before this is the first use of this sort that has been seen.

Back in 1965 Jane Goodall started to see in her studies, the use of various plants as medicines. In this instance, there was a specific leaf that they would eat when not feeling well – importantly, the leaf was not chewed as is normal. when researchers did tests on the leaf, they found it contained a specific chemical which was capable of killing a range of bacteria, fungi, and nematodes

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Glass is capable of being endlessly recycled – but some countries are better than others

Making new glass from cutlet (small glass pieces) saves significant energy. This is partly because it needs a lower temperature to melt. While it is true that much of the materials that go into glass are not in short supply, it is still more sensible to reuse, particularly if your energy requirements are lower. Apart from energy uses, other benefits of recycling include 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution. It also means that glass does not have to go into landfill – we need to reduce rubbish going to landfill down to as close to zero as possible.

Glass can be endlessly recycled so why is a country like the USA so far behind many others in this important field
Continue reading “Glass is capable of being endlessly recycled – but some countries are better than others”
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The British government has promised to go carbon neutral by 2050 how much to generate all electricity from wind?

How can we produce all our electricity through wind and solar? These are the two most wide-spread possibilities in terms of green electricity generation. It has been calculated, that in order to power all UK homes from wind, we need funding of 50 billion.

Now while this number is huge, the British government spent over a trillion pounds last year. This means that the investment required to generate 100% of our power from wind is about 5% of one years spending. This strikes me as incredibly cheap. This investment, would allow about 4 times as many turbines to be added as there currently are.

There would obviously be other costs, such as storing electricity for when the wind is not blowing. The important take away, is that this is negligible. Indeed with debts of over 3000 billion, adding 50 more is not a big step.

More importantly, it is calculated that doing nothing could cost the UK alone trillions of pounds. If we invested this money over the next say 8 years (so that all the money was available by 2030 and all the turbines were up and running by 2035) it becomes quite a small investment in government spending terms (though it is still a large amount of money).

It is estimated that by 2050 climate change could cost the UK up to £20 billion a year. Of course other countries around the world will likely have to pay far more. The UK has the 12th highest electricity use in the world as a country, this means that while each country will need a lot of money to go fully green electricity, it is not necessary to break the bank.

Different countries will have different ways to reach net zero, and we should help and encourage this move – but why dont we start planning the necessary investment, make sure that the UK leads the way in eliminating our electrical carbon footprint?

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Website update!

We are in the process of creating the 2 members areas. This will hopefully be ready to go live in the next few weeks. more details coming soon. The first members area is for those readers who want to help us move the websites aims forwards: essentially trying to make it always more profitable to retain wildlife than to kill it – through creating a marketplace for it to be advertised: as you can imagine this is a huge job and we need all the help we can get. Apart from giving you a members area, we want to set things up so you can be an advocate for the sites aims – it will be possible for you to add destinations to the site in the members area, There will also be discussion forums and the ability for readers to interact with me.

The second members area is to help the website fulfil its objective: this will be for people who either live alongside wildlife “in the shadow of mankind” or run something in a “wild place” or run a “hide”. This is designed to work as a forum for those listed on the site, so while people can sign up before listing, this is essential if you wish to remain a member. We will also include those who work in conservation and possibly a writers area (those who agree to write an article for the website ever week or so). This members area will be free for eligible people and will give similar resources.

We have had some issues with security over the last few months. We have succeeded in improving security, but seem to be having some plugin issues (we have been intermittently locked out). We are hoping that these problems are behind us (thankfully they have not impacted the front end of the site).

We continue to strive to become the go-to resource for both conservationists and wildlife tourism. As you can imagine that is a huge aim, but we hope that when these member areas go live, some of you might join us, and help make it a reality.

Tim Welby

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Carbon footprint of the UK ghost flights during Covid

What are ghost flights?

Flying empty planes is a complete waste

These are flights that are totally empty. These flights took place because airports demanded that a certain percentage of take-off slots were filled in order for each company to retain ownership.

Why is this problematic?

The Average plane emits about 53 pounds of carbon per mile, and flies on average 500 miles. As a result, the average flight emits roughly 25000 pounds of carbon per flight. Roughly speaking, an empty plane uses 20% less fuel, so we can say that each ghost flight emitted roughly 10 tonnes of carbon. Over the 15,000 flights that flew empty, that is 150,000 tonnes of carbon – with no purpose except allowing airports to keep raking in the profits.

At a time when we are all trying to cut carbon emissions this is horrendous. Is it a large portion of our countries annual emissions? no, it is less than 1%. However, at a time when everyone is being encouraged to reduce their carbon footprint as much as possible this is an absurd waste.

Alarmingly, ghost flights are not only a British thing in many countries around the world they have been a far bigger thing. What is worse, is that this was belatedly recognized by the EU reducing requirements temporarily in the middle of the epidemic.

Things must change – if in the future we have an epidemic which reduces passengers flying to zero, we must also have a reduction in the emissions and flights to zero as well.

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An arrested Sumatran politician – arrested for bribery, was found to have a pet Orangutan among a group of other exotic pets

There is a great deal of corruption in many parts of the world. In many places politicians are almost expected to give themselves extra benefits – indeed those who do not, are often quite notable for standing out.

In this case, after arresting the politician his house was raided, when the animals were found.

Keeping wild animals as pets can carry a 5 year jail sentence, in this case it must -he must not escape penalty for this
Continue reading “An arrested Sumatran politician – arrested for bribery, was found to have a pet Orangutan among a group of other exotic pets”
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Have we been underestimating emissions from deforestation? Perhaps by as much as 100%?

In a world where we are worried about global warming and carbon emissions, it is insanity that we are still cutting down trees. Recent research shows it even more insane – the carbon footprint of deforestation has been shown to have doubled in the last 2 decades.

Unfortunately, this problem is for simple reasons. Generalizing, the majority of people who are worried about global warming are in developed countries – few of these countries have an significant rainforest left, as they cut them down (often centuries ago).

In developing countries, people are less worried about global warming. Are the stupid? No, of course not. In the developed world, for the vast majority of people, we do not need to worry about where our next meal is coming from (sure there are varying levels of poverty, but on the whole dying from starvation in the west is rare). In developing countries, however, starvation is still a problem that occurs from time to time. Terrible famines have occurred within living memory, which means that the populations in these countries are more concerned with plans to stay alive, not with concerns over how difficult they are making their descendants lives.

The worlds forests contain more than a century of human carbon emissions (from fossil fuels). In other words, if we cut it all down we will blow past all possible safety points and will be well in to runaway global warming. We need to help the countries which still contain rainforest – even one off payments in the billions are not enough. The west needs to assist countries with large rainforests, particularly the Democratic republic of the Congo, Indonesia, and Brazil in growing both their economies and food production in the smallest amount of space possible, alongside significant regular payments for retaining their rainforests.

Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen. There is also significant differences between concern from individuals on the ground and the government. If this site succeeds we will create a marketplace for those living by rainforest to benefit, however if the government decides to cut down the forest this will not matter.

What is clear is that not only do we need to end deforestation, but we need to reverse deforestation in many places. This is not only necessary for global warming, but also for rainfall and the whole host of other reasons that benefit local people.

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Can the red sea teach us how to save the worlds corals?

The coral itself is actually usually quite a dull colour, the brilliant colours of coral reefs come from the algae that lives within its coral tissue. These algae’s are called Zooxanthellae and in return for their home, the algae supply most of the corals nutrients.

The problem, is that these algae are very sensitive to temperature changes, and so if the sea remains unusually warm or cold for more than a few days, the algae leaves the corals and this is called a bleaching. This bleaching has occurred more and more recently in the last few years.

As a result of this, it is feared, that up to 90% of the corals worldwide will be lost by 2050.

This is where the red sea corals become so interesting.

The red sea coral reef looks the same as any other reef, but it appears that there is a difference, that might be the key to saving reefs around the world

Just 2 years ago, researchers found some corals in the Gulf of Aqaba, a trench between Israel, Jordan and Egypt which could withstand higher temperatures for longer. Just 1 degree above normal, sustained for a week can be enough to cause bleaching. If the temperature does not fall quickly, the corals will die. Yet here, corals have been seen to survive temperature rises above 7 degrees. It is thought that these corals have developed these abilities because they regularly suffer large temperature changes.

If they can identify corals that have this ability, and translocate them into new reefs, they will cross-breed. As the heat resistant corals are heat resistant, they are likely to survive far longer and therefore be able to pass on their heat resistant trait into the whole reef.

Given the rapidly warming planet, we only have about 30 years to act. Apart from their own intrinsic value, coral reefs are also worth roughly $600,000 per square kilometre each year, through protecting coastlines, increased tourism, medication and a whole lot more effects.

This is a fantastic possible save for the worlds reefs, time will tell if it works.

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