A picture of 5 Young environmental campaigners at Davos was taken and then cropped in an unfortunate way

The Gathering of world leaders and ultra wealthy at Davos in Switzerland has just occurred. There is a great deal of talk about the environment and cutting climate warming gases such as CO2 ( attendees that increasingly aware of the hypocrisy of a riding on private jets to an event like this).

At this event five young environmental campaigners had come to speak to people and they were photographed together. Unfortunately despite the above picture showing all 5, associated Press made a copy available to its members in which the only African woman in the group Vanessa Nakate was cut out of the picture. While associated Press argued that they had nearly at the picture so is to remove the building from the background and it has not gone down well. Africa is responsible for a very small portion of the carbon emissions of the planet.

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Dam that threatens the survival all of the rarest great ape is in the wrong place will make more carbon dioxide emissions during building and reduce emissions less than claimed

A recent analysis has shown that the the Dam that would cover 90% of the Tapanuli orangutan population has had the prospects of positive outcomes hugely hyped by it’s backers, and minimising negative facts about the Dam have been buried.

The region is already well connected to the grid with almost all Communities already served. Due to the astounding amount of Forest that would be lost if this damn were to be created, if it were to ever reduce carbon emissions it would take many decades if not centuries for the carbon cost of the dam to be offset by the electricity it creates. Given that in order to stop catastrophic climate change we need to be cutting carbon emissions now it will not help in this fight whatsoever.

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British Appeals Court has ruled against the third runway at Heathrow Airport

For over a decade there has been an argument in the UK about adding additional Airport runways to the area around London.

planes in a line, coming into Heathrow

Certainly it is true that Heathrow Airport is close to capacity. Indeed from many parts of London you can see the planes coming in and usually you can see two or three in the sky at the same time on approach to the runway.

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Uk has just signed you energy infrastructure with Africa and despite Boris Johnson’s promises where do you think the majority of it went

More than 90% of this 2 billion pounds energy infrastructure deal that the UK has done in Africa over the last week is in oil and gas extraction. Boris Johnson open the summit talking about how we breathe the same air and how the climate emergency means we must stop business as usual as carbon emissions heat the planet.

1.2 billion pounds of this will be spent on oil production in Kenya with the majority of the rest going to Tunisia Morocco and Nigeria fossil fuel projects. Just 8% or 161 million pounds went to to green projects being split between a new solar farm in Kenya and the solar powered irrigation pumps in Uganda.

We are supposed to be hosting un global climate summit in Glasgow this coming November. You would think that the government would therefore be working towards the cleanest deals possible. This is an embarrassment to the UK and I hope that come November that is clear.

Guardian to ban fossil fuel advertising

Given the forward thinking of the Guardian on environmental issues, we would would be reasonable to suppose that they had put a ban on fossil fuel advertising in place a significant time ago.

However they have now put this ban in place. If bans on fossil fuel advertising are replicated in other parts of the economy this could possibly accelerates the end of fossil fuels anyway.

I suppose as the saying goes better late than never ( it’s alarming to say that about a newspaper that is leading the way but these moves should have occurred a decade ago as the science became clear)

Have the heartland Institute discovered the anti Greta thurnburg?

The heartland Institute is pushing forward a young woman named Naomi Seibt as a counter to Greta Thunberg. I am intentionally not including a photo. One is easily found but who it is, is irrelevant. The Heartland institute has recognised how powerful Greta Thurnbergs mesage has been over the last few years and is trying to line up someone against her that looks similar. Don’t be taken in, this is a young person arguing for the status quo to be retained, but with no knowledge or facts on her side. The Heartland institute is well known for pushing dubious or blatantly false arguments, and frankly anyone they like would be someone that I would not take seriously.

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What should the government do about hybrid cars

I believe hybrids should be banned alongside pure petrol and diesel engine vehicles: they generally only have a range of 20 or 30 miles at most before you need petrol or diesel and as such even on a standard commute usually they cannot run purely on electricity. Furthermore unless the buyer is a person who for instance is elderly and only used it to go to the shop once a week this setup means the majority of the use will be in a fossil fuel mode. Hybrids are away for fossil fuel cars to make themselves look cleaner. However, this requires you to have a full working fossil fuel engine and a fully working electrical propulsion which means the vehicle is more complicated and more likely to break down as well as not doing either job particularly well. 

At the moment the plan is to ban hybrid as well which is good. A hybrid that does not allow more than 90 % of travel miles to be done on electricity is not good enough.

However other countries are being more ambitious on when they banned the sale of new new fossil fuel cars, and it is being suggested actually bringing this date forward further 2030 would save UK consumers a considerable amount of money. One of the reason that government set targets so far in the future is so that all the Industries involved can be sure of where they stand, the UK may have been one of the first countries to say that they were going to ban fossil fuel cars but their date was so on an ambitious that one year later they are already moving it 5 years sooner still,  and there is a potential to need to move it soon as still- which would suggest that the government has failed miserably to to give a clear framework for what is going to happen in the future.

Greta thunberg leads protest of 30000 environmentalists in in Bristol and calls for young people to be the adults in the room

Greta thunberg is back in the UK and is leading a protest in Bristol into the destruction of the environment and global warming. She has stated that young people have to be the adults in the room as the leaders of virtually all countries are not doing enough to save the globe.

Objectively it is hard to argue with her analysis.

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Fighting a locust plague with ducks?

China is to send 100000 ducks to Pakistan in order to help with the fight against the Plague of locusts they are fighting. It has been found that ducks have three times the capability of fighting locust outbreaks than chickens that we used originally.

locust swarm


In optimum conditions ducks can eat 200 locust each per day. With 100000 duck army this is 20 million Les locusts every single day. Given 400 billion locusts are approaching China from Pakistan and this seems a rather small impact. The ducks will eat around 0.005% of the locust population each day. Also the ducks have been found to stay where they are put far more reliably than chickens.

However perhaps they will impact a locusts behaviour or breeding success. Time will tell how successful this is.

See Animals Wild