This is not a melanistic whale, instead it is a beluga whale, which is usually white. Filmed in January it is only the sixth time that this species has been sighted in Scottish waters, generally living in the icy arctic waters.
This species has around 150,000 individuals left in the wild, making them more safe than many species. However, living in the Arctic where global warming is changing things fast, we need to remain viligant, as it could be quite a different situation after not much time.
To view our page on Beluga whales, and any other mention that the species has had in the past, click here
Exxon is like many other oil companies – they have buried their head in the sand, and have continued to deny the science.
There are still oil rigs littering our coasts, do we really want another rush to build more equipment, which will last long after the shale gas runs out?
What astounds me, is that, over the last 3 years, the price of Exxon shares has gone up 3 times over. This means that the majority of people who are investing in the market, believes either that there is a killing to be made from Exxon before it goes out of business, or climate change is wrong (it is true that investment in Exxon 3 years ago would have tripled, but a long-term investment is unlikely to be successful, as Exxon has to completely change its business model.
So, why is Exxon buying a shale giant?
Clearly, it thinks that there is money to be made, before the world transitions. The problem is that should Exxon be right, the world will suffer more global warming.
We already need to leave much of our known reserves of fossil fuels in the ground, Shale gas, is just more,
We need to be moving away from fossil fuels as fast as we can.
How is your family doing? As for us, we have bought a second had electric car, we have just installed our solar and thermal solar, and will in a couple of weeks, have a heat pump installed that will remove our last reliance on gas (these two moves, will have removed carbon from our travel and from our house running and heating – we also have zero carbon electricity). Obviously we still have a way to go, but we are making progress. Of course, from a finance point of view, it is a good move – it is true that our car was more expensive than anything we’ve had before, however, the purchase cost will only take 6-7 years to save back , and our house greening has a payback time of around 4 years- after that we should be several hundred pounds better off each month.
Exxon is still betting that there is more money to be made before the good times are over, however they are betting on our future.
It is foolish to invest in them, either they are right, and will make a fortune while the world suffers, or they are wrong, and this business venture will collapse.
On this post, I will list a group of articles on British politics. Unfortunately, there have been quite a lot in recent times, hence this way to deal with them. These are mostly to do with climate and environment, rather than animals, though obviously this is of importance. It should be noted, that while some of these sound like they are contradictory, they are not, though I would argue that some suggest underlying conflict which needs sorting asap. (Given its length, do use ctrl f, which will allow you to jump to any article that specfically interests you
In a recent discovery, Skywalker gibbons have been found in areas of Northeastern Myanmar, where they have found around 44 groups of this primate. Given that the 150 was thought to be made up of 11 solitary and 32 groups, we can say that roughly speaking a group consists of 4 individuals. If that is true, then this incredibly rare species, has just had its numbers expanded by 133.3% in one go. What is more, is that this part of Myanmar has many other species of gibbon, and it is quite possible that there are more skywalker gibbons as yet unidentified.
This also expands its range beyond the forests of China, well into Myanmar.
It should be noted that this new community lives in forests that have threats of their own.
Oddly, despite gibbons habits of singing loudly at the start of the day, it is only recently that acoustic surveys were used for the Skywalker gibbon. There are 20 wild species of gibbon, and their songs are usually easy to tell apart. This yielded this huge increase in the population of the Skywalker gibbon.
It would appear that the new home of the Skywalker gibbon is little more secure than the old one, suggesting a bigger fight to protect the area which it lives in.
For a variety of reasons, over the last few months, I have not written as often as I would like. As such, I have accumulated quite a few articles that I wish to mention. While the animal articles require their own space, others do not. As such, this post will include electric car news from all over the world. Dates are a little muddled (and may be relatively out of date), and it is possible that with some of these, changes have been made. We are working hard on improving the website, which is taking much of our time, we hope to have a breakthrough soon. Below is a list of articles written, click on read more to read each of the articles listed.
-The Tesla s P100D has a 0-60 time of 2.28 seconds
–Department of Transport in the UK has a new scheme which will help with the cost of installing charging points in places like schools and similar
–A new possible battery breakthrough would both cut the cost of batteries, and bring down the length of time it would take to charge to something similar to that of filling up a petrol or diesel tank
–when will all UK cars be pure electric
–Volkswagen is loosing the electric car race to China and Tesla
–EU has set a target of 30 million electric cars on its roads by 2030
–The Chinese government is promising to rein in the number of electric cars its companies are making, so as to not flood the west
–Freezing temperature are known for reducing electric car range, caused long queues for charging
–Autocar published an article looking at how green electric cars actually are
–Paris Mayor plans to triple SUV parking tariffs to cut air pollution
This critically endangered species of honeyeater has a renewed hope of survival. They have become so rare, that the juveniles have started mimicking other bird species, because they hear the sounds of their own species so rarely.
The new speck of hope comes from the fact that captive birds have bred after being released.
There are an estimated 2200 species in Australia which are in some way endangered. This species is endangered for the same reason that many of these are – loss of habitat. Agricultural land, forest clearing, logging and the expansion of coal seam gas drilling was predicted to wipe out this bird, but thankfully they have survived.
Around 140 birds have been released to help bolster the population and have been shown to have bred with wild birds. With just 300 wild birds left, every extra breeding bird can make a large difference.
Researchers have found that sperm whales decide on which way to turn democratically. While these whales only socialize with members of their own clan. You might think that this might restrict them, but generally clans have 20,000 females, making these groups huge (one of the distinguishing marks of the clan is by vocal dialects – which may end up as symbolic markers of the clan identity).
When travelling in a group they can take over 1 hour to decide which way to turn. These groups can be extremely large, and yet decide things together. Decisions like direction and speed of travel and also when to feed. While it is not clear how they reach consensus or how they “speak” to each other, it is clear that decisions are made together.
A British beaver living out its life on the the river Otter in Devon
Anyone who has removed a branch or similar from a pond, will remember the incredible quantity of weed that will have wrapped around it. Any surface which lies underwater, tends to accumulate variety of things which makes it “grimy”. From dirt to algae and even bacteria, the process is called fouling.
However, animals like otters and beavers do not have to spend large amounts of time removing these substances from their fur – Why? This ability comes in part from the fur itself, where each hair can bend and flex as the animal moves, and a recent study showed that this ability to move allows the accumulation of dirt to be less than half of that when the hair is held steady at both ends (or for instance in hair that does not sway). This is a big issue in places such as boat, and people are working on ways to stop this.
It is fascinating the way that so many human processes take their inspiration from the natural world.
Beaver dams create barriers which allow all these bad substances to be removed. Dams block large quantities of soil, manure, slurry and fertilisers from rivers and streams, The stationary water allows substances like fertilizers and other chemical substances to sink to the bottom and be removed from the river ecosystem. Both the European beaver and the American beaver have the same impact on their water environment. While otters do not have the same dam making ability, they do have cleaning impacts on their environments as well.
It is well known, that while otters and beavers are often not the first species to return after a river is polluted, they can accelerate the process.
Is this news to anyone? It is known that the car industry is in a race to move to electric. Given the vast saving for the end line consumer, the huge reduction in pollution, and the fact that many countries have already set dates where combustion engine car sales will be banned, surely the response to this news is ” why have you not made this move before?
What is clear, is that ford is developing a smaller and cheaper EV platform. Well this is great, but everyone is trying to create small affordable electric cars.
Now, how many of these small cars is ford aiming to sell? Currently, ford makes a $28,000 loss on each electric cars. Which means that they need to bring this down, or 2 million electric cars sold my ford would cause a huge loss.
Tesla is making progress on their own cheap model – the so called tesla model 2. This is aimed to hit the target of $25,000, or around £18,000, and they are expecting to make millions of this model, which does not seem unreasonable.
We need to remember, that while we look on ford as an old car company (and they are) at the current moment, they are not bigger than tesla. So in 2023 tesla sold 1.81 million vehicles, all electric, while ford sold 1.99 million, however only 72,000 of these were electric. If in the future, only electric cars count, then perhaps we should already be looking at ford as the minnow in a pond with a huge shark that is tesla. If we look at profit, this might make this clearer, Ford made profits of $4.3 billion, while Tesla made profits of 15 billion.
So, is Ford a tiny electric car maker, or not? Is it going to become one of the most profitable electric car makers, or is it going to become a small car maker? Time will tell, however, the problem is that the 2 million small electric cars that ford says its is targeting, is also the same number that Tesla is going to be targeting. Can the world demand sustain 2 million from each? Possibly, in the future, but Ford may well find that diving into the pond of small Electric cars is a hard place to make money, and finding enough demand for 2 million electric cars may well prove to be the harder part of the transition.
Time will tell, but they certainly have their work cut out for them.
