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A recent study has shown that many farms could increase their yields while greatly reducing the quantity of chemical fertilizers that they have to buy. Given the dramatic increase in the price of fertilizers, this may well become something that many farmers are forced into.
CATL has created its first sodium-ion batteries and they can charge to 80% in 15 minutes. With a current usable charge of 160 watt hours per kg, they are targeting 200 in the near future. Another big advantage, is that these batteries can be used along lithium ion batteries.
This is not the sodium glass batteries that John Goddenough came up with, but may well still help in the moves we are making.
It is incredibly clear, that carbon reductions cannot stop when we have gone electric in cars, and greened out grid, along with are heating.
Unfortunately, it is clear that we need to cut the carbon footprint of our diets as well. Beef has a large carbon footprint – its plant based beef patties are responsibly for 120 grams of carbon, instead of 2.11kg.
Will lab-grown meat arrive to cut this down? possibly, but will it arrive soon enough to help us out? I dont know.
What is clear, is that those of us in the West need to dramatically cut our carbon footprint in the next few years, not in a few decades. As such some changes in diet will be needed.
While many people have found that electric cars are already more than capable of taking care of not only their daily needs, but also doing incredible road trips (I recently drove mine more than 1000 miles to watch the bears of north west Spain) it is still the regularly refrain that they cannot go far enough.
Lets forget for the moment the fact that unlike a combustion engine car you don’t have to stand and wait for the car to charge up – you plugin and then go have lunch/do what ever you want. For many people, they wish to replace their combustion engine with a car that is very similar (again even though, for almost every recharge they will plug it in at home in the evening, and in the morning be ready to go) and as such an extended range is something that will help with adoption. Now my experience with our car, is that we need to plan our stops a little better, but usually the car has the range to carry on, long before the family is ready to get back in. If you are doing a road trip on your own, this may not always be the case – and as such perhaps cars could do with more range.
Enter a new battery chemistry of Lithium-sulphur, which could triple battery capacity, and therefore the range of a car. Given that the longest range recent cars have ranges over 400 miles, this would give you a car with a range of 1200 or about 17 hours of non-stop driving at UK maximum allowed speeds.
Continue reading “New battery going to make electric cars a no-brainer?”Generally, when you encounter grass, or indeed sea grass, it appears to be many millions of individual plants all growing together.
Scientists discovered one single seagrass plant which has spread over 200 square km, and is thought to be 4500 years old.
This huge single plant now provides a place to live and feed for vast numbers of crabs, fish, turtles, dolphins and dugongs.
No one knows how the melomys got to Bramble cay a small island 31 miles off the coast of Papua New Guinea, but they did. In 2015 they became the first mammal to go extinct purely as a result of climate change, as their little island home at the end of the great barrier reef sink beneath the waves.
In 1978 a few hundred were counted, in 1998 just 100. In 2002 and 2004 just a few dozen were found. The amount of lady plants shrink by 97% between 2004-2014, and when a survey was carried out in 2014 no specimens could be found.
Electric cars appear to be accelerating in their adoption. The UK is close to having more than half a million electric cars on its roads (currently about 477,000). One could add to this the roughly 348,000 hybrid cars, but these are a half way step, and it entirely depends on how they are used, as to whether they end up being cleaner or not. Never-the-less the number of cars in the UK that can drive at least a little distance on zero emissions is approaching 1 million.
Both the Amazon and the Congo have been given the status of totally virgin rainforest, without any human impact. What is becoming increasingly clear is that this is not the case.
Instead it is the case, that the communities which lived here -sometimes in large numbers, lived in balance with the environment.
Archaeologists have found vast network of settlements in the Columbian Amazon, spanning hundreds or even thousands of square km, consisting of a main settlement with huge platforms, and smaller settlements spread out around. All are linked by causeways, and canals and reservoirs dotted the land to make agriculture possible.
To be sure, these settlements were low density, but they successfully lived in harmony with the rainforest for centuries.
Oddly, while these communities prospered for 1000 years, they disappeared before Columbus arrived, and it is not clear why.
How should this impact work these days? I am not sure. There are no large groups of modern people who have learnt to live in harmony with their environment, but clearly bush people have. Perhaps we need to follow their example – though the current indigenous people of the Amazon do not live in settlements of large size, otherwise we would have know about these centuries ago,
Current worldwide pledges on carbon dioxide reduction are no where near enough and would lead to catastrophe.
Last year commonsense was found. It was recognized that global warming of 2 degrees will lead to a horrific situation, and that we need to be aiming for 1.5 maximum degree warming. This has been agreed, but at cop26 the pledges gathered were just enough to limit warming to a maximum of 2 degrees.
Unfortunately, actions taken (those pledges that are actually changing behaviour) fall far behind promises, leaving us on target for 2.7 degrees of warming – the upper band suggests 3.6 degrees of warming is still possible.
Developed countries around the world are not acting fast enough. They are also failing to supply funds promised to help the developing world cut their emissions.
Importantly delay will increase the cost. If we fail to act now, actions in the future could be 10-100 times more expensive
NOT A LEGACY I WISH TO LEAVE FOR MY CHILDREN
As if we need any examples of the contradictory actions of rich governments, the UK government is still giving permission for new had fields to be created.
It is known that if we are to keep warning to 1.5 degrees or less, more than 50% of fossil fuels must remain in the ground. As such this move is foolish.
The government could do as much for consumer bills by bringing back the green housing grants-and funding it properly. Many people in the country can afford to do the work themselves but many more don’t stand a chance.