Author: Tim

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Should South Africa burn its rhino horn stockpiles?

Image came from an x tweet. It shows part of the white rhino horn collection that has built up over time

To see the whole tweet click here

The South African government now has a total of 70 tonnes of rhino horn in stockpiles. Why, you might ask, have they continued to collect rhino horn since 1977 when its trade was banned? It would appear that, like elephant ivory, there was a hope that they could be sold, from time to time, to push down the price on the black market for rhino horn. There has also been an attempt to make money from this resource.

The problem with this, is as shown by the sales of elephant ivory, it is not actually reducing the demand, but quite to the contrary, these so called one off sales actually have often been seen to increase demand, which leads to a surge of poaching.

The demand for rhino horn is already absurdly high. Last year 499 rhino were hunted in South Africa, though positively, the Kruger only lost 78 (406 were lost on public lands and national parks).

Given past sales of both ivory and rhino horns have not reduced demand but instead increased it.

If past precedence is to be believed, then what will happen is that there will be a brief reduction in demand and price when the extra quantity is released, but this has usually been followed by a surge of extra poaching.

Rhino horn is currently valued at $60,000 per pound, and as each tonne has 2204 pounds, this rhino (if all sold at this price) would be worth $9.25 billion. That is a very large amount of just short of 1% of the whole countries GDP. However, were this rhino horn be allowed to be sold, then while the price of rhino horn would likely drop (without careful care to sell it over some time), but it would also greatly increase the demand for rhino horn.

This would mean that should there be a great increase in the demand for rhino horn. There are currently 23000 white rhino across south Africa, each of these with between $200,000-400,000 of horn on their head.

How long do we think it would take for the demand for white rhino horn to increase poaching back to the thousands a year. At the end of 2023, there were 1850 down several hundred from the year before. To put this in context, in 2007 17,480 white rhino were living wild in southern Africa (80%-90% of these were in the Kruger). Given South Africa has completely failed to end the white rhino massacre, we cannot trust them to look after the few that still remain.

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BP continue the misleading adverts – “and not or”

I am not sure whether I have been targeted, or whether these adverts that have been irritating me are being seen by everyone as often. I must have encountered these adverts at least once a day for the last month, and if you look at their YouTube channel, their blurb starts.

Our purpose is reimagining energy for people and our planet. We want to help the world reach net zero and improve people’s lives.

 If you do not believe me, click here to load their page and see for your self.
 

Why is this irritating? Because, whether they are intentionally suggesting that their company is green or not, this is the obvious conclusion for their advertising. The only hat-tip to their fossil fuel business, is to say that they will keep these fuels going until they are not needed.

Last year, BP took its second largest profits of $13.8 billion (only beaten by 2022 when they made $27.7 billion). In the same year BP spent $1.26 billion on renewable investments, up from $1.02 billion the former year. What does this mean? Renewables are a green side project: fossil fuels are the main part of BP business. While Shell is not currently yelling (at least on my youtube feed) their investment is similar.
 

 In 2023, BP invested 4.7 times as much money in oil and gas, as it did in renewables

Does it think that and not or, might mean that they can continue to invest more than 90% into fossil fuels and a small amount in renewables (as well as investor returns etc -this is a choice)? What is odd, is generally their renewable investments are good investments yielding returns of 15% a year.
 

As if another story is needed to highlight the absurd position of BP, here is another article from the guardian, on this very issue, only published yesterday, click here to read it

 
I have already been shown this advert twice in the last 30 minutes. I have not tried to complain about this advert, because I am sure it will have no impact. Never-the-less BP must stop pushing this advert, as it is a complete lie.
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Apologies for quiet and a fossil fuel good judgement

Do not worry, this website is still moving forwards! If you look closely at the maps on the home page, you will find that the number of destinations has been growing over time. I have been working on adding the rest of these.

However, I could not help but report on this GOOD JUDGEMENT

This is fantastic news. The giving of these licences is completely against the governments policies, and in their own assessments, they ignored the carbon footprint of the eventual use of the fuel (only taking into account the carbon emissions of extraction).

Climate activists, and even certain people in both houses of parliament have been pointing out the absurdity of this position- a position I might add, that had to go to the supreme court of the UK in order to be looked at rationally.

What does this mean? Well that is not clear, though it will require the government to explain their contradicting positions.

It is certainly a positive step forwards, as this ruling suggests that the UK courts are not going to allow the British government to make laws, and then make decisions that break those same laws.

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Ron DeSantis is trying to reverse any sensible climate change policy in Florida – insanity

Ron Desantis (DoD photo by Army Staff Sgt. Nicole Mejia)

Ron DeSantis has deleted mention of Climate change from Florida laws, and banned offshore windmills.

He is claiming that this is to protect Florida from ‘Green Zealots’. Other parts of the bill includes rules which give preferential treatment to natural gas companies, and scraps rules on energy efficient vehicles being bought for the state. Being a state with so much coastline, it is going to be hit harder than virtually any other state, and is already being eaten away by storms and similar.

In terms of cost, Florida has had 87 weather/climate disasters since 1980, each costing at least $1 billion, which is likely far more than it would cost to have adapt.

Are republicans truly that determined to not be liberal, that they are willing to ignore science and pay several billion dollars a year as a result? Ron DeSantis won by 60% to 40%, but the state has been moving further and further towards being a swing state – perhaps this will be the difference which makes the state firmly move into this category?

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Uk emissions fell slightly last year, so why is Rishi Sunak trying to encourage a new generation of gas power plants?

Gas

This is a particularly odd behaviour. It is significantly cheaper to generate electricity by virtually any form of renewable electricity. We are making great progress in cutting our carbon emissions (in 2022 UK emissions fell by 3.5%, but this progress will be delayed for some time, and unable to drop as far as they need to) and these power stations will last for 20-30 years, which means that even on the low end, these power stations will be still running in 2050.

As can be seen from all of the renewable sources of electricity, their costs are declining fast. The cost of gas is already more expensive than wind, and that does not account for catching the carbon from it (which will hugely increase the cost per kilowatt hour. Likely making it more expensive even than nuclear power. 

While Rishi Sunak has suggested that we need gas to power the UK, that is rubbish. We have 25 years. Furthermore, renewables are always cheaper over their lifetime, which means that by 2050 we will already have saved money overall. I am confused as to who wins – though given Sunak has included this in the conservative manifesto, suggesting that this is in some way a political move.

We can only hope (at least on this front) that the polls do not change, and Conservatives are pushed out of power. This is thought that in 2022 14% of carbon emissions came from the gas powered power stations we have. Whether Labour will do the right thing and reverse this decision, we will find out in the future.

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Natural hydrogen at 95.8% purity found at drill site in South Australia

The vast majority of hydrogen on earth is locked into water. While splitting water and then recombining it can be done, and is in some forms can be thought of as a battery, it has long been postulated, that there might be hydrogen deposits in the earths crust. Not considered valuable until recently, few were looking for hydrogen.

This has changed dramatically, and after writing several months ago about a find in the USA, another has been made in South Australia. This find has 95.8% pure hydrogen, greatly reducing the purifying costs (the same company has also found deposits of helium at 17.5% pure).

This hydrogen should not be used for passenger cars, but instead in applications where nothing else can do (like air travel) . Even shipping, currently highly polluting, does not need to be. A mixture of kite sailing, new retractable sails of various kinds, and even electric motors with batteries, means that shipping should be able to rapidly decarbonize over the next few decades. This hydrogen must be used carefully – while these deposits might be large, they are not endless. As such, we want to use this for uses which cannot use batteries.

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Nepal releases 23 Gharials into historical range, good idea?

The current wild population of Gharials is 198 individuals, which means that the 23 that were released this year, accounts for around 1 eighth of the wild population. Furthermore, having been released into former range of the Gharial, they are unlikely to encounter other Gharials until the population is far less endangered.

Part of the reason for their decline is down to the dams and similar which have been built on the rivers, and have separated this population, so that they have been unable to breed.

The last gharial on the river that they were reintroduced to was seen in 1993.

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New breakthrough allows zero carbon cement and steel

Making concrete and steel are both incredibly carbon intensive. As such, this new process appears to be really important. By throwing old concrete into steel processing furnaces, not only purifies iron, but also reactivates cement as a bi-product. If the furnace is heated using carbon neutral electricity, then both of these incredibly important items (for the modern human world) can be made without emitting carbon at all.

At the moment, not only is cement the worlds most used building material, but it emits 8% of the worlds carbon emissions in the process of being made. Unfortunately, at the current time, there is still work that needs to be done, in order to get to the point where the concrete that comes out of this process is as high grade as brand new concrete

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So you think that only the poster child of climate change – the polar bear, is threatened by the changing climate? Think again – now rhino?

White Rhino

Rhino are unable to sweat, which means that as temperatures increase, both black and white rhino are more and more reliant on finding shade, in order to keep their huge bodies within safe temperatures – will there come a time, where this is impossible? What other species might be at risk, even far from the poles.

Continue reading “So you think that only the poster child of climate change – the polar bear, is threatened by the changing climate? Think again – now rhino?”
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Wallaby dealing with an invasive fox

A highly encouraging video, of a native wallaby species chasing away a red fox, introduced from Europe. The species is likely a red wallaby.

It is quite simply a fact, that in many places, while introduced predators have an easy time predating young, often adult wildlife can either escape or fight back. This is true in this situation, and adult Kiwi birds are capable of fighting back in New Zealand.

Never-the-less it is quite simply an issue, that we have transferred species all over the world. While this is a greater threat on smaller islands (places like New Zealand – this island was full of various flightless birds, but having introduced land predators, many of these species are either on the verge of extinction, or are only doing well as a result of work by humans.

See Animals Wild