A small herd of 170 bison, released into a 20 square miles area of Tarcu mountains in Romania, are estimated to allow the land to capture 59,000 tones of carbon each year.
Big animals like this, stimulate the soil and plant growth, allowing the soil and plant growth to take up far more carbon than without them. Although Romania is one of the wildest countries in Europe, the European Bison was lost around 200 years ago. Between 2014 and 2021, 100 bison were reintroduced into the area, and that population has naturally grown such that there are now 170.
Scientists estimate that the lands carbon storing potential is as much as 10 times greater with the bison (they suggest that it is between 5 and 15 times more carbon.
The Ross ice shelf is vast, covering 182,000 square miles, it is only slightly smaller than France, and yet a study has shown, that the whole ice shelf can move 40 cm in just 10 minutes. These were generally caused by slips in the Whillans Ice Sheet, which is one of just a few ice flows into and through the area.
The whole shelf was found to move 6-8cm once or twice a day, triggered by these flows moving. This could be the cause of both icequakes, and fractures running through the ice (fractures are important, as they make it more likely that a section of the ice will break off the edge of Antarctica and head into the ocean. While this ice can, on occasion survive a long time – A23a broke of Antarctica in 1986 and has been floating free for much of the time since (except for a decade or so when it grounded); it was estimated to be 400m thick and weigh in at nearly 1 trillion tonnes.
This is a problem for a simple reason. Unlike the north pole, there is land under the ice in Antarctica. This means that while in the north pole, the ice sheet is already in the sea, so its melting cannot increase sea level, Antarctic ice all does increase sea levels.
The Ross ice shelf is known to have collapsed 120,000 years ago during the last interglacial period, and contains enough ice to raise sea levels by 11.5m (this would also cause another 2m of sea level rise because of the glaciers which would no longer be held back).
A Dutch startup, is trialling mitigating this in the Arctic, by pumping sea water onto the ice. This then freezes, thickening the ice. It is possible that this might work in the short term, however, what is clear, is that the only long-term solution, is to stop burning fossil fuels, so as to halt the heating of the earths climate.
Whether tropical or not, old growth forests absorb far more carbon than new trees, and can increase this
Old growth trees, have the capacity to greatly increase their growing rate, when there is a lot of carbon dioxide in the air. This has been found, in a study by the University of Birmingham. This is important, as in many places around the world, an area of destroyed natural forest, is considered to be replaceable by a similar area of planted trees, but what is clear, is that in order to merely keep up with the absorption of the original trees, several multiples more of trees need planting. What is worse, is that this is not worrying about the huge amount of carbon that is stored in the trees that are cut down, or within its roots system and the surrounding soil.
To put this in perspective, at the current time, it is estimated that a football pitch of primary forest is lost every 6 seconds.
This experiment was done, by piping extra carbon dioxide into a forest area and monitoring its growth. Unfortunately, this does reinforce the conservationist point of view, that simply planting a similar area of woodland for each bit lost, is not good enough.
The last coal powered power plant in the UK is having its last day today, before it is closed down
The shrink in the electricity generation in the UK for coal, has been quite astounding. in 2006, coal produced 37% of the electricity for the UK, dropping to zero by 2024.
Holborn Viaduct was the first coal power plant, opened in 1882 (In the early 1800s, coal was used to make town gas for lighting and to fuel the expansion of Britain’s burgeoning railways, but not for electricity).
It is estimated that the UK has burnt 4.6 billion tonnes of coal since this time, emitting a little over 10 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Greece and the U.K. achieved the fastest coal power reductions — moving at a quicker pace than what’s needed globally but Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Israel, Romania, Germany, the United States and Chile are all not too far behind. However, there is still a huge amount of work to be done. Coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, supplied 36% of electricity generation in 2022. This must drop to 4% by 2030 and then 0% by 2040 if the world is to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C and prevent the most catastrophic impacts of the climate crisis. This is frankly an astounding rate of decline, and there are many countries around the world, who will have to be supported, if we are to meet this requirement.
Paradoxically, the USA also appears on the list of countries furthest from phasing out coal, along with India and China. It is quite feasible for the USA to cut its way to coal at a surprising rate (though whether Trump returns to the White house, or Kamala moves from the vice presidents wing, to the presidents wing, is likely to have a big impact on whether coal is left behind in the USA or not)
It is true that coal is the most dirty fuel, but we still have a great deal of work to do as a species, if we are to avoid the worst of global warming. It is thought that we have just 6 years to stop burning gas, and this accounts for around 22% of global electricity generation. In much of the west, gas is also used for heating, and while there are alternative options (we had a heat pump installed this year, after it was clear that our boiler was failing). 73.8% of UK houses are heated in this way, and so there is clearing a big need for the transition to occur faster.
In the UK, all electricity generation is meant to be carbon neutral by 2035, so gas must disappear by then – though as the financial penalties for continuing to burn things and the cost of other electricity generation falls, the financial imperative to end gas power plant use, is only going to increase, so we may well get there far faster. It should be noted, that the government also has a 95% electricity generation target in 2030, so gas must reduce fast over the next 5-6 years.
Currently, wind power generation accounts for 30 gigawatt hours, but the 2030 target is 50, and solar generation is targeting a 5 fold increase in the amount of generation by 2035. These two alone, will greatly outweigh the loss of gas.
Of course, you can save money in almost any part of the world, but installing solar (we nearly have ours working) will not only help in cleaning up the grid, but our investment, is likely to be paid back from savings in around 3 years.
In the global south, it is even easier to make this work.
50% growth in a year, is the fastest pace recorded in the last 20 years. The COP28 has a target of tripling clean energy capacity by 2030, and this speed keeps this target in contention.
Worldwide renewables have now reached 510 gigawatts of energy, which is fantastic, and means that humanity stands a good chance of pushing out fossil fuels in the near future. However, it suggests that renewable power is behind target, with the expected increase being 250% by 2030, rather than 300%.
Still, it is growing, and many countries are only slowly getting round to making their own progress. Another positive, is the increasing number of houses that are putting solar panels on their own roofs – with the huge rewards for investing in solar (and other home generation) and the reducing costs, the finances are increasingly obvious. While this is initially, meaning that well off people in the developed world are doing this, there are large parts of Africa, which are skipping large joined electricity networks, and getting remote communities off grid one by one.
It seems inevitable, that wind and solar are going to supply the majority of our energy needs in the future, however, the faster this happens, the better it is for all of us.
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.
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.
Looking at the busy mass of growing green, it is hard to see how this is the most inefficient way to grow food…
The study that the article is based on comes from the university of Michigan, and is frankly badly, badly made. It is the quintessential study, where this is the answer, now how do we get there, sort of study.
So, what did they do? Well, they put gardens into 3 different categories
Backyard gardens – single occupancy
communal gardens (like the above)
Urban farms
Your backyard garden has about as small a carbon footprint as it is possible to have, it is possible that fruit or veg from here actually has zero carbon footprint. Community gardens can be a bit different – you have a small area, so you might use more compost or fertilizer, and it is possibly further from where you live, so you might drive to it. However, this kind of place also has a low carbon footprint.
It is essentially just the Urban farms which are a problem here: growlights and watering and temperature controls all add up to large quantities of energy.
This video shows this is an easy way to understand.
Do not be put off! If you have an allotment or a vegetable patch in your garden, this is almost completely carbon free food, it does bring down your carbon footprint.
It is unfortunately the kind of study you can find in a newspaper like the Telegraph; I do not think it would be a surprise for any readers to hear, that this is not the place readers go to find out about the new scientific studies of this kind.
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.
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.
