Category: Emission reduction

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The worlds energy imbalance doubled between 2005 and 2019

The world is warming. This is something that is now essentially settled. Despite fossil fuel companies arguing the reverse, it was their research 40 years ago (and more) that brought the concerns of global warming first to the attention of humans (though initially they kept these discoveries quiet, and it has only come to light in recent years).

This new research shows that the world is now trapping twice as much energy as it was just 15 years ago.

As around 90% of this energy ends up in the oceans, this is a big problem. While the southern ice cap sits largely on land, the Northern icecap floats on the oceans. This is unfortunately one of the feedback loops that we know about. Ice reflects sunlight (and therefore heat) back into space. As the oceans warm this ice melts, replacing white reflective surface with deep blue absorbing surface – meaning that the oceans then absorb still more heat.

The unfortunate conclusion of the study was that unless this uptake of heat slows fast bigger shifts in climate should be expected.

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World leaders are falling short again on delivering on their promises

One of the biggest issues that have been recognised, is that a similar route to prosperity is not open to the developing world. As Europe and north America developed their economy they emitted huge amounts of carbon – much of our power was created by burning coal.

In order to help developing countries jump this stage completely and move straight to renewables, the west had promised money. Developed countries had together committed to 72 billion a year to make this happen. While this sounds like a great deal, when you remember that without it, we are on course for devastating levels of global warming, it comes more into balance.

It was hoped that the G7 could boost this process in advance of Glasgow COP26. Given the G7 accounts for 60% of the worlds wealth, but its population accounts for only 10% of the global population, you would think that we could afford roughly 10 billion a year to be able to continue to live in a hospitable environment. Now of course, this is not all that we need to do – we also need to cut our own emissions to zero as fast as possible, however, there is much money to be made in this work.

The COVID epidemic has taken everyone’s attention off global warming. This is understandable, but we now need to refocus and make the changes that are required as quickly as possible.

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Re-emergence of sails?

Freight shipping has a huge carbon footprint. It is true that the carbon footprint is far lower than freight carried by air, however this does not help.

However, it is also true that these ships do not travel particularly fast. With the new kite sails designs where a kite with roughly 100 square meters area, and the ability to be flown above 100m – an area where the wind speeds and directions are far more reliable.

Kite freight ships are becoming a reality quick
Continue reading “Re-emergence of sails?”
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Students have protested at the Science museum in London over shell funding a climate crisis exhibition

It does seem to be rather self-serving, if you are putting together a exhibition on the threat that the climate crisis is producing, and you allow one of the biggest oil and gas companies in the world to fund it.

Much of the exhibition talks about carbon capture and storage (something that has not been demonstrated at significant scale, and yet would have to be catching billions of tonnes of carbon per year if it is to have a chance of helping) as well as nature based solutions.

The police cleared the building at the end of the day, ending what had been intended to be an overnight occupation.

It certainly seems that shell is trying to whitewash their company (should that be greenwash) and this should not be allowed. Rather, shell should be spending thousands of times more money on actually solving the climate crisis. Furthermore, ideas like carbon capture should not be allowed to be touted, until it has been demonstrated at scale. Finally, there is another problem. As far as the climate crisis is concerned, any captured carbon should be locked away for millions of years, yet at the moment the majority is either used to help with oil and gas extraction, or is turned into synthetic fuels – neither of these help in any way with forestalling the continued move towards run-away climate change.

SHELL MUST DO BETTER.

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Solving the Climate crisis and biodiversity loss together

Yesterday I was writing about a series of dams that have collapsed in Brazil. We need to remember that there are two imminent threats that we are facing in the natural world.

  1. The world is warming. This is going to make life far harder for our children
  2. We are loosing much of the wilderness on the planet. Unfortunately we rely on this to survive in the long-term

We need to cut carbon emissions dramatically, we know as the human race that if we do not cut emissions dramatically and very fast, our planet will go through horrific change from the loss of the ice caps (and the resulting sea level rise) to the desertificion of large parts of the planet – some of this previously being rainforest.

If we cannot halt the loss of areas such as rainforests, the problem becomes even larger as we destroy one of our largest carbon sinks.

In the west, we have a responsibility to not only cut our own emissions to net zero in the space of a few decades, we must also help developing countries grow their own economies and increase the standard of living for their citizens without destroying what remains of the ecosystems that still exist.

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China must close 600 coal-fired power plants early to hit their own climate target – but this could save money

China has stated that they will peak their emissions by 2030 and hit carbon neutrality by 2060. These targets are just about acceptable in terms of meeting the human races target of holding temperature raise to 1.5 degrees C.

Continue reading “China must close 600 coal-fired power plants early to hit their own climate target – but this could save money”
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How much electricity does it take to reform fossil fuels? drive an electric instead

Conservatives estimates suggest that it takes 6kwh to reform one gallon of fuel (a gallon is roughly 4.54 litres). One gallon carries an average fossil fuel car roughly 24 miles.

How far will 6kwh carry an electric car? If you drive a porsche taycan you get around 3.6 miles per kwh, giving you a range of 21 miles, with a tesla 3 this range would increase to over 25 miles.

Continue reading “How much electricity does it take to reform fossil fuels? drive an electric instead”
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Is bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies too energy intensive to be used?

Elon Musk has just announced that Tesla will no longer allow buyers to pay in bitcoin. Why is this relevant to a wildlife and environment blog?

Tesla is there to transition the world to sustainable transport, as a goal. of the roughly 4.1 trillion kwh of electricity used in the USA last year roughly 500 went on bitcoin (roughly 1 in 8) or 13%.

Continue reading “Is bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies too energy intensive to be used?”
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Lab grown meat saw funding increase 6 fold during 2020

Studies over the last few years show that 80% of of people are open to eating meat grown in bioreactors.

Lab grown meat is still meat, it just does not need to be grown in the animal

Why is this good news? Well one of the important advances with this meat is that it is thought that it could be created with a similar carbon footprint to lettuce.

Continue reading “Lab grown meat saw funding increase 6 fold during 2020”
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Republicans and fox news have decided that cut Biden has promised to make will mean 4 pounds of meat a year

The need for America to cut it’s carbon footprint by 50% in the next decade under biden’s plan has been attacked to absurd proportions.

Republicans have been arguing against doing something about climate change for decades. It should therefore be borne in mind that the speed of cuts necessary now has been made necessary by previous republican governments. Now this has to be remembered that this did not come from something Biden said, and in there more honest moments some republicans will admit this, unfortunately for the time being though it is clear that the noisy republicans are all in with this fake attack. 

Here is an explanation of the problem
Continue reading “Republicans and fox news have decided that cut Biden has promised to make will mean 4 pounds of meat a year”
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