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Dugongs, a close relation of the sea cow, have not done well over the last few centuries. In places like Australia they still live in large numbers. In places like Thailand though there are only thought to be about 250 remaining.
They particularly dislike motorboats and often get injured by them. The lockdowns have therefore been an incredible gift to these animals, and it is fascinating to see how quickly their behaviour changes where humans are absent.
A drone shot this image
President Carter installed 32 solar thermal panels on the white house 30 years ago. By 1986 Jimmy Carter had been replaced by Ronald Reagan – and unfortunately his priorities were different. He scrapped the research and development budget for renewables and eliminated any tax breaks that were encouraging deployment of solar or wind turbines.
When the white house had to have its roof fixed, Reagan used this as an excuse to remove the solar panels, despite the fact that they were still working fine.
Continue reading “The Raegan administration removed the solar panels from the white house, why and what does it show?”Just like Trump in the USA Jair Bolsonaro has taken an axe to the environmental protections that Brazil has created over decades. Also just like Donald Trump, the majority of these moves have been done by Executive act. Between march and may last year, Jair signed 195 infralegal acts – and just like under Trunp these acts are thought to be only just legal and should have gone through their governmental body.
There is a constant attempt to make electric cars sound less clean than they are. Now, for a start, in order for these calculations to work at all, the most polluting electricity is usually used. Next the amount of energy used to create the car and the emissions in this process is added.
With incredibly cold weather hitting Texas (for instance the beach is covered in snow), Fox News has been making a big thing of the fact that some of the wind turbines are not turning supposedly because they froze – and that this is the cause of the blackouts.
This is factually incorrect. According to data from the Texas government wind turbine shutdowns accounted for less than 13% of the total outage. A bigger problem is freezing of oil and gas equipment throughout the state.
Continue reading “Foolish attacks on renewable energy – Texas blackouts cannot be blamed on green energy”As in the USA, some of the UK newspapers have an illogical hatred of electric cars. Perhaps chief amongst them, in the UK, is the Daily Mail. Now, I’m unsure what it’s problem is, but this article is littered with errors.
Continue reading “The Daily Mail is claiming blue hydrogen is better fuel for cars: let’s see if it is (hint of course not)”At a time when many people are discussing whether we can even afford to continue to extract the fossil fuels we have already started to extract, and when the government is talking about leading the world in cutting fossil fuel use, the local Cumbrian government has given permission for the first deep coal mine in 30 years.
This decision by the Cumbrian local government has been remade on three occasions. The government of the UK in Westminster has claimed this is a local matter and that they have no right to get involved. Obviously this is patently absurd – what’s more if we are to have any chance of meeting our emission reduction promises the government must immediately abandon its foolish position, and make it clear that it is not going to happen.
Clearly despite the promises made about reducing carbon emissions, and the progress made in places such as virtually the end of coal burning for power, are not baked in successes and we must make sure to keep the pressure on the government to keep going and indeed ratchet up the speed of which we deal with a problems.
Battery power is great for cars and taxis. Recently Tesla has shown you can make a viable electric lorry – claims the range isn’t far enough are absurd. Name one country when a lorry driver is allowed to drive for more than 4 hours without break – modern chargers can give you 4 hours of range in 15 to 30 minutes (a Tesla 3 or Y can have 180 miles in 15 minutes).
However, there are areas where fuels will be used, like rocketry. Now it is true that no one has yet made a rocket fly on biofuels, but that’s a different problem.
Continue reading “Bio-fuels are necessary if humans are to stop burning fossil fuels so what’s wrong?”Palm oil is a plant based alternative to digging up hydrocarbons (like oil).
In theory, the concept of growing the fuel that we use might be a good idea, unfortunately this has not worked well in practice. The best place to grow palm oil is along the equator, but this is where much of the tropical rainforest also grows. It has already been established that as much of this needs to be left intact as possible for the world to function as an ecosystem.
While I would have a problem in the way this is being undertaken for the simple reason that these rainforests hum with life there are other issues. Continue reading “Problems with Palm Oil – and how to avoid it”