Category: Emission reduction

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The telegraph has put out an article suggesting that homegrown food has 5 times greater carbon footprint than conventional: is that right? Should we all end our allotments?

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.

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Electric cars roundup: recent news

For a variety of reasons, over the last few months, I have not written as often as I would like. As such, I have accumulated quite a few articles that I wish to mention. While the animal articles require their own space, others do not. As such, this post will include electric car news from all over the world. Dates are a little muddled (and may be relatively out of date), and it is possible that with some of these, changes have been made. We are working hard on improving the website, which is taking much of our time, we hope to have a breakthrough soon. Below is a list of articles written, click on read more to read each of the articles listed.

-The Tesla s P100D has a 0-60 time of 2.28 seconds

–Department of Transport in the UK has a new scheme which will help with the cost of installing charging points in places like schools and similar

 –China wants us to buy its electric cars

  –2023 best selling car was the Tesla model Y 

 –A new possible battery breakthrough would both cut the cost of batteries, and bring down the length of time it would take to charge to something similar to that of filling up a petrol or diesel tank 

 –when will all UK cars be pure electric 

–Volkswagen is loosing the electric car race to China and Tesla 

–EU has set a target of 30 million electric cars on its roads by 2030

 –The Chinese government is promising to rein in the number of electric cars its companies are making, so as to not flood the west

–Freezing temperature are known for reducing electric car range, caused long queues for charging  

 –Autocar published an article looking at how green electric cars actually are

–Paris Mayor plans to triple SUV parking tariffs to cut air pollution

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Ford has made clear its aim to take on Tesla and BYD by launching cheap electric cars

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.

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Aircraft contrails are a significant part of global warming

A recent experiment by google and American airlines, has shown that these could become far rarer which would help cut aviation emissions.

Through using AI models, contrails can be reduced by 54%. Given the impact on global warming (contrails absorb and trap heat really well), removing these contrails could make a big difference around the world.

So how big is this difference? Well planes only account for 2.5% of global emissions, but this increases to 3.5% with other effects such as contrails. A large part of this 1% is down to contrails, so by largely eliminating them, could cut aviation impacts by 2 sevenths.

Looking at it differently, a reduction of 2/7 or 29%, accounts for 2/3 of the emissions cuts required by aviation by 2050.

This does not really make a big difference to the overall issue, but shows that Aviation can still cut their impact in a meaningful way.

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Company Green Grazing from Vietnam is aiming to grow and sell red seaweed, as an additive to livestock feed

Why is this important?

red seaweed photo credit Peter Southwood

Around the world there are around 3 billion cattle and sheep. These produce around 231 billion pounds of methane each year, which is around 10 billion metric tonnes of methane into the air. Remember that over the first 20 years (it reduces after this) methane traps roughly 80 times the same amount of carbon dioxide. So this is the equivalent of a huge amount of carbon.

To put this in perspective, if we shrink the worlds carbon emissions to zero, but are left with all this methane, we are likely to have runaway global warming anyway.

So what does this seaweed do? It essentially causes the cows and sheep to create less methane. How much? Well, while around 100 million tonnes of this seaweed would be needed, they could eliminate 98% of the methane emissions from these livestock!

In 2019 around 34.7million tonnes of seaweed was farmed, which is leading some sceptical researchers to suggest that it cannot be done. However, if we look logically, this is already enough seaweed to reduce methane emissions by 1 third – not to be sneezed at.

Another problem, is that currently Greener Grazing is restricted to only growing 1/3 of the year, as the water temperature kills the seaweed the rest of the time. However, this could be fantastic – if cross breeding can give this seaweed the ability to cope with warmer water, they might be able to meet the whole worlds demands.

More work is needed, and other tests have proved less successful in the reduction of methane, but still, this is a field, where we might be able to green peoples behaviour without requiring them to stop eating meat.

Now, of course, if meat grown in a lab could reach price parity, it may deal with this problem overnight, though it would also eliminate many peoples source of income.

Time will tell if this company is going to have a large effect or not. We need to have farmers wanting this additive, thereby creating a valuable market for coastal communities around the world.

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Is the COP conferences a waste of time, if climate change deniers are able to lead it?

At the current time, countries in the region in which the COP is held will chose a president. In theory, that is fine, however, in practice if this is going to continue then the middle east should be banned from hosting the conference.

So, what precisely did Sultan Al Jaber say, which was so troubling?

Firstly, he claimed that a ‘phase-out of fossil fuels would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves'”.

He then claimed that there is ‘no science’ to suggest phasing out fossil fuels is the only way to achieve 1.5C.

After being laughed at, over this utterly insane statment, he suggested that the comment had been misinterpreted. It should be noted, that this was in response to a question from a woman, which he was relatively rude about.

Do you think this woman misunderstood?

He even had the gall to suggest that the misrepresentation was undermining his desire to reduce carbon emissions (perhaps if this is true, it can start with his huge fossil fuel company can show this?). More than 100 countries are already supportive of this.

The worlds uptake of electric cars must accelerate. This is partly underway – last year around 67 million cars were sold, but 14% of these were electric, up from just 9% the previous year. The uptake is accelerating.

It should also be noted that apart from extreme heat in the UAE, continued global warming will also damage the UAE in extreme ways. The UAE economy is 0.5% of the global economy, in the end, places like this may refuse to accept the end of oil, and will have to be bankrupted, as cars move to 100% and many other industries clean up their act.

 

Amazon River Dolphin

Amazon river dolphin by Oceancetaceen sometimes known as the Orinoco

Amazon Dolphin

The Amazon river dolphin, (other names include boto, bufeo or pink river dolphin), is a species of toothed whale endemic to South America and is classified in the family Iniidae. Three subspecies are currently recognized: Amazon river dolphin,, Bolivian river dolphin and the Orinoco river dolphin while position of Araguaian river dolphin  within the clade is still unclear The three subspecies are each found in a separate river basin (in order) the Amazon basin, the upper Madeira River in Bolivia, and the Orinoco basin.

The Amazon river dolphin is the largest species of river dolphin, with adult males reaching 185 kilograms (408 lb) in weight, and 2.5 metres (8.2 ft) in length. Adults acquire a pink colour, more prominent in males, giving it its nickname “pink river dolphin”. Sexual dimorphism is very evident, with males measuring 16% longer and weighing 55% more than females.

Like other toothed whales, they have a melon, an organ that is used for bio sonar. The dorsal fin, although short in height, is regarded as long, and the pectoral fins are also large. The fin size, unfused vertebrae, and its relative size allow for improved manoeuvrability when navigating flooded forests and capturing prey.

They have one of the widest ranging diets among toothed whales, and feed on up to 53 different species of fish, such as croakers, catfish, tetras and piranhas. They also consume other animals such as river turtles, aquatic frogs, and freshwater crabs. However, this is not particularly surprising, as there are so many forms of life in the Amazon rainforest, and plenty is likely to occasionally find themselves in the river.

In 2018, this species was classed as endangered, by the IUCN with a declining population. Threats include incidental catch in fishing lines, direct hunting for use as fish bait or predator control, damming, and pollution; as with many species, habitat loss and continued human development is becoming a greater threat.

While it is the only species of river dolphin kept in captivity, almost exclusively in Venezuela and Europe, it is difficult to train and often die very young, when kept in captivity..

Life expectancy of the Amazon river dolphin in the wild is unknown, but in captivity, the longevity of healthy individuals has been recorded at between 10 and 30 years. However, a 1986 study of the average longevity of this species in captivity in the United States is only 33 months. An individual named Baby at the  Duisburg Zoo, Germany, lived at least 46 years, spending 45 years, 9 months at the zoo.

Below you will find any news articles on Amazon dolphin (though articles with both words also get sucked in). Also  we will add any information on where you can go to see these in the wild, beneath both of these.

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How viable is planting trees to mitigating climate change

Back in 2019 NASA wrote an article, talking about planting trees as a way of doing part of the work for mitigating climate change. By looking at satellite images they looked at areas that were recently deforested, or areas which would be easily turned into forests. They came up with an incredible number of 900 million hectares (2.2 billion square acres). If all these areas were reforested with the right trees for each area. Apart from suddenly increasing the worlds forests, and giving breathing space for many species on the verge of extinction, the calculations suggest that these lands would take around half a trillion trees – it would increase forest cover by 25%.

Calculations suggest that the carbon that would be emitted would account for around 200 gigatons of carbon, or reducing carbon emissions in the atmosphere by around 25%. Now alarmingly, this is only around 20 years of current emissions, so it is not the only thing that we would have to do.

Even planting half a trillion trees is not an end of climate change – this is how much emissions we have emitted – but it would be a fantastic start.

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The director of the International Energy Agency has suggested the ‘staggering’ growth of green industries gives hope to the 1.5 degree target

This 1.5 degree Celsius target has been talked about as increasingly impossible to meet. However, this target is essential – many of the worlds low level islands long-term survival leans on this.

Here, an expert is suggesting that we might survive. This is some positive belief that we have been in short supply of, in the last few years.

“Despite the scale of the challenges, I feel more optimistic than i felt two years ago” he added “Solar photovoltaic installations and electric vehicle sales are perfectly in line with what we said that they should be, to be on track to reach net zero by 2050, and thus stay within 1.5C. Clean energy investiment in the last two years have seen a staggering 40% increase”.

We are by not yet there, it is very much the case that we need to keep working hard.

The targets that he set, include a tripling of clean energy by 2030 and a 75% reduction in methane emissions by the same date, and a desire to see these targets come out of the COP28.

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Rishi Sunak is making a stupid decision – end of combustion car sales in 2030?

It was only 3 years ago that the government said from 2030 there would be no more combustion engine, yet his most recent decision rolls this back (though it should be noted that he is still aiming for 80% electric car sales by 2030) along with reducing the requirements landlords to insulate their homes so it is cheaper for their renters to heat their home.

Will this foolish back-track be undone after the next election? Will it be seen as a senseless foolish move in the future? I think that this government will struggle to claim climate responsibility in the future
Continue reading “Rishi Sunak is making a stupid decision – end of combustion car sales in 2030?”
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