Wildlife and conservation new, wild travel information and links for booking
I wrote (rather poorly) back in October about fusion and its potential positives. In the middle of December, we had a breakthrough of incredible proportions.
For the first time, it took less energy to start fusion and sustain it, than was released in the reaction. This is obviously essential, as if it takes more energy to get the reaction to take place, than is generated you are using electricity not generating it.
Easyjet has switched its green aviation plans from electric to hydrogen. The aim is now to be flying a 200 person plane by 2035 on hydrogen. Previously, they were working with wright electric on a battery electric plane by 2030.
Currently, aviation emits roughly 2.5% of carbon emissions, and when taking into account non carbon effects, it accounts for roughly 3.5% of human global warming effects.
They have hastened to add, that this does not mean that they are giving up on battery electric, but that they wish to have multiple options. It is also recognized, that at least in the short-term, that while battery electric might be able to replace 80% of easyjets flight paths, the rest are to far for battery electric, unless power density takes a bigger leap forwards than currently expected.
In the meantime, inefficient aircraft are gradually being replaced. Of course this is good both for the environment and the company, as an inefficient plane uses more fuel to fly.
With huge savings on electric car maintenance, Hertz has just put in a similar size order (to that for tesla) to GM. This will bring their worldwide number up to over quarter of a million electric cars to rent.
It is true that Hertz owns 550,000 electric vehicles around the world, so this move will bring them closer to about 50% of their cars.
Continue reading “Hertz has found that electric cars cost 50-60% less money to maintain”Unfortunately these 3 activities appear to be most responsible for collapse or incredible pressure on ecosystems across the globe.
Vertical farming is a new concept. By growing crops indoors under lights, the crops grow far faster and so can be harvested multiple times a year. Furthermore, by using artificial lights it is possible to have many layers of food.
There is often an argument put forwards in the UK, that as the UK is just a small country we cannot do much when it comes to global warming. After all we only emit about 1% of the worlds emissions, right?
Well firstly, given the world has a population of 8 billion (roughly speaking) and we have a population of about 67 million, so we are only about 0.8% of the worlds population, yet are emitting 1% of emissions.
Continue reading “If the UK only emits 1% of the worlds carbon emissions what can we do? well a lot”This article is a few months old, which is why it is so encouraging that since it was released, the Australian people have risen up, and thrown out the government of Scott Morrison.
Why should he draw so much ire? He worked incredibly hard, while in office to both blame states for not doing the right thing, while at the same time making it as hard as possible. He made comments attacking many of the necessary changes that were going on.
Continue reading “Australia could have to find more than 1.2 trillion dollars to deal with climate disasters by 2060 even with rapid action, so why is the Australian government not doing their part?”It would appear that no matter what supermarkets are saying, South American beef is still encouraging deforestation. According to a new study 1.1 million cattle with boot directly from protected areas within in the rainforest, with a further 2.2 million cattle found to have spent at least some of their lives grazing in protected areas or on indigenous land.
It should be noted that this study largely stops taking you data in 2018. This is not because they got bored, but because at the beginning of 2019 Jair Bolsonaro olsonaro was elected and change the rules so they could not do the work they were doing.
As much as 70% of the Amazon rainforest deforestation has been entirely down to creating space for cattle grazing. While virtually every meat producer has promised not to source their meat from these areas, information appears to be kept intentionally lacking so that these meat producers can get away with using resources they have promised not to.
Quite apart from the high carbon footprint of consuming South American beef in Europe, it is clear that we cannot do, and be sure we are not contributing to the loss of the Amazon rainforest.
I should mention (as I have in the past) that my family have largely seems to eat beef. We have not gone vegetarian, but have found that replacing beef mince with turkey mince not only greatly reduces our carbon footprint but is almost indistinguishable after it has been cooked. If you must eat beef (unless something changes dramatically this is likely to always have an unacceptably high carbon footprint) at least eat British beef- not only should it have much lower travel carbon footprint, but there are no rainforests in the UK to be lost.
Australia is likely to loose a great deal if climate change continues in a big way. This is because Australia already has a large part of the country unbearably hot. If the temperature increases another 2-5 degrees these areas might well become impossible to survive within.
This is why it is so strange that Australia is so backwards in this respect.
Currently, Australia gets a great deal of money by selling coal abroad. This is because Australia is incredibly rich in coal. As a result they are keen to be able to put off zero carbon as long as possible as they will loose this income.
Professor Lesley Huges is a climate specialist, that has just been appointed to the Australia climate change authority and she has quite rightly stated that 2050 net zero is not good enough. Encouragingly, though she has also said that the new government was showing a willingness to listen to science. The Climate change minister has appointed 3 new members after it was suggested that the authority was to heavily weighted in the direction of business and fossil fuels (if there are too many representatives from this part of the market, then concerns about global warming are likely to get less voice, as fossil fuel companies know they only have a finite length of time to make money from resources that are likely to be banned in the future).
Continue reading “Has Australia actually appointed a climate change authority member who actually wants to do the right thing?”This morning, I read an article in the Express. Now it is true, that the express is strongly leaning towards Conservative thinking point, but this argument is absurd. According to the article 2/3 of UK drivers want this ban pushed further into the future.
