While proportionally a small percentage of human emissions, the emissions of seafaring trade currently amounts to roughly 2% of our emissions.
The thing is, that with the huge advances in wind technology it would be possible to save a great deal of money and emissions.
A recent test of a ship kite, was found to save 10-15% (the creater of one of these systems suggested saving of 20% or more) of the fuel per day, a saving of $1000-1500 – which is quite something. While the kite systems currently cost a million or so, this will still be paid of in a couple of years. Furthermore this price is likely to fall as the technology becomes more mainstream.
In past governments indigenous land was out of bounds, yet under Bolsonaro there is currently 1265 requests to mine in Indigenous territories pending. This behaviour is prohibited by the Brazilian constitution, which shows how bad this is. If the mining is illegal what is the ned for it to even be looked at?
Given in these cases this land has been given over to the tribes, it is not the governments to hand over to miners.
The big concern is that even if Bolsonaro is voted out after just one term, he may have destroyed most of the countries remaining forests and indigenous areas, meaning there will be little for his replacement to save.
One of the companies wrote to Mongabay after the article was originally published, they claimed that they did not know anything about it. Unfortunately the record of the request is clear, and it is worth noting that while denying the existence, they did not cancel any of the requests at all
Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters are getting frustrated. The whole world can see that the direction the country is taking is extremely dangerous. Rather than changing tack they have decided to silence the detractors.
Whether environmental researchers, academics or officials, it seems that no one is safe. Increasing numbers of these professions are being forced to seek safety abroad to avoid threats to their lives.
This is not the behaviour of a democracy leader, and it wont work
The human race has been emitting carbon at an extreme rate for several centuries. Before we started burning things for the energy locked up inside them, the worlds carbon sinks and its carbon taps were in relatively stable harmony. For long periods of the earths existence, carbon absorbed by plants equalled the carbon emitted by breathing and volcano eruptions among other sources.
There are a variety of other carbon sinks. The earths oceans absorb carbon, while they can absorb huge quantities of carbon, this acidifies the water, which means that we dont want to rely on that to to great an impact.
The last time that I wrote about a potential Airline disrupter was back in late March. Interestingly, the source article was written back at this point but I didn’t find it for a few months.
In this case, the change is in design rather than in the fuel (the last article on planes was looking at using biofuels made from algae. I should note, that this is probably possible to power any aircraft, so both changes could team up.
In this case, rather than changing the fuel, the layout of the plane was changed. Rather than 1 relatively thick wing, they replaced it with 3 thin wings distributed along the body of the plane.
By having 3 sets of narrow wings, each part of the plane is supported.
One of the main advantages of this design, is that there is no natural rotating point. Generally the tail of the plan is required to keep the plane flying level (this tail is recognized as one of the most problematic parts of the plane in terms of efficiency).
Why is this design exciting? Well this plane would have a carbon footprint 70-80% lower than current aircraft. This means that it is incredibly cheap to run, and therefore cheaper for passengers to fly on. Also of interest is the fact that this design makes the aeroplane far safer. Due to its higher efficiency it can also fly an incredibly long way – 10,500 miles, far enough to easily fly London to Australia ( this would suggest that perhaps in the future, non stop flights to new Zealand are not too far off). Another advantage, is that due to its low drag coefficient, it would fly at 690 miles per hour (mach 0.9) – more than 100 miles an hour faster than normal passenger jets. In a similar way, London to Johannesburg would be a little over 8 hours.
So this plane would be cheaper to fuel, fly further and faster. It is predicted to be far cheaper to maintain, and to have a life span of twice current planes. It would have a wider body, so take more passengers than normal. It has a high lift coefficient, allowing it to take off from shorter runways, allowing it to access more of the world. Due to the how thing the wings are, they would not be able to store fuel anymore, so this would have to go in the proper body of the plane – current plans would be at the top of the plane over the passengers. As well as having a lifespan of roughly 50 years, it is thought that each plane will take half as long to build.
Whether we see an aircraft like this is anyone’s guess. Moving to one engine at the rear of the plane, probably rules out electric propulsion, though who knows. Of course with wings as slim as this it is unlikely to be able to accommodate dispersed power.
It is unfortunately true, that we are so close to climate disaster that we need all large countries to move as one on mitigating climate change. What is to happen if just a few refuse? An article from a few months ago spells this out, and its not good.
If ChinaRussiaBrazil and Australia all follow up on the pledges that they made on carbon reduction the world and the rest of the world followed their example, we as a planet would be looking at warming of 5°C rather the 1.5°C that scientists tell us is needed in order to avoid terrible impacts.
Back in 1975, the American Grizzly bear was declared endangered. With only minor differences, the American Grizzly bear is the same species as the European bear, that lives from Western Spain, through Europe to the Kamchatka bear of far Eastern Russia.
In 1975 the USA lower 48 states grizzly bear population numbered somewhere between 136 animals and 312, so it was essential that it was protected. Nowerdays the same 48 states have a population of around 1500, but given that this number would have been as high as 50,000 when people started migrating to the USA in large number, this recovery is only just getting going.
In some ways, recent discoveries should have been made long ago. Asiatic lions historic distribution stretched across Asia, north Africa, and Southern Europe.
Given that the Barbary Lions historic range covered the central part of this huge area, it seems reasonable that the Barbary lion and the Asiatic lion should be closely related. Yet it was only in the last few years that genetic evidence has been shown that this is indeed the case.
Methane emissions are 80 times more warming that carbon dioxide. They do not stay in the atmosphere for ever, but in the short term, they could still cause the human race an enormous task which could quickly become unmanageable. Methane (natural gas) is often found in the same place as oil yet, bizarrely, extractors are generally after one or the other. By making rules on methane capture, significant quantities can be stopped from escaping into the atmosphere, never mind the fact that this methane can then be sold, greatly increasing income.
According to a recent NASA study, methane is responsible for about 25% of the global warming that has occurred since the industrial revolution.
Under Obama the central American government tightened rules on methane extraction in an attempt to deal with this issue. The larger companies engaged with the new rules, but unfortunately the smaller companies which are responsible for much of the fracking that occurs complained and the EPA under Trumps oversight (Trump had installed many fossil fuel executives into its ranks) reversed these cuts.
The industry claimed that there was not much leakage and that the problem was under control. Unfortunately this was a lie. At the same time that they were claiming tiny leaks publicly, privately they were admitting to a huge problem.
So far, these lies which are going to cost the world population have not been punished at all. What is worse, we wouldn’t know about the behaviour were it not for a secret recording made of a member of the independent petroleum association. According to the recording Ron Ness president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council told the meeting “We’re just flaring a tremendous amount of gas. This pesky natural gas. The value if it is very minimal”. A few months later, the same organisation had a lawyer state that it is not in their interests to let even a molecule of gas escape.
Yet this requires us to be fools. The most long lasting view of an oil rig is with a flame blowing out, burning off excess gas.
We need to make pollution the expensive option. If venting is the cheapest way to work, lets tax it to such an extreme level that it is worth their while to catch the waste. Of course the best way to end this practice is for the producers to go out of business. While we are moving in that direction at a reasonable speed, it is perhaps too slow for the survival of the way of life that we humans have got used to over the last few millenia. If we continue as we are, the climate we will leave for out children will not be as pleasant.
It is an unfortunate fact, all over the world, that people have chosen to live near the sea. There are many reasons for this, but the basic fact is that this is often the most productive land.
The problem now, though, is that all these peoples lives are liable to change. This is because small rises in sea levels could make them homeless. As much as 1 billion people live at low enough elevation to make this a threat.
Countries like Bangladesh are very flat, and it is estimated that as many as 20 million people within Bangladesh would become homeless by 2050 under current trends (this assumes that we meet our carbon cut targets. There would be many others that would be lost.
Forgetting the hundreds of millions of people in the developing world, there are famous buildings and places which should underline this issue in the west as well.
Buckingham palace would be under water up to the first floor if we fail to act. A temperature rise of 1.5 degrees C would merely bring the water level to the front door. Many other famous buildings such as the pentagon, the tower of London and Tokyo tower in Japan would all be lost.
This is all a long winded way of stating, that even with the dramatic cuts the world is hoping to make over the next few decades, many people on earth are still likely to loose their lives have their lives changed dramatically, in most cases for the worse.
