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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”The Trump administration gave permission for drilling in the Alaska Arctic refuge. This is a ruling that should never have been made.
Thankfully, as the Biden administration is aware that we live in the real world and that the world is warming, they recognise that as much oil needs to be left in the ground as possible. Furthermore, without the refuge, many species will be threatened with localized extinction.
Estimates are that there are 11 billion barrels of oil below the refuge – we cannot afford to release that much CO2 emissions, and the USA cannot meet its carbon reduction pledges if this oil is not left in the ground.
The arctic is warming 3 times faster than the rest of the planet. This is a common sense move, and should never have been made. Far more oil needs to be left in the ground. Many oil and gas companies face bankruptcy if fossil fuel cars and heating ends, however without it, the world is likely to become far more hostile – I do not wish to leave a world like that for my children and grand children.
Tigers are still found in small populations across large parts of Asia, and as such, many millions of people live in relatively close areas to places that protect the wild tiger. A poacher in Bangladesh has finally been caught, it is estimated that he is responsible for the deaths of 70 tigers. Given the current population is thought to be between 300 and 500 in the whole of Bangladesh, this poacher alone could greatly increase the risk of local extinction in the near term.
DNA analysis has shown that a grey whale first seen off the South West African coast, originated in a population off the eastern coast of Asia.
This grey whale in question was spotted off the coast of Namibia by scientists. Given where they are usually found, they wanted to check what was going on so took a DNA sample.
The sighting is exciting, as it suggests that grey whales collectively have memory of long unused breeding grounds, or are merely exploring beyond their current range.
Even more exciting, this male was found to likely come from the North pacific population, a highly endangered population with only 200 members.
Now while from this populations point of view, a female migrating the other way would have been more useful, it suggests that there is far more mixing across huge distances than was previously known.
Perhaps as the pressures of whaling fade into history, these animals will return. It is true that whaling is not yet being left in the past. Norway Iceland and Japan all still have small whaling industries. However, provided whaling is kept at this level, or reduces over time the vast majority of whales will be unaffected. It is important that whaling (even in these limited numbers) stays clear of certain species; for instance northern right whales still only number around 200 in the wild, so even hunting at the levels we will have could push this species to extinction.
Any decision on which species can be hunted must come down to science. It is irrelevant if a people have hunted a specific whale for centuries, if they would exterminate the rest of its species.
Whales should be allowed to recover to previous levels. They are also capable of sequestering carbon in large quantities, both from their dead bodies and waste. We need them to thrive – both for their benefit and for ours.
It is thought that between global warming and habitat loss, 90% of the remaining great ape range will be lost – potentially as early as 2050!
The loss of these rainforests will make climate change mitigation far harder, and I do not wish for my grandchildren to grow up in a world where there is no such thing as a large rainforest. As elsewhere, the loss of the apex species such as great apes both makes conservation harder, and imperils the ecosystem as a whole, as less visitors come so there is less money for protection.
A group of investment funds, which collectively manage $41 trillion have urged the governments of the world to truly act on global warming and to bolster their net zero targets.
The group consists of 457 investors, who currently manage almost a third of the worlds assets.. They called on governments to “significantly strengthen” plans for emission reduction – importantly bringing in net zero targets by 2050 or sooner.
Continue reading “Collection of investment funds urge governments to end support for fossil fuels – but are they? What could their actions do?”A herd of elephants left their home in March of 2020, and have been roaming free for the last 15 months. In that time they have travelled 500 km (300 miles) roughly the equivalent of the distance from the most eastern to most western point in the UK.
The world has an unfortunate problem. In many parts of the world we are successfully reducing our carbon footprint dramatically, through cleaning our electricity generation among other improvements.
Unfortunately, in our current setup, often the only way to pay for conserving the wild places on our planet is by visiting them, and for most people, this requires long-distance flights.
Something we must avoid in more wealthy countries is to simply halt all tourism to wild places. If in order to cut a few tons of carbon from our personal emissions, we remove the reason to conserve a large rainforest in Africa or Asia, can we really blame the locals when it gets cut down? In theory, money does indeed get sent to some of these countries to pay for offsetting our emissions. Unfortunately this rarely reaches people on the ground.
Continue reading “Contradiction of wildlife tourism – do not kill the wild natural world while cutting your emissions”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%.
It might be a shock to many, but Jaguars were once native to the USA. What’s more despite humans biggest efforts, the eradication was not completely successful. The third largest big cat, after Tiger and Lion, was persecuted along with many other native fauna after Europeans started to settle in the USA.
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