Category: Politics

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Donald Trump is president again – impact on the world

I am not going to pretend that this is not bad. Donald Trumps former term was bad for the natural world and the fight against climate change. Likely changes:

  • Leaving the Paris climate agreement again – there is some suggestion that this will lead to a collapse of the agreement. Trump has pushed coal among other fossil fuels, and is likely to roll back various progress. Perhaps a possible hope is Elon Musk and his closeness to Donald Trump – might this relationship mean that less is done against electric cars? Last time, the USA carbon emissions fell despite everything that Trump did (definitely not because). Keeping temperature increases to just 1.5 degrees Celsius is pretty much impossible, if the USA does not do its part.
  • Denialism and doubt will return – it is not just that Donald Trump is not willing to work towards the end of carbon emissions, but he does not believe that global warming is real. This is a real indictment on how he forms his views of the world, as it is a simple fact that the world is warming
  • Clean energy policies will go, along with scientific decisions on wolves and other wildlife within the country. This is quite likely to have an impact on global biodiversity, as the USA will abandon its lead on this.
  • Under Trump the first time, protected status for species no longer required the same protections, and much wilderness in the USA lost its protection. A return to office is likely to make this far worse.

The situation is serious. Having been president before, it is highly likely that trump will be more effective this time, as he knows more than last time. He has retaken the Senate, and it looks like he is going to take the house as well. Will he manage to use his position more effectively? Leadership on climate, biodiversity and many more things will fall open, we must wait and see if other countries step up to fill their shoes, and continue to push forwards.

We are in for another bumpy road

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Political suggestion for Americans – do not vote for Trump

We all know what Donald Trump is like. On climate change, he changes what he says on each time. However, his beliefs become clear, when we look at his behaviour. He took the USA out of the Paris climate accord, and made every effort to reverse all improvements on this front.

There are many reasons not to vote for Trummp. While there is a baffling desire to support Donald Trump from the Christian right, consider the facts 

  • He is a thrice married man, who has cheated on all his wives
  • He does not have any idea on the bible, and while he tries to suggest he is a Christian, has no idea what the bible contains. 
  • He has no idea what it is to be a Christian, what it means (see video below). Jesus turned himself over to be killed by the authorities, look at what it means, before voting for this man again. You may disagree with everything that Biden has done, but he is clearly a man who has a relationship with God, look at it rationally before voting for a man who has shown himself to be unsuitable for the role.

What is a Donald Trump second term going to mean for the environment, nature and climate change?

  • He is especially opposed to wind power and has promised to halt offshore wind development, which he claims harms marine life. Not only is impact on marine life not true, these are not only the cleanest, but also the cheapest ways to make power (wind and solar is currently around 50% less than coal power, and this is only getting better).
  • Trump greatly expanded the right to hunt on federal land. His changes increased hunting of wolves to such an extent that many years of progress was lost. Grizzly bears are in a similar position, as well as Jaguars and many other more common species.
  • While carbon emissions did fall under Trump, this was despite not because of him. He relaxed rules on carbon emissions from cars (despite the opposite direction that the market is going).
  • He has greatly expanded drilling for both oil and gas, and has no intention of curtailing this. We cannot afford to burn all the fossil fuels, but this is not Trumps position.
  • He rolled back over 100 major climate policies and rolled back many more rules governing clean air, water, wildlife and toxic chemicals, despite his mantra of clean air and clean water. Click here to view a new york times with all of these in detail.
This is just a quick list of some of the reasons why you should not vote for this man. Should you have children, or child relatives, it should be obvious why, and I would hope that even without descendants, you would want to leave the world in a better place.

Please share this, and other similar articles with friends who can vote. Lets help Americans to recognize the danger that Trump poses – analysis shows that should climate change continue, the USA falls in just third from the top, in terms of the amount they are likely to have to pay, should climate change continue.

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Apologies for quiet and a fossil fuel good judgement

Do not worry, this website is still moving forwards! If you look closely at the maps on the home page, you will find that the number of destinations has been growing over time. I have been working on adding the rest of these.

However, I could not help but report on this GOOD JUDGEMENT

This is fantastic news. The giving of these licences is completely against the governments policies, and in their own assessments, they ignored the carbon footprint of the eventual use of the fuel (only taking into account the carbon emissions of extraction).

Climate activists, and even certain people in both houses of parliament have been pointing out the absurdity of this position- a position I might add, that had to go to the supreme court of the UK in order to be looked at rationally.

What does this mean? Well that is not clear, though it will require the government to explain their contradicting positions.

It is certainly a positive step forwards, as this ruling suggests that the UK courts are not going to allow the British government to make laws, and then make decisions that break those same laws.

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According to a new study the west Antarctic ice shelf will now melt (not a question of if but when)

West antarctic ice sheet from high up NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz CC by 2.0

So, if the melting of this ice sheet is now unaviodable what would its impacts be? Well this ice sheet has enough volume of water, to raise global water levels by 5m. While this might not sound like much, there are 16 countries around the world who would loose more than 10% of their area, and the country at the top – the Netherlands, would loose roughly 55% of its landmass. It is estimated that by 2030 5.4% of the worlds population or 460 million people will live in this zone that will cease to exist.

Unfortunately, there is little positive to write, as the author suggests that this is now inevitable. Drastic cutting now, is all that can stop this damage at 5m raise in sea levels. Without it, what are we going to see? 100m rise in sea levels? This would require us finding space for 1/3 or the human population, on the remaining land, as their land will disappear beneath the seas.

Why is this not considered a major disaster?

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What to do, when officials at the UN farming body have their findings censored? Is the UN working for more global warming?

A large, and growing proportion of worlds methane emissions comes from the meat industry around the world. Methane is a far more powerful, if shorter lived warming gas, with 84 times the warming potential over 20 years (and still 28 times the warming potential over a century.

Continue reading “What to do, when officials at the UN farming body have their findings censored? Is the UN working for more global warming?”
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Do not buy a hydrogen boiler!

The UK watchdog (amongst many other groups) have concluded that hydrogen boiler is a stupid idea. It is true that its only waste product is water and oxygen, but the cost of making the hydrogen is very high.

Should there be large quantities of hydrogen sitting around, then this might make sense – burning hydrogen is generally a very clean fuel. The problem is, that it is almost impossible to store or transport it without loosing much on route, and it is incredibly expensive to split water – the current form for the vast majority of the hydrogen on the planet. Fossil fuel companies are keen, because their old methods can extract and split hydrogen, but it will mean large carbon emissions as well, so is useless – there is a reason that it is called grey hydrogen. Green hydrogen is the only kind that will give us any profit as a world.

So why is the government supporting the switch (alongside gas focused industry). The department for energy security and net zero stated this week that the gas network ” will always be part of our energy system”. I am not sure why anyone would look at it, given an air-source heat pump is likely to be around price parity, and ground source heating even cheaper.

Installation, at the cheap end will be far cheaper than a heat-pump, but this will be more than made up for over the lifetime of the device. Furthermore, with the grants currently available, you are far better off going straight to a heat pump. This is a waste of time and money, and it would not be remotely surprising, if you had to remove it before the end of its life,as it would be costing too much

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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.

 

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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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UK could quit ‘Climate wrecking’ treaty’ – encouraging, must see more

The treaty in question is called the Energy Charter Treaty, and apparently if changes are not made by November we will look at exiting.

Under this charter, any coal power plant forced to shut could require the government responsible to continue paying the company for the lifetime that the power station could last.

What is in this egregious rules? Well, it would be run with a system of secrets of courts, and it would allow a company to sue any signature country should they bring an a law that might cut their profits in the future.

Given that any cuts in coal use, oil use, wood or many other things would impact many companies bottom line. Given that coal and oil use must cease within the next couple of decades, and only wood from land that would be replanted, the vast majority of companies would have their profits hit.

This foolish treaty would either lead to governments abandoning all carbon reduction targets, or paying large companies billions for all time.

This treaty is not centuries old, rather, it came into being back in 1998, at a time where we knew about climate change. France is similarly talking about quitting. Other countries are also looking at leaving, and it is thankfully likely to collapse.

It is strange how this possible became a treaty, as this plan is insane.

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