Category: Politics

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2 and a half billion trees died after the El Nino of 2015-6 in the Amazon

El Nino are natural weather phenonium generally occurring between every 2 and 7 years. It would appear that as predicted, the El Nino is getting worse as a result of climate change.

This mass die off released carbon dioxide greater than the annual emissions of a country like the UK or Australia.

The fear is that this will become a common event as the planet warms.

The problem is that with this much carbon released, the Amazon as a whole was flipped from being a net absorber toa net emitter of carbon.

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Tiger doubling from 2010 aim review – Thiland

As with many of the other countries on this list, precise population numbers do not seem to be available. What is clear is that in 2010 the tiger population was thought to be in excess of 100. Their current population is around 177 ( the population grew by 50% over the last 2 years).

Rapid growth of the population appears to be possible thanks to an improvement in their habitats health.

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Montpelier a city in France realized its error, and dropped an order for 51 hydrogen buses for electric instead

Montpelier had set aside $33 million for this project, over 2 years. This decision was made, after local officials realized that electric buses would be 6 times cheaper to run. This price included the building of a plant to make the hydrogen.

In terms of cost, it was estimated that the buses (for which the council was given help buying but not for running costs) would cost 3 million euros to run, yet only 500,000 for electric. The per mile price was 0.15 euro instead of 0.95.

Although they were going to be helped in purchasing, the hydrogen buses are also between 150000-200000 euros more to buy in the first place.

The myriad reasons that hydrogen is not a good idea have been obvious for some time. Green hydrogen (much of hydrogen is taken out of gas- obviously a nonstarter if your aim is reducing carbon emissions) requires a great deal of electricity to split water, and it would be far more efficient to just put that electricity in batteries and use them. Another issue is the compression of the gas. The only possible place where hydrogen might be useful is in aeroplanes.

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Apparently Low-carbon ambitions must not interfere with ‘normal life’

According to Xi Jinping, low-carbon ambitions must not interfere with modern day life! If this is true, then we are unlikely to get the cuts that we need.

Now, it is not unreasonable for a country to want to raise its standard of living. However, China is likely to be hit very hard by climate change. While you do not think of China as a low lying country like Bangladesh, 67,000 square km (about 26,000 square miles) lie 1m or less above sea level – and 67 million people live in this area. It is true that this only accounts for about 5% of Chinas population but given how crowded this country already is, this is likely to cause a lot of issues. More to the point Shanghai is only between 3m and 5m above sea level,

Around the world about 600 million people live close to the sea. Of course we understand that each country must look after its own citizens – but that includes protecting them from global warming. China currently accounts for 26% of global emissions, and the rest of the world cannot cut enough to make their emissions irrelevant.

Now, it is entirely true that the president may be trying to keep his own population on side, but we need the whole world to work on this problem. China accounts for 15% of the worlds GDP, then can not take a back seat.

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In 2020, for the first time the UK got more energy from renewable sources than from fossil fuels

In 2020, renewable electricity accounted for 43% of the UK electricity, while fossil fuels accounted for just 38%. The remaining generation came from nuclear. Unfortunately, that proportion was reversed in 2021.

Never-the-less the British prime minister announced in October at the Conservative conference, that the aim is to reach 100% renewable electricity by 2035 (I would suggest that they need to decide if nuclear is a green generation or not – I would suggest it is, but it should therefore be included in the figures, in the long-term it is not likely to be needed, we should be able to generate all our electricity from solar and wind).

It is encouraging to think that by 2035 all our electricity will come from green sources. In addition as no ICE cars should be sold after 2030, by 2035 the proportion of clean propulsion should be rapidly moving towards 100%

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In the UK the Advertising standards agency (ASA) has promised to crack down on green washing

It is disgusting, that despite the science being clear for decades now (and the urgency needed) there is still so many companies that are desperately trying to hang on to their business as normal way of life.

As the world, and customers in particularly are increasingly voting with their feet and moving if a supplier is not being green enough, a lot are continuing to push out false news to try to throw climate change into doubt.

There has been much success on this, however it has run its course. The ASA has announced a regulatory crackdown on ads which seek to mislead on climate change.

Currently, the ASA rules are loose enough to allow significant misleading claims and mistakes to be gotten away with.

Time will tell if they are successful, however it is work long overdue. Much of the incorrect ideas on climate change have been placed in peoples minds on purpose.

Past examples include oil companies bigging up tiny parts of their business in adverts (and failing to mention the vast emissions from the 99% or more of their core business, along with companies like Volkswagen who cheated on emission standards allowing them to get away with far more emissions than they admitted to. Others include Coke who had a big campaign about waste plastic in the oceans – failing to admit that most of this plastic was their fault.

We will have to watch this carefully. Thankfully, in this day and age, there are many different people watching to keep account of what is going on. We must not avert our eyes.

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Carbon footprint of ghost flights during the lockdown

One would think that during the height of lockdown. that no planes would fly. After all, few people wanted to travel, and many destinations were banned.

Unfortunately no such luck. Why do I say this? Well currently 2.1% of emissions come from aviation (in wealthy countries this is far higher as many poor countries have little or no aviation – in the USA aviation accounts for 3-4%).

So what happened in lockdown?

Continue reading “Carbon footprint of ghost flights during the lockdown”
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UK makes a lot of noise about its green spending, unfortunately we are spending more on polluting ones

£145 million was earmarked in the March 2021 British budget for environmental spending. Let almost 40 billion is spent on polluting ones. Tax breaks to companies, to encourage investment in projects (that will damage the environment ) along with £4.5 billion lost from the fuel duty freeze (it has been frozen for 11 years).

Continue reading “UK makes a lot of noise about its green spending, unfortunately we are spending more on polluting ones”
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UK ministers have once again delayed the point at which a ban on trophy hunting will come in

Despite to much fanfare, announcing that in 2019 during a queens speech their plan to ban trophy hunting, the government has once again delayed this law coming into effect.

Clearly endangered animals such as lions tigers elephants and many more are shot for sport around the world in numbers above 10,000 per year. While some of the meat is often given to local communities, the reason for the hunt was to provide a trophy for the hunter.

I find it disgusting that British politicians announced this policy 3 years ago but have not brought the rule into force. They are attempting to get the global clap on the back without actually having the bring in the law.

There are few to no predators that live in large enough numbers to be able to afford hunting. For me (as well as I suspect many of my readers) hunting is a rather distasteful experience. There are a few areas on the planet where hunting is temporarily justified such as the Selous – but these should be short lived. In the long run making money from wildlife should be done with a camera and not with a gun

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