Through out his time in the white house, Donald Trump attacked climate change science foolishly mocked it by pointing out hot weather and generally undermined the long-term leading position that the American government has had in the climate change fight. It is of course true, that what ever words presidents have said about climate change, they have not invested enough in doing something about it. As such, despite having roughly 5% of the worlds population, the USA is the second biggest emitter, emitting roughly 15% of the world emissions each year.
Continue reading “Donald Trump spent his time in the White house saying America couldn’t afford climate mitigation – what a foolish position”The Colorado population has voted to reintroduce wolves, and how does this square with Trumps delisting of wolves in the USA
At the end of last year, the people of Colorado have voted to reintroduce wolves to the state by 2023. It should be noted that a wolf has been collared in the state in the last few months. It came from a neighbouring state, and therefore clearly wolves would return on their own eventually.
The proposal squeaked across the line with 50.4% of the vote. Now, this decision is complicated by Trumps foolish move to delist wolves throughout the USA, despite their current position. Estimates of the number of wolves in the USA when settlers arrived, range from 250,000 up to 2 million. Even if we assume the low end of the range, the current wolf population of the lower 48 states in the USA is just 6000, a number that we can safely say is at the most, roughly 2% of historical numbers.
Continue reading “The Colorado population has voted to reintroduce wolves, and how does this square with Trumps delisting of wolves in the USA”The Raegan administration removed the solar panels from the white house, why and what does it show?
President Carter installed 32 solar thermal panels on the white house 30 years ago. By 1986 Jimmy Carter had been replaced by Ronald Reagan – and unfortunately his priorities were different. He scrapped the research and development budget for renewables and eliminated any tax breaks that were encouraging deployment of solar or wind turbines.
When the white house had to have its roof fixed, Reagan used this as an excuse to remove the solar panels, despite the fact that they were still working fine.
Continue reading “The Raegan administration removed the solar panels from the white house, why and what does it show?”Bears do have close encounters with people, however sensible behaviour makes this interesting for both
The bears in France are often talked about like a problem child. However in actual fact that is not what they are like at all.
Bears are omnivores, and as such while they spend much of their time eating berries or roots they are capable of scary bursts of speed. Bears have been filmed running in excess of 35 mph, which means that even at his top speed a bear could catch up with Usain Bolt. More to the point, while better suited to sprints, bears can keep up an impressive speed for a significant distance – certainly further than a human could. This means, that while for much of the year they are herbivores, they are highly intelligent opportunistic hunters, and therefore cannot be relied upon to act in a certain way.
As with many other large mammals, they view children under 10 as essentially relatively harmless – meaning that small children should not be alone in bear country. Attacks on humans – even small children, are rare as with chimpanzees and wolves, however they are not unheard of.
Here is a video from a few years ago. A man had gone for a walk in the mountains with his son. where they encounter a bear at close range. Just remember that this mountain range is roughly 270 miles long and 80 miles wide (at its widest) covering over 7000 square miles (just a bit smaller than wales) and within this mountain range there are 43 bears. These all fall within 5000 square km (just under 2000 square miles) but this means that bears are rare and being shy generally stay out of site. Furthermore, bears are most active between dusk and dawn so seeing one in the middle of the day is rare.
Continue reading “Bears do have close encounters with people, however sensible behaviour makes this interesting for both”Was Trump really the business president?
Trump ran for office on the basis that he was good at making decisions on the information at hand.
However one of the clearest decisions that needs to be made (and he refused to consider seriously) is climate change.
The constant refrain is that “97% of scientists agree that global warming is happening” however, as I have written in the past( http://seeanimalswild.com/2018/04/13/do-97-of-climate-change-scientists-believe-in-climate-change/) this is more like 99.99%
Continue reading “Was Trump really the business president?”Jair Bolsonaro is having a similar impact on environmental laws in Brazil to the impact of Donald Trump in the USA – will the effect be longer lasting?
Just like Trump in the USA Jair Bolsonaro has taken an axe to the environmental protections that Brazil has created over decades. Also just like Donald Trump, the majority of these moves have been done by Executive act. Between march and may last year, Jair signed 195 infralegal acts – and just like under Trunp these acts are thought to be only just legal and should have gone through their governmental body.
Wolf hunting in the USA: Wisconsin Hunt vastly overshoots
Under Trump, the American wolf lost its endangered species status.
This was not a scientific decision, it was a political. It is true that the number of wolves in North America has grown dramatically since hunting was banned across most areas. However it is absolutely absurd to suggest that the population has recovered.
Foolish attacks on renewable energy – Texas blackouts cannot be blamed on green energy
With incredibly cold weather hitting Texas (for instance the beach is covered in snow), Fox News has been making a big thing of the fact that some of the wind turbines are not turning supposedly because they froze – and that this is the cause of the blackouts.
This is factually incorrect. According to data from the Texas government wind turbine shutdowns accounted for less than 13% of the total outage. A bigger problem is freezing of oil and gas equipment throughout the state.
Continue reading “Foolish attacks on renewable energy – Texas blackouts cannot be blamed on green energy”In a conversation on CNN Bill Gates states by 2050 climate change will kill as many people as Covid has and by 2100 5 times as many
The video in question (I will include it below this article) is actually discussing the pandemic and Bill Gates predictions for the future.
However, in passing he points out that the current likely global warming to take place in the next almost 3 decades before 2050 would leave us with a planet warm enough to kill roughly the same number of people a year as Covid has. More scary, by 2100 the death rate could be 5 times as high (and it should be remembered that these are direct deaths rather than indirect deaths from starvation due to crop failure).
Look at the global effort to fight Covid! It is true that world wide it has killed roughly 2.5 million, however this number must be put in context. The number of deaths in 2019 was roughly 60 million, or approximately 1% of those alive. As such 2.5 million is just a blip up on the radar – it is a change of less than 5%.
Roughly 1/3 of the human population lives within 5-10m of the sea (vertically). More concerning, roughly 200 million live less than 1m above sea level. If we meet the current 2 degrees c target, limiting temperature rise, the sea is expected to rise somewhere between 60cm and 110cm.
In this situation, roughly 3% of the human population will have to move, given the expectation that weather will get worse as the temperature rises, the actual percentage that will have to move is likely to be far higher.
Remembering all the indirect problems such as weather changes, loss of remaining forests, desert expansion and many more, the world we are heading towards leaving for our grandchildren is one that we would not want to have to live in.
These comments about global warming are just examples. They are not the main point of the interview.Â
Humanity has shown an incredible ability of working together effectively during the pandemic.Â
This must continue, we must address climate change to halt the doomsday scenario that our most educated are predicting we are heading towards.
For me (and for the website) one of the most exciting points is that a large part of the fight against climate change could be succeeded in by undoing the damage to many ecosystems around the world.
This would be surprisingly cheap and could lead to far higher financial benefits than the costs involved. It would serve a second fantastic goal of halting species loss, and allowing many wildlife populations to recover.
Two birds with one stone is always good. When they are both so essential this is fantastic news.
Tar sands pipeline cancelled (keystone)
This is a foolish project that is survived for far too long in the USA. The pipeline that Joe Biden has promised to cancel was meant to bring oil from the tar sands of Canada.
Not a particularly cheap a source of oil, and one of the most polluting in the world this is the wrong way to improve oil security in the US.
There are obviously many more steps to be taken but Joe Biden has within hours of being installed started the process of making sure that some of the foolish decisions of the last administration are undone. The majority if not all are highly unpopular in the USA- indeed the reason that it is so easy for Joe Biden to reverse them is because they were put in place with trump signing executive orders and therefore can be reversed as easily.