Making concrete and steel are both incredibly carbon intensive. As such, this new process appears to be really important. By throwing old concrete into steel processing furnaces, not only purifies iron, but also reactivates cement as a bi-product. If the furnace is heated using carbon neutral electricity, then both of these incredibly important items (for the modern human world) can be made without emitting carbon at all.
At the moment, not only is cement the worlds most used building material, but it emits 8% of the worlds carbon emissions in the process of being made. Unfortunately, at the current time, there is still work that needs to be done, in order to get to the point where the concrete that comes out of this process is as high grade as brand new concrete
A highly encouraging video, of a native wallaby species chasing away a red fox, introduced from Europe. The species is likely a red wallaby.
It is quite simply a fact, that in many places, while introduced predators have an easy time predating young, often adult wildlife can either escape or fight back. This is true in this situation, and adult Kiwi birds are capable of fighting back in New Zealand.
Never-the-less it is quite simply an issue, that we have transferred species all over the world. While this is a greater threat on smaller islands (places like New Zealand – this island was full of various flightless birds, but having introduced land predators, many of these species are either on the verge of extinction, or are only doing well as a result of work by humans.
Might we see the last of these structures in the next few years?
If we have enough oil, gas and coal licenced to last us until we need to be carbon neutral, does that leave no space for further oil gas and coal licences or exploration?
Well, no, but if we are to be carbon neutral by 2050 and we have all the fossil fuels needed until then, then any further extraction must prove that it can capture the same amount of carbon as its products would release.
Is any oil company going to be able to guarantee that it will capture as much carbon as that is released? Unlikely.
At the current time, around us the price of petrol is roughly £1.50 (there are parts of the UK where it is as low as £1.00). Working on a price of £1.50 roughly 45p goes back to the oil company per litre. Now, petrol when consumed in a combustion engine emits roughly 2.3kg of carbon dioxide for every litre, so for the oil company to be able to pay for the carbon to be caught (current prices tend to range between $100-$400 per tonne, or 10-40cents per kg). This means a price per litre of petrol of between 23 cents and 92 cents – somewhere between half and over 2 times the earnings to the oil company.
In other words, provided each oil company lives up to its promises, there is no longer any profit in oil.
Furthermore, it is not possible to put up prices further, as the competition is electric cars. The UK miles per gallon are typically between 36 and 43, so for the £6.75 per gallon that petrol costs in the UK, giving a price per mile of between 16p and 19p, or £1.60-£1.90 for 10 miles. Our car (a relatively large, if efficient electric car) goes around 3.3 miles per kwh (better on the motorway) and with 1 kwh costing around 7p that means a price of 21p per 10 miles. That means that already electric cars are between 7.6 and 9 times cheaper to travel at the current time. These cars are only getting more efficient, so by 2050 it is probably even worse.
Who is going to choose to drive with a fuel almost 10 times more expensive? Oil for personal travel is a dead man walking. Heat pumps and many other things, mean that fossil fuels are not going to be used for so many more of the tasks in our life. It is true that we are yet to find a way to replace fossil fuels in air travel, but in the next 26 years, it is highly likely that we will crack this too.
The short conclusion, is that we do not need further licences, and anyone stupid enough to buy a licence is unlikely to be able to afford to use it – this at least suggests that the majority of the uses of fossil fuels will disappear in the next 25 years, though those in the west need to make sure that the prices come down fast, as this is the only way that the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) will move over to heat pumps and electric cars at the rate that we all require.
How do we help this happen, when so many of the people in these countries live hand to mouth anyway.
For those who come to this site regularly, you may well have noticed a break in out blog contents – we have been concentrating on other parts of the website. Should you go looking, we have now built a series of animal databases – these are just the first few. Our aim is to link to as many species of wildlife as possible, and offer visitors the ability to book to go to places where a specific species lives. It is true, that some species are rarely seen – so if pangolin or beaked whale is the species you want to see, while we can help put you in the right place, we cannot guarantee a sighting.
On the other hand, with the incredible pressure on ecosystems around the world, without tourists visiting regularly, many of these ecosystems will be destroyed – and then the chance of seeing these species will be very low (and if this happens too often, the chance of seeing some of these species may drop to zero as they become extinct).
A depressing thought, but understand, we have the power to change things.
It is often not easy, to live alongside wildlife, particularly as a farmer. From minor irritants to crop damage or even livestock predation, there are many pitfalls. This website is finally reaching a point where we are aiming to help with this. Whatever the primary use of your land, we believe that there is enough interest to produce a second income from interested parties – and while this could range from enough to live on, to extra ‘pocket money’, we want to reach a point where destroying wildlife is a financial insanity. Help us!
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.
There is still a great deal of reluctance to accept climate change amongst republicans (this is odd in a country with one of the highest education levels in the world). There is also a certain amount of those who have publicly accepted it, saying humans cannot do anything about it anyway (so why should we try).What is worse, is that a number of them must recognize that climate change is a threat to their state and the people who live there, but are campaigning against it because of the narrow interests of a car company which is based in their state. This video outlines it well
Another attempt is being made to move the world beyond EVs and onto hydrogen cars. Is this worthwhile? Who is trying to make this happen and why? Lets start by looking at the advantages and disadvantages of this technology. (I have named them electric and hydrogen cars, I know some hydrogen car makers will take issue with this, but an EV does not need a fuel to be pumped into the car, merely power)
Comparison subject
Electric car
Hydrogen car
Fuel
Electricty
Hydrogen
Fuel Cost
3p a mile charged at home, on the go varies but up to 15p
A full charge drives 300- over 400 in a modern electric car.
And where is most charging done? at home while you sleep
£10-15 per kg, 77 miles per kg.13p-19p. It has a capacity of 5.6kg (£56-£84 at those prices)
A full tank allows around 400 miles range
There are few refilling stations and even in the best parts of the world they are less common than chargers or petrol stations.
Fuel Carbon Cost
Carbon neutral up to UK grid 2021 of 265g per kwh (so around 85g per mile at top)
50-55kwh to make 1kg of hydrogen. So between zero and 14.575kg of carbon, or 189g per mile
So a hydrogen car is more expensive to fuel and worse for the environment. What is good?
It is true that a hydrogen car can refuel faster, taking 3-5 minutes, however, you have to stand by your car for this whole period. A tesla 3 can add 172 miles in 15 minutes.
According to a financial times article, the average motorway stop is for around 20 minutes. Now, it is generally suggested by highway codes and similar, to stop for 15 minutes every 2 hours. This means that while a hydrogen car can drive for longer in one go, the human inhabitants will need far more comfort breaks. A tesla 3 can be driving for 2.5 hours before needing that 15 minute break once again.
This is about the only advantage
Cost of vehicle: a Toyota Mirai starts at just under £50,000, while the tesla 3 starts at just under £40,000. Hydrogen cars also need more services.
So who benefits from a switch?
Toyota with its smooth-riding Mirai and Hyundai’s Nexo. Audi, Honda, BMW, and others have explored it as well, but generally the car is complex so who does well? Fossil fuel companies. If they cannot sell fossil fuels, perhaps they can simply split them for the hydrogen
The Greenlandwolf, is known from remains, to have lived in Greenland for at least 7600 years, though, given Caribou have been there for 8900 years, it is quite possible that they have been there for longer.
It is a small population of around 200 individuals, so encountering them is rare. This video to the right is an incredible encounter a photographer had, when she realized that she had been surrounded by them. As you can see, wolves do not generally consider humans as food.
We have not been as kind in the past, and between 1920 and 1932, 35 wolves were killed in the core wolf range, forcing the population to decline rapidly to extinction.
It should be noted, that there is only a small population in Greenland, and it is a huge landmass, so it is quite possible that the population is larger.
Eucalyptus plantation and rainforest, approximately 50 miles north of Porto de Moz, Brazil.
Thomas Crowther was an ecologist whose work inspired many tree planting projects, the problem is that this is a more complex idea than it first seems, and more importantly, mass plantations do not help.
Forests take up vast quantities of carbon, but the whole ecosystem must benefit, otherwise while trees may get planted, they are likely to fall foul of pests, or similar.
One of the simple requirements, is to plant trees more like a rainforest would. We cannot plant monocultures of a single tree – this is simply the equivalent of rolling out a picnic rug for the specific pests which feed on the tree in question. Instead, we need hundreds of tree species in each acre. Amazingly, without this, the trees ability to do what we want and draw down carbon dioxide is severely limited, so will fail.
Interestingly, preserving remaining forests has a far bigger impact on carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere, so this is not only beneficial to the wildlife that lives there, it is also one of our most effective tools, to avoid climate change.
Think of all the primates, great apes and many other species that would be saved, if we just started to do what is best for ourselves.
Above, is an interesting video done by one of the more popular youtubers in this space. It looks at a fascinating new idea about how we could harness the wind.
You might well ask, why do we need a new way? and that is a good question. The simple fact is that in the current model that we use with the standard wind turbine, they are reaching the biggest size that they can possibly be (there is a wind turbine in China, which is 50 storeys high). It is likely the simplest way to harness wind power at sea, but what about power for a single building or a small village? This new way of harnessing the wind has got Bill Gates attention with a cost of roughly 1/3. Being only 25m tall rather than the normal height, it could be placed in far more places, without reducing the power given. Furthermore, on this system, the whole of each blade actually helps pull around the track, rather than just the tip. It is true that these are early in their process, but why is this useful. Well with this idea, you could for instance put a track over a long terrace of houses, or even over a stretch of motorways. Furthermore, it is possible to put all of the parts of an 2.5mw turbine inside a single lorry.
Installation costs are Airloom energy $0.21 per watt installed, vs wind farm $1.25 per watt on standard wind turbines. Multiplying that up, Airloom would cost $210,000 per megawatt hour, while a windfarm would cost $1,250,000. Looking at it differently, if Airloom succeeds, you would be able to install almost 6megawatt hours of Airloom for every megawatt hour of normal wind turbine. It should be noted that in recent times, solar has overtaken wind as the cheapest form of electricity generation. This to reverse this gain for a very long time.
