Category: Uncategorized

The concept of a tipping point is quite terrifying. Essentially what it proposes, as if humanity allow warming to a certain point there could then become a feedback loop, making us regaining control next to impossible.

For instance, in the Arctic currently the sea ice reflects a great deal all of the sun’s energy straight back into space. The concern is that as the sea is substantially darker than the ice, as our warming continues the ice cover the arctic seas will soak up more of the sun’s energy. This in turn will lead to more sea ice melting, and so it goes on.

Another arctic tipping point of concern is the vast quantities of methane that are trapped in the permafrost. At one time the Arctic was far warmer and therefore had a great deal of plant matter, much of this is lying under the permafrost. However without the permafrost layer all this methane will escape. Being a substantially more efficient warming gas than carbon dioxide this could have a dramatic impact on the world’s temperature-melting more permafrost and allowing even more methane into the atmosphere.

Both of these feedback loops could have terrifying results for the human race. You would think therefore that we would do something to stop it happening. Yet because of a significant vocal minority, that exists in almost all countries on earth we are not doing this. In the USA much of this climate doubters have found a home in the republican party. Unfortunately in the UK these people have found a home largely with the conservative party, and while they have made an effort to scrub this climate change denying side of their party it still pulls many of the strings. One such example was David Cameron’s attempt to rebrand the conservative party has been good for the planet- with it’s little tree icon-followed only a few years later with David Cameron notably saying I’ve had enough of this green “bleep”.

To make progress and avoid these horrific feedback loops, the world’s population must stop voting for short-term gain and elect political leaders who are actually going to try to leave a better world for our children than they found.

The Javan rhino is critically endangered, with a population comfortably under 100 individuals.

This is why it is very exciting that people have spotted two new calves this year in there only remaining habitat of Ujung Kulon National Park.

Wind turbines have been gradually getting bigger and bigger. There are several reasons for this; Bigger wind turbines are better at translating the wind into electricity, and when you get more than 100 m above the earth’s surface the wind speeds become far more reliable (this allows for better predictions of what electricity will be available when).

California has rather a different make up than the rest of the USA. With an economy which will often rank well within the top 10 countries in the world, and a very different political leaning to much of the rest of America, California has often treated climate change far more seriously than elsewhere in the USA.

Beaked whales are a relatively little known about family of species.they are known to be able to hold their breath for incredibly long periods of time, but a recent study has shown quite how incredible this was.

When initially there was a discussion among the global community about cutting carbon emissions to fight global warming, it was agreed that many countries that were just developing needed to have the ability to emit carbon to get to where the rich countries already are (as the rich countries had done during their growth period).

Jennifer Aniston’s record for the quickest time to a million followers on Instagram has been beaten by David Attenborough. After joining the site it only took 4 hours and 44 minutes to reach 1 million followers.

In recent years the BBC has stopped trying to cover over the threat to the natural world in their world famous documentaries. This once as you can see, deals with the fact that there are so many species currently threatened with extinction on earth- and virtually all are our fault either directly through hunting and ecosystem loss, or indirectly through climate change.

A significant portion of the world carbon emissions are taken up bye the rain forests of the tropics. This is something we rely on-without this we would need to become substantially carbon negative around the world to halt runaway global warming from the natural carbon emissions from various sources.

The largest single un-broken piece of ice in the Arctic existed in Greenland, but it has just got significantly smaller. The piece that broke off is not exactly small, measuring around 110 square miles in size. This huge peace is already started to break into far more smaller pieces.