At the moment there is an alarmingly high frequency of British conservative members of Parliament stating things about global warming and reducing carbon footprint that are categorically wrong.
Polar ice is now melting 6 times faster than it was in the 1990s
This statistic on its own is alarming but to put it in Context this suggest that we are tracking the worst of the three scenarios put forward by climate scientists in the past.
Wind and solar will soon be cheaper in all markets than coal powered electrical generation
First of all this statistic is quite astounding. The drop in the cost of both wind power and and solar has been so significant over the last few years that once the preserve of wealthy countries it will soon be cheaper than anything else.
The astounding thing about this statistic though is that this is not only where you are building a grid from scratch, but wind and solar will soon be cheaper even if you have a prebuilt coal power plant. It is thought that this date will occur around about 20:30
Increased concern for damage to indigenous communities from covid 19
Brazil has changed its tack under bolsonaro. He has been astoundingly derogatory about the indigenous Brazilian people ( indeed the way he talks you would only think he wanted the rule for the Descendants of European settlers) and this has been shown by his increasing support and push for invasion of their lands either forgiveness afterwards or promises beforehand that nothing will happen.
In a human crisis the Natural World often does incredibly well
It would appear that corvid 19 has had a phenomenal good impact on the Worlds atmosphere. The fact that significant portions of of China have been under lockdown has meant that the factories are closed down. Satellite pictures of these places show significantly less pollution then is normally the case.
Similar impacts can be seen over parts of India and western Europe.
It just been uncovered: people working for trump are implanting climate denialism into scientific research
Multiple times in the last few years administration has taken a scientific report and decided to do something that completely contradicts his findings.
The most obvious of these is global warming, where it extends to the import of hunting trophies from abroad and the huge increase in the number of trophies allowed to be taken in the USA (likely to decimate wildlife populations within the country).
However having run up against this time and time again the trump administration is increasingly trying to forced all the arguments by putting in his false information into the report before it’s published.
An Insider in the interior department has been inputting the the totally discredited idea that trump has been regularly spouting- there’s an actuality extra carbon dioxide in the environment is good. Given the basis of the recent globally agreed treaties to deal with the increase in carbon dioxide emissions- and the clear need for the USA’s reduce it’s emissions given that it accounts for 25% of the world’s total, this is a clear attempt to justify abandoning its agreements.
In particular Trumps appointment who arrived early in his presidency, has continually tried to push the idea that at the current models have over-estimated the amount of warming that would occur. This is despite the data clearly stating this is not the case indeed if anything is has underestimated the impact.
The trump administration has attacked aggressively the interior department scientific outlook both in terms of studying future global warming and of studying diseases and epidemics. This second area has quite rightly come back to bite them as the Outbreak of the Corona virus has demonstrated the lack of readiness that the trump administration has for a significant illness spending in the population.
I should mention that this article was written in isolation from yesterdays article and on the basis of other articles, though it should be concerning that the Us government is both trying to make scientific papers play a smaller role in choosing what to do- and the same week an article suggesting that Trumps administration is demanding the right to change scientific articles to fit their own views before publishing.
Why is it necessary to do both? Is it clear, even to Trump, that whatever the position on scientific research you cannot be seen to continue to go against the evidence all the time? America currently leads the world in the amount of research it creates- however if Trump damages the reputation of this research and its impartiality, it could do untold damage to american universities and their world standings. This is likely to last far beyond Trumps administration- reelection or not.
EPA to expand censorship of government scientific papers
Under Scott pruitt the EPA made changes that will allow them to sensor or remove unhelpful parts of governmental scientific papers.
Nigeria upgrading the status of a reserved that protects about 20 Nigeria Cameroon chimpanzees
One of the most endangered subspecies of great is the Nigerian Cameroon chimpanzee. Currently between 3500 and 9000 of these chimpanzees remain in the wild. As with most other primate threatened species the reason for the problem is the reduction in the amount of habitat they have: their forest has been cut down.
The fact that there is such a wide range in estimates of the wild population shows the lack of research into this subspecies, as with many others we are severely endangering wild populations before we even know much about them.
Much of the trespassing into this reserve is for marijuana cultivation. Generally these reserves are setup to carefully manage resources rather than to specifically protect them from destruction, so the upgrading of this protected area should be very good for its future management. As in other national parks while the the chimpanzees are the flagship species that is being protected the fact that the forest they live in will not be cut down me and the saving of many other species that share the same ecosystem.
A survey of a neighbouring States forest reserves last year suggested a 60% reduction in the chimpanzee numbers since the year 2000. This is clearly unsustainable, and given the slow reproduction of chimpanzees it could take a long time to get back to where it was assuming all pressures on this population stop now.
There is already firm moves to to get the agreement from the community surrounding the park so that they can be employed as eco guards. However if well managed and sensible facilities are put in place this could be be the means of improving the standard of living for all these communities in a relatively short period of time. Sustainable tourism could bring in useful funds for the Protection of this forest and the people who rely on it.
Corona-virus threat to primate species
Humans have pushed the majority of wild primates into small spaces, where the total population might number only a thousand or far less.
Personal update
My apologies for my stop start writing at the moment. As with many people I am working with my children at home, which makes it a more stop start project than I would like.
There is lots of things changing at the moment as a result of the Covid 19 outbreak. I am trying to keep the news varied, but as you can imagine, the news on wild species is less numerous when the human world is in uproar.
Also of excitement, we should be going live with our first few reserves and lodges in the next few weeks. Apart from trying to fulfil the initial purpose of this website- to simplify wildlife travel, it would be good to get some income coming in to fund the websites work.
Slightly further in the future, our aim is to allow smaller wild places to be listed. I want to help make having wild animals on your land a positive even if you lose occasional livestock. As these places to visit grow, I hope I will have your support (both financial and otherwise) to simplify wildlife travel and make wildlife a more positive.
This should give wildlife encounters and watching opportunities at a range of prices and I hope to gradually build up a big choice
Tim Welby – blog author