Drax coal power station is the largest remaining coal generator in the country and has stated that from next year they are going to stop burning coal and switch to biomass. This is a fantastic milestone and should be celebrated.
What should the government do about hybrid cars
I believe hybrids should be banned alongside pure petrol and diesel engine vehicles: they generally only have a range of 20 or 30 miles at most before you need petrol or diesel and as such even on a standard commute usually they cannot run purely on electricity. Furthermore unless the buyer is a person who for instance is elderly and only used it to go to the shop once a week this setup means the majority of the use will be in a fossil fuel mode. Hybrids are away for fossil fuel cars to make themselves look cleaner. However, this requires you to have a full working fossil fuel engine and a fully working electrical propulsion which means the vehicle is more complicated and more likely to break down as well as not doing either job particularly well.
At the moment the plan is to ban hybrid as well which is good. A hybrid that does not allow more than 90 % of travel miles to be done on electricity is not good enough.
However other countries are being more ambitious on when they banned the sale of new new fossil fuel cars, and it is being suggested actually bringing this date forward further 2030 would save UK consumers a considerable amount of money. One of the reason that government set targets so far in the future is so that all the Industries involved can be sure of where they stand, the UK may have been one of the first countries to say that they were going to ban fossil fuel cars but their date was so on an ambitious that one year later they are already moving it 5 years sooner still, and there is a potential to need to move it soon as still- which would suggest that the government has failed miserably to to give a clear framework for what is going to happen in the future.
Greta thunberg leads protest of 30000 environmentalists in in Bristol and calls for young people to be the adults in the room
Greta thunberg is back in the UK and is leading a protest in Bristol into the destruction of the environment and global warming. She has stated that young people have to be the adults in the room as the leaders of virtually all countries are not doing enough to save the globe.
Objectively it is hard to argue with her analysis.
Continue reading “Greta thunberg leads protest of 30000 environmentalists in in Bristol and calls for young people to be the adults in the room”Fighting a locust plague with ducks?
China is to send 100000 ducks to Pakistan in order to help with the fight against the Plague of locusts they are fighting. It has been found that ducks have three times the capability of fighting locust outbreaks than chickens that we used originally.
In optimum conditions ducks can eat 200 locust each per day. With 100000 duck army this is 20 million Les locusts every single day. Given 400 billion locusts are approaching China from Pakistan and this seems a rather small impact. The ducks will eat around 0.005% of the locust population each day. Also the ducks have been found to stay where they are put far more reliably than chickens.
However perhaps they will impact a locusts behaviour or breeding success. Time will tell how successful this is.
MIT scientists have developed a process which can desalinate water using the sun
Desalination is an extremely power hungry process. Either of substantial amount of pressure is required or evaporation of the water.
However recent process by MIT looks to hugely improve the efficiency of such a system. Using a series of evaporators and condensing sections they have been able to reach an efficiency of 385% ( Due to the reusing of this ambient heat allowing an efficiency well in excess of 100%)
Continue reading “MIT scientists have developed a process which can desalinate water using the sun”Why is Goa claiming they have no wild tigers, when are the parts of India are claiming they do when they’ve been lost
The Western Ghats is one of the best kept conservation areas of India. Indeed in the past you regularly heard tigers growling. In this remote northern corner of Goa tigers are a well-known and popular member of the local fauna. Being an animal that many people would like to see in the wild having tigers is also withdraw to your corner of the world.
Three endangered mountain gorillas killed by lightning strike
Mountain gorillas live in a small patch of montane, rainforest in Central Africa. Being a mountainous region there are naturally dangers and unfortunately 3 mountain gorillas, succumbed to one of these dangers recently. They were killed by a lightning strike.
The mountain gorilla population does currently stand at around 1000 members having grown by almost 50% since 2008. This is very impressive for a slow breeding population like gorillas, but this is a still a relatively small population and a local epidemic could make the situation very poor.
Continue reading “Three endangered mountain gorillas killed by lightning strike”Botswana has recently sold the right to hunt 60 elephants. Should the rest of us mind?
There has been uproar around the world at the decision of the Botswana government to sell the rights to hunt 60 of their elephants.
Conservationists have the cried this as a threat to the elephant population. The cost of hunting each one will be over £30,000 which means that the total money earned from this will almost come to 2 million.
Now let’s put this Hunt in perspective. Botswana hosts 30% of Africa’s remaining elephants. The current elephant population of Africa standards around 415000, And while this is down from 1.3 million in 1979, It is very expensive to conserve the remaining elephants, And therefore necessary that the country to host them find ways to raise the money.
When are too many elephants in an area Generally the biodiversity drops as they knocked the majority of the trees down and therefore, reduce the amount of habitat that is not suitable to them.
Those against elephant hunting do have some scientific arguments on their side. One of the most obvious is the fact that because Hunters like to have elephants with large tusks, this is not an advantage. In areas where hunting occurs we are changing the genetic population, because while in the past having large tusks meant you would have more babies and live longer it now means you are hunted earlier and therefore you don’t survive to have young of your own.
However, While I would never go hunting elephants myself, and do not feel that I am impressed by people who do hunt elephants, there are areas of the world where hunting could be argued is a necessary evil. This is for various reasons, from not enough people wanting to see the wildlife, to their being too many elephants for the area to support (this causes high mortality in young and a change in the vegetation which in turn can impact other species}
Rhino poaching Falls for the fifth consecutive year in South Africa
The fact that the rhino poaching of South Africa has fallen for 5 years in a row is something to celebrate. However, despite this there is a lot that we still need to be concerned about.
In 2019 594 Rhinos were killed within the Kruger National Park by poachers. In 2015 a little over 1300 rhino were lost to poachers, in the same area. As such, cutting the poaching by more than half in the space of only 5 years is impressive ( though, it should be noted that the rise was more rapid than the fall has been), 594 Rhinos killed is still a huge number.
South Africa hosts over 90% of the world’s remaining Rhinos, which means that any poaching here has a large impact on the world’s population. It should be noted that the 594 Rhinos lost last year in South Africa Is the equivalent of 4 times the total world population of Sumatra and Java Rhinos that remain.
Boris Johnson has announced that petrol and diesel cars will be banned 5 years earlier than originally planned
Boris Johnson has announced that the British government will ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from the year 2035 rather than the original 2040.
Continue reading “Boris Johnson has announced that petrol and diesel cars will be banned 5 years earlier than originally planned”