Category: Uncategorized

Reduction in the carbon cost of smelting aluminium

At the moment aluminium smelting is a process which uses carbon dioxide, as an ingredient,  which is then released.  New technology has been developed that will drastically cut carbon emissions from aluminium production. This is such a carbon intensive process that the change will save 6.5 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions a year in Canada alone. Continue reading “News in Brief – Reduction in the carbon cost of smelting aluminium, mysterious rise in banned ozone depleting chemicals, does the UK really need until 2040 to stop selling hydrocarbon powered cars?”

It is only in recent times that scientists have looked carefully at the elephants that live in the rainforest of Africa and found that actually they are a different species to the savanna elephant.

While there are areas of forest such as the Udzungwa mountains in Tanzania, which are surrounded by Savanna, that are inhabited by Savannah elephants, this is rare.

The African forest elephant is a distinct animal that is spread out throughout the Congo Basin. It is smaller with straighter tusks (as it lives in forest the wide spread tusks of Savannah elephants would get in the way) and smaller ears. The poaching of Savannah elephants increased after southern African countries were allowed a one off sale of their ivory stocks, and while some poaching of forest elephants was going on, this “one off sale” (southern African countries started talking about a repeat almost instantly) increased demand.

The generally recognised idea is that every few years, if lots of ivory is released in one go, the price falls so low that it is not worth the risk that congress with it. Elephants are highly intelligent animals very capable of doing serious injury to people who get to close, particularly if they feel threatened. Due to their ability to communicate over large distances once one is killed all others will be highly aggressive (an added problem as it reduces the money from photographic safari).

Unfortunately, on this occasion countries who had no history of ivory carving or ownership started reading legal ivory and wanted more than was provided. Furthermore China with its large and newly created wealthy middle class, proved a fertile market particularly as it came to be seen as a status symbol.

As such when the legal ivory supply ran out, the markets looked for other places to get it. The Selous in Tanzania lost 80,000 elephants in 4 years.

However, it quickly became apparent that forest elephants were harder to protect, and so came the massacre of the Congo basin elephants. Unfortunately, being straighter forest elephant tusks are easier to work with so enhancing the poaching.

There are small areas where elephant have largely escaped,  such as Gabon, but in general there had been as rapid destruction of these animals, and in areas local extinction.

It should be noted that as ecosystem engineers forest elephants are highly important and forests without them are more at risk from many threats.

Over the last few years there has been a distinct move within leading political parties against experts. This was particularly clear in the run up to the Brexit vote, where the ‘vote leave campaign became increasingly cross with ‘experts sticking their nose in’. Having won the referendum by a narrow margin, any one who points out that the remain campaign had made valid points are attacked (not being patriotic enough etc). Bizarrely this has not been challenged effectively

However,  in the USA Donald Trump has pushed this to extreme proportions. The one place that had continued to look at Trumps absurd claims in a realistic way are the comedians on the evening chat shows. The problem is that with Trump leading America, science and reason have been forced to take a back seat.

The situation had got so bad, in April 2018 600 scientists jointly called out Trump’s attacks on all sides of science. The problem is that due to Trump’s positron as president, he doesn’t have to have a coherent argument – he can simply decree a new governmental line.

Scott Pruitt as he ad of the EPA has declared that we need a red team blue team debate (a debate with two teams from opposing viewpoints) on climate change.  In areas where debate has not reached a conclusion, red team blue team is useful. Climate science is not one of those – indeed science in general works asking these lines- new theories are presented in published papers, and then all scientists can read them and when they disagree submit dissenting papers. Over time a consensus is reached. Scott Pruitt’s idea is particularly stupid as after this process had gone on for the last 50 years a consensus had been reached. As I wrote in my article looking at the  regularly quoted 97% consensus on climate change, looking at papers published in the last few years by serious scientists (as opposed to oil companies’ scientists who know at the start what their research must say) well above 99.9% of articles from the last couple of years agree, the climate is warming and humans are causing it.

In another article in the Guardian, the author argues that the republicans have so damaged the EPA, the only way to reverse this is by a change in government. Some of the changes brought in actually make it harder for the EPA to use science as a reason for anything. Thankfully, Trump has so irritated a large part of the voting population that it is possible he will lose House or Senate or both, however until then there are people trying to defend these attacks. Under Pruitt, the EPA has become a body to promote business rather than looking after the natural environment of the USA.

A Republican senator attacked the idea that climate change and melting ice sheets were causing sea level rises. Instead he pointed at the cliffs of Dover and similar –  he claimed that the world wide sea level rises are caused by rock falls, along with silt and mud washed down rivers. This demonstrates such a lack of scientific understanding as to be highly concerning he got into the Senate.

Quite apart from anything,  given the vast area covered by oceans (361 million square km), one cubic km of rock would raise one million square miles of oceans by 1mm, so to raise world oceans by 1mm you would need 361 cubic km going into the oceans – an astounding amount,  especially as this is for 1mm sea level rise – 1 metre rise requires 1000 more rock. He also insisted the Antarctic ice sheet has grown recently despite all scientists agreeing the data show it has shrunk by over 1000 square km.

The UK is also currently engaged in a quiet push to get the EU to weaken climate laws. It is not surprising that this attempt is surreptitious, as it goes against all scientific evidence. The UK tried and failed to add similar legislation to the 2012 climate agreement. I have to say that I find this behaviour from Westminster embarrassing, and it worries me, that it is about to lose its brake on stupid moves that currently exists in the form of the EU.

There are a large number of different trials going on around the country into whether it is feasible to reintroduce Beavers and what they would do in the places that they would return. This question is important to answer for several reasons. The first of these is that there is a legal requirement in the EU to consider reintroducing any species that has been made locally extinct by humans. While we are leaving the EU this directive is actually a very good thing and therefore is worth following. The second reason that this question needs answering is because in places like the Tyne river basin in Scotland a large number of beavers have escaped and live in the wild and it is important to work out whether this is something that we wish to encourage or to reverse. Continue reading “Beaver trials – as expected, benefiting ecosystem”

In an interview last year Tucker Carlson bought in a physicist from MIT and then berated him over his, and the generally accepted, views on climate change. In this interview Tucker Carlson stated many facts that were totally incorrect.

It was an absurd interview, and would only be tolerated by a channel like Fox News. However while Fox News is more willing to openly state things that any reasonable person would be able to refute, the interview would be improved if an interviewee was allowed to appear and speak without being interrupted by the host. This behaviour is not restricted to far right wing news channels but unfortunately happens in many other places.

Many of these outlets, if challenged, will state that the numbers generated were changed in some way by the scientists. In recent years unfortunately there has been a climate scandal that started in the UK University of East Anglia.

This group edited a graph by smoothing out bumps in recent periods, to remove any drops in the average temperature. This was underhand and foolish, particularly as accepted for publication in a serious magazine the underlying data would have to be presented alongside the analysis done. Having said that, this was an attempt to make the graph look clearer than it was, but the underlying evidence is extremely clear. The fiddling of the data was not required.

The organisations that made the biggest fuss over this con have continued to point at this as a reason to not take action despite further mounting evidence showing that climate change is taking place and indeed accelerating, and that therefore we still need to take action as fast as possible.

The Persian Leopard

The Persian Leopard is only found in a few countries and only in very few small numbers. However the fact that it still clings on means that it is far easier to recover this species than it would be were the last few to have disappeared. This is similar to the Amur Leopard which dropped to only a population of perhaps 20 but has made an astounding recovery in the last 10 years where it has gained more than double its population. This is still a very small population base but is likely to lead to a growing population which, because of the support of the Worldwide Conservation Group, has huge amounts of money being thrown at it. Continue reading “News in Brief: The Persian Leopard, Accidental Death of one of the last male Marsican bears, and a mutant enzyme which eats plastics”

As much as half of our carbon footprint comes from what we eat. There is a carbon price on virtually everything, there are very few foods, unless we grow them ourselves in our garden, which take in more carbon then it takes to grow and get them to us.

It is it a particular problem that in the West we eat a large amount of meat as this is far more carbon intense then eating vegetables. However not all meats are the same, and it is actually possible to cut your food carbon footprint significantly without removing all meat from it.

It should be it noted, numbers I have had to state are approximate. There are instances where some of the meat would have far higher carbon footprints than are stated. A particularly poor situation is in South America where large parts of the Amazon are being cut down to give grazing ground for cattle. The fact that the rainforest is being cut down would suggest that this beef has a extremely high carbon footprint, and far higher than these stated numbers.

Lamb come out the highest, with the equivalent of 91 miles driven for each portion eaten. Beef in general came second on about 63 miles per serving, but this can be higher depending on where and how the cattle was raised. It should be noted that in a time of not enough water in many parts of the world beef grazing is also a very poor efficiency use of water.

Cheese has the next highest footprint at about 31 miles per serving (assuming that servings are roughly similar size). At 28 and 25 pork and then turkey has a dramatically lower carbon footprint than lamb or beef which would suggest that while going vegetarian will cut your food carbon footprint in half you get half of this benefit simply by switching beef for pork or turkey. Chicken has an even lower carbon footprint, only 16 miles driven per serving, so halving your carbon footprint again. Eggs have a carbon footprint of 11, and potatoes have a carbon footprint of 7 so you cannot go carbon free on your food.

Unfortunately in the West, as with most other carbon emissions, we find that the way we live is the worst way in terms of reducing CO2. Other countries like India and China have rapidly rising CO2 levels and have or will soon overtake America and Western Europe. In terms of carbon per head India and China are still vastly lower then we have in the West and it is our responsibility to demonstrate a way of living without emitting so much carbon that the planet roasts.

The Eurasian Steppe is a vast grassland that stretches in the West from Romania and Ukraine all the way through much of Russia to the Far East of the Eurasian continent. In the past this huge grassland supported vast populations of ungulates (hoofed animals). The damage to the ecosystem has been most severe in the far East of this huge wildlife habitat, in an area called the Eastern Steppe. Continue reading “Collapse of the far Eastern Steppe ecosystem and what is being done to help its recovery”

Dolphins breaking fishing nets

Dolphin in the Western Mediterranean Sea have taken to breaking into fishing nets. While this is considered a serious problem it is thought that actually this is probably the fault of the fishermen. There is no limit on the quota that the fisherman from Cyprus are allowed to take. This is meaning that there simply aren’t enough fish left in the sea. What is more absurd about this is that local fisherman are highly critical of this policy and actually would like limits put in place so as to protect their income over the longer term and stop large boats coming in from elsewhere to decimate the future stock. Amusingly they have attempted pingers on the nets, in order to put the dolphins off. Unfortunately it appears that the dolphin rapidly worked out what these pingers meant and have taken to treating them as a dinner bell, coming in rapidly to feast. Continue reading “News in Brief – Dolphins breaking nets, frogs resistant to illness, and bad news for the Great Barrier Reef”

For those of you who have not heard of Bonobos, they are a close relation to the Chimpanzee. The population of Chimpanzees and the population of Bonobos is split by the Congo River. It seems that as the Congo River formed it split the population of Chimpanzees in the far distant past, and the Chimpanzee like animals on one side continued to evolve as chimpanzees dominated by males. However on the other side of the river, they took a different path, these chimpanzees started to be dominated by the females and as such the way the communities behaved changed. Rather than regular aggression and violence, things changed so that when tension arose it was dealt with by sexual contact instead of by violence. The females in the Bonobo population are the dominant force and the males are kept carefully under control. Continue reading “A new discovery about the astounding intelligence of Bonobos”