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In the UK, it has been shown that at every solar farm looked at, there were more species, from insects such as butterflies, to mammals such as hares do well.
I would argue that these areas are not as good as reserves, but it is still a positive benefit. Indeed, it is conceivable that if wolves and bears returned to the UK, these sites could be fantastic for these animals.
Chevron has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2030 through a carbon offset scheme. It is notable, that Chevron sells a product which is totally incompatible with carbon zero emissions.
This new research suggests that their carbon offsets are worthless, and therefore the emissions of Chevron will not change at all.
Corporate Accountability, a non-profit which did the research, found that 93% of the offsets that Chevron bought and counted are so environmentally problematic as to be worthless.
A carbon offset scheme is considered worthless, if its linked to a forest or plantation (or green energy project that does not lead to additional carbon capture. In other words, it is great to pay countries to keep their forests standing, indeed this is essential, not one new tonne of carbon is pulled out of the air by protecting the forest, so the carbon Chevron releases has not been removed from the air.
This is for a simple reason – it is not capturing new emissions. It is fantastic to not cause new emissions, but stopping new emissions is not the same as catching carbon to offset emissions that you are creating.
How did Chevron think this was acceptable.
Carbon offset is very simple: if I emit 1 million tonnes of carbon, and then pay to replant a rainforest in Tanzania that can take 1 million tonnes out of the atmosphere, this carbon remains locked as long as the rainforest continues to stand. Another idea would be to capture 1 million tonnes of carbon and bury it deep in the earth, to lock it away for millions of year.
In 2020, Trump gave responsibility for managing wildlife populations back to the states. Now one might argue that this is the right thing to do, after all it is democracy, but is it?
Many of the states in the USA are horrifically gerrymandered, with some having a small minority overruling the great majority. There are many intentional ways that this is done (republicans have been very good at it over time – there are been 2 times in recent years where democrats got more votes but lost.
Continue reading “Montana (and many other states) cannot be trusted to maintain sensible populations of grizzly bears or wolves, so why do they have control?”Across France this is around 11gigawatts, or over the year almost 10 terawatt hours of electricity generation per year. This is a very sensible idea, as it is a second use of the land.
In the south of England, there are now 2000 panels placed over car parking spaces. These offer a capacity of almost 1MW hour. Each parking space covered, has a capacity of about 2kw. In the UK, the countries target of solar by 2030 is to have 40gw of solar capacity, up from 15gw currently. It is estimated, that almost half the remaining target would be met by carpark roofing – which suggests that we could hit far more than 40gw of solar.
Usually in order to increase the power generation from anything, it needs new hardware – if you wanted to increase the amount of power from a set of solar panels on your roof there is little you can do, without replacing them (this of course pre-supposes that the panels are in a good location, and are not in the shadow of a tree).
That is why this is incredibly exciting. The idea of being able to roll our new rules about how wind turbines work, and instantly make 1% more energy is incredible.
It is true that, currently, wind only accounts for about 6.5% of electricity generation. Conversely, it accounts for 24% of renewable generation – which is quite likely to be a percentage that grows as we move towards 100% renewable electricity generation.
So, with this change it will only account for 6.565% what difference is that?
Well, last year the world generated 28500 terawatt hours, which means that 0.065% increase is 18.5 terawatt hours extra created through 100% green sources.
Now, between 2020 and 2022, the average carbon emissions per kwh was around 370g. As such, were all of this energy created in the USA (it is not the most expensive or the least, so we are going to use it as representative – even though this power would be generated around the world) this much extra green energy would save 0.370 time 18.5 time 10 to the power of 9 (there are 1,000,000,000 kwh in 1 terawatt hour) which means that this little modeling trick would have saved roughly 7 million tonnes of carbon emissions. Now while this is relatively small in global terms (with 50 gigatonnes of emissions in 2020) it is still not insignificant – indeed, it is equivalent to the total emissions of Botswana, or indeed Latvia in 2021. That strikes me as an easy move, perhaps looking at this in a different way, perhaps more importantly, for wind farm companies, this energy is worth roughly £340 million ($450 million)
The Christian Social Democrats believe that there is no place for wolves in Germany, and members of the party have called for their intentional extinction. Taking around 10% of the vote they are a small but relatively influential party – and given the way that elections work in Germany, coalitions are common. Unfortunately, coalitions will often give small parties an outsized voice, so this foolish position has the potential to become government policy faster than one would expect.
The Gir forest was the last refuge of the Asiatic lion. Back in 1893 it was thought that there were only 18 animals remaining. Thankfully that number has rebounded very well (there are scientists who doubt this extremely low number) and the Indian lion population is now thought to number about 600. The problem is, that the reserve is not particularly large at 1410 square km (544 square miles). Even in the Serengeti (which has one of the highest density of lions) there is about 1 lion for every 2 square miles, yet the Gir forest has more than one per square mile. This contributes to a mortality rate that is dangerously high, with 283 lions dying in the last couple of years.
As such it is not surprising that many of the lions live outside the reserve, and is thought that around 1 in 4 live outside the reserve.
This was one of the reasons that efforts were made to move some of these lions to other reserves, but Gujarat has blocked this despite loosing various court cases.
Now, it is not easy to live alongside lions, and the state government is both endangering the long term survival of the Indian Asiatic lion, as well as many of its human population by its determination to hold onto the whole population within its borders.
The Indian cheetah was lost from India back in 1952. Hosting Tigers, Lions, Leopards, and Snow Leopards within its borders, it was a mark of pride when the cheetah reintroduction was announced. It is certainly true that cheetah once roamed India, and as the only cat to be lost in theory I would agree that it should be returned. However, there are many other issues, not least the fate of surviving Indian wild cat species: Indian lions came close to extinction, and Tiger population fell to about 1% of historical numbers – now up to about 4%, Indian snow leopards are also only thought to number around 4-500.
In other words, there is much concern that any significant amount of conservation money, which might otherwise be used to protect the remaining Indian Lions Tigers and Snow Leopards (as well as Leopards and other smaller cats) will be redirected to reintroduce the Cheetah, and therefore one of these other species will be lost in the process.
What is of bigger concern, while these are not the 3 to have died, only 3 of the 20 cheetah have been fully released into the wild
Continue reading “3 of the 20 Cheetah translocated from South Africa to India have died in recent weeks, does this confirm doubters?”Sorry for the quiet over the last week, we have been working hard on improving various sides of the website. Firstly, you should find that the menu is easier to use, whether on mobile or a desktop computer. Secondly, a lot of work has gone into the species watch tab. Now all currently listed animals has a page associated, we still need to find more people to help with visitors, but progress is being made.
Do consider joining us, the task is huge.
This creature has been seen off the coast of the UK by divers and snorkelers, but it is thought to be the first time that one was found in a UK rock pool. This is just more signs of our warming planet.
The occasional visitor may not do damage, but it is very possible that if the seas continue to warm enough might arrive to start damaging the prospects of other native wildlife.
The world has got far smaller since the advent of the aeroplane. While many people that are writing on environment and wildlife (like me) would encourage you to avoid flying, By all means reduce it as much as possible, if your journey can be done in the car or by train do it this way. I understand the desire to fly – in just a few hours you can be on the other side of Europe.
However, most European trips can be done either on the train or in the car. Indeed, by train it is often faster than by plane – when you include the waiting time, baggage reclaim, and the time taken getting to and from the airport.
Continue reading “Will flying ever be green?”