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UK electricity generation to be carbon neutral by 2035 says Boris Johnson

By 2030 all cars sold will need to be electric or some other form of fuel. Combustion engines will be banned, this is good news. However, if the national grid continues to burn fossil fuels, the cars will still pollute, even if their efficiency, and therefore the amount of emissions that they create will have fallen.

This will mean that all power in the UK will come from wind, solar, hydro and nuclear.

One of the big advantages, is that this will shield us from price rises of gas impacting electricity prices. Unfortunately, at this time, many houses will still be heated by gas. This can be replaced over time.

At the moment gas power plants are still very important for keeping the lights on in the uk, but this will disappear over the next 15 years.

While there are still challenges, what we need as a country is to be moving in the right direction as fast as possible. Renewables plus nuclear is already above 50% – renewables supplied 43% with nuclear adding another 16%.

By removing carbon emissions from our electricity generation and travel, each family in the UK will cut their emissions by about 17%. No where near finished, but a very good start.

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Tanzania reimposes a rule banning export of animals, one day after they rescinded the ban put in place 2016

The ban was to be lifted for traders to clear their stocks, and would have been lifted from the start of June to the start of December.

Outrage forced the minister in charge to reverse the change within 24 hours.

WWF the worldwide famous conservation organisation warned on Saturday that relaxing this ban would undermine progress made in wildlife protection, particularly by encouraging poaching which has been on the decline in recent years.

Hosting 50% of Africa’s lions, Tanzania is essential for the thriving of many species and so this is a good thing.

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A study found that 3/4 of oil palm concessions in Indonesia and Malaysian Borneo certified by RSPO were forest or wildlife habitat just 30 years ago!

It seems that so long as the initial cause of the deforestation was not palm oil (or perhaps not the current owners of the palm oil farm?), then even if it is immediately converted into palm oil plantations, it can be counted as sustainable.

I think that few people would claim that practices like this are sustainable

This is absurd. It should obviously be the case that if an area is deforested illegally, then it should be reforested, not get the right to permanently become part of the crop areas.

Not really good.

It essentially means that the RSPO affiliation means nothing, as those of us concerned about the destruction of the rainforest and the loss of the biodiversity that it contains cannot trust them at all. I have written in the past, about Newquay zoo getting its signs wrong on avoiding palm oil. What is clear, is that almost none of the palm oil from Indonesia can claim to be avoiding deforestation as you’d expect. Has the RSPO destroyed their authority for ever? Time will tell.

What is clear is that this is not a new thing. Back in 2016 the Huffington post wrote an article “RSPO: Completely Worthless, or Just Mostly Worthless? (UPDATED)” (click the article to read it in another tab) in which it basically outlines many of the points from this latest assessment. This study was more thorough, so can tell us the extent of the problem, but what is clear is that it is not new.

Should the RSPO be given a second chance? I would argue not. If they have not cleaned up shop in 6 years, then there is going to be little rainforest left before they actually get their act together. Can it be done? Ferrero is ranked number 1 out of 173 by WWF on sustainable palm oil sourcing. Clearly it can be done – However, brands that hold onto RSPO may well start being avoided by the eco-concerned. If they are that useless then why even look for their mark

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A simple change in how bitcoin is verified, could cut energy consumption by 99%

Bitcoin and other crypto currencies have rightly gained a reputation of using insane amounts of power to run. Even by using the excess heat to heat other buildings, it is still a problem.
Bitcoin mining already uses as much power as Sweden. However this could all change. Currently, the software uses, “proof of work” which requires massive computer arrays to validate purchases.

Rival system such as Ethereum uses “Proof of Stake” where miners have to pledge their coins to verify transactions. Any inaccurate information leads to penalties.

With how much energy bitcoin is using, they must follow suit or find another way to cut their energy demands dramatically.

Bitcoin mining is requiring so much power, that coal powerplant stations that are due for dismantling are being given a reprieve. This is concerning, particularly in America where their power grid had made much progress, but could see all this reverserd.

We do not want to be in a world, where countries that do not clean up how they power the grid, can make huge piles more money, simply by continuing to pollute.

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Nature communications has calculated that half of world rooftops would supply all the electricity we need

I wrote a short time ago about the solar area needed to power the world. As a result, I was fascinated to find this article from a few months ago.

On the vast majority of rooftops, nothing is done with this space. Covering the half of these roofs that face the right way, with solar panels, would be able to power the world.

This would have another advantage. If the whole world was solar powered, and we connected all countries around the world, then batteries could be unnecessary – Europe could power America and Australia during the night, and they could return the favour during our night.

The UK has been very foolish, but greatly increasing the price of Solar. This must be reversed to not put off the Solar roll out.

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Apparently fossil fuel cars make ‘hundreds of times’ more waste than electric cars

It seems obvious. Into one car you simply put electrons, into the other car you pump as much as 50kg of fuel, which uses more resources?

How anyone can compare the 30kg or so lost at the end of an electric cars life, to the 50kg or so that the average combustion car burns each week, is baffling

Over the lifetime of an electric car, roughly 30kg of raw material will be used. A combustion engine car will use 17,000 litres of oil.

Continue reading “Apparently fossil fuel cars make ‘hundreds of times’ more waste than electric cars”
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Fame of the Axoloti has grown over the last few years -Minecraft, but in the wild they are not doing so well

Axoloti look strange, and have got a lot of attention after being included in Minecraft. Unfortunately they are threatened with extinction

Having lost much if their habitat, the Axoloti is struggling to survive. Once widespread through the high-altitude lakes around Mexico city, the Axoloti an amphibian that is about 30cm long is restricted to just a few inland canals. Here somewhere between 50 and 1000 of these lizards live. Water pollution, habitat loss, and predation by invasive fish species such as Carp and Tilapia are all pushing this amphibian towards extinction.

Public awareness of this animal has exploded. Apart from its inclusion in games, it also features on the 50 peso coin from 2021.

Will it be able to survive? certainly there is now the will, however, it is hard to clean up waterways that lie so close to a huge city.

Time will tell if the Axoloti will survive in the wild, or whether future generations will think that they are a phantom of the game creators imagination.

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Forests appear to reduce the planets temperatures by half a degree – we cant afford to loose this

In a time when half a degree more or less warming, might be the difference between tens of millions of people becoming climate refugees, and hundreds of millions (or even billions), the idea that without our forests the planet would be at least half a degree warmer, should give us even more incentive to protect the forests that remain.

Rainforests are fantastic places and now it is clear that we need them to keep the planet cool copyright Freebie photography
Continue reading “Forests appear to reduce the planets temperatures by half a degree – we cant afford to loose this”
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I have written in the past about the discovery that seaweed added to a cows diet greatly reduces methane emissions, now Morrisons wants to act

Morrisons is to have its cows given additives of seaweed in an attempt to reduce methane emissions.

Cows that can graze along the sea shore will happily eat seaweed, but adding it to all cow diets will greatly reduce emissions

This additive reduces methane emissions by as much as 80%, and given that morrisons currently has roughly 10% of the country shopping there, they have the potential of reducing cow based emissions by 8%. Now other brands need to follow Morrisons lead on this, but about 5% of the UK emissions is accounted for by the emissions of cows, which means that Morrisons move alone, should cut carbon emissions in the UK by around 0.5%, now while this is not huge, if everyone across the country chose to use this meat, 5% of emissions is a pretty substantial cut.

More to the point, with the main supermarket chains in such close competition in the UK, I find it hard to believe that others are not going to follow Morrisons lead. I for one will be happy to get our beef from Morrisons (though in our case, we have already replaced most of our beef mince with turkey mince which has a far lower carbon footprint anyway.

See Animals Wild