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Leading fracking company taken over by green energy group

Fracking is a problem. In many parts of the world (including in the UK) it only emerged as a means of getting oil out of the ground, after we should have stopped doing this.

It is known that most of the known reserves of oil and gas must be left in the ground. it is therefore insane to start a whole new industry extracting oil and gas in new ways.

There was a lot of people saying that if we need oil and gas, why not find it under Britain, but this fails to recognize that oil and gas use is falling fast and needs to fall faster.

If you look at graphs of petrol and diesel over the last few decades, the combination has remained pretty steady. Let demand is expected to fall off a cliff over the next decade.

This is as a result of dual threats, which could undermine most of the market for these damaging fossil fuels.

Firstly, each petrol or diesel car consumes on average about 2.3 tonnes of fuel. This means that each electric car sold reduces demand by 2.3 tonnes per year. Currently only 11% of cars in the UK are electric, but as the government has stated that new fossil fuel car sales will be banned in 2030, this should rise quickly. When surveyed, most drivers say they hope their next car will be electric. If new car sales are banned at this point, it will take a while for all fossil fuel cars to disappear from the roads.

However, there is likely to be an unpleasant feedback loop, where the more electric cars there are on the road, the fewer people want to buy.

In a similar way, fossil fuel free heating methods will replace gas boilers

As the number of consumers of a product reduces the savings from working in large quantities will be lost. This will push up prices for the remaining holdouts -which in turn will push more people to adopt electric alternatives.

By having a green energy company take over a fracking company, these changes are likely to happen as fast as possible. The new owners are not interested in holding on to fracking as long as possible – to the contrary, they will end its use as soon as possible.

This can only be good news in the world

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DHL has ordered 12 all electric Alice cargo planes

While there is not yet a battery that can power a passenger jumbo jet, aviation is looking more and more likely to go electric at some point.

The Alice plane is a plane that when carrying passengers can sit around 20. In cargo mode it can fly around 500 miles. It can be flown by a single pilot, and can fly about 1200kg. Travelling at just short of 300 miles per hour, and taking roughly 30 minutes of charging for every hour in the air (it can only stay up for about 100 minutes) it is thought that using these planes will save about 70% of the cost.

DHL electric cargo plane

Also, being simpler engines with far fewer moving parts, the planes are expected to have higher reliability and lower costs for maintenance.

Even more exciting, these ranges are doable on current batteries. As there is huge amounts of money going into battery research it is highly likely that in the future, the range of these planes will be able to be increased.

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Building new renewable power generation is cheaper than continuing to burn fossil fuels

For decades, many in the fossil fuel industry and plenty of politicians argued that we cannot move to renewables unless they are cheaper than fossil fuels. Now of course this ignores the fact that they have been for decades if we made fossil fuel users pay all the cost of their use (clean-up, health problems and others).

However, a new report shows that across much of the world, it is cheaper to abandon coal and gas power stations and replace them with renewables – and then run them, than it is to keep using the coal or gas PowerStation.

Continue reading “Building new renewable power generation is cheaper than continuing to burn fossil fuels”
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Tiger doubling aim from 2010 review: Bangladesh

It appears that there are only 2 different areas of Bangladesh which still hosts tigers. These include the Sundarbans, an area of mangrove lying between India and Bangladesh and the Chittagong Hills Tract where photographic proof of a tiger has been taken. Unfortunately, though there are tigers in the Chittagong hills tract, it is unlikely going to be more than a few.

While not the habitat people think of, tigers are clearly doing alright in the Sundarbans. The habitat clearly has space for more, but with humans incursions it may never grow much.

There is still some argument about how many tigers call the Sundarbans home. 114 tigers were identified, however as this survey only looked at about 16% of the forest it is reasonable to presume there are more. If all areas of the Sundarbans have similar densities of Tigers, we can estimate the whole population at about 700. Assuming this is prime habitat, the original number of 400-500 seems reasonable.

My judgement is that the tiger population has grown. I suspect that it has not doubled, but it has increased. I suspect that there is still significant poaching, but with continued efforts these tigers could recover.

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The north of the country of Myanmar has been found to play host to a wide range of large mammals

We have watched with horror, the problems that Myanmar has suffered over the last few decades. Perhaps one of the positives though is the fact that often when this sort of thing happens ecosystems are given time to recover.

This appears to be the case in the the snowy north.

40 different large mammals were sighted on the camera traps. These include Red pandas dholes Shortridges langurs and takins. As a result of the study, a recommended southern extension of a local national park, could protect this special area.

Clouded leopards are also present (a species that could encourage tourists to come and visit).

With few roads in the area, at the moment it is only accessible after several days hiking through unforgiving terrain. This has protected it from destruction, but also from discovery.

We must just hope and put pressure on Myanmar to protect this area before it is destroyed.

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In 2010 the 12 tiger countries agreed to try to double the number of wild tigers by 2022 how did they do? Today India

Yesterday I wrote about the problem of tigers living as pets in the USA (https://seeanimalswild.com/2022/02/04/there-are-more-than-10000-tigers-living-in-the-usa-with-under-4000-in-the-wild/(opens in a new tab)

Today and over the next few days, I am going to try to do an overview of how the 12 tiger range countries have managed in their target of doubling tiger numbers in the last 12 years.

India:

Indian tiger resting in the shade

In 2010 it is estimated by WWF that India had 1706 tigers living wild within its borders. There are now estimated to be roughly 2967, which would mean an impressive growth but not meeting the doubling goal they have however claimed to have met it (often with lower starting figures). Still a population increase of 72% is not a bad showing in just 12 years. I should note that this number of 2967 is also listed on many pages as the number of tigers in 2018. So it is possible that they have increased the number further over the last 4 years – data is hard to find. One positive point for the future is currently wild tigers only live in about 10% of the potential 115,830 square miles of habitat. Either way, the Indian country is not satisfied with this number, and are aiming to increase numbers by a further 35%. One thing that has been recognized, is that reserves missing apex predators do not do as well. This is for a variety of reasons, but the main ones come down to regulating availability of grazing for too many herbivores. Mizoram’s Dampa reserve, West Bengal’s Buxa reserve and Jharkhand’s Palamau reserve are three tiger reserves within India which have no tigers.

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Climate scientists have spotted warning signs of the Gulf stream collapse

For many years there has been concern about what will happen to the various ocean currents, as the earth and the oceans warm. One of the currents that has the biggest positive effect is the Gulf stream – and scientists warn that the loss of this current could have devastating effects on the world and must not be allowed to happen.

Unfortunately, we are not changing our habits very much at all, and certainly not fast enough.

Continue reading “Climate scientists have spotted warning signs of the Gulf stream collapse”
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one in three shark and ray species in the world faces extinction

Sharks are generally one of the top predators in any ocean. As a result, if they disappear the rest of the ecosystem tends to loose its balance.

The number of these predators facing global extinction has doubled in just 1 decade. A study recently found that shark and ray numbers are down 70% in the last 50 years. Species that were once pretty common like hammerhead sharks are now in danger of disappearing for ever.

These sorts of sights are already rare, however, we could see them consigned to history if dramatic action is not undertaken in the next few years.

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Carbon footprint of ghost flights during the lockdown

One would think that during the height of lockdown. that no planes would fly. After all, few people wanted to travel, and many destinations were banned.

Unfortunately no such luck. Why do I say this? Well currently 2.1% of emissions come from aviation (in wealthy countries this is far higher as many poor countries have little or no aviation – in the USA aviation accounts for 3-4%).

So what happened in lockdown?

Continue reading “Carbon footprint of ghost flights during the lockdown”
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