Germany is pushing for Group of Seven nations to walk back a commitment that would halt the financing of overseas fossil fuel projects by the end of the year, according to people familiar with the matter. That would be a major reversal on tackling climate change as Russia’s war in Ukraine upends access to energy supplies.
A draft text shared with Bloomberg would see the G7 “acknowledge that publicly supported investment in the gas sector is necessary” as a temporary response to the current energy crisis.
Is Germany the climate villain now and not Canada for once LOL. This is Germany getting what it deserves after a bunch of idiotic energy decisions especially regarding their nuclear reactors.
Climate Damage Caused by Growing Space Tourism Needs Urgent Mitigation June 25, 2022
Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Published today in the journal Earth’s Future, researchers from UCL, the University of Cambridge and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) used a 3D model to explore the impact of rocket launches and re-entry in 2019, and the impact of projected space tourism scenarios based on the recent billionaire space race.
The team found that black carbon (soot) particles emitted by rockets are almost 500 times more efficient at holding heat in the atmosphere than all other sources of soot combined (surface and aircraft) – resulting in an enhanced climate effect.
Furthermore, while the study revealed that the current loss of total ozone due to rockets is small, current growth trends around space tourism indicate potential for future depletion of the upper stratospheric ozone layer in the Arctic in spring. This is because pollutants from solid-fuel rockets and re-entry heating of returning spacecraft and debris are particularly harmful to stratospheric ozone.
Study co-author Dr Eloise Marais (UCL Geography) said: “Rocket launches are routinely compared to greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions from the aircraft industry, which we demonstrate in our work is erroneous.
“Soot particles from rocket launches have a much larger climate effect than aircraft and other Earth-bound sources, so there doesn’t need to be as many rocket launches as international flights to have a similar impact. What we really need now is a discussion amongst experts on the best strategy for regulating this rapidly growing industry.”
Migratory birds are declining globally because of the way that humans have modified the landscape over recent decades—according to new research from the University of East Anglia.
A new study published in Global Ecology and Biogeography reveals that population declines have been greatest among species that migrate to areas with more human infrastructure—roads, buildings, power lines, wind turbines—as well as higher population densities and hunting levels.
Habitat degradation and climate change have also played a part in driving long-term declines.
The research team hope their work will help inform how best to target conservation efforts.
caltrek wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 5:44 pm Climate Damage Caused by Growing Space Tourism Needs Urgent Mitigation June 25, 2022
Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Published today in the journal Earth’s Future, researchers from UCL, the University of Cambridge and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) used a 3D model to explore the impact of rocket launches and re-entry in 2019, and the impact of projected space tourism scenarios based on the recent billionaire space race.
The team found that black carbon (soot) particles emitted by rockets are almost 500 times more efficient at holding heat in the atmosphere than all other sources of soot combined (surface and aircraft) – resulting in an enhanced climate effect.
Furthermore, while the study revealed that the current loss of total ozone due to rockets is small, current growth trends around space tourism indicate potential for future depletion of the upper stratospheric ozone layer in the Arctic in spring. This is because pollutants from solid-fuel rockets and re-entry heating of returning spacecraft and debris are particularly harmful to stratospheric ozone.
Study co-author Dr Eloise Marais (UCL Geography) said: “Rocket launches are routinely compared to greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions from the aircraft industry, which we demonstrate in our work is erroneous.
“Soot particles from rocket launches have a much larger climate effect than aircraft and other Earth-bound sources, so there doesn’t need to be as many rocket launches as international flights to have a similar impact. What we really need now is a discussion amongst experts on the best strategy for regulating this rapidly growing industry.”
UK fracking industry offers fixed gas price “to cut bills”
JUNE 22, 2022
Charles McAllister, of UK Onshore Oil & Gas (UKOOG), told a committee of MPs this afternoon this was a “plausible way” to cut bills.
He said:
“I have already got my board to agree that they will be more than willing to sell gas, especially to large industrial users, at fixed contracted prices.”
Mr McAllister was responding to comments by members of the Environmental Audit Committee that a revived shale gas industry onshore in the UK would not cut bills because gas prices were set internationally.
He said the Bowland shale was “literally underneath” industrial areas on the east coast and in the north west that had received government funding to develop carbon capture and storage.
He said:
“So we’ll be more than willing to fix the price into those facilities, that give a guaranteed price to those facilities and to the downstream users, be that other heavy industry, homes, transport, etc. That’s a plausible way of getting bills down.”
caltrek wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 5:44 pm Climate Damage Caused by Growing Space Tourism Needs Urgent Mitigation June 25, 2022
Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Published today in the journal Earth’s Future, researchers from UCL, the University of Cambridge and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) used a 3D model to explore the impact of rocket launches and re-entry in 2019, and the impact of projected space tourism scenarios based on the recent billionaire space race.
The team found that black carbon (soot) particles emitted by rockets are almost 500 times more efficient at holding heat in the atmosphere than all other sources of soot combined (surface and aircraft) – resulting in an enhanced climate effect.
Furthermore, while the study revealed that the current loss of total ozone due to rockets is small, current growth trends around space tourism indicate potential for future depletion of the upper stratospheric ozone layer in the Arctic in spring. This is because pollutants from solid-fuel rockets and re-entry heating of returning spacecraft and debris are particularly harmful to stratospheric ozone.
Study co-author Dr Eloise Marais (UCL Geography) said: “Rocket launches are routinely compared to greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions from the aircraft industry, which we demonstrate in our work is erroneous.
“Soot particles from rocket launches have a much larger climate effect than aircraft and other Earth-bound sources, so there doesn’t need to be as many rocket launches as international flights to have a similar impact. What we really need now is a discussion amongst experts on the best strategy for regulating this rapidly growing industry.”
EU countries reach climate crisis deal after late-night talks
Wed 29 Jun 2022
EU countries clinched deals on proposed laws to combat the climate crisis in the early hours of Wednesday, backing a 2035 phase-out of new fossil-fuel car sales and a multibillion-euro fund to shield poorer citizens from the costs of carbon dioxide emissions.
After more than 16 hours of negotiations, environment ministers from the 27 member states agreed their joint positions on five laws, part of a broader package of measures to slash planet-heating emissions this decade.
“The climate crisis and its consequences are clear, and so policy is unavoidable,” EU climate policy chief Frans Timmermans said, adding that he thought the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, a major supplier of gas, was spurring countries to quit fossil fuels faster.
Ministers supported core parts of the package that the European Commission first proposed last year, including a law requiring new cars sold in the EU to emit zero CO2 from 2035. That would make it impossible to sell internal-combustion engine cars.
Italy, Slovakia and other states had wanted the phase-out delayed to 2040. Countries eventually backed a compromise proposed by Germany, the EU’s biggest car market, which kept the 2035 target and asked Brussels to assess in 2026 whether hybrid vehicles or CO2-neutral fuels could comply with the goal.
US hunting lobby spent £1m on fight to delay UK trophy import ban
Wed 29 Jun 2022
The US hunting lobby has spent £1m putting pressure on the government to delay the trophy import ban, a new report by MPs has found.
Boris Johnson promised to ban the imports of these trophies three years ago, but the legislation has still not gone through parliament. Because of the delay, the Conservative MP and animal welfare campaigner Henry Smith has put forward his own private member’s bill to ban imports of hunting trophies.
A new report from the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on banning trophy hunting has detailed the lobbying efforts of international hunting groups.
The report found that the US-based hunting lobby group Safari Club International (SCI) spent £1m on a campaign to change the minds of MPs and the British public about a ban on imports of endangered species’ body parts.
SCI is the world’s biggest trophy hunting group. It awards prizes to its members for killing large numbers of endangered animals. Founded in the 1970s, it is one of the biggest corporate donors to politicians’ campaigns in the US, and calls itself “the leading defender of the freedom to hunt”.
The APPG report found the SCI funded a Facebook page called Let Africa Live, which posted claims such as: “The UK is about to destroy local economies in Africa.” Although the page insinuated it was created by local groups in African countries, an investigation found it was funded by SCI from a pot of money called the Hunter Legacy 100 Fund. The campaign eventually had its page shut down by Facebook, whose head of security said: “The people behind this network attempted to conceal their identities and coordination.”
Turning Methane into Methanol Under Ambient Conditions Using Light June 30, 2022
Introduction:
(EurekAlert) An international team of researchers, led by scientists at the University of Manchester, has developed a fast and economical method of converting methane, or natural gas, into liquid methanol at ambient temperature and pressure. The method takes place under continuous flow over a photo-catalytic material using visible light to drive the conversion.
To help observe how the process works and how selective it is, the researchers used neutron scattering at the VISION instrument at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Spallation Neutron Source.
The method involves a continuous flow of methane/oxygen-saturated water over a novel metal-organic framework (MOF) catalyst. The MOF is porous and contains different components that each have a role in absorbing light, transferring electrons and activating and bringing together methane and oxygen. The liquid methanol is easily extracted from the water. Such a process has commonly been considered “a holy grail of catalysis” and is an area of focus for research supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. Details of the team’s findings, titled “Direct photo-oxidation of methane to methanol over a mono-iron hydroxyl site,” are published in Nature Materials.
Further extract:
Industry has long sought an economical and efficient way to convert methane into methanol, a highly marketable and versatile feedstock used to make a variety of consumer and industrial products. This would not only help reduce methane emissions, but it would also provide an economic incentive to do so.
Methanol is a more versatile carbon source than methane and is a readily transportable liquid. It can be used to make thousands of products such as solvents, antifreeze and acrylic plastics; synthetic fabrics and fibers; adhesives, paint and plywood; and chemical agents used in pharmaceuticals and agrichemicals. The conversion of methane into a high-value fuel such as methanol is also becoming more attractive as petroleum reserves dwindle.
As These Bacteria Eat, They Generate an Unusual Triangular Molecule That Can Be Used to Make Jet Fuel
June 30, 2022
Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Aircrafts transport people, ship goods, and perform military operations, but the petroleum-based fuels that power them are in short supply. In research publishing on June 30 in the journal Joule, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab have found a way to generate an alternative jet fuel by harvesting an unusual carbon molecule produced by the metabolic process of bacteria commonly found in soil.
“In chemistry, everything that requires energy to make will release energy when it's broken,” says lead author Pablo Cruz-Morales (@pablocruzmoral1), a microbiologist at DTU Biosustain, part of the Technical University of Denmark. When petroleum jet fuel is ignited, it releases a tremendous amount of energy, and the scientists at the Keasling Lab at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory thought there must be a way to replicate this without waiting millions of years for new fossil fuels to form.
Conclusion:
Cruz-Morales explains that the fuel produced by the bacteria would work a lot like biodiesel. It would need to be treated so that it could ignite at a lower temperature than the temperature needed to burn a fatty acid, but when ignited, it would be powerful enough to send a rocket into space. “If we can make this fuel with biology there's no excuses to make it with oil,” says Cruz-Morales. “It opens the possibility of making it sustainable.”
In the future, Cruz-Morales hopes that he and the team of Department of Energy researchers who worked on the project will be able to scale up this process so that their alternative fuel could actually be used in aircrafts. “The problem right now is that fossil fuels are subsidized,” says Cruz-Morales. “This is something that is not only related to the technology, but the geopolitical and socio-political constitution of the of the planet right now. You can see this as a preparation for the moment because we are going to run out of fossil fuels, and there's going to be a point, not far from now, when we will need alternative solutions.”
UK government to scrap European law protecting special habitats
Thu 30 Jun 2022
Environment secretary George Eustice wants to tear up a key piece of European law that environmentalists say protects cherished habitats in the UK.
Eustice told MPs the Habitats Directive was in a list of laws he wanted to amend in the forthcoming Brexit freedoms bill designed to cut red tape, saying it was bureaucratic and fundamentally flawed on multiple levels.
The directive has provided protections for UK habitats since 1992. It supports a network of areas – known as Natura 2000 sites – where special habitats are protected. There are more than 320 Natura 2000 sites in England, nearly 900 in the UK and more than 25,000 throughout Europe.
The sites offer more protection than the domestic designations, sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs). The regulations have been used in numerous cases to provide more protection for habitats and species.
Eustice, however, told MPs on the environmental audit committee that the habitats regulations would be on a list of laws he wanted to alter once given legal powers to do so under the freedoms bill.
“The more we have looked at this body of law, the more clear it has become that it is quite fundamentally flawed. It only engages when an activity is defined as a plan or a project, so if something needs a permit, or a licence or planning permission the habitat regulations engage and start to require an assessment.
UK should 'have another go' at fracking, says leading geologist
Thursday 30 June 2022
A leading geologist who advised the government on fracking has told Sky News that in his view the UK "could have another go" at the controversial shale gas extraction method, which was suspended indefinitely in 2019 in the UK after exploratory drilling caused a series of earthquakes.
Professor Peter Styles said that it was "reasonable" for the government to have commissioned a review from the British Geological Survey (BGS) into whether fracking can be done more safely.
The BGS review focuses on whether there have been any new developments or techniques that could reduce the risk and magnitude of seismic events caused by fracking, and is due to be submitted to the government on Thursday.
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has said that given the energy crisis driven by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the government should keep "all possible energy generation and production methods on the table" but that his department would be led by the science on fracking and would only lift the moratorium if it were shown to be safe, sustainable, and of minimal disturbance to those living nearby.
Prof Styles said: "It may not work out that it is a plausible source of energy… but I think we should try to understand it, we should always try to understand these things.
"The more time we spend understanding the data, and actually having hard facts, the better it is, rather than just having supposition and decisions made on political grounds."
New Massive Offshore Wind Turbine Can Power A Home For Two Days With A Single Spin by Jack Dunhill
June 29, 2022
Introduction:
(IFL Science) A new offshore wind farm will utilize some absolutely massive turbines to produce power – so massive that just one spin will power the average home for two full days. The turbines have recently been improved from the best in the world to even more so, and the development will be the US’ first utility-scale wind farm.
Vineyard Wind, the developers of the offshore farm, recently announced they would be using the turbine manufacturer GE to produce the power, meaning the turbine of choice will be the GE Haliade-X. This turbine has a massive 13 MW capacity, which is more than double that of other turbines installed off the US coast.
According to the manufacturer, just one spin of the massive Haliade-X is enough to power an average UK home for two days, smashing the previous record also set by GE.
“The selection of GE as our preferred turbine supplier means that a historic American company will play a vital role in the development of the first commercial scale offshore wind power in the U.S.,” said Vineyard Wind CEO Lars Pedersen in a statement.
“This is a huge moment not only for the future of our project, but also for the future of an industry that is poised for exponential growth in the coming decades.”
In spite of the West's sanctions, Russia's economy has not collapsed, and it in fact retains the power to devastate the global energy market.
The Group of Seven nations are hammering out a complicated mechanism to cap the price fetched by Russian oil in a bid to tighten the screws on Vladimir Putin’s war machine in Ukraine. But given Moscow’s robust fiscal position, the nation can afford to slash daily crude production by 5 million barrels without excessively damaging the economy, JPMorgan analysts including Natasha Kaneva wrote in a note to clients.
For much of the rest of the world, however, the results could be disastrous. A 3 million-barrel cut to daily supplies would push benchmark London crude prices to $190, while the worst-case scenario of 5 million could mean “stratospheric” $380 crude, the analysts wrote.
“The most obvious and likely risk with a price cap is that Russia might choose not to participate and instead retaliate by reducing exports,” the analysts wrote. “It is likely that the government could retaliate by cutting output as a way to inflict pain on the West. The tightness of the global oil market is on Russia’s side.”
Researchers investigating the exposure of small mammals to plastics in England and Wales have found traces in the feces of more than half of the species examined.
In a paper published in Science of the Total Environment, researchers from the University of Sussex, the Mammal Society and the University of Exeter state that the densities of plastic excreted were comparable with those reported in human studies.
Fiona Mathews, Professor of Environmental Biology at the University of Sussex, says that "much is known about the impact of plastic on aquatic ecosystems, but very little is known about the same with terrestrial systems. "
"By analyzing the droppings of some of our most widespread small mammals, we've been able to provide a glimpse of the potential impact plastic is having on our wildlife—and the most commonly found plastics leaking into our environment."
The paper, authored by graduate Emily Thrift, Prof Fiona Mathews and Dr. Frazer Coomber of the University of Sussex and the Mammal Society, with Dr. Adam Porter and Prof Tamara Galloway of the University of Exeter, identifies plastic polymers in four out of the seven species for which they had fecal samples for. The European hedgehog, wood mouse, field vole and brown rat were all found to be plastic positive.
The question is there the will and the ability to get it done.
