Ecology

Inside Climate Change - Electrified transportation sped past renewable energy last year to become the world’s largest category of energy transition investment. This finding, part of a report BloombergNEF released Tuesday, shows a shift that is “absolutely critical to getting to net zero,” said the lead author, Albert Cheung. The transportation sector is a leading source of global carbon dioxide emissions, and, because of the long lives of vehicles, investment decisions today will take a while to translate into emissions reductions.

In July 2021, the massive Bootleg fire in southern Oregon burned 650 square miles and left vast swaths of forest littered with dead trees.  But when the smoke cleared, scientists discovered that forests treated with prescribed burns—blazes intentionally set by firefighters and foresters to reduce the flammable vegetation available to feed big fires—had largely survived because fewer woody fuels were available to stoke the megafire. Evidence like this is fueling a renaissance of prescribed burning in the U.S. West. Nationally, the U.S. Forest Service has resolved to thin and burn 50 million acres —an area the size of Nebraska—and officials are increasingly recognizing myriad Indigenous uses of fire that improved the health of forest ecosystems and made explosive wildfires less likely to burn in them. Now, states are joining the movement to return what proponents call “good fire” to landscapes at risk of blowing up with uncontrollable wildfires. But as a spate of devastating, climate-fueled conflagrations like the Bootleg fire led Oregon officials to consider setting more prescribed burns, they were stymied by a shortage of qualified professionals to ignite, manage and snuff them. 

Last year, China installed more new solar capacity than the total amount ever installed in any other country, Bloomberg reported.

In order to help the United States transition to renewable energy, the Department of the Interior has announced a new solar energy “roadmap,” including 22 million acres of public lands to expand solar energy development in the West, a press release from the Bureau of Land Management  said.

 Interesting Facts - Although ants rarely appear on the menu in the United States, it’s a different story in other parts of the world. Countries in Southeast Asia, Africa, South America, and even America’s backyard — Mexico — all have traditional dishes or ingredient blends that contain ants. In Laos, weaver ants add an acidic tang to fish soups, while in Mexico, fried leaf-cutting ants are a fixture at local markets. Although both larvae and adult ants can be eaten, the former is usually more appetizing; adult ants contain less flavor, though they are richer in protein. Ants also contain fiber, vitamins, and minerals such as iron, magnesium, potassium, zinc, and phosphorus. In other words, ants might just count as a superfood.

Lindau/Lustenau - "It is unrealistic to believe that the global vehicle population of over one billion cars with combustion engines can be replaced by electric cars in the foreseeable future," says Frank Obrist, founder of the Obrist Group, which focuses on sustainable energy concepts, and calls for "more realism and less ideology in energy policy". He points out: "Many countries around the world lack the political will, public acceptance and financial resources to switch to e-mobility for decades to come." As an alternative, he calls for the increased use of environmentally friendly synthetic fuels (e-fuels) in combustion cars. Obrist argues: "Ultimately, it's about the overall carbon footprint, including battery production, power generation, the construction of new infrastructure, the potential scrapping of more than a billion vehicles and the production of synthetic fuels from renewable energy sources -