Roger Aines

@rogeraines.bsky.social

1152 Followers 469 Following

Carbon removal, photography, science communication. Check out the book Championing Science by Amy Aines and me. Most of my birds live in Livermore, California.

A quiet pool of water with trees reflected in the water.
A Great White Egret waiting in a shallow pond for a fish to appear. The bird is reflected in the water. Torrent sedge behind has long grassy strands. Livermore, California summer of 2025
Cover of the book Rascal by Sterling North showing a boy holding a bicycle, and the face of a raccoon staring at the camera.
Full moon rising in the distance over a mountain ridge in Livermore, California. A tall palm tree stands to the left, and a deciduous tree to the right. Photo taken just at dusk on the full moon.
graph showing China's exports of clean tech Solar, EVs, and batteries. Since 2020 have grown from 2 billion to 20 billion, with about 5 billion of that just since the war in the Gulf.
https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/04/Global-Electricity-Review-2026.pdf
A monarch butterfly laying eggs on the underside of a milkweed leaf. Livermore, California.
A bird chases other birds off the feeder.
Two bluebirds and a finch in a shallow creek.
A variable checker spot butterfly on a sage flower, showing off his fuzzy gray back. Las Trampas park Danville CA
Las Trampas park near Danville CA
A brown hummingbird hovers hear the pink/red flowers of a New Zealand tea tree. Livermore, CA.
A female Anna's hummingbird hovers at an Orange flower, getting yellen pollen on her bill. Livermore, California.
Two red tailed hawks apparently having sex in a tree. The male is on top. One of them was squawking pretty loud!
Four orange California poppy flowers. One has a bumblebee grabbing some pollen from it.
two northern flicker woodpeckers facing each other and pointing their beaks toward the sky.
A male wood duck swims behind some cattail reeds.
A river otter with a fish in its mouth pokes up through duckweed.
A cedar wax wing bird holding a red toyon berry in its beak.
Chart showing percentage of GDP spent in US on firewood since 1774. From Nat Bullard https://www.nathanielbullard.com/presentations
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=66944. Chart showing Brent crude prices have steadily declined despite global tensions.
A wind turbine against a blue sky. From the Altamont pass in California.
Cover of Thomas Hager's book the Alchemy of Air.
Cover of Pathogensis by Jonathan Kennedy
Cover of the book Foolproof by Sander van der LInden
Cover of Simon Sharpe's book Five Times Faster
Cover of the book World Eaters by Catherine Bracy
Cover of Kate Marvel's book Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet.
Cover of the book Growth: A History and Reckoning by Daniel Susskind
Graph showing the rate of decrease of the cost of renewables as a function of their total deployment. IRENA (2024), Renewable power generation costs in 2023, International Renewable Energy Agency, Abu Dhabi.  https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2024/SepIRENA_Renewable_power_generation_costs_in_2023.pdf (https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2024/Sep/IRENA_Renewable_power_generation_costs_in_2023.pdf)
Cover of the book How Big Things Get Done by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner https://bit.ly/48RM44N
A great horned owl of a chimney top, almost at full dark
A Cooper's hawk splashes in a shallow pond.
A graphic showing the amount that fossil-fuel importing countries have reduce their imports relative to a scenario where renewables did not exist. From Carbonbrief.org. https://www.carbonbrief.org/iea-renewables-have-cut-fossil-fuel-imports-for-more-than-100-countries/. reporting on the recent IEA report https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2025 The IEA’s Renewables 2025 report quantifies the benefits of renewable-energy deployment for electricity systems in fossil fuel-importing nations. It compares recent trends in renewable expansion to an alternative “low renewable-energy source” scenario, in which this growth did not take place. In this counterfactual, fuel-importing countries stopped building wind, solar and other non-hydropower renewable-energy projects after 2010. In reality, the world added around 2,500 gigawatts (GW) of such projects between 2010 and 2023, according to the IEA, more than the combined electricity generating capacity of the EU and US in 2023, from all sources. Roughly 80% of this new renewable capacity was built in nations that rely on coal and gas imports to generate electricity. The chart below shows how 31 of these countries have substantially cut their dependence on imported fossil fuels over the 13-year period, as a result of expanding their wind, solar and other renewable energy supplies. All of these countries are net importers of coal and gas.
Mark Stebnaki, photo of tobacco turning brown in the field. From Pexels https://www.pexels.com/photo/scenic-view-of-a-tobacco-farm-2888962/
An Anna's hummingbird caught mid-flight in front of a purple bloom on a Mexican sage plant.
An Anna's hummingbird sitting in a desert willow tree looks up at the sky when he heard another hummer chirping.
Sunset view of Mt. Fuji silhouetted above the Tokyo skyline. A brilliant orange sunset with lots of textured clouds.
survey results for public worries in the US listed in order of most concern. From Yale https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/top-public-worries-in-the-u-s/?utm_source=Yale+Program+on+Climate+Change+Communication&utm_campaign=736f1581fd-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_09_10_05_57&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-736f1581fd-1410357131
Graph of estimated total carbon emissions in China showing that for the last two years or so they have been roughly flat, perhaps declining a little. from Carbon Brief.
a graph showing that new clean power additions in China exceeded the demand growth for electricity - heralding a drop in Chinese carbon emissions for electricity. from Lauri Myllyvirta.
a great white egret has stabbed a minnow, a native California Hitch.
a great white egret landing in a small pond with his wings outstretched
A man standing in front of an old elm tree on the campus of Carleton College in Minnesota.
an 8 spotted skimmer dragonfly clings to a dead grass stem
A Horse-Fly Carpenter bee pokes a hole in the base of a penstemon flower in order to suck out the nectar - without pollinating the flower. This is known as nectar stealing. Larger carpenter bees like the Valley Carpenter Bee will crawl inside and do the job properly! These bees seem to use existing holes over and over again. From my backyard in Livermore, CA.
Anna's hummingbird chasing gnats
Two graphs of the amount of CO2 removals purchased (12.5 MT in 2024), and the number of companies providing that service (160 in 2024).
two brown pelicans about to dive into the ocean on a sunny day in Loreto, Mexico.