Bad Ecology

Denialists in Denver & St Paul

2008-09-12T00:25:00.006+01:00

From our U.S. Political Correspondent: Senator S. Hello-Il

OK, OK, you’ve had to read the same entry for weeks. But you people don’t know just how time-consuming it is to be a member of the "vast, well-funded Denial Industry" (VWFuDI) [1].

Of course I had to work at both US conventions. Denver with the Democrats wasn’t too bad; when you’re a mile high, the thin atmosphere makes black-bear bile-duct liqueur (Alc: 89%) kick in pretty damn quick and whale sushi is even more irresistible. On the other hand, at the Republican Convention, St Paul felt uncannily like Minneapolis – think Antarctic but with less groovy nightlife and ten-times the wind-chill factor. No sign of Global Warming there - zilch … not a sausage … bugger all.

I was “surplus to requirements” during the Democratic convention – apparently Obama has enough arms up his backside already. However, my puppeteering partner Kim Jong-Il was on overtime operating Joe Biden’s new hair, Ted Kennedy’s old (very old) jowls and Maria Shriver-Shwarzenegger’s bleached, skeletal, brittle-bones. Kim’s years as Miss Piggy’s tail have never been wasted.

For the Republicans in St Paul, I personally, puppeteered Sarah Palin’s hair and glasses – which was exhausting but I held my own. Everybody noticed her beehive quiver and swell when she praised “small town America” and the sadomasochistic gleam in her eyes when she demanded oil drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge – that flinty glint is my speciality! My final performance was as Bristol’s foetus, providing a few good kicks for the reporters from Fox News.

Poor old Kim Jong-Il, after the fatiguing week in Denver, he was expected to puppeteer McCain’s hair and neck. He was, clearly, pooped. His biceps, triceps, pecs, lubricales, flexor digitorum profundi etc., simply gave way, he couldn’t hold up either head or hair ... let alone both! It was the Haliburton straw that broke the Lockheed-Martin back.

So, McCain had no hair or neck. He looked like an albino Tahitian turtle, captured by Captain Cook during the transit of Venus in 177?? [Sub-Editor: please check Wikipedia for correct dates], which then spent the next 230 years in a veal crate. You and I know that McCain has had three or four deadly carcinogenic melanomas removed so must avoid sunlight (just like Angel in that fab ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ series). But the great American public probably thinks he’s just a really pasty, neckless, old geyser in a permanently bad mood. (Incidentally, I’ve had two cancerous Basal Cell Carcinomas removed, one in front of each ear. Pick the right dermatologic surgeon – mine is on 57th Street Manhattan – and you can get an eye-lift included in the price).

Sadly, poor old McCain has already had so much flesh removed from his face that he looks like an older, more surgically-manipulated Joan Rivers – with the complexion of the new, de-improved (i.e. non-ethnic) Michael Jackson.

I tell you, it was a relief to meet Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton in the steam room on the last night to collect the suitcase full of cash.[1] (BTW - if you’re ever in that situation, keep your back to them and pour a bucket of water over the hot rocks before you turn around – ophthalmologists say the visual trauma of uncovering such despicable nakedness should only be temporary but why take the risk of permanent blindness?) Even with thick steam, Cheney's beady eyes will burrow into your soul so keep the meeting short. Denial is a dirty job but somebody has to do it.

Kim Jong-Il is resting comfortably back home in Pyonyang; should be back on his feet in no time, don’t believe the capitalist media about him having a "stroke". It's just good, old-fashioned puppeteer poopedness.

Ref: 1. The Denial Industry. http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/sgw_read.asp?id=102958862007

Poor farmers embrace GM technology

2008-09-04T10:00:00.002+01:00

The Philippine Star provides an important good-news story. After the eruption of Mt Pinatubo in June 1991, much of the farmland in the Barangay area of the country seemed to be ruined. Deposition of volcanic ash and the effects of the corn borer insect pest threatened the end for an important food producing region.

However, a few years ago, farmers started planting GM corn that resist the insects. They achieved such starlingly good results that the good news spread rapidly and now 95% of farmers use the GM corn seed.

With the GM variety farmers have increased yields to as much as 10 tonnes per hectare - three or four times the yield of conventional corn - pesticide use has plummeted and beneficial insects are back.

Philippines: GM Crops Provide Key to Greening Barren Lands

- Rudy A. Fernandez, The Philippine Star, July 27, 2008

Once lahar-mantled, now lush greenfields. Barren hills once upon a recent time, now lush corn farms. Open fields that used to reek of the acrid smell of toxic pesticides, now wafted by fresh, healthful air. The friendly insects are back too, helping Mr. Farmer control the insects that have been attacking his cornfields.

These are some of the magical transformations in many areas in the countryside, thanks to Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) corn. Bt is a bacterium that naturally occurs in soil. Through biotechnology or genetic engineering, a specific Bt gene has been inserted in the corn variety. Bt corn produces its natural pesticide against the Asian corn borer. One of the most destructive pests attacking corn in Asia, including the Philippines.

For almost a decade now, the new genetically modified (GM) corn variety has excited the interest of many Filipino farmers because of its high yield and resistance to the dread corn borer. Take the farmers of Barangay Anao in Mexico, Pampanga. Following Mt. Pinatubo's eruption in 1992, the village's farms were covered with lahar. But Bt corn brought back greenery to the landscape.

When we visited Anao two years ago, we learned that almost all its farmers were already planting the transgenic crop. A barangay leader had told us that GM corn yield as much as 10 tons per hectare, or three or more times the yield of ordinary varieties.

In one cropping season (more than three months), a farmer using the biotech crop can earn as much as P100,000. Another said he could now send his children to college because of the bountiful harvest from Bt corn.

About 95 percent of the barangay's farmers are now planting biotech corn, Anao outstanding farmer Carlos Guevarra recently told Sonny Tababa, coordinator of the Los Baños-based Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture-Biotechnology Information Center (SEARCA-BIC).

Many farmers in Iloilo also have a success story to tell: Their Northern Iloilo Corn Producers Association Inc. (NICPAI) won the PLEDGE, the highest international award given by Monsanto, a global agriculture corporation, to outstanding projects in agriculture.

NICPAI's "From Grassland to Corn Land" saga bested 197 other entries to get the Judges' Choice Award and $20,000 cash prize.

The farmers' group started in 2005 as the Sara Corn Financiers' Association organized by youthful farmer-leader Delson Sonza of Sara town.

Before, many farmers in northern Iloilo could hardly eat three meals day. Their lives have improved considerably since they turned to GM corn.

"With biotech corn farming, families without a carabao and other farm implements can now cultivate their grasslands which were converted into corn lands," Sonza told journalists at a science forum held recently in Makati City. Monsanto, assisted by NICPAI, had earlier introduced the zero and minimum tillage technologies to the farmers. In just three years, the area covered by GM corn significantly increased from 800 hectares to 9,300 ha.

Now, Sonza said, the farmers can afford to buy home appliances, vehicles, and postharvest facilities. "The families can now send their children to school and provide well for their needs." In view of the strides achieved in GM crop production, the area devoted to biotech corn continues to expand, noted Dr. Randy Hautea, global coordinator of the International Services for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA).

As of 2007, about 300,000 hectares had been planted to transgenic corn in the Philippines, he reported at a recent media forum in Los Baños jointly sponsored by ISAAA, SEARCA-BIC, US Agency for International Development (USAID), and Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD).

The country is now the world's 10th biggest grower of GM crops, thus, joining the ranks of biotech "mega-countries" (those planting biotech crops in 50,000 ha or more).

Global Warming - fewer & less intense hurricanes

2008-09-04T09:32:00.001+01:00

Remember 2005, when the climate doom-mongers blamed global warming for hurricanes Katrina and Rita which caused so much damage in New Orleans, Texas and other US states that lie on the Gulf of Mexico?

They all said it was ‘A Sign’ that hurricanes would be much worse in future. Sadly for the eco-fundamentalists (but good news for everybody else) was that the hurricane seasons of 2006 and 2007 were among the mildest on record. Strangely, Greens did not say that 2006-2007 were ‘A Sign’ that global warming might cause fewer hurricanes.

But, the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – which few of the Green lobby actually seem to read - actually does say that global warming is likely to cause fewer hurricanes and cyclones!

Chapter 10 of the 2007 IPCC report – ‘Global Climate Projections’ – summarises the computer models that predict what will happen with tropical cyclone/hurricane intensity in future decades.

Naturally, with computer simulations, you can get pretty much whatever outcome you want. The surprising thing is that even the most extreme predictions for global warming over the next several decades seem to indicate that there will not be an increase in cyclone/hurricane activity at all.

Most computer simulations at the larger geographical scale of 50-100km (Yoshimura 2006, Sugi 2002, Chauvin 2006) seem to show that there will be fewer cyclones overall and in the North Pacific, a slight increase in the North Atlantic, but no overall increase in intensity. With a few different wind circulation parameters the same simulations show fewer weak cyclones/hurricanes and no increase in more intense storms. One of the models indicates increased rain with the same number of cyclones.

Two more computer models (Hasegawa 2005, Bengtsson 2006) indicate fewer and less intense cyclones/hurricanes, but again more rain with those that do occur.

Only when scientists simulated 80 years of increasing CO2 and a tripling of current levels of CO2 could computer models be made to predict an increase in the number and severity of cyclones/hurricanes by 2090.

So, next time a climate change “expert” tells you that global warming is causing an increase in the number and intensity of hurricanes and cyclones, tell them to read the IPCC Report and that for at least the next 75 years, global warming will cause fewer and less intense storms.

Get the IPCC 2007 Global Climate Projections from:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter10.pdf

Apologies for last week's missing blogs

2008-09-03T18:04:00.003+01:00

Two weeks ago, all members of the Illuminati, the Denial Industy, The Elders of Zion and the Freemasons were contacted in the middle of the night and whisked away in Black Hawk helicopters to attend the annual Top Level Conspiracy. When I arrived at Bohemian Grove, California, it was looking particularly verdant and lovely for the time of year - but when I discovered that my bunk-mate was Dick Cheney I was, too say the least, little pissed off. Last year I bunked with George Clooney and made a bomb from selling his used socks, undies, toothbrushes etc.

It was a miserable meeting with a lot of backbiting. The 2000 meeting was a jolly singsong in contrast. Back then, both Presidential candidates were members of the Skull & Crossbones society at Yale. Bush simply had a better average in the beer bong contest - Gore new it wasn't his turn and nothing could be done. If he'd just waited his turn until 2008 everything would have been fine.

Now look at the cock-up! We have ExxonMobil and BP-Amoco supporting McCain, Monsanto and GE-Westinghouse supporting Obama. Creatinionst supporting Palin, Catholics supporting Biden. This is exactly what Bohemian Grove is supposed to iron out! At least we can be sure that Nader will run - so all the crackheads and people with alien chips in their brains will be instantly identifiable as they come out of the polling booths (apparently that's the best possible time for abductions and experiments).

Naturally, I have come back from all these TOP LEVEL meetings with instructions on how to cope with all the new data that the Earth is cooling again. For example, the increase in sea ice at the North Pole is a totally expected sign of climate catastrophe; similarly, the minor hurricane Gustaf proves that global warming is on the rise.

Apologies to porphyriacs

2008-08-21T13:22:00.002+01:00

Sincere apologies to all those with porphyria of any type: acute intermittent, porphyria cutanea tarda, erythropoietic protoporphyria, delta-aminolevulinic acid dehydratase deficiency, congenital erythropoietic, hepatoeryrthropoietic, hereditary coproporphyria, variegate or dual.

In a previous post I may, inadvertently, have given the impression that your disease could make you as crazy bonkers as Prince Charles or, indeed, George III.

I wish to make it clear that the madness of Prince Charles is his and his alone and cannot be blamed (entirely) on any metabolic disorder whatever. One would have to have both the peculiar genetics of HRH Chucklehead and his very peculiar upbringing to exhibit any such unique, disturbingly and extraordinary pathology

Please donate to the British Porphyria Association (or other national equivalent) - give whatever money you save by not buying overpriced Duchy Originals organic crap.

Get all the facts about porphyria here.

British Porphyria Association
http://www.porphyria.org.uk/facts.htm

Prince Charles - astute businessman???

2008-08-21T13:10:00.001+01:00

For those seriously interested in biotechnology, Andrew Apel has an excellent website – GMObelus. Andrew also puts together the weekly AgBioView newsletter which covers biotech news from all over the world and makes one realise how isolated a backwater Europe is when it comes to agricultural progress.

As Andrew points out, there was almost unanimous disagreement with Prince Charles’ mad outburst against scientists, the modern world and GM crops in particular. But he warns us all not to be complacent; there is still a lot of fighting to be done against the forces of reaction.

I think Andrew gives Prince Chucklehead too much credit when he speculates that the crazy outburst may be part of a PR stunt to herald the entry of Duchy Originals into the Indian market. There was certainly outrage in India that Charles deemed the Green Revolution a failure – hundreds of millions of Indians are alive today because of the agricultural breakthroughs 40 years ago. But, just as in the west, there are also reactionary forces in India – like the ludicrous figure of Vendana Shiva (never knowingly missed a banquet) – who think it is spiritually enriching to starve.

Why on Earth Indian’s would want to buy Duchy Originals organic crap is beyond me – even Sainsbury’s won’t take Charles’ shrivelled, overpriced carrots any more.

From the Independent:

The Prince is entitled to his views - but not his ignorance

It's shocking to hear this millionaire Gloucestershire farmer denounce the 'Green Revolution' in India

- Dominic Lawson, Aug. 15, 2008

There are any number of reasons why someone such as His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales should be passionately opposed to genetically modified crops. For a start, his own position - and future one as head of state - is based entirely on genetic purity (formerly known as "royal blood").

One characteristic he might have inherited from his grandfather, King George VI, is a propensity for sudden, almost incoherent, rage. This week, that excellent journalist Jeff Randall gently suggested to the heir to the throne that the future of farming might be with industrial-scale production, rather than the sort of methods he practises. "What?" exploded the Prince. "All run by gigantic corporations? That would be the absolute destruction of everything!" Randall went on to report that "bouncing in his chair", the Prince set out a nightmarish vision in which millions of small farmers "are driven off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness".

The Prince, predictably, continued his rant by attacking GM technology - although Randall had never raised it - which he said was: "Guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time. Snakes, some of them thousands of miles long, will roam the countryside." Well, I made that last sentence up, but you get the gist: the world as we know it will come to an end if wicked big business is allowed to introduce GM crops on an industrial scale. The main empirical problem for this argument is that GM crops have already been grown for more than a decade across the globe, providing trillions of meals, with no observable malign consequences for humanity or the environment. Quite the reverse, in fact: many types of GM crops have been designed to produce high yield with minimal soil tillage; others require much lower use of pesticide than conventional crops, thus saving vast amounts in agricultural fuel use.

Now that the area covered by GM crops has reached more than 100 million hectares, involving farmers in countries as varied as China, Uruguay, South Africa and Iran, it is possible to assess the truth of the various "Frankenfood" scare stories promulgated by the likes of the Daily Mail (which yesterday was alone in publishing a leading article endorsing every word of the Prince of Wales's outburst).

Such a study has recently been published by the European Commission. This is especially significant because the member countries of the EU have been more nervous about the consequences of GM technology than any other developed nations. The report, ominously titled "Economic Impact of Dominant GM Crops Worldwide", gives the lie to the notion that GM is somehow only designed for large-scale agribusiness. It states that "analyses show that adoption of dominant GM crops and on-farm economic gains have benefited both small and large farmers... Moreover, detailed analyses show that increases in gross margin are comparatively larger for small and lower-income farmers than for larger and higher income farmers." In other words, Prince Charles's notion that such methods will in themselves cause the extinction of small farmers is simply refuted by the experiences of real people in the real world.

Read on at the Independent website:

Buy a hybrid - today!

2008-08-21T12:20:00.006+01:00

It must be a sign of getting old and cranky, but Jeremy Clarkson is starting to make sense all of a sudden.

The mad ranting of our next king

2008-08-20T18:27:00.002+01:00

With his over-emotional, fact-lite insistence that GM is ‘destroying everything!’, Charles echoes his unfortunate ancestor George III.

No one ever accused Prince Charles of having a good grasp of science or a keen analytical mind. But, even by his standards, his complaints about GM crops last week were quite bizarre.

In an interview with the UK Daily Telegraph (1), the prince blamed scientists and multi-national companies for ‘an experiment with nature which had gone seriously wrong’, for ‘damage being wreaked on the earth’s soil’ and for ‘huge salination problems in Western Australia’.

‘Why else are we facing all these challenges, climate change and everything?’ he whined. To which the obvious answer is – not because of GM crops, which have only been planted since 1996 and, if anything, global warming has slowed in the last decade. Nor have GM crops ever been planted in Western Australia; the state government has a moratorium on them – to the increasing fury of farmers who hope GM will be part of the solution to their agricultural problems.

Most of Charles’ misinformation seems to come from the Soil Association (2), which campaigns for and certifies organic farming. Though even the Soil Association’s chief propagandist, Patrick Holden, was unable to defend Charles’ position on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. In April 2008, the Soil Association issued a press release (disingenuously called a report) on the ‘latest available research on GM crops’. This ‘report’ contains misquotations, distortions, dishonesty and deceit on a truly heroic scale.

Of 24 references, only nine are actually peer-reviewed studies or reports from scientific bodies. Every peer-reviewed study is misrepresented in the ‘report’ – along the lines of a theatre hoarding that boasts ‘spectacular’ when the reviewer really said ‘this play is spectacularly awful’. The remaining ‘references’ are to newspaper articles, websites or propaganda from other anti-GM pressure groups.

For example, a 2003 study in Science reported that, ‘Field trials carried out with Bacillus thuringiensis [GM] cotton in different states of India show that the technology substantially reduces pest damage and increases yields. The yield gains are much higher than what has been reported for other countries [emphasis added] where genetically modified crops were used mostly to replace and enhance chemical pest control.’ (3) The Soil Association twists that positive conclusion and states that yields have been disappointing in developed countries – because the increases have been much greater in developing countries! It says: ‘A 2003 report published in Science stated that “in the United States and Argentina, average yield effects [of GM crops] are negligible and in some cases even slightly negative” (Qaim and Zilberman, 2003). This was despite the authors being strong supporters of GM crops.’ (4)

Anti-GM vested interests ignore two genuine scientific reviews of the first decade of GM crops – one from the United States Department of Agriculture (5), the other a very detailed international study from a UK economics consultancy (6).

Global Impact of Biotech Crops: Socio-Economic and Environmental Effects, 1996-2006 was published just months ago and exposes every deliberate lie of the opponents of GM.

GM crops are benefiting farmers in developing countries (7) – over half the decade’s cumulative total of £33.8billion additional value has been created on Third World farms by small farmers. GM crops have reduced pesticide use by 286million kg; there has been a 15.4 per cent reduction in environmental impacts and GM crops have reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 14.76billion kg CO2 equivalents in 2006 – equal to taking every car in Britain off the road for a year.

In contrast, new studies of organic farming show just how destructive that out-of-date system can be. Researchers at Boston College grew soybeans by three methods: no-till conservation (no ploughing, drilling of seeds into ground prepared with weed-killer); conventional tillage, and organic farming (8). No-till conservation produced both the highest crop yield (15 per cent more than conventional and 110 per cent more than organic farming) and held the most carbon in the soil (41 per cent more than conventional tillage and 48 per cent more than organic). Sequestration of carbon prevents release of CO2 or methane into the atmosphere – thus limiting global warming. Higher yield and lower environmental impacts are essential for developing countries. These results confirm a Defra Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) report of 2006 (9), which concluded that organic farming caused more GHG emissions, generated more acid rain and released more nitrogen pollution into the environment than conventional farming.

Given the Soil Association’s ‘loose handling’ of scientific evidence it is surprising that Defra quotes its figures as official government statistics on organic food sales in the UK – even when the numbers are clearly invented on the back of an envelope. For 1996, the Soil Association claimed £260million in sales of organic food; for 2006, it claimed sales of £1,937million (10) – both numbers included as fact in Defra publications and press reports.

What an eagle-eyed civil servant or hack would have noticed is that 260 compounded at 25 per cent annual interest for nine years is exactly 1,937! Which is more likely: the organic food-buying public has been as regular as clockwork for 10 years, or the Soil Association publishes dodgy dossiers that are swallowed unquestioned by a gullible government and media?

Those interested can listen to the interview with the prince on the Telegraph’s website (11). As his voice cracks with emotion at ‘they simply will not understand!’ the impression is of impotent rage, self-pity and persecution. Described on BBC radio as ‘verging on the extreme’, the interview reminded me of psychiatric patients who have their delusions challenged – they become confused, aggressive and make wilder and wilder claims to reinforce their delusion (for example, the janitor who believes he is Napoleon will present his in-growing toenail as an injury from Waterloo).

Is it possible that Charles’ state of mind – seemingly irrational, confused, entrenched – has echoes of the beginning of his ancestor King George III’s long illness? George did not manifest psychiatric symptoms until after he turned 50 – Charles is 59. George is thought to have had an unusual form of porphyria (a blood disorder that causes metabolic disturbances) brought on by arsenic prescribed by his doctors. If Charles had a similar genetic predisposition to the disease, it may have been masked for years by a high intake of the anti-oxidant beta-carotene and certain fish oils.

But if his intensive vitamin and supplement regimen were to change suddenly, or if he were to take St John’s Wort (a herbal remedy for anxiety or depression) or alter his drinking habits, his metabolism might, if he is predisposed to this illness, be tipped over into a type of porphyria. Swings in mood and delusions will eventually be followed by a blotchy red face and skin, discoloured urine and a painful abdomen. Sadly, if any of these symptoms were to arise, Charles would probably call a homeopath, meaning the disease would progress to more overt signs of confusion and disturbed behaviour.

If anyone knows a real doctor connected to Buckingham Palace, maybe it’s time to give them a nod in Charles’ direction. Just to be on the safe side

References

(1) Prince Charles warns GM crops risk causing the biggest-ever environmental disaster, Telegraph, 12 August 2008

(2) New Soil Association report shows GM crops do not yield more – sometimes Less, 14 April 2008

(3) Yield Effects of Genetically Modified Crops in Developing Countries, Science; p299 and p900-902, 7 February 2003

(4) New Soil Association report shows GM crops do not yield more - sometimes less, Soil Association, 14 April 2008

(5) Economic Research Service/USDA: The First Decade of Genetically Engineered Crops in the United States/EIB-11 (pdf)

(6) Global Impact of Biotech Crops: Socio-Economic and Environmental Effects, Brookes and Barfoot, 1996-2006

(7) See concluding comments on p29 in Global Impact of Biotech Crops: Socio-Economic and Environmental Effects, Brookes and Barfoot, 1996-2006

(8) Improved Crop Production And Fewer Greenhouse Gases ScienceDaily, 30 March 2004

(9) Environmental impacts of food production and consumption, Defra 2006 (pdf)

(10) Soil Association helping organic farmers meet demand, 25 January 2008

(11) Jeff Randall interview with Prince Charles, Telegraph, 12 August 2008

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5601/

Landfill

2008-08-19T08:31:00.001+01:00

The Ecologist story on Landfill contains all the tired clichés we have come to expect from the nitwit-wing of the green movement. This time represented by Annie Leonard, an American “academic” who has put together a little 20 minute video of such immense banality that you just have to watch it.

With the up-to-the-minute contemporary humour of Karl Marx and the insightful dialectic materialism of Harpo Marx, she explains how capitalism works with the enthusiasm of a drunken sailor, the vocabulary of a Sesame Street character and the rigorous intellectual analysis of a paranoid harpie.

In her video The Story of Stuff she summarizes 300 years of scientific, technological, philosophical, medical and educational progress – into a resource that only the brain dead could get excited over.

Here’s her thesis in a nutshell.

Capitalism is evil. Its aim is to trash the planet as quickly as possible. We have already used up 1/3 of all the world’s resources. [Note – we haven’t even got through 1/3 of the resources in the Earth’s crust, which is only 5% of all the Earth’s resources!]

The USA is, especially trashing foreign countries. Over 80% of the world’s original forests are gone. [Note – 100% of all the world’s original forests were gone 400 million years ago – forests die, fall down, get replaced all the time for millions of years]
This is called Extraction. Once extraction is done, we move to Production: toxic chemicals are used to create toxic products.

Toxins in = toxins out.

They build up in breast milk so babies are getting high doses of toxins. We do not know the impact of these toxins. [Note – except that, for 250 years life expectancy has increased, infant survival has increased, cancer rates (age-standardised) are falling, children are bigger and healthier than their parents.]

To increase production, in poor countries 200,000 people move from the countryside to the city every day, this is bad. [Note – people move because life on farms is very, very hard – life in cities is just very hard. Ask how many living in cities want to go back to the country … none.]

There is a lot more in the same, depressing, ignorant, unimaginative vein.

Eventually, she gets to Planned obsolescence – of mops DVDs, cameras and computers. Strangely, she seems to think your computer needs a new central chip every year, but because the new one is a different shape it won’t fit so you have to buy a new computer(??!!?!whaaaaaa??).

This suggests she has never bought a computer and certainly doesn’t know how one works.

Eventually, she tells you to ask your Grannie whether we were all happier in the 1950s because that’s when studies show maximum satisfaction from life. She thinks its because there was less consumerism then, but surely its more likely because:

Men and women knew their place. Men at work, women in the home cooking and cleaning.

A woman simply must accept a certain amount of domestic violence to maintain a happy home.

If a woman did work outside the home, she must get used to being judged on her looks, being paid less than men, and having sexual innuendoes thrown at her every day.

Blacks also knew their place – at the back of the bus, separate schools, separate toilets, separate lunchrooms, different hotels, no voting rights.

Jews knew their place too – not in country clubs, not in certain neighbourhoods, not in some companies.

This is the dreamy wonderland to which the anti-globalisation-brigade wants us to return. Interesting that the leader of this movement in the US is a “feminist academic” and in the UK The Ecologist is owned by a family of far-right politicians.

DUMB ECOLOGIST: Bees, Landfill, Gandhi-Greens

2008-08-18T15:44:00.006+01:00

This week please panic about: Bees, Landfill, Gandhi-Greens or Techno-Greens

No Ecologist newsletter for two weeks - but finally, they've made up for it with an edition of spectacular inanity.

First topic - where are all the bees going? Apparently bees are dying off all over the world. Naturally, the Ecologist's nitwit correspondent blames GM crops and EM radiation; even though bees are disappearing where GM crops have never been grown and the EM radiation emitted by the Sun is millions of times greater than that from your iPod.

Imagine the conversation deep in the bowels of the Ecologist:

"Zac, where are the bees?"

"I had one of my maidservants take them away for cleaning."

"What? All the bees in the world?"

"No silly, the B's on your keyboards. My psychic said 'There will B trouble at the office this week.' So I had them removed as a precaution."

"We believe in the Precautionary Principle." Say all staff in hushed tones.

"No Zac, I mean where are the buzzy bees that flit from flower to flower to pollinate the fruit and vegetables?"

"Ah ... you should have said. That smacks of interference with the natural order. Who are these bees to be picking up pollen from pistels willy-nilly and shoving it down the stamens of unrelated species. It's genetical modificational gone mad!"

"Bees are all employed by Monsanto," quoth Melchett, the loyal Fool as he pranced atop the spring-water-cooler. Hey Zac, how much subsidy did you get for your farm this year?"

"Over £5,000 ... that will make a nice little bet when I go to the casino tonight."

"Ha ha, Ya Boo, I got more than youhoo - they gave me £55,000."

Zac was not amused (he rarely is - £10 prize for a photo of him smiling - not counting when he emerges from his mistress's house). He picked up a fly-swat and whacked Melchett unconscious.

Highgrove to lose organic status? ... Shock news!

2008-08-16T08:50:00.002+01:00

Prince Charles is Britain's most famous proponent of organic farming and his estate at Highgrove is a showplace for organic ideals.

BUT -- Prince William has sabotaged all his father's principles by feeding contaminated food to Highgrove's pigs. As a result, Prince Charles risks public humiliation if Highgrove is stripped of organic status by the Soil Association, Britain's largest organic certification body.

The Soil Association boasts that its standards are far more strict than required by law; animals cannot be given nonorganic or genetically modified (GM) feed for example. They certainly may not be fed anything contaminated with industrial oils or lubricants.

And ... Prince Charles relies on homeopathic remedies to treat his pigs. In homeopathic theory a tiny, tiny amount of a substance can have potent effects on humans and animals.

In these photos Prince William is seen doling out pig food from a Castrol oil drum! Nothing could be more toxic to Highgrove's soil (which Prince Charles has carefully tended and nurtured for so many years) than the deliberate splattering of petroleum products across it. And the effects of homeopathic doses of engine oil must have serious consequences for the health of the swine!

Let's hope, for the sake of both Princes, that these photos never find their way to the Soil Association because that organisation (with its very, very high standards) is guaranteed to act quickly and severely.

My advice to cautious organic consumers -- do not buy any products from the Duchy range for at least three years -- that's how long it takes to get re-certified as organic once your farm has been despoiled by the evil of chemicals.

Poor farmers embrace GM technology

2008-08-15T15:01:00.001+01:00

Green Party - fascist roots, fascist policies

2008-08-15T08:16:00.005+01:00

Over at Climate Resistance (by far the most tastefully designed site on climate matters) Peter Tatchell is, rightly, taken to task for believing a bizarre scare story about a decline in oxygen levels in the atmosphere. Not only is there plenty of oxygen in the air (21%) there's plenty more in the ground. Oxygen is the most abundant element in the Earth's crust - about 45% followed by silicon at around 20%.

Who can forget Tatchell's heroic attempt to arrest the fascist dictator Robert Mugabe? But, sadly, Peter has been tempted by the dark side and joined the Green Party.

Here's an article I wrote a while ago, detailing why Tatchell should steer clear of his new green friends.

Forbid the purchase of corner shops by immigrants; protect traditional British lifestyles from incomers; stop urban families moving to country villages to prevent crime; grant citizenship only to children born here; restrict tourism from outside Europe; subsidise white farmers and boycott food grown by blacks; prohibit embryo research; stop lorry movements on the Lord’s Day; ban national sports teams from competitions in unfriendly countries; disconnect Britain from the European electricity grid; establish an international “new order” to resolve world economic crises.

Policies of one of Britain’s most influential political parties: a party that has steadily increased its vote over the last decade; a party that appeals overwhelmingly to whites; and a party that shares significant objectives with neo-fascists and religious fundamentalists.

Perhaps – the BNP? Despite its attempts to appear modern and inclusive and the soothing talk in its 2005 General Election Manifesto, of “genuine ethnic and cultural diversity.” [1]

Actually, affiliates of the progressive consensus may be surprised to learn that all the reactionary policies in the first paragraph are from the Green Party’s Manifesto for a Sustainable Society (MfSS) or were adopted at the party’s Autumn Conference in Liverpool over the weekend of September 13-16, 2007.[2]

Of course, the Green Party will protest against the accusation of reactionary politics. However, in an article critical of the G8 leaders in June 2007, George Monbiot, advised readers to judge politicians for “what they do, not what they say.”
For example, as well as supporting ethnic and cultural diversity, the BNP says it accepts:

“… the right of law-abiding minorities, in our country because they
or their ancestors came here legally, to remain here and to enjoy the full
protection of the law against any form of harassment or hostility…” [3]

Disregard the rhetoric and look at what the rest of the BNP manifesto promises would actually do and it remains a party of racist and neo-fascist ideology – internationally isolationist and domestically reactionary.

The trouble for Greens is that their manifesto pledges would result in many of the same outcomes as the BNP programme.

You will not find the words “Boycott food grown by black farmers and subsidise crops grown by whites,” in the Green Party’s manifesto, but consider the effects of these policies:

“The Green Party recognises that subsidies are sometimes necessary to protect local, regional and national economies and the environment, and we will support them in these instances.”[4]

“Controls such as tariff barriers and quotas should be gradually introduced on a national and/or regional bloc level, with the aim of allowing localities and countries to produce as much of their food, goods and services as they can themselves. Anything that cannot be provided nationally should be obtained from neighbouring countries, with long distance trade the very last resort.”[5]

The paradox of arguing for Fair Trade while refusing to buy African vegetables because of “food miles” has been noted many times, but it is a paradox the Green Party simply ignores. According to the Guardian, Britain has two black farmers,[6] so any policy to subsidise domestic produce and erect barriers to outsiders will, ipso facto, support white farmers and disadvantage black farmers. Even if supplies are “obtained from neighbouring countries,” white European farmers benefit at the expense of poor farmers in Africa and the developing world.

On agricultural policy in general, Greens will agree with the following sentiments:
“Britain's farming industry will be encouraged to produce a much greater part of the nation's need in food products. Priority will be switched from quantity to quality, as we move from competing in a global economy to maximum self-sufficiency for Britain, sustainable agriculture, decreased reliance on petro-chemical products and more organic production.” [7]

However, those promises come from the BNP 2005 General Election Manifesto – in a section indistinguishable from the Green Party manifesto:

“To be able to fulfil all our basic food needs locally. To grow as many other products as we can to meet our basic needs (e.g. for textiles, fuel, paper) on a local or regional basis. To enable all communities to have access to land which can be used for growing for basic needs. To ensure that all growing systems use only natural, renewable inputs and that all organic waste outputs are able to be recycled back into the soil or water system.” [8]

Perhaps this is why, according to the BNP:

“We are the only true ‘Green Party’ in Britain as only the BNP intends to end mass immigration into Britain and thereby remove at a stroke the need for an extra 4 million homes in the green belts of the South East and elsewhere, which are required to house the influx of 5 million immigrants expected to enter the country under present trends over the next twenty years.” [9]

Greens agree with the BNP about migration and the green belt. They promise to: minimise the environmental degradation caused by migration; not allow increased net migration; and end the pressure on the Green Belt by reducing population and stopping growth-oriented development. [10] Reduction in non-white tourism and immigration would be an inevitable consequence of government restrictions on air travel. Few refugees from Iraq, Darfur, Zimbabwe manage to get all the way to Britain without a large carbon footprint, neither can tourists from beyond Europe.
How about the accusation that the Green Party would: “stop people from inner cities moving to the countryside to protect traditional lifestyles and prevent crime; forbid the purchase of corner shops by migrants.” Here, are the relevant resolutions from the MfSS:

“Communities and regions should have the right to restrict inward migration when one or more of the following conditions are satisfied: [11]
a) The ecology of the recipient area would be significantly adversely affected by in-comers to the detriment of the wider community (eg. National Parks, Antarctica);
b) The recipient area is owned or controlled by indigenous peoples (eg Australian aboriginal people) whose traditional lifestyle would be adversely affected by in-comers;
c) The prospective migrants have, on average, equal or greater economic power than the residents of the recipient area and they or their families were not forced to leave the area in the recent past.”

“Regions or communities must have the right to reject specific individuals on grounds of public safety.” [12]

The examples (breathtakingly disingenuous) assert that they intend simply to stop Richard Branson driving a new main line through Stonehenge, Rupert Murdoch building a printing press on top of Uluru or Caesar’s Palace opening a casino at the South Pole.

Surely the Greens, of all people, know that Britain has hardly any desolate tundra and few Australian aboriginal communities. In practice, these policies would give the “indigenous” white folk of a quaint rural hamlet the right to rebuff a Leicester Bangladeshi purchaser for its corner shop because she has “greater economic power” than the villagers – whose “traditional lifestyle” would be “adversely affected” by her ethnicity and religion. They could also keep her out “on ground of public safety” because her inner city Muslim children are more likely to be criminals than their own offspring.

Not surprisingly, the BNP agrees with the Greens about the “right of all peoples to self-determination and that must include the indigenous peoples of these islands.” [13]
(Alas, not every small community is Ambridgely-correct – thrilled to embrace a half-Irish gay couple, a Vicar with a Hindu girlfriend and a mixed-race child, and an African husband for the daughter of the Lord of the Manor with the same enthusiasm it has for organic ciabatta and carbon trading.)

In the 1980s, when the Thatcher government restricted immigration to Britain to those with at least one grandparent born here, it was accused of constructive racism. Thatcher claimed her measures were not racist – any discrimination against nonwhites was just an incidental consequence of the need to maintain what is now called “community cohesion.” Green Party policy would go even further down the road of constructive racism than Mrs Thatcher, refusing citizenship to children born overseas even if their parents hold British passports. [14]

The Macpherson Report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence identified “unwitting racism” in the police that can arise from well intentioned words or actions that arise out of uncritical self-understanding born out of an inflexible ethos of the "traditional" way of doing things:

“It persists because of the failure of the organisation openly and adequately to recognise and address its existence and causes by policy, example and leadership. Without recognition and action to eliminate such racism it can prevail as part of the ethos or culture of the organisation.”[15]

By its uncritical acceptance of “traditional” ways of doing things – from the “spiritual link between ourselves and nature” [16] in agriculture, to anti-globalisation, to making the home “an important centre of economic activity” [17] – the Green Party allies itself with some of the most reactionary contemporary political forces in the land. And the “traditional” way of doing things is usually a reactionary approach to modern social issues.

Green Party agreement with Christian fundamentalists on at least two issues requires no textual analysis: MfSS policy number EU523 would ban lorry movements on Sunday throughout Europe and H329 calls for an immediate ban on embryo manipulation and cloning for any research, therapeutic or reproductive purposes. [18]
Policies EU532 and 533 would scrap all connection of electricity grids throughout Europe – partly because interconnectivity allows nuclear generated power to creep along the wires.[19]

For national sports teams, CMS871 would require politicians to determine “whether it is appropriate for the team to take part in competition against a country with whom normal friendly, respectful, or diplomatic relations are not possible.”[20]
It is frequent for parties on the extreme fringes to share an analysis of contemporary politics – and Greens and BNP certainly share a lot of analysis.

From the BNP 2005 Manifesto:[21]

“For most of human history, the existence of such ethnic and cultural diversity among humanity was so obvious and apparently unchallengeably natural that the political theorists and philosophers of past generations simply took it for granted. Only in the last few decades has this been changed forever by the advent of mass passenger travel, the insatiable desire of the globalised capitalist economy for cheap labour, and the worldwide reach of US consumerist culture through film and television.”

“That poison is in large measure the blind economic force of global capitalism, with its insistence on the unrestricted flow of goods, capital and labour to wherever in the world they will make the maximum short-term profit ... It is not about ‘love’ and ‘tolerance’, it is about profit.”

From the Green Party Manifesto:

“Formidably powerful and publicly unaccountable transnational companies are becoming ever more footloose, their strength and mobility facilitated both by technological advances, and by the progressive withdrawal of investment controls by governments and by multilateral institutions such as WTO. TNCs are now increasingly able to exploit differences in social and environmental standards between countries in order to maximise profits.” [22]

“The rush towards globalisation is neither inevitable nor desirable. It is leading to the sharp reduction in powers of local and indigenous communities, states, and even nations, to control their futures, as economic power is transferred to global institutions. A worldwide homogenization of diverse, local, and indigenous cultures, social and economic forms, as well as values and living patterns increasingly reflect the new global monoculture.” [23]

To solve these “problems” the Green Party calls for an international “new order” to address a “global economic … cris[i]s.”[24] That language requires a very special kind of historical ignorance. Can no one in the Green Party have noticed that the last ideology to emphasise the spiritual oneness of man and nature (“blood and soil”) and used the phrase “new order” was the fascism of the mid-20th century? A fascism represented in contemporary politics by the BNP.

Similar analyses may be common for parties on opposite wings of politics, but it is not so common to posit the same solutions.

No doubt, when the Green Party adopted its manifesto there was no deliberate intention to implement a reactionary and racist strategy. But the Green Party is overwhelmingly white: of more than three dozen individuals listed as speakers and discussion leaders at its Autumn Conference only one was obviously a member of a visible ethnic minority.[25] Even the discussion on issues affecting women from ethnic minority communities was led by a white woman and just 2% of Green Party candidates in the 2006 local elections were from of a visible ethnic minority.[26] Perhaps the absence of minority members in Green Party counsels results in the same sort of “canteen culture” that affects the police, making it oblivious to the right-wing, pseudo racist nature of its plans for Britain.

The lessons of the Macpherson Report’s “institutional racism” could be expanded to include “institutional reactionaryism” and should be learnt not only by the state apparatus and large companies, but also by the Green Party – which declares its desire for a fair and just society.

REFERENCES

1. BNP 2005 General Election Manifesto: Rebuilding British Democracy (BNP 2005) pg 3 http://www.bnp.org.uk/candidates2005/manifesto/manifesto2005.pdf
2. Green Party Autumn Conference 2007: http://www.greenparty.org.uk/files/conference/2007/Final_Agenda_Autumn07.pdf
3. BNP 2005: pg 21
4. Green Party Manifesto for a Sustainable Society (GP MfSS): EU413 http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/mfss/
5. Ibid: EU443
6. The Guardian Monday June 26, 2006 “Meet Britain's other black farmer” http://www.guardian.co.uk/country/article/0,,1805973,00.html
7. BNP 2005: pg47
8. GP MfSS: AG500, AG501, AG502, AG503
9. BNP 2005: pg 48
10. GP MfSS: MG200, MG400, CY561
11. Ibid: MG204
12. Ibid: MG207
13. BNP 2005: pg 3
14. GP MfSS: NY515
15. Rachel Morris, Cardiff Law School: Summary of Macpherson Report: http://www.law.cf.ac.uk/tlru/Lawrence.pdf
16. GP MfSS: AG100
17. Ibid: EC403
18. Ibid: EU523, H329
19. Ibid: EU532, EU533
20. Ibid: CMS871
21. BNP 2005: pg 18-19
22. GP MfSS: EC902
23. Ibid: EC903
24. Ibid: EC900
25. Green Party Autumn Conference 2007 Timetable. http://www.greenparty.org.uk/files/conference/2007/Liverpool_timetable_full.pdf
26. Green Party Candidates for May 4th 2006 http://www.greenparty.org.uk/files/election/2WebverLE06cand.htm

Republished from: Samizdata

Green Party elections

2008-08-14T08:16:00.015+01:00

The Green party is holding leadership elections for the first time in its history, with Euro MEP Caroline Lucas running against former star of The Bill, Ashley Gunstock.

Lucas was asked if union workers, those in industries which will be crippled – even eradicated – by a radical environmental agenda, would be happy to learn of the imminent extinction of their profession:

"Their industries are under threat from climate change – not environmentalism," she says. "The Green party has a clear message - the transition from high to low carbon economy has to have workers in the forefront of it.

"Given it has to happen one way or another, it can either be forced on us or we can manage it in the best way. Obviously it's frightening to realise your industry will change. But a post-carbon economy will need lots of skills and human power so it's very good news for a lot of workers. These industries will be more labour intensive than the fossil fuels they are set to replace."

Here are some of the good "labour intensive jobs" expected to be revived under a Green Party government.

Pyramid builder

Mill worker

Prince Charles - finally cracked

2008-08-13T08:10:00.009+01:00

The sheer hysteria in Charles' voice during the interview (played this morning on Radio 4's Today Programme) suggests he may really be losing his grip on reality. It's worth noting that, his ancestor, George III's "madness" only started to manifest after the age of 50 and Charles is 59.

It is thought that George's porphyria (thought to be the inherited disease responsible) was only brought on by excessive use of arsenic in his "medicines". Porphyria can be masked by use of Beta-carotene and fish oil supplements, but set off by changes in the formulation and large doses of other vitamins.

I wonder if Charles has changed the large doses in his rigorous vitamin supplement regimen recently? Somebody should alert him to the fact that such a change can set off symptoms of porphyria (including "madness") - as can gall stones or excess alcohol consumption.

Today's Daily Telegraph carries an interview in which Prince Charles shows exactly how clinically insane he has become in his old age.

Talking of genetically improved crops:

He accused firms of conducting a "gigantic experiment I think with nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong".

"Why else are we facing all these challenges, climate change and everything?"

Where does he get his information? From the Fairyland Green Pixies website?

Apart from the obvious fact that GM crops were first planted only in 1996 and climate change has been going on for 100 years, if he read any research whatever, he would know that:

GM crops are being grown by more poor farmers than western farmers
GM crops provide higher yields
GM crops are being grown on more land in the developing world than the west
GM crops are improving incomes of poor farmers
GM crops have reduced pesticide use by 286,000,000 kg
GM crops have reduced environmental impacts by 15.4%
GM crops have provided an additional $33.8 billion in economic benefits
GM crops have reduced greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to taking 6,650,000 cars off the road

A report just a few weeks ago reviewed the progress of GM crops throughout the world and discredits every one of the green fundamentalist lies about the technology:

Global Impact of Biotech Crops: Socio-Economic and Environmental
Effects, 1996-2006

Find it at: http://www.agbioforum.org/v11n1/v11n1a03-brookes.htm

As I have pointed out before, it is organic farming that threatens the planet by producing more greenhouse gases, more acid rain and more nitrogen pollution than conventional agriculture - while providing less nutrition.

I suspect Charles' real concern is that with food prices rising, people are deserting overpriced organic food in droves.

He goes on to say:

"Look at western Australia. Huge salinisation problems. I have been there. Seen it. Some of the excessive approaches to modern forms of agriculture."

Hey Charlie – GM crops are banned in Western Australia, always have been! It’s irrigation that causes salination problems – they discovered that in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago. Where have you been? Do you want to ban irrigation? In fact GM crops are one of the solutions to the agriculture problems in Western Australia which is why the farmers are so desperate to get the ban lifted by their idiot state government.

Salt-resistant GM crops are already in trials, GM rice has already proved better at coping with inundation and salt than conventional varieties.

His next statement of ignorance was:

The Prince of Wales cited the widespread environmental damage in India caused by the rush to mass produce GM food. "Look at India's Green Revolution. It worked for a short time but now the price is being paid.

"I have been to the Punjab where you have seen the disasters that have taken place as result of the over demand on irrigation because of the hybrid seeds and grains that have been produced which demand huge amounts of water.

"[The] water table has disappeared. They have huge problems with water level, with pesticide problems, and complications which are now coming home to roost.

The claim that “India’s Green revolution … worked for a short time” will be news to the 600 million people who are alive today as a result of the Green Revolution. Before improved dwarf hybrid crops were introduced 40 years ago it was India – not Africa – which suffered from yearly famines and the deaths of millions from starvation.

The real problems in India come from opponents of GM who have persuaded a few state governments not to allow GM crops. When farmers see the enormous benefits GM seeds bring to their neighbours they want the same seeds. Because the GM seeds cannot be legally sold in those few states, farmers buy “GM seeds” on the black market that turn out not to be GM seeds at all; so farmers have to buy all the old pesticides they thought they could now do without. They get into debt and many end up committing suicide. Suicide has always been a serious problem among small farmers in India, but GM crops are actually reducing suicide among farmers who grow genuine GM seeds.

Farmers who plant genuine GM seeds get larger yields, use fewer chemicals and make far more money than before. All over the cotton-growing regions of India farmers are able to send their children to school for the first time because they can afford the fees and the kids are no longer needed to work on the farm all day.

See: '28% of Gujerat under illegal seeds' at Hindu Business Line
http://greenbio.checkbiotech.org/news/2008-04-30/28_of_area_under_cotton_in_Gujarat_using_illegal_seeds/

Highlights from the report:

Genetically modified (GM) crops have been grown commercially
on a substantial scale for eleven years. This paper updates the
assessment of the impact this technology is having on global
agriculture from both economic and environmental perspectives.
It examines specific global economic impacts on farm income
and environmental impacts associated with pesticide usage and
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for each of the countries
where GM crops have been grown since 1996. The analysis
shows that there have been substantial net economic benefits at
the farm level amounting to $6.94 billion in 2006 and $33.8 billion
for the eleven-year period (in nominal terms). The technology
has reduced pesticide spraying by 286 million kg and, as a
result, decreased the environmental impact associated with herbicide
and insecticide use on these crops by 15.4%. GM technology
has also significantly reduced the release of GHG
emissions from this cropping area, which, in 2006, was equivalent
to removing 6.56 million cars from the roads

GM technology has had a very positive impact on farm
income derived from a combination of enhanced productivity
and efficiency gains. In 2006, the
direct global farm income benefit from GM crops was
$6.94 billion. This is equivalent to having added 3.8% to
the value of global production of the four main crops of
soybeans, maize, canola, and cotton. Since 1996, farm
incomes have increased by $33.8 billion.

Substantial gains have also arisen in the cotton sector
through a combination of higher yields and lower
costs. In 2006, cotton farm income levels in the GM adopting
countries increased by $2.15 billion and since
1996, the sector has benefited from an additional $9.6
billion. The 2006 income gains are equivalent to adding
13.1% to the value of the cotton crop in these countries,
or 7.8% to the $27.3 billion value of total global cotton
production. This is a substantial increase in value-added
terms for two new cotton seed technologies.

In terms of the division of the economic benefits
obtained by farmers in developing countries relative to
farmers in developed countries, in
2006, just over half of the farm income benefits (53%)
have been earned by developing-country farmers. The
vast majority of these income gains for developing country
farmers have been from GM IR cotton and GM
HT soybeans. Over the eleven years, 1996-2006, the
cumulative farm income gain derived by developing
country farmers was $16.4 billion (48.5% of the total).

GM crops have contributed to a significant reduction in
the environmental impact of production agriculture on
the areas devoted to GM crops. Since 1996,
the use of pesticides on the GM crop area was reduced
by 286 million kg of active ingredient, a 7.9% reduction,
and the overall environmental impact associated with
herbicide and insecticide use on these crops was
reduced by 15.4%.

In terms of the division of the environmental benefits
associated with less insecticide and herbicide use for
farmers in developing countries relative to farmers in
developed countries, just over half of
the environmental benefits (1996-2006) associated with
lower insecticide and herbicide use have been in developing
countries (52%).

In 2006, the permanent carbon dioxide savings
from reduced fuel use associated with GM crops was 1.2
billion kg. This is equivalent to removing 540,000 cars
from the road for a year.
The additional soil carbon sequestration gains resulting
from reduced tillage with GM crops accounted for a
reduction in 13.5 billion kg of carbon dioxide emissions
in 2006. This is equivalent to removing 6 million cars
from the roads for a year. In total, the carbon savings
from reduced fuel use and soil carbon sequestration in
2006 were equal to removing 6.56 million cars from the
road (equal to 25% of all registered private cars in the
United Kingdom).

GM Crops - listen to the sceptics

2008-08-12T12:07:00.012+01:00

It’s "debate genetic improvement of food day" here at Bad Ecology. Never let it be said we present only one side of the argument.

Those who oppose GM crops do so for one of three reasons:

1. Superstition (tinkering with Nature, upsetting the woodland spirits): typified by Prince Charles and Zac Goldsmith. These are the most dangerous because stupid people with a lot of money or influence are always dangerous. Because they are so utterly deluded, rational debate is impossible.

2. Vested interest (GM either threatens their income, or is a great money-raising scare): typified by Greenpeace which, logically, should support GM crops for their higher productivity, better energy efficiency and lower environmental impact but an anti-GM stance was a better money-raiser for the (then, in 1996) cash-strapped organisation. Organic farmers also see a threat to their cash cow from a genuinely ‘sustainable’ and ‘chemical-free’ way to farm.

3. Anti-capitalist/globalisation (GM is a way for big corporations to take tighter control over agriculture): this is the only intellectually respectable opposition to genetic improvement of crops. Typified by George Monbiot who, rightly, criticises large seed companies for treating food and food security as just another business instead of recognising its huge practical and symbolic significance.

Today, here’s a selection of recent articles, some that raise legitimate concerns that the GM companies (and we proponents of the technology) must address, and some that present the latest evidence and developments.

From Slate.com

Food Fight - The Four Barriers to the Genetically Modified-Food Revolution- and Why No One Is Talking About Them. Paul Roberts, August 8, 2008

Could this be the turning point for genetically modified food? As food prices have soared around the world, agro-industry companies like Monsanto and Syngenta, along with their allies in Washington, have been carefully positioning GM technology as our last, best hope against a global food catastrophe. Since traditional crop-breeding methods aren't keeping up with soaring food demand, they argue, we have no choice but to re-engineer our crops at the molecular level to give bigger yields.

Appealing as this argument sounds, it misses the real obstacles facing GM. Yes, traditional crop science is struggling. And yes, rising food prices might help consumers and lawmakers overcome their fears about GM's safety (especially as some of those concerns are overblown). But neither change will alter the fact that GM crop technology itself isn't ready to save the world. Despite GM's potential, the technology faces substantial technical and economic barriers before it will spark a second green revolution – barriers that aren't being discussed in the newly energized debate over genetically modified food.

Read on here.

From Skeptoid
August 05, 2008

Genetically Modified Organisms: Jeopardy or Jackpot?

Today we're going to look at one of the most divisive issues in global food production: genetically modified organisms. Supporters point to vastly improved crop yields and reduced need for fertilizers and pesticides; opponents claim that such products are inadequately tested and may result in unknown dangers. Some poor developing countries, like the Philippines and some African nations, have become battlegrounds between the environmentalists and the farmers. Let's find out what both sides are claiming.

Read on here.

Listen to this here.

From Science

Reinventing Rice to Feed the World, Dennis Normile
18 July 2008

'With prices of rice and other cereals soaring and granaries emptying, it might take a second green revolution to avert widepread famine.'

South Asia's monsoon is a mixed blessing for rice farmers. The rains fill paddies. Light flooding brings sediment that replenishes soil nutrients. But almost every year, somewhere, flooding is so severe it wipes out the crop.

In 2007, disaster struck the floodplains of the Tista and Jamuna rivers in north-central Bangladesh. Over a million hectares of farm fields were flooded, some inundated for as long as 3 weeks. Agricultural losses topped $600 million. A few pioneering farmers, however, were testing an experimental rice variety that tolerates submergence, and their plants recovered even after 12 days underwater--three times longer than normal varieties can endure. Yields suffered: They got about 4 tons per hectare, about 1 ton less than they would have without flooding, according to M. A. Salam, research director at the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) in Gazipur. "The farmers were very happy to get this yield under these circumstances," he says, because many of their neighbors were left with nothing.

Submergence-tolerant rice and other new yield-boosting varieties are arriving at a critical time. In recent weeks, the collision of rising demand and tightening supplies has driven a phenomenal spike in rice prices that sparked riots in Haiti, Bangladesh, and Egypt. A dozen countries, including India and China, have restricted rice exports, deepening the crisis. Exacerbating a bad situation, rice production in Myanmar this year will likely drop 6%, to 9.4 million tons, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecast, after extensive damage from Cyclone Nargis in early May. A storm surge flooded about 1.75 million hectares of the Irrawaddy River delta with saltwater and destroyed embankments and irrigation systems.

The global food crisis grabbed the attention of G8 leaders meeting in Japan last week. They pledged to reverse the decline of aid and investment in agriculture and accelerate research and development (R&D) to boost food production. Nevertheless, the looming food shortage "is a story that's going to be here for a while," says Philip Pardey, an agricultural economist at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul. Demand will continue to rise, he says, as the world's population grows and more grain is diverted to produce biofuels and to feed livestock as meat consumption rises. At the same time, Pardey says, funding constraints have slowed R&D on improving grain yields and have crippled developing country extension systems, which get the latest seeds and techniques into farmers' hands.

All grains are affected by the trend. But a rice shortfall could be disastrous. In 2005, rice supplied 20% of total calories consumed worldwide, including 30% in Asia, according to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños, Philippines. IRRI claims that two-thirds of the world's poor--those living on less than $1 per day--subsist primarily on rice. And production is stagnant. Over the past several years, more rice has been consumed than grown--the difference made up by dipping into world rice stockpiles, which peaked at 146.7 million tons in 2001 but declined to 73.2 million tons in 2006, according to USDA. Prices were already rising, then lackluster harvests, export restrictions, and speculative buying sent prices soaring. For example, a popular export variety of Thai rice jumped from $362 per ton last December to $1000 per ton in April. Prices have retreated to $720 per ton.

To balance production and consumption, IRRI forecasts that by 2015 the world must grow 50 million tons more rice per year than the 631.5 million tons grown in 2005. This will require boosting global average yields by more than 1.2% per year, or about 12% over the decade, says IRRI's research director, Achim Dobermann. In the near term, he says, farmers could wring an extra 1 to 2 tons of grain per hectare by growing the latest varieties and improving farm management--everything from optimizing fertilizer use to building rat-proof granaries that stem postharvest losses. A long-term trial plot at IRRI produces 18 to 20 tons of grain per year per hectare, but the average field in Asia yields half of that. Existing technologies "haven't been moved out sufficiently to farmers," Dobermann says, because many extension systems are poorly funded and staffed. IRRI runs a training program that helps address this issue.

In the long term, superior rice varieties are key to averting widespread food scarcity, says Pardey: "The yield levels we're seeing are historically high, and to even maintain them let alone increase them, you have to run pretty hard to keep ahead of evolving pests and diseases and other stresses." Given how long it takes to develop new varieties, he adds, "you've just got to keep priming the pump of the research."

Submergence-tolerant rice shows the years of effort it often takes to produce a new variety. Flooding costs South Asia about $1 billion a year in rice losses. Although paddy rice is grown in standing water, most varieties die if submerged for 3 or 4 days. Researchers had long known of varieties that apparently evolved to withstand monsoon flooding. An Indian variety known as FR (flood resistant) 13A can recover and produce rice even after 3 weeks underwater.

Despite that advantage, farmers have largely abandoned such varieties in favor of modern cultivars that produce double or more grain under normal conditions. In the 1970s, IRRI tried crossing FR13A with high-yield varieties. But farmers rejected the resulting cultivars because they didn't like the taste and had difficulty adapting the plants to local conditions, says David Mackill, head of plant breeding at IRRI.

In the early 1990s, Mackill, then at USDA's Agricultural Research Service in Davis, California, and colleagues at the University of California (UC), Davis, set out to identify the gene or genes in FR13A responsible for submergence tolerance. His team hybridized a variety derived from FR13A and an intolerant rice cultivar and tested hundreds of plants to see which recovered from submergence. Using molecular markers, or segments of easily identifiable DNA, they compared the genomes of the tolerant and nontolerant offspring, linking a region of chromosome 9 to submergence tolerance.

They enlisted colleagues at UC Riverside and IRRI to isolate the gene responsible, Submergence 1A (Sub1A). The group determined that Sub1A is expressed in FR13A only when the plant is submerged and that many nontolerant rice varieties don't have Sub1A. To confirm its role, they introduced Sub1A into an intolerant variety lacking the gene and got submergence tolerance. The group reported its findings in Nature in 2006.

IRRI plant physiologists, meanwhile, concluded that Sub1A inhibits stem and leaf elongation and the loss of chlorophyll that typically occurs in submerged plants. Limiting elongation conserves energy, and preserving chlorophyll, essential for photosynthesis, enhances chances of recovery.

Mackill joined IRRI in 2001 and 2 years later started working to get Sub1A into commercial varieties. Using marker-assisted selection, which links a DNA segment to a trait of interest, his team screened crosses for plants with Sub1A but otherwise identical to the target variety. The Swarna variety popular in India and Bangladesh was one of the first to get Sub1A, and germ plasm was given to BRRI and its counterpart in India in 2005. This year, BRRI has four varieties with the Sub1A gene in field trials, Salam says. They will ramp up seed production of the best candidate, which will take another 2 years. Varieties are being tested in eight other Asian countries.

Production of submergence-tolerant rice will become appreciable sometime after 2010, Dobermann says. It's fortunate that a single gene confers a high degree of submergence tolerance. Researchers aren't always so lucky. In 2002, a team at IRRI, the Philippine Rice Research Institute in Muñoz, BRRI, and UC Davis identified Saltol, short for salt tolerance, on rice chromosome 1. A rice variety carrying Saltol is now in field trials in Bangladesh. But Saltol confers tolerance only during the seedling stage. This works for wet-season rice, because adult plants are saved by monsoon rains that reduce soil salinity as the season progresses. But dry-season varieties face increasing salinity during the critical flowering period in spring, when coastal groundwater turns brackish. Researchers are probing for other genes that might protect these types.

Scientists are using molecular techniques to boost resistance to diseases and pests as well. "But with biotic stresses, it is more complicated because you're defending the plant against pathogens or insects that are evolving," says Dobermann.

Getting durable resistance to insects often requires several genes with different properties, continual improvement, and wise farming practices, as illustrated by the fight against the brown planthopper. The tiny insect sucks the sap from rice stalks and often infects the plant with viruses. Infestation can be deadly. In the 1970s, the planthopper was brought to heel through integrated pest management--which encourages the use of natural predators--and the development of resistant varieties.

But in just 10 years, planthoppers developed an ability to attack resistant plants as well as resistance to a widely used pesticide. Annual losses in China are estimated to run 2.77 million tons and in Vietnam about 700,000 tons, says Kong Luen Heong, an IRRI entomologist. The root problem is overuse of pesticides, which kill off the planthopper's natural predators. "This is a problem of unsustainable practices," Heong says. Breeding resistant varieties might help, he says, but to be effective, new varieties must be integrated with changes in farming practices. IRRI is planning a pest-management demonstration project in China in 2009 that minimizes pesticide use.

Researchers have cultivars that are resistant to other stresses--including drought, cold, and iron toxicity--in the R&D pipeline. Teams are also working on genetically modified (GM) varieties. Public antipathy, particularly in Asia, has kept GM rice confined to labs. A variety modified to produce pro- vitamin A could force governments to come to terms with transgenic crops (Science, 25 April, p. 468). IRRI now has the so-called golden rice in a field trial, and trials in farm fields in Bangladesh could start in about 2 years, Dobermann says. But he thinks it will take at least a decade for GM rice to have a significant impact on production.

Another factor slowing work on new varieties is the structure of the rice market. Private companies conduct a lot of research on crops such as maize and soybeans because there is a thriving seed business. Rice farmers, on the other hand, retain part of each season's crop as seed for the next crop, so there is a smaller seed business and advances depend heavily on public-sector efforts. Pardey says little public spending in advanced countries goes to increasing grain productivity; instead, it is spent mostly on fruits and vegetables and environmental concerns. Contributions to organizations like IRRI have waned: IRRI's budget has eroded from a peak of $44.4 million in 1993 to $27.9 million in 2006. And few developing countries, aside from China and India, have been ramping up spending as quickly as they need to, Pardey says. As a result, over the past 10 years maize yields have risen by nearly 1.8% per year while growth in rice yields has slipped below 1% annually and is virtually nil across Asia, Dobermann says.

Closing the gap

Reducing losses to stresses can only partly ameliorate a crisis. Varieties tolerant to submergence, drought, and salinity are useful in environments that account for about 25% of global rice production. "If we want to do something in terms of food security," says Dobermann, "we need to invest much more in improving varieties" for the 75% of rice grown in favorable environments.

Recent improvements in potential rice yields have been incremental in part because breeders have already picked the low-hanging fruit. In a sign of the challenges ahead, Qifa Zhang, a rice geneticist at Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan, China, identified a gene on chromosome 7 that plays a key role in boosting yield potential. He found, however, that most modern cultivars already carry the gene. Understanding how it works might lead to yield gains, says Zhang, whose findings appeared in Nature Genetics last May. "But we'll have to be creative in deciding how to make use of it."

Higher yields could come from greater reliance on hybrid rice. Hybrids of genetically diverse plants benefit from heterosis, or hybrid vigor, which produces yields up to 20% greater than inbred varieties. China pioneered the use of hybrid rice in the 1970s and now plants it on 16 million hectares, or 57% of its total rice area. Last year, hybrid rice accounted for about 65% of China's 186 million ton rice production, according to Longping Yuan, director-general of the China National Hybrid Rice R&D Center and a professor at Hunan Agricultural University in Changsha. The average yield of hybrids is 7.1 to 7.2 tons per hectare versus 5.8 to 5.9 tons per hectare for inbred varieties.

But several factors have limited the spread of hybrid rice. Yuan's hybrids are indica varieties suited for the tropics. His team has not yet produced an effective japonica hybrid for temperate regions. In addition, Yuan admits, the hybrid rice he introduced in 1976 "was just so-so" in taste and quality. It was promoted by a central government anxious to feed its people, he says. His center is striving to improve the rice's taste.

Because of quality concerns, breeders in other countries have been slow to adapt hybrids to local conditions. Hybrid rice also requires a change in farming culture and infrastructure. The practice of retaining part of a crop as seed works for inbred varieties that are self-pollinating. But the yield benefit of heterosis is seen only in first-generation crosses. This means new hybrid seed must be purchased for each crop.

The drawbacks have limited hybrid rice to about 4 million hectares outside China. But Dobermann foresees that total rising to as much as 20 million hectares in a decade as varieties improve.

One alternative--looking to wild and exotic strains--promises to boost yields of inbred varieties. For decades, breeders have worked with a limited number of rice varieties chosen for observable traits, says Susan McCouch, a rice geneticist at Cornell University. Wild and exotic varieties were ignored, she says, because they yield less rice than modern cultivars and thus were not obvious sources of beneficial genes.

In the 1990s, McCouch and Cornell colleague Steven Tanksley crossed wild and exotic rice varieties with modern cultivars and then used molecular linkage maps to identify genes in offspring that increased yield. They almost always found some yield-boosting genes from the wild parent, McCouch says. They then added targeted genes from the wild parent to modern cultivars. This strategy appears to have an effect similar to heterosis, but the desired trait is fixed and boosts yields in later generations.

Now about a dozen groups around the world are using wild rice genes in this way to improve local varieties. Sang-Nag Ahn, a rice breeder at Chungnam National University in Daejeon, South Korea, and his colleagues crossed four elite Korean rice cultivars with wild species. Some offspring yielded 10% to 20% more grain than the parents, says Ahn. The most promising lines are in field trials; he expects to release the first of these crosses to farmers in 3 to 5 years.

A more ambitious plan is to convert rice from a C3 to a C4 plant that's better at bulking up on carbon. C3 plants--the majority of species, including wheat, barley, and potatoes--use the enzyme RuBisCO to turn carbon dioxide into a three-carbon compound that is fixed into the plant's biomass. Less common C4 plants, such as maize and sugar cane, have an additional enzyme, PEP carboxylase, which produces a four-carbon compound that RuBisCO fixes more efficiently. C4 plants, which probably evolved from C3 plants millions of years ago, are 50% more efficient at turning sunlight into biomass. John Sheehy, an IRRI plant physiologist, says that a C4 rice plant could boast 50% greater yield while requiring less water and fertilizer (Science, 28 July 2006, p. 423).

Sheehy and colleagues have screened wild relatives of rice and found some evidence of the close vein spacing in leaves, the large numbers of photosynthesizing chloroplasts, and the CO2-absorption high-pay characteristics that are typical of C4 plants. "They are not C4 plants but are closer to C4 than normal C3 plants," Sheehy says. He predicts it could take several years to prove that rice can be transformed into a C4 plant and a decade or more to produce a prototype. That's just the kind of long-term, high-payoff research that governments should be funding, says Pardey.

A meta-analysis of hundreds of studies that Pardey's group is preparing for publication shows "a pretty well-established relationship" between R&D and increasing yields. They also found that the peak effect of a discovery comes 20 to 25 years after the research was initiated. Conversely, sagging growth in agricultural productivity is the direct result of limited increases in R&D funding since the late 1970s, Pardey says. Reversing the trend requires "a decadal response," he says, "not a political cycle response." The rice crisis that caught the world off-guard may take many years to resolve.

From Nature Biotechnology

Join the Dots - 'Pushing biotech as the 'solution' to the world's problems is doing more harm than good'
Editorial, August 2008

These days, governments, industry and experts seem to be putting biotech forward as a solution to almost everything. The mantra has changed from biotech simply providing cures for disease in developed markets to larger, more global problems. Biotech is now the solution to feeding developing nations. It is the answer to a renewable supply of energy. Or it is a means of reducing the carbon footprint and global warming. Although biotechnologies can certainly help solve these problems, ramming that message down people's throats is hardly likely to convince the doubters. And in the long r un, it might even turn out to be counterproductive.

Take a recent case in point: the Biotechnology Industry Organization's (BIO) slogan for its annual meeting held in San Diego in June was "Heal, fuel, feed the world." On no count is this equivocal or faltering or modest. Of course, perhaps that should be expected of an industry lobby organization whose job it is to proselytize the potential of its members' technology and products. But the problem is the slogan just isn't very realistic.

There are hundreds of thousands of acres of genetically modified (GM) crops being grown around the world, but they are not at present addressing key agricultural problems for poor farmers, such as salinity, desertification and drought. Nor are they addressing problems such as malnutrition (although with Golden Rice, they could). For the moment at least, there are only a handful of GM strains available for food staples (other than corn) widely cultivated in developing countries. Many nations in Africa have a ban on GM seeds.

As for biofuels, such as ethanol, these are being generated from maize in the US and from sugarcane in Brazil. Neither of these approaches has much to do with biotech. Biotech is just one part of the set of technologies and approaches that will be needed to make cellulosic ethanol a reality, among several other alternative renewable energy sources.

And although biotech has addressed a few orphan diseases, produced new therapies in infectious disease, cancer and autoimmune disorders, and recombinant versions of biologics for diabetes and growth disorders, it hasn't delivered on the promised 'cures' of genetic therapies or even the wide adoption of molecularly targeted medicine. Certainly, it hasn't done much to address disease and malnutrition among the world's poor.

This journal champions biotech research, so we are not downbeat on its prospects to, one day, generate products that will heal, fuel and feed the world. That is, nevertheless, an outrageous act of faith bordering on the religious. And the fact is tha t biotech approaches must be used in the context of other technical and nontechnological solutions. Thus, reason dictates that proponents should be very careful about overhyping what biotech can do now and overpromising what it can do in the future.

In biotech, the new 'thing'-whatever it has been at the time (interferons, antisense, sepsis therapies, antibodies, genomics, functional genomics, structural genomics, proteomics, RNA interference)-is constantly put forward as the 'solution' (usually with a concurrent stampede of startup activity and investment). Genomics and other 'omics were vaunted as solutions to the need for personalized medicine, a need that was poorly defined. Protein drugs were offered as wonder molecules, targeting diseases specifically and finally. GM crops solved concerns about the environmental consequences of intensive agricultural pesticide and herbicide use, they solved developing nations' food security and they replaced fossil fuel energy.

This pushy, solution-based approach elicits opposition instantly. The emergence of bioethanol and biodiesel as viable 'green' energy sources, for instance, has served to orchestrate a backlash against the approach. This has gained some ground following a series of reports from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that point out that most of the biofuel policies in the developed world are narrowly focused-they stimulate the production of one or two types of fuel using one or two types of technology to process the excess agricultural production of just a few (and usually just one) crop types. Public and political opinion on biofuels swung rapidly from a rather gung-ho attitude in 2007 from almost everyone (farmers, car drivers, industrialists, politicians and even environmentalists) to antipathy in 2008.

It is time for biotech communication to be done right. And it is time that the industry and its lobby organizations learnt that pushing one-dimensional hype about biotech solutions is counterproductive.

A much more successful approach for encourag ing the politicians and the general public to get on board the biotech bus would be to let them come to their own conclusions about the solution to the problems that society faces. This will mean outlining the problems accurately: in the fuel versus food debate, for instance, it is almost undeniably true that we will need more food (to feed 9 billion people), more energy (for 9 billion, most of whom want a higher standard of living) and more protection of biodiversity (by conserving natural habitats)-all within changing climatic conditions.

But it isn't necessary to finish the sentence by saying that biotech or GM is the solution. If that is said, then anyone with resistance to globalization, industry (and science), intensification and any other ignorance-based biases will-true to form-resist.

Biotech's proponents need to try less hard. The majority of people will eventually join their own dots and see that biotech and genetic modification are worth backing. And ultimately, they will recognize that biotech has its place as one-and in some cases the best-solution to some of the world's most pressing problems. After all, this is simple psychology. It generally is a good thing to allow other people to think that your good idea was theirs all along.

Organic food – as bad as ever

2008-08-11T09:00:00.001+01:00

New research funded by the organic industry itself shows that conventionally grown food contains just as many nutrients as the more expensive food from less productive organic farms.

The International Centre for Research in Organic Food Systems (ICROFS) is the world’s leading pro-organic research centre, so the results come as a devastating blow to the organic industry.

Despite claims by organic proponents (such as Britain’s Soil Association) the evidence is now overwhelming that “organic” is simply a marketing label that confers no advantages to human health or the environment.

The latest research, funded by (ICROFS) comes from the University of Copenhagen and is published in the latest edition of Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. This is the first research ever to look at minerals and trace elements in crops then up the food chain when fed to animals.

Organic vs conventional farming practices

Carrots kale, peas, apples and potatoes – staple ingredients in most families’ diets were cultivated by either:

Organic – using animal manure on established organic soil, and one organic pesticide

Semi-organic – using animal manure and pesticides (as legally allowed).

Conventional – using artificial fertilizers and pesticides (as legally allowed).

Crops were grown on similar/identical soil on adjacent fields so experienced the same weather conditions and were harvested or treated at the same (recommended) times. Then, the crops were fed to animals over a two year period and intake and excretion of minerals and trace elements were measured.

At harvest there were no differences in mineral or trace elements found in fruit and vegetables grown by any of the three methods; similarly, levels were the same in the animal meat after slaughter

The only difference was significantly higher yields of fruit and vegetables from the conventional fields and the very low productivity from the organic fields.

These results confirm a 2006 study which was the most comprehensive ever metabolic comparison of wheat from organic and conventional agriculture. German researchers found no significant differences in levels of amino acids, sugars and 44 metabolites between the conventional and organically grown wheat.

Anti-oxidants in organic fruit

Organic proponents, however, continue to point to a few studies from 2003 and 2004 which demonstrated higher concentrations of flavonoids in organically grown corn, strawberries, marionberries and tomatoes.

Flavonoids are natural pesticides produced by plants when under attack from insects; other phenolic anti-oxidants may be produced when plants are under stress such as drought or competition from other plants (as in over-planting). In humans, flavonoid and phenolic anti-oxidants may have anti-cancer effects (but these are purely speculative at present).

Unfortunately, since plants only produce more flavonoids only when diseased, there is a balance to be struck between:

High output of healthy crops from conventional farms: with good concentrations of the vast majority of nutrients.

Low output of diseased crops from organic farms: with slightly increased concentration of one type of anti-oxidant which may or may not have some minor health benefits.

If flavonoids do fight cancer, they will be required in vastly higher concentrations that can be found in vegetables or fruit. They would need to be taken in supplement form – like high dose Vitamin C.

Climate Change worsened by organic farming

Although proponents claim that organic farming is better for the environment, this is as much Greenwash as oil companies that claim to be green. Unfortunately, a host of minor celebrities and instant environmentalists (see Jamie Oliver, Prince Charles, Gwyneth Paltrow, Trudie Styler, Zac Goldsmith, Mark Watson) have led a public relations campaign to convince the public that that organic means “good for the environment and climate change.”

In fact, there is a substantial body of research to show exactly the opposite. Proper life cycle assessment (LCA) research shows that organic farming:

Uses more fossil fuel

Releases more CO2

Pollutes more water

Causes more acid rain

... than conventional farming. It was LCA research that demonstrated the adverse effects of biofuels – after “environmentalists” had praised the idea for years. We now know that integrated no-till techniques using modern fertilisers and pesticides can sequester 41% more carbon than organic methods while also increasing yield by 110%.

Sadly, proponents still misrepresent the facts about organic farming. Most of the organic propaganda in the US originates from from "research" at the Rodale Institute which was:

"... created by visionary J.I. Rodale who moved from New York in the late 1930s to rural Pennsylvania, where he was able to realize his keen personal interest in farming. He learned about organic food-growing concepts being promoted by Lady Eve Balfour and Sir Albert Howard and theorized, based on their work and his own observations, that to preserve and improve our health we must restore and protect the natural health of the soil.”

Rodale had no scientific evidence to suggest that Lady Eve’s “organic” idea was better than conventional farming. They both just “felt it to be true” emotionally. The Rodale Institute takes this as its steering principle so its "research" must be taken with a large dose of healthy scepticism.

The main “peer-reviewed” publication on which organic fans rely to show that organic farming can produce as much yield as conventional farming is:

Pimentel, Hanson, Seidel et al. Environment, energy and economic comparisons of organic and conventional farming systems. Bioscience. July 2005. (55:7); 573-582.

Sadly, for its scientific veracity, this was not a scientific study but a "review" of other studies that was funded by the Rodale Institute, carried out at the Rodale Institute and co-authored by employees of the Rodale Institute. This makes it utterly worthless as a piece of disinterested science.

If Monsanto (for example) sponsors a study from an independent university, using only independent scientists and independent farms, the results are condemned by “greens” as “biased”. How much less credible are papers from the Rodale Institiute?

The rosey Nazi views of organic founders

A concern for those “liberals” and “progressives” who support organic farming should be the highly reactionary Nazi-sympathisers who founded it and whose ideas continue to influence the movement today. “Visionsary” JI Rodale was inspired in England by Lady Eve Balfour (daughter of a Conservative Prime Minister) who invented organic farming and founded the Soil Association. His other inspiration was Sir Albert Howard who was a member of several secretive anti-Semitic and Nazi-sympathising groups of aristocrats such as the openly fascist Viscount Lymington. Another was Jolian Jenks, a member of the British Union of Fascist Blackshirts which terrorized Jewish neighborhoods in London. Jenks remained editor of the Soil Association’s magazine until well into the 1960s.

A recent history of organic farming in Britain reveals much of its hidden fascist origins.

Another look at the origins of the organic movement is found in:

English Blood and Soil

From the EcoFascism website.

Some selections:

Fox is even more enthused by “author, farmer and one of the founders of the British soil conservation movement”: Lady Eve Balfour. “The health of the soil, plant, animal, and man is one and indivisible.” wrote Lady Balfour in The Living Soil (1942). Fox notes: “there was no real scientific evidence of this at the time, but she felt it was true.” Lady Balfour believed in a return to using horses. (69 & 70)

Fox leaves out a few facts about Lady Eve’s crowd. Lord Northbourne was a member of the propaganda group “Kinship in Husbandry” led by Viscount Lymington, an organic agriculture expert. The Viscount, a former Conservative MP, was openly fascist and a member of the clandestine, aristocratic fascist organization “English Mystery”. The Viscount introduced Jorian Jenks into Kinship in Husbandry.

Mr. Jenks, a farmer, was a prolific propagandist for the British Union of Fascists specializing in agricultural issues. The BUF printed shocking pamphlets on how industrial fertilizers cause cancer. In 1940 Jenks and 800 of his comrades were incarcerated. The Viscount, being an aristocrat, was spared the indignity. Both Viscount and scribe were back at it after the war with Jenks editing, and helping write, “Mother Earth” magazine - the main publication of Kinship’s successor, Lady Eve Balfour’s “British Soil Association”. During this time, Jenks developed an acquaintance Walter Darre, a leading Nazi ecologist. (71)

Throughout Fox’s history of this hidden literary Tradition she blithely mentions how critics have often referred to the Traditionists as: “fascist”, “reactionary”, “Nazi sympathizer”, “very conservative”, or “redneck” etc. Inscrutably, at one point in her anti-industry polemic she quotes Albert Speers. (“There is nothing to stop unleashed technology and science from completing its work of destroying man...”) Speers is casually, unnecessarily introduced as just another authority in spite of having been the Nazi Arms Minister. (72) Finally, Island Press, the publisher of Fox’s book, is a Ford Foundation front group- folks with closet-skeletons.

Climate camp - 137 drown!

2008-08-10T15:25:00.000+01:00

Oh gosh, what a terrible disaster at the Climate Camp! Oh the Humanity!

Despite being warned not to go in the River Medway, the nitwitted protesters (most of whom had not been out of Chelsea before) jumped in a fleet of boats and got themselves in trouble.

Now they've all drowned - woe and thrice woe! For latest news, see below.

Good news - the 137 damp eco-warriors were rescued by our brave boys in blue! All they lost was: dignity, self-respect, ego, several boats, the chance to make a decent protest, interest among the press etc etc.

Contributors to the charity The World Development Movement may be surprised to learn that, instead of helping develop Africa or Asia or South America, the middle-class white, dilettantes of the charity have been living it up in central London with the climate protesters.

Wonder how many wells the cost of that blow-up plane would have built in Africa?

Climate Camp - dog shoot

2008-08-10T12:47:00.002+01:00

Originally, dogs were welcome at the Kingsnorth Climate Camp, but the policy has since changed.

Dogs are no longer wanted! Everyone who has already turned up with a dog should NOT let them play in the big field to the south - the one with the sheep.

Local farmers want target practice with their shotguns so DO NOT paint a large red cross on their sides to give something decent to aim at).

Message from the Climate Campers:

PLEASE DO NOT PHONE 078 1167 1893 or 0163 421 0111 WITH NUISANCE CALLS OR COMPLAINTS.

DOGS ARE FILTHY, FLEA-INFESTED CO2 AND METHANE MACHINES.

PLANET NOT DOGS! PLANET NOT DOGS!

See details in link. (On a personal note, may I say how much I profoundly disagree with that nasty, caninist propaganda. Dogs are people too.)

Lots more bad news from the Climate Camp below!

DOG POLICY

Note: the dog policy has changed.

The farmer, who has been very cooperative has made only one stipulation:

There can be no dogs on site due to his sheep.

So the camp is now a dog-free zone.

Please be aware that farmers in the area have in the past shot at dogs who are found on their land. Please make arrangements for your dog to be looked after - and don't bring it to the site.

BAD NEWS TRAVEL FAST

The camp is £20,000 short in its budget. Send donations to MacMillan Cancer Relief instead!

The number put out earlier for action updates is wrong. Send them to 01634 210 111.

None of the photos on the website can be downloaded. Phone 078 1167 1893 to complain.

Send your holiday snaps by email or text to phone.uploads@gmail.com just so the Press has something to look at. But, since ... "the email address phone.uploads@gmail is not recognised ... " you might have problems.

Join the discussion group on 01634 210 111 and press 7. You may be lonely 'coz there's no one there at present.

Scargill vs Monbiot - burn more coal!

2008-08-09T14:38:00.006+01:00

Confusing support and opposition for the Climate Camp from the once radical Arthur Scargill, President for Life of the National Union of Mineworkers.

Although he claims to be an "environmentalist" Arthur demands a return to large scale coal mining in Britain, he says:

"Britain needs an integrated energy policy that will produce 250m tonnes of indigenous deep-mine clean coal per year - from which could be extracted all the electricity, oil, gas and petrochemicals that our people need."

In fact, he almost sounds like a Climate Denier: (spittt!)

"After the closure of 192 pits since 1980, the loss of 170,000 jobs and the closure or non-operation of nearly 70% of coal-fired power stations on the false premise that they were uneconomic and the worst polluter of carbon dioxide, it is reasonable to expect that there would have been a dramatic fall in CO2 emissions. But in fact CO2 emissions have actually increased ..."

Sadly, Arthur goes on to show that he can't be let out of the Maximum Security Twilight Home for the Terminally Bewildered just yet:

"All existing and new coal-fired power stations should be fitted with clean coal technology - including carbon capture that would remove all CO2 - and at the same time we should be developing a massive renewable energy policy based on wind, wave, tide, barrage, hydro, geothermal, solar power, together with insulation, conservation and reforestation."

Arthur's imaginary friend has been telling him about carbon capture again - something that exists only in fairy tales. And it sounds like Arthur is feeling persecuted by his old comrades; one of the wardens (oops, I mean nursing staff) has told him of George Monbiot's recent conversion to nuclear power:

"Has George Monbiot sold out on his environmental credentials or is he suffering from amnesia? In his article on these pages [The Guardian] last Tuesday he states that he has now reached the point where he no longer cares whether or not the answer to climate change is nuclear - let it happen, he says ... I challenge George Monbiot to test out which is the most dangerous fuel - coal or nuclear power. I am prepared to go into a room full of CO2 for two minutes, if he is prepared to go into a room full of radiation for two minutes."

Hmmm, maybe Arthur has a death wish. With his state of health two minutes in a room full of C02 would be suicide (You can't breath pure CO2 Arthur, pure CO2 is poison, more poisonous than plutonium!). Whereas George would almost certainly be fine after two minutes in a room full of radiation - depending on the type of radiation, obviously.

Surely, as a leader of mineworkers, Scargill should known that there have been over 500,000 deaths in mining accidents over the last 60 years? Shouldn't he also know that over the last 60 years there have been fewer than 25 deaths in radiation accidents - excluding Chernobyl. At Chernobyl there were fewer than 60 deaths from acute radiation poisoning and it was originally estimated that over the following 50 years there would be fewer than 4,000 deaths.

In fact, deaths as a result of exposure to the "Chernobyl Cloud" of radiation have been few and far between and the "Children of Chernobyl" featured (and exploited yet again) in Ewan McGregor's TV travels are nothing whatever to do with radiation.

Somebody refer Arthur Scargill to the section on the effects of Chernobyl on human health on Wikipedia. Normally I would not recommend Wikipedia, but since I wrote most of this section and the Editors have stopped any further vandalism I endorse it warmly. Please don't use the 'alternative' section on Wikipedia since it is simply the vandalised section moved to a different place and given a different title.

Anyway, the point is, why is Scargill recommending a technology that has killed (directly) half a million people in 60 years and is causing "disastrous climate change" instead of a safe technology that will help solve climate change?

Could his very very generous pension for life have something to do with it?

For radiation accidents (ex-Chernobyl), see:
http://www.orau.org/ptp/Library/accidents/la-13638.pdf

For health effects of the Chernobyl accident, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

Thought for the weekend – Win A Prize!

2008-08-09T00:02:00.000+01:00

Can anyone at the IPCC add?

As we all know, the Earth’s temperature has increased by an average of 0.65 degrees C over the last 100 years. So where are the bits that have cooled?

The IPCC’s 2007 Summary for Policymakers contains a handy map of the world (pg6) upon which the “experts” have draw a graph of temperature over each continent between 1900 and 2007.

North America – average temp increase since 1900 – 0.9 degrees
South America – average temp increase since 1900 – 0.6 degrees
Europe - average temp increase since 1900 – 0.9 degrees
Africa - average temp increase since 1900 – 0.9 degrees
Australia - average temp increase since 1900 – 0.6 degrees

We are constantly being told that the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed by 2 degrees, that parts of the Amazon have warmed by 2 degrees, that the Arctic is unfreezing, that parts the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans have warmed by 2 degrees – and so on and so on.

But if the temperature has increased so much over so much of the planet’s surface – why is the global average up by only 0.65 degrees? Surely, that means some parts of the planet have cooled down big time to balance all that extra heat over the continents and the oceans?

Why not find those ultra-frigid planetary parts (could it be your freezer, set way to low?) and let us know. The Winner will receive an award of unprecedented gloriosity that will make Al Gore’s Nobel Prize look like his graduations certificate from Bible College.

DUMB ECOLOGIST: No reason to panic!!!

2008-08-08T19:01:00.003+01:00

This week please panic about: Nothing?!?!

Apologies to all who look forward to a fresh new example of Dumbness from The Ecologist magazine every week. Each day we have waited with bated breath for the Ecologist weekly newsletter to appear in our mailbox - but no such luck.

Perhaps ... can it be true ... the environment has been solved!?!?! No more problems for The Ecologist and its deeply committed band of confused, ill-educated, street-performers and aristocratic trust-fund teenagers to solve?

Well there's not so happy a reason. As you may know, a few months ago Ecologist readers were asked to panic about computers and the internet. Apparently they cause invisible waves of naughtiness and toxicity that poison the minds of all right thinking people. Some of the staff started to wear large turbans made from aluminium foil to protect their sensitive brains. As an extra security measure, Zac Goldsmit ordered all computers removed from the office to be replaced by an all-organic, silicone-free, eletromagnetic-wave-free substitute.

In this eco-internet, happy thoughts are sent along thick fibres spun from organic hemp and dipped in a pool of mother's milk. When someone drinks it (or uses it in tea) the thoughts disperse around The Ecologist office much more efficently than by email. Zac Collects all the Ecologist news this way and send it written out on strips of organic mashed potato using the very ecological language cuneiform.

Back at Zac's eco-farm, the Butler (as a working class person, he is not susceptible to the electromagnetic waves that disrupt the brains of the more highly evolved Ecologist staff) then enters all the information on the Ecologist website at the only computer terminal allowed to be connected to the internet (inside an old bank vault lined with 18 inches of lead) somewhere in the bunker Zac is building in preparation for the End of the World (expected November 9th, 2013).

This week, we understand, Zac and the gang have taken the Goldsmith Executive Winnebago (6 beds, 2 kitches, 4 baths, media suite, executive kitchen, staff quarters for 8) to the Climate Camp and since Zac never travels without the Butler, there is no one who can get the Ecologist Newsletter out this week.

Oh Well -- let's hope normal service resumes next week!

A howl of pain - "green" taxes

2008-08-08T12:44:00.001+01:00

A howl of pain from Rod Liddle in this week’s Spectator which says what the vast majority of people think – that “green taxes” are simply a way for governments and eco-nitwits to gouge more out of us and trample us down into conformity.

The measures on ‘gas-guzzling’ cars, policing of wheelie bins and surcharges on plastic bags are based on scientific fads and, often, the government’s greed for taxpayers’ money. The Third World won’t pay the price, and nor will big business — but we will.

And so the measures taken against us increase almost by the week, become ever more punitive and costly and ever more difficult to justify in environmental terms. They seem much more like under-the-counter revenue-raising measures, or a means of saving our useless and profligate district councils money to spend on things which nobody wants or needs. Or worse than either of these things, a witless nod in the direction of a prevailing fashion — uncosted, unchallenged, a little like that fatuous wind turbine on the side of David Cameron’s house in Notting Hill, which will generate nothing whatsoever of consequence, except for a sort of inveterate loathing of the chap on my part. I suppose there must be a fourth criterion — green taxes which are fair and just and provide a legitimate recompense for the damage we have wrought. But the fuel levy excepted — these seem few and far between.

A little under a year ago an organisation called the TaxPayers’ Alliance commissioned a study which revealed that British taxpayers paid out ten billion pounds per year more than was the environmental cost of our carbon footprint — or, as they put it, every British family was overpaying four hundred pounds per year in green taxes. By ‘green’ taxes the organisation meant fuel levies, vehicle excise duty, landfill tax and the EU emissions programme. Now, OK, it’s a fair cop — I suppose you would not expect an organisation called the TaxPayers’ Alliance to commission a study which concluded that we should all pay more in tax of one kind or another. But still, I have not seen those figures convincingly rebutted anywhere. I suspect that they are impossible to rebut and that instead the answer will come that we have a duty to the world which well exceeds the damage we wreak upon it. Perhaps — but if so, then let’s say as much, clearly.

Let’s look at a couple of measures recently introduced and see if we can divine a motive for them. Let’s begin with the government’s original intention to whack up the tax on elderly ‘gas-guzzling’ cars, out of a stated wish to have us all driving modern, ‘clean’ cars. This was clearly a revenue raising measure because its actual effect would have been environmentally damaging in two key aspects. First, raising car tax on any car tends to lead people to use their car more often in order to get better value for money out of it. Further, those who traded in their old cars to buy a new one would leave a far-bigger footprint because the energy and thus emissions involved in constructing a new car far, far outweigh those expended in continuing to drive the old one. It is inconceivable that the government did not know this when the measure was unveiled by Alistair Darling — they simply thought they could get away with it because it came under the heading ‘green’. Fortunately, the public was not so stupid.

Then there’s the decision by supermarkets nobly to charge customers for plastic bags. I do not for a single moment understand why this involved any sort of sacrifice on behalf of our multinational supermarkets; it simply made shopping more expensive, or less convenient, for the customer. Most people, I suspect, pay about 60 pence extra for their shopping as a consequence, on top of the extortionate rise in basic food prices. If the supermarkets had decided to reduce their packaging by 80 per cent, abolish environmentally unsound buy-one-get-one-free deals, or the government decided to fine them for returning stock to farmers when the crop was not pristine and of uniform length and shape, slap a tax on out-of-town shopping centre car parks — all of those measures would be of greater benefit to the environment and less painful for the beleaguered consumer. But the consumer is not a terribly powerful lobby.

And here are a few more environmental non sequiturs. Fining residents more than 100 quid for overfilling their wheelie bins by three inches is not merely fatuous and vindictive, it is also un-green. Clearly, the more waste removed in a single operation, the more environmentally economic it is. And if residents think they’ll be fined for slightly overfilling their bins, they may well resort to fly-tipping or — and I accept that this is an attractive proposition, now I think about it — ramming it down the throat of one of the local council’s bin snoopers. And while we’re on the subject, I still haven’t seen a study which shows the incontestable benefit of recycling glass and aluminium. I’m not saying that there isn’t one; merely that I have yet to see good hard figures which prove the case.

Then there are the sudden draconian measures introduced which will, in the end, be of as much environmental use as Cameron’s bloody wind turbine. Such as banning patio heaters. The emissions from these admittedly ugly things are so minuscule as to be almost unmeasurable — and don’t forget, we wouldn’t need them at all if the government had been a little bit more sensible in its decision to expunge smoking from the face of the earth. This is an example of the witless nod to fashion which will achieve nothing, apart from make the lives of a few million individuals slightly less pleasant.

Why are these proposed eco-towns called eco-towns when they are, in fact, the very opposite? The only ‘eco-town’ is one which isn’t built. You can’t pave over the whole of Oxfordshire and claim green credits for having done so, even if every house is that wholly fictitious thing, carbon neutral and full of disabled access ramps every five paces. And this brings us to what should be the central issue: overpopulation is way, way more damaging to the environment than any amount of carbon emissions (although it does of course, lead ineluctably to more carbon emissions). The more greenfield land that is built upon, the more egregiously our environment is damaged. This seems to me so obvious as to be scarcely worth stating - and yet the green lobby approaches the subject very gingerly, for reasons of political correctness.

Our island is overcrowded, especially in the south; we have a housing shortage largely because we allow too many properties to remain empty in the hands of private landlords and because the cost of new houses was (and still is, despite the subprime crisis) unsustainably high. Address those issues before building 12 Sunderlands in the south-east of England. Incidentally, our birth rate is commendably low; the reason Britain has become horribly overcrowded to the extent that our infrastructure cannot cope is due solely to immigration — for which, once again, the ordinary taxpayer foots the bill.

There was an interesting study released a year or so back which ‘proved’ that it was more environmentally sound to drive your car to the shops than to walk there and back. This is because the amount of protein you would be required to consume before undertaking such a walk would exceed, in expenditure of energy (feeding all those cows, killing them, packaging them, dragging them to the supermarkets etc), the comparatively lowly amount required to drive a car a mile or two.

The truth is, I suspect, that you can ‘prove’ almost any old rubbish to be environmentally sound or otherwise — the science is so inexact and so open to manipulation. This isn’t an excuse for doing nothing, but it is a good reason for suspecting the motives of any and all politicians when they use the word ‘green’. It is beginning to be seen as a gigantic con perpetrated against the very people who can least afford it.

See Spectator website

Monbiot vs Burchill & vs Porritt

2008-08-07T13:28:00.009+01:00

Listen to Julie Burchill castigate George Monbiot about green miserablism and hypocrisy.

Sorry - audio currently unavailable; hope to have it back soon.

Listen to Jonathon Porritt accuse George Monbiot of "selling out" on nuclear power.

Sorry - audio currently unavailable; hope to have it back soon.

Ten Myths About Nuclear Power

Greens opposing nuclear power muddle every issue from terrorism to uranium supplies, in order to besmirch the only proven safe and cost-effective way to generate large amounts of electricity that won’t produce large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. One would think that greens don’t want a world with abundant energy and a stable climate!

These are some of the myths we are likely to hear from greens debating nuclear power over the next few weeks:

1) Uranium is running out
According to Greenpeace, uranium reserves are ‘relatively limited’ (1) and last week the Nuclear Consultation Working Group claimed that a significant increase in nuclear generating capacity would reduce reliable supplies from 50 to 12 years (2).

In fact, there is 600 times more uranium in the ground than gold and there is as much uranium as tin. There has been no major new uranium exploration for 20 years, but at current consumption levels, known uranium reserves are predicted to last for 85 years. Geological estimates from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) show that at least six times more uranium is extractable – enough for 500 years’ supply at current demand (3). Modern reactors can use thorium as a fuel and convert it into uranium – and there is three times more thorium in the ground than uranium (4).

Uranium is the only fuel which, when burnt, generates more fuel. Not only existing nuclear warheads, but also the uranium and plutonium in radioactive waste can be reprocessed into new fuel, which former UK chief scientist Sir David King estimates could supply 60 per cent of Britain’s electricity to 2060 (5).

In short, there is more than enough uranium, thorium and plutonium to supply the entire world’s electricity for several hundred years.

The other myths:

2) Nuclear is not a low-carbon option

3) Nuclear power is expensive

4) Reactors produce too much waste

5) Decommissioning is too expensive

6) Building reactors takes too long

7) Leukaemia rates are higher near reactors

8) Reactors lead to weapons proliferation

9) Wind and wave power are more sustainable

10) Reactors are a terrorist target
Read about all the myths at:

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4259/

Climate Camp - Butlins for the brain dead

2008-08-07T13:13:00.001+01:00

At Spiked-Online, Rob Lyons pricks the pomposity of Climate Campers who want us to return to the middle ages - with "environmentalists" as the new priests sermonising, threatening fire and brimstone, selling (carbon) indulgences and keeping the uppity peasants in their place.

Kingsnorth: a camp of uncritical conformity
Rob Lyons

The ‘climate campers’ pose as radical – yet their disdain for consumerism and love of sustainability makes them little different to Gordon Brown.

Environmental activists have built a climate camp near a power station in Kingsnorth, south-east England, to protest against plans for a new coal-fired plant. Yet Britain’s energy infrastructure is heading rapidly for obsolescence, and the British authorities need to start building coal-fired plants now if we are to avoid a shortfall in energy supply. That is of little concern to the climate campers, however – they would positively embrace a fall in energy supply, and the austerity that would follow.

Read on at Spiked-Online

For another excellent examinations of the Climate Camp and the unpleasant bunch of toffs, aristocrats and green hypocrites who inhabit it, see Climate Resistance:

Hypocritic Oaf

CHP - no heat, no power, no hope

2008-08-07T12:16:00.005+01:00

The front page of today's Guardian is a scare story about the Earth warming by 4 degrees. But still, that paper continues to oppose nuclear power and GM crops.

The Guardian's energy policy is neatly summed up in the former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone's plan for the future energy supply of London, which relied on CHP and wind power. But the contents of the plan reflect the banal and impractical thinking that characterises the green movement and ensures that the proposed ‘carbon savings’ will be illusory.

Every London neighbourhood will have a municipal waste incinerator, a couple of sawdust-burning furnaces or a gigantic sewage reservoir bubbling methane and other flammable gases. Roads and parks will be dug up to lay an entirely new system of hot water distribution to homes and offices that, in turn, will be re-plumbed. Thousands of combined heat and power plants – each the size of a small block of flats – will take over from central gas and electricity as the main suppliers of energy to the city.

This extraordinarily ambitious plan (perhaps verging on megalomania) was former London mayor Ken Livingstone’s misty-eyed vision for the capital’s ‘decentralised energy’ future to meet the challenge of climate change. And it is still the way the Green Party and green groups want London to develop – in fact Livingstone’s energy plans were drawn up with Greenpeace his Action Today to Protect Tomorrow: The Mayor’s Climate Change Action Plan was endorsed by the Green Party.

The top priority for greens is to build combined heating and power (CHP – or, with cooling, CCHP) stations. Proponents claim that CHP power plants are ‘sustainable’ because as they generate electricity, unwanted heat is transferred into water rather than released into the air. This heated water is pumped to nearby buildings to substitute for central heating and hot water. Depending on the size of the CHP plant and the density of housing, it can supply hundreds or thousands of properties – but the rapid cooling of water in pipes means that it is only useful for infrastructure fairly close by – hence the need for localised plants.

Greens say CHP plants will burn domestic and industrial waste, biomass (in the form of pellets manufactured from sawdust or dried plants), and sewage (dehydrated solid sludge or gases released by microbial digestion).

In fact, the vast majority of CHP plants burn gas – not as polluting as coal, but a high-carbon fossil fuel nonetheless. Using waste (either rubbish or sewage) as a fuel is still experimental and inefficient. Biomass is, essentially, wood burning and not only produces carbon dioxide but also dioxin. Ironically, dioxin is usually the greens’ scary (if much exaggerated) poison of choice, the mere mention of which is expected to seal any eco-argument - but such fears seem to have been forgotten in the push for sustainable energy.

CHP plants can operate at 80 per cent efficiency (the rate at which the energy potential of fuel is converted to heat or power) compared with 40 per cent for coal stations. But the original energy content of, for example, biomass is tiny. Small biomass plants simply cannot generate the high-pressure steam of a large fossil-fuel furnace. For electricity generation, biomass plants operate at only 10 per cent efficiency. ‘Decentralised energy’ and CHP are assumed to be ‘renewable’, ‘sustainable’ and ‘low carbon’. This fiction – common in environmental circles – is believed because it coincides with other fairytales about the moral superiority of recycling. Surely it is better to use waste, sewage and biomass for energy generation rather than landfill?

Only nine per cent of Britain’s waste is domestic (which puts the greens’ enthusiasm for recycling household rubbish into perspective); the vast majority of waste - 91 per cent - comes from industry, agriculture, construction, mining and so on. The most efficient method of disposal would be landfill. This method can also produce a small amount of energy, through the burning of the methane that is produced as the organic matter decomposes. But EU regulations now require member states to institute expensive landfill taxes. So there will soon be huge mountains of waste to dispose of somehow.

But since greens have lways opposed incinerators, they have to convince the public that that incineration is not the noxious polluter it one was, but is really a ‘sustainable’ source of energy.

Actually, these ‘sustainable’ sources of fuel are simply a method of sending carbon dioxide back into the air without the inconvenient delay of storing it in the Earth’s crust for millennia. The energy used in collecting the fuel, processing it into a usable form, transporting it to CHP plants and disposing of solid waste is simply ignored. And until some practical form of carbon-capture and storage is developed, carbon dioxide will still be released into the atmosphere. The whole process will really increase CO2 levels in the atmosphere – less than coal burning, certainly, but it will not reduce CO2 levels as would nuclear power.

The experience of Denmark suggests that wind power and decentralised energy – especially with CHP – are highly incompatible. Wind undermines both the economics and energy efficiency of CHP and it is doubtful whether the Danes have saved any carbon emissions at all as a result of their massive investment in CHP and offshore wind power. Denmark’s ‘sustainable’ energy strategy results in the country having to import at least 10 per cent of its electricity from neighbouring Sweden, where half the electricity supply is nuclear.

If greens truly wanted to reduce carbon emissions quickly and significantly, they would propose a carbon-free ‘nuclear tariff’ for consumers to sign up to, suggest that all gas boilers be replaced with electric one – and follow the example of the Israeli government in planning to roll out an electric car scheme with battery-replacement stations instead of petrol stations.

An all-electric Britain supplied by nuclear power stations would reduce carbon emissions from transport and heating to, as near as damn it, zero - an effective, achievable and affordable way to make Britain the world’s first carbon-free. But in the anything-but-nuclear world of environmentalism, that kind of thinking is taboo.

Obamans FOR climate change

2008-08-07T00:01:00.001+01:00

For all amateur video enthusiasts or those who fancy themselves as undiscovered advertising geniuses, why not enter the contest for the best 30 or 60 second commercial to "inspire your next president." The contest is run by our very, very good chums at the Climate Matters website - which looks like a Greenpeace front organisation. They especially want kids to enter as another form of brainwashing for the young.

The total prize fund is only $4,500 (probably every child wins a prize) so don't invest a lot of time. The link below will lead to you my own crappy attempt (under the name Glob Al S.Keptic, aged 4.2 years) which shows what you can do with Windows Movie Maker and an hour of boredom on a wet Sunday afternoon).

All quotes from Barack Obama guaranteed 110% true!

Who would have thought Barack had quite such strange views on the subject of climate change?

For those who doubt their own ears, here is a transcript of Obama's message:

"America will invest 150 billion dollars over 10 years in the climate change all of us so desperately want - to condemn future generations to global catastrophe.

"We see the effects of global climate change in our communities and around the world make America a little but stronger and a little bit safer and a little bit more prosperous.

"Business will be allowed to emit any greenhouse gases for free as a central part of our national security strategy – we’ve been hiding that for a long time."

The video closes with the blessings of God on all the Democratic Party candidates.

(Thanks to Mozart and Marvin Gaye.)

Monbiot goes nuclear

2008-08-06T14:53:00.009+01:00

Apparently, there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than if a busload of Born-Agains turns up at the pearly gates.

If so, there were a lot of hangovers in heaven this morning because yesterday George Monbiot announced his support for nuclear power – first in his Guardian column, then later on BBC2’s Newsnight. Yes, it's true. If you don't believe it, read on and see and hear the evidence for yourself.

Monbiot is about to discover what it is like to be out of step with the “green consensus.” In fact, it’s already started. Already, on a Channel 4 discussion forum, this comment has appeared (edited because it’s pretty dull):

“Did I dream it or did George Monbiot finally fully induct himself into the prize fools hall of fame last night on Newsnight? ... So, after 30 years, to be treated to the spectacle of George Monbiot's public endorsement [of] nuclear power as the ultimate solution to global warming indicates the whole environmental movement is in crisis and has come full circle after 30 years to betray its founding myth … Someone once said of Enoch Powell that he was driven mad by the remorseless of his own logic. That could equally apply to the sad figure of George Monbiot.”

But the inevitability of George’s conversion to nuclear should not come as a surprise. He gave a strong hint of movement in that direction in a column in 2006 [edited, and with emphasis added]:

“If someone had worked out how to cause a war within the environment movement, they could not have developed a better means than nuclear power. In public, we will line up to attack the energy review published by the government today. In private we will reserve some of our venom for each other, as we start to ask ourselves whether we have made the right decision.

“The UK’s dying nuclear power stations are, at the moment, its principal source of low-carbon energy. Electricity produced by a pressurised light water reactor, when all its carbon costs have been taken into account, emits around 16 tonnes of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour. Gas produces 356 tonnes and coal 891. If our nuclear power stations are replaced by thermal plants, the UK’s annual output of CO2 will rise by roughly 51 million tonnes, or 8% of the total.

“Zac Goldsmith, arguing against new nukes, calls this percentage “miniscule”. This is breathtaking. We campaign to prevent electrical appliances being left on standby, hoping to save some 4 million tonnes of CO2 a year. How can we then dismiss a cut 13 times as great?

“Anti-nuclear campaigners have a tendency to believe anything that casts the industry in a bad light. Last month’s edition of the Ecologist magazine, for example, contends that 14 million tonnes of concrete are required to build a nuclear power station, resulting in a massive release of carbon dioxide. Specifications are notoriously hard to come by, but I have managed to find the figures for Calder Hall A, opened in 1956. It used 72,500 cubic yards of concrete, which equates to 108,000 metric tonnes, or less than 1% of the Ecologist’s estimate. Modern power stations are smaller.”

When Greenpeace invented the anti-GM scare in the late 1990s, Monbiot ridiculed Prince Charles, who talked of “the spirit of the Earth rustling through the trees … crying out against GM crops.” Jonathon Porritt, of course came to the defence of Prince Chuck because he has the most enormous man-crush on our nitwit heir to the throne. And Monbiot’s opinion of playboy dilettante Zac Goldsmith and his Ecologist magazine (inherited from his even-more nitwit uncle Edward) can be judged from the language in the quote above.

Everyone in the environmental movement sniggers behind Goldsmith’s back because of his incredible ignorance on just about every matter except poker. Of course they never laugh to his face because the £300 million he inherited from his asset-stripper daddy buys an awful lot of “respect”.

George Monbiot is one of the few “environmentalists” who has a science degree. He has always been pretty contemptuous of the Nitwit Wing of greenism, and his conversion to nuclear at least shows that he actually believes in dangerous climate change.

The Green Nitwit tendency wants either disastrous climate change or wants to saboutage future energy supplies - anything to collapse the world economy. Either way, their long wet dream is for a return to a pre-industrial fantasyland where the corn is golden, the peasants are happy and Environmentalists supervise the hard work from the country house. It is, quite literally, an eco-fascist dream straight from the pages of Mein Kampf.

One of the most sad and touching (but most revealing) moments in the Monbiot vs. Porritt debate came with George’s plea:

“If we can’t debate this without being accused of selling-out …”

Hey George, now you know how it feels to be on the receiving end!

As a bonus, Monbiot appeared on the Today Programme this morning to be attacked for green miserabalism by Julie Burchill.

Audio from the Burchill vs Monbiot debate and a debate between Monbiot and Jonathon Porritt on nuclear power is available on a later post above.

Recycling - bullshit!

2008-08-05T18:23:00.010+01:00

Those who don’t keep their eyes glued to the obscure TV stations above 100 on the satellite dial may be missing one of the best documentary series in history.

Penn & Teller: Bullshit exposes charlatans and conventional wisdom with ruthless humour. Whether it’s Uri Geller, detoxification diets, alternative medicine, stage hypnotists, religious cults, exorcism or beauty therapies – Penn & Teller dissect them and the con artists who perpetrate them.
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Well before Borat and Ali G. (and, hopefully, long after) Penn & Teller revealed the stupidity, hypocrisy and ingrained thinking in all of us – but especially the mindset that makes people susceptible to wacky religions, health fads and greenism. In the clip below the world’s greatest magicians tell the truth about one of the great sacred cows of modern life -- recycling. Penn & Teller show that it is largely a waste of time, money and resources and causes more environmental damage than it prevents.

British artist Tracy Emin has a theory that nuns are taught sewing to keep their hands occupied and stop them masturbating. Recycling is just mental masturbation for the masses in order to stop them thinking.

Penn & Teller: Bullshit - Recycling

A few interesting factoids:

More people recycle than vote.

40% of what you recycle ends up in landfill anyway (probably a lot more in the UK).

The true cost of landfill (before the stupid EU tax) is £25 per tonne, recycling costs £75 per tonne.

Eco Quiz - How ecological are you?

2008-08-04T16:39:00.013+01:00

It is a fact universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of limited scientific knowledge is in want of carbon rationing. As noted earlier, most self-appointed eco-experts have no scientific education whatever. The prime example, of course is Al Gore - Divinity College (failed), Law School (failed).

The most egregious recent example is Mark Watson - one time stand-up comedian, now full-time climate bore - whose book 'Crap at the Environment' was Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 last week. His extensive research on the subject of global warming consisted of reading a book by Mark Lynas (history graduate) and George Monbiot's latest (hey, at least he studied zoology). You could tell Watson did no actual research because he felt guilty about eating New Zealand lamb when it is well-established (and even acknowledged by the deep-green Sustainable Development Commission) that it uses less carbon to fly prepacked juicy lamb joints from the other side of the world than to eat lamb from Wales. He also subscribed to an organic vegetable box scheme - which produce at least twice as much CO2 as an equivalent amount of veg from Kenya.

So, here is a short quiz to test your climate bore friends if they rant in the pub about the imminent danger of planetary collapse under the weight of carbon. It includes a few basics about climate science with some even more basics about general science ... to expose the ignorance of eco-fanatics:

1. Which atmospheric gas has the most impact on the climate?

-- Water vapour. Gaseous H2O causes more vastly more variation in the Earth's temperature than all the others put together - one reason why computer models of climate are so crappy. No one really knows what warming will do to cloud cover.

2. Assuming there's no wind: if you dropped a ping-pong ball from a tall building, when should you drop a golf ball to ensure they hit the ground together?

-- The same time. See Galileo, Newton etc. Light objects fall at the same rate as heavy objects.

3. If a pint of beer represents the whole atmosphere, how much beer represents carbon dioxide?

-- One and a half drops. Most eco-warriors think CO2 is about 50% of the atmosphere instead of less than 0.04%.

4. A few years ago a heat wave was blamed for 20,000 extra summer-time deaths in Europe. If the climate warmed by 2 degrees C how many additional temperature-related deaths would there be in Europe?

-- None. There would probably be 80-100,000 fewer deaths. (See Rob Lyons interview with Nigel Lawson on Spiked-Online for the reason.)

5. You shoot a high-powered sniper rifle at exactly horizontal. How can you tell exactly when the bullet hits the ground?

-- Drop a bullet from the same height as the rifle. The bullet may be travelling horizontally at 500mph but gravity still pulls it down with the same acceleration as a dropped bullet.

6. Roughly how many extra hurricanes will result from global warming of 2-4 degrees C?

-- None. According to the IPCC, for at least the next 80 years, global warming will cause fewer and less intense hurricanes. Hurricanes are caused by hot air (from the equator) meeting cold air (from the North Pole). Their intensity is related to the difference in temperature between the air masses. Global warming has more effect at northern latitudes so the cold air will be less cold - hence the hurricanes will be less intense (no matter what the BBC weatherman says).

7. Does the Sun revolve around the Earth or the Earth revolve around the Sun?

-- I know it sounds like a silly question, but on the French version of 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' recently, half the audience got the answer wrong (!!).

8. Did dinosaurs hunt humans or were they totally vegetarian?

-- Despite what eco-warriors saw in 'Jurassic Park' or hear from Creationists, dinosaurs were extinct more than 60 million years before humans evolved.

9. If you looked through a book of cricket or baseball (or anything) statistics, how many numbers would start with 1? Or 2? Or 3? ... up to 9?

-- If you thought 11% of numbers would start with each of the nine numerals, think again. In any collection of statistics about 30% of numbers start with 1, about 17% with 2, about 12% with 3, about 10% with 4, about 8% with 5, about 7% with 6, about 6% with 7, about 5% with 8 and about 4% with 9. This is Benford's Law and even applies to expense claims - so be aware when faking receipts; it's one easy way forensic accountants can tell if data is invented.

10. If the "Tipping Point" of global warming is coming in 5-10 years and will cause the collapse of human civilisation why aren't the eco-doommongers digging caves, stocking up on tinned food and learning to shoot? (Like "survivalists" the U.S.?) Why are they still living comfortably in Hampstead and writing for the Guardian?
-- That's, largely, a rhetorical question.

You can be almost certain that the worse someone thinks global warming will be, the fewer questions he (or she) will get right.

Eco-Warriors' science ignorance

2008-08-04T08:58:00.002+01:00

It's quite astonishing that the people who shout most loudly about "The Science" of climate change being "final" and have the most eco-fundamentalist views have the least scientific education.

Take the following:

Peter Wilby - Guardian media expert
Prince Charles - Prince & layabout & adulterer & all-round loony
Lord Melchett - heir to ICI fortune, hobby farmer
Al Gore - heir to Gore fortune & Senate seat, electoral failure
Zac Goldsmith - heir to strip-mining and deforestation fortune, playboy
Jonathon Porritt - heir to Baronetcy of Hapstead, Prince Charles-lover
Dr Caroline Lucas - Green Party MEP, not a real doctor - PhD in Eng Lit
Mark Lynas - New Statesman green correspondent
Jonathan Dimbleby - publishing heir, hobby farmer
James Murdoch - publishing heir of evil right-wing Rupert
Jamie Oliver - really really bad, fat-tongued cook
Sting - "singer" & wifey Trudie, Ugly, Weeply Styler
Chris Martin - "singer" & wifey Gwyneth Paltrow - Hollywood heiress
Thom Yorke - "singer" & public school socialist
Madonna - "singer" but at, least a self-made millionaire unlike the rest.
Leonardo DiCaprio - actor.

None of the above have any more than basic school science; most gave it up at the age of 15 then concentrated on arts subjects for their secondary school graduation.

From what we can tell there are only two eco-types who have a degree in a
science subject:

George Monbiot - heir to a biscuit fortune and son of two ardent Tories but he can spot the difference between CO2 and the crack in your arse.
Tony Juniper - now with Friends of the Earth but formerly a bird-botherer so may no longer be able to tell the difference between CO2 and the crack in your arse.

Firefox - thanks everybody

2008-08-01T18:54:00.002+01:00

Thanks for alerting me to the problems for Black & White listeners in Firefox. I believe the problem is now fixed.

(There is no "full article" at the link below.)

Global Warming – “My mistake!” says Gore

2008-08-01T16:32:00.005+01:00

Al Gore, world’s No 1 climate change campaigner today apologised for Global Warming.

“Sorry everybody, it was a giant cock-up on my part,” he said in a Washington DC press conference, “Turns out a fly took a giant shit on the White House Xerox machine in 1997. When I copied articles from Scientific American all the decimal points appeared in the wrong place.” Laughing, he continued, “So it looked like the Earth is getting warmer. In fact, everything is fine!”

On hearing the news, Michael Mann, famous for the hockey stick temperature curve, said, “Thanks Christ Al said it first. When I was joining the dots Madonna was on the radio, singing, “‘Oooo touched for the very first time,’ and my pencil slipped. In fact the “curve” should be flat as a pancake. There’s no global warming. None. Not a sausage. Fuck all.”

At NASA, James Hansen too was relieved, “Yippee! That’s all people ask me about … global warming this, global warming that … I just can’t be arsed … it’s so boring! I always wanted to dance like the Kids from Fame, that’s my passion. No more getting up at 4.00am to read the crappy thermometer anymore, it’s on with the leg warmers and off to ballet class for me.”

In England, George Monbiot, famous eco-warrior agreed, “I’ve had my eye on a Ferrari for ages. Now I’ve got a second hand Beetle and its sodding useless. I made big bucks from the gloomy climate hippes and its time to enjoy. Eat my dirt, fucking tree hugger organic yoghurt fucking vegan bicycle brigade!”

There was spontaneous applause at the IPCC’s South Pole station. A spokesman said, “We thought something was wrong because it’s cold down here. I mean really fucking cold. So fucking cold you can’t take a piss without your dick freezing off. It’s that cold. No sign of warmth at all.”

Only the residents of ‘Sea View’ Oklahoma, currently 1,000 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico were unhappy. Mayor, Ms Verna Gobble, screamed, “Damn that Al Gore. He promised a 20 feet rise in sea level and that would have made us the new Cancun – what with the old one being 15 feet underwater. We built beach huts, condos with moorings for yachts and a lighthouse. What are we supposed to do now? That fucking bastard, I’m glad I voted for Bush at least he just started a few wars.”

Eco-Hitler Youth

2008-08-01T12:44:00.006+01:00

See fascinating entry at Devil's Kitchen on recruitment of kids as ecofascist shock troops.

And related YouTube clip here.

And a reminder of the fascist roots of Green politics here.

Welfare for the wealthy -- Lord Melchett

2008-08-01T12:11:00.011+01:00

All the talk among British politicians is of the importance of getting people "off welfare and into work" by cutting benefits etc.

A better place to start might be with the huge payments made to multi-millionaires as farm subsidies. We all know that a farm is the best tax dodge in town, but some of our most vocal "environmentalists" who scream about "subsidies" to air travel for the masses are not exactly newcomers to the whole idea of state hand-outs.

Take Peter, Lord Melchett (please!) former Executive Director of Greenpeace UK, now chief propagandist for the organic nitwits at the Soil Association (see fascist and anti-Semitic foundations at previous posts).

Melchett's grandfather founded Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) once the world's largest chemical company; his father was Chairman of British Steel; and at age 23 Peter inherited a title (Baron Mond) and large country estate in East Anglia. If you thought that shame alone would stop him putting his nose in the trough of taxpayers money to subsidise his farming hobby, think again.

This is what he has received recently:

................Arable & Set aside .........Countryside 'stewardship' .........Extras
2002/3 .....£53,018 ..................................£21,751 ..........................£3,342
2003/4 .....£42,981 ..................................£22,009 .........................£3,342
2004/5 .....£57,235 ..................................£21,576 ..........................£3,647
2005/6 .....£74,933 ..................................£20,506 .........................£3,545
2006/7 ...........N/A .......................................N/A ............................£3,644

In other words, we taxpayers have given one of the wealthiest men in Britain £278,564.18 in just over four years!

You would think, as a committed socialist, his Lordship would share some of this largesse with local peasants but, as we know, he prefers to destroy their crops instead.

Climate Realist sites: From Oz

2008-08-01T10:00:00.003+01:00

Two excellent Australian websites are this week's featured Climate Realists:

The Lavoisier Group - of scientists and climate experts with important things to say.

Greenie Watch - an outspoken and humourous critic of the GW "consensus"

One of the great things about Australians is that they don’t mince their words, so Greenie Watch calls James Hansen “warmist crook.”

The Lavoisier Group has a series of scientific papers and presentations that are understandable to those with a modicum of science education (sadly, that rules out 99% of British environmentalists) and Greenie Watch collects fascinating tidbits from all over the news and web and analyses them in typically forthright language.

Today, why not read a short slide presentation from the Lavoisier Group on why the Earth’s rotation, not around the Sun but around the centre of mass (CM) of the solar system (which are not absolutely the same thing) has not been taken into account in climate models but has serious impact on our temperature.

Ian Wilson presentation - solar oscillation from the Lavoisier Group

An example of the content of Greenie Watch:

MELTING GREENLAND?

The New York Times article below is so wrong on so many counts that it is difficult to know where to start in deconstructing it. It has basically swallowed Al Gore's poop whole and yet shows no sign of indigestion. At this stage I just append a few desultory comments at the foot of the article.

Greenland's ice sheet represents one of global warming's most disturbing threats. The vast expanses of glaciers - massed, on average, 1.6 miles deep - contain enough water to raise sea levels worldwide by 23 feet. Should they melt or otherwise slip into the ocean, they would flood coastal capitals, submerge tropical islands and generally redraw the world's atlases. The infusion of fresh water could slow or shut down the ocean's currents, plunging Europe into bitter winter.

The island's ice cover has already begun to disappear. "Changes in the ocean eat the ice sheet from underneath," says Sarah Das, a glaciologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. "Warmer water causes the glaciers to calve and melt back more quickly." Hunters who use the frozen surface of the winter ocean for hunting and travel have found themselves idle when the ice fails to form. The whales, seals and birds they hunt have begun to shift their migratory patterns. "The traditional culture will be hard hit," says Jesper Madsen, director of the department of Arctic environment at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. "But from an overall perspective, it will have a positive effect." Greenland's fishermen are applauding the return of warm-water cod. Shops in the island's capital have suddenly begun to offer locally produced potatoes and broccoli - crops unimaginable a few years earlier.

The claims above show that the author needs to learn some history, climatology, geology, glaciology and oceanography. No such problems happened 1,000 years ago when the Vikings farmed coastal parts of Greenland that are now under ice. Why was the place given the name "Greenland" in the first place?

The bulk of the Ice Sheet sits in a depression in the ground so it cannot "slip" into the ocean. Complete melting of the ice sheet would require global temperature to rise by more than 3 degrees C and to stay that high for thousands of years. Decades have passed since climatologists disproved the urban myth that the Gulf Stream keeps Europe warm: the jet streams produce that warming. The ocean circulation is powered by winds that get their energy from the Sun so they cannot "shut down" unless the Sun disappears.

The IPCC and various independent sources give estimates of sea-level rise based on recent Greenland rates of melting ranging from zero to little more than ONE INCH over the current century. Only the Gory brain and the NYT talk of 23 feet.

If there is glacial shrinkage in Greenland it is more likely due to global cooling than global warming. It's just basic physics but Greenies ignore that: Since the temp of most glaciated areas is well below 0 degrees Celsius, the major determinant of glacial mass is precipitation. And what drives precipitation? Sea surface temperature! Warm seas give off more evaporation -- and hence precipitation -- and cool seas give off less. So lesser glacial mass and hence lesser precipitation implies global COOLING! And since the world has in fact been cooling for nearly two years now, some glacial shrinkage could be expected as a result of that.

Poor African farmers benefit from GM

2008-07-31T15:29:00.004+01:00

Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in Africa has just joined the biotech revolution by approving the planting of two varieties of GM cotton adapted from local varieties. In yet another slap in the face for the misrepresentations of western "green" groups, more than three-quarters of the royalties will go to local farmers. The new GM cotton cuts pesticide use by 60%, reduces production cost by 30% and has a 30% increased yield. The new GM varieties will make up for the fall in the cotton harvest over the last few years.

Reuters:

Cotton farmers in Burkina Faso will soon be planting genetically modified seeds that could boost output and cut costs after the government became the first in West Africa to approve GMO cotton for general use this week.

Bt cotton, developed by U.S. farming biotechnology leader Monsanto, contains a bacterial protein that deters insects, reducing the need for costly pesticides and raising yields by around 30 percent.

Two strains of Bt cotton, both developed from local varieties, have been approved for production and general sale, Zourata Lompo, director of Burkina Faso's National Biosecurity Agency (ANB) told a news conference on Thursday. "This year we have authorised 15,000 hectares for seed production and if the socio-economic evaluation by our field workers is conclusive there is no reason why next season we won't move to generalised production of genetically modified cotton," Lompo said.

Burkina has been the top cotton producer in West Africa in recent years, although its harvest slumped to 360,000 tonnes in the 2007-08 season from 660,000 tonnes the previous year. Researchers at Burkina Faso's INERA agricultural research institute said Bt cotton required only two pesticide treatments per season, compared with six or eight for non-modified cotton.

That cut pesticide use by at least 60 percent. Pesticides currently make up around 30 percent of production costs. It translates into a saving of around 35,000 CFA francs per hectare each season, while the 30 percent higher yield from Bt cotton increases revenues by around 55,000 CFA, the researchers said.

Royalties from seed production will be split with local farmers receiving 72 percent of seed sales and Monsanto 28 percent, officials said. "It's a co-ownership scheme. The gene belongs to Monsanto, but all the scientific work to select and evaluate performance and toxicity has been done by Burkinabe scientists on Burkinabe varieties," Lompo said.

St. Louis-based Monsanto's cotton, which is already grown in some other countries around the world, has a gene derived from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that protects the plants from specific lepidopteron insect pests, the company says.

Use of genetically modified crops for food and textiles has increased in recent years but has faced opposition from environmentalists who say the release of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could upset delicately balanced habitats or even lead to uncontrolled super species.

Last year, 23 countries planted genetically modified crops, Monsanto said. Only one, South Africa, was on the continent where advocates like Monsanto say GMO crops could have their greatest impact in increasing food output and fighting poverty.

Burkina National Cotton Producers' Union President Francois Traore said farmers had nothing to fear from GMO cotton. "We are going ahead because we have followed the process since the start and the researchers have proved our fears were unfounded. The trials have demonstrated that at a productivity level, we will earn more with Bt cotton," he said.

Give this kid a SLAP!!!

2008-07-31T13:00:00.003+01:00

After you watch this YouTube clip, I guarantee you will want to leave all your lights on, run the car 24 hours a day in the driveway, drop poison in the sea for the whales to chew on, fly continuously between the Poles in most fuel-guzzling plane you can find, and sign up to a 100% Dirty Coal electricity tariff.

Somehow, this most obnoxious example of Greenpeace propaganda passed me by initially. Ever wonder what happened to the sinister alien "Pod" kids from "The Midwich Cuckoos" (U .S. title - "Village of the Damned")? Here's one of the evil, bug-eyed drones. You can just imagine him in Nazi Germany as Top Boy in the Hitler Youth , turning over his parents to the S.S. because "they look too Jewish." But here, he's spouting Greenpeace propaganda.

Sadly, the effect is somewhat ruined by the fact he has a Canadian accent. Canadians are such nice people and it's impossible to sound to threatening when you say "abooot" instead of "about."

Greenpeace paid to destroy crops

2008-07-31T02:00:00.008+01:00

Despite Greenpeace claims that they destroy GM test crops "on principle" we now have conclusive evidence that, in fact, the Greenpeace policy against GM and in favour of "organic" is bought and paid for.

Large foundations pay Greenpeace directly to create anti-GM propaganda, stir up fear and destroy test crops in order to keep genetically improved foods off supermarket shelves. Their objective is to promote "organic" farming -- with all its fascist history and neo-Nazi philosophy. By doing the work of these far-right foundations Greenpeace puts at risk the lives of millions in the developing world who stand to benefit from improved seeds.

Just over ten years ago, two dozen middle-class Greenpeace employees and activists destroyed the livelihoods of two brothers who ran a small (27 acre) farm in East Anglia near the large 850 acre estate of Lord Melchett, (then) Greenpeace Executive Director.

The excuse for this act of violence - which left one of the elderly brothers in hospital with a heart attack - was a small trial of GM crops on the brothers' land. In his subsequent trial for criminal damage, Lord Melchett used the excuse that his "organic" farm dozens of miles away might be contaminated by GM seeds or pollen. Only later did we discover that, despite his boasts, Melchett had not actually converted his land to organic and was still spraying his crops and using artificial fertilisers. In fact, even 10 years later that conversion has still not been completed - according to the financial statements of Melchett's charitable trust.

Further, in their defence, Melchett and his co-accused claimed their actions were a matter of principle.

Now, however, we discover from financial statements in the United States, that Greenpeace has been paid large sums of money to conduct its anti-GM campaign.

The website Activist Cash reveals large payments to Greenpeace USA (connected to Greenpeace UK through Greenpeace International in Amsterdam - which all exchange monies) specifically to trash GM crops:

Turner Foundation ................$ 1,390,000 "To encourage schools to use organic food"
Rockefeller Foundation .........$ 780,000 "To encourage use of organic food"
John Merck Foundation .........$ 80,000 "To force GM food off supermarket shelves"
Clarence Heller Foundation ...$ 75,000 "To promote organic over GM food"
Holborn Foundation ...............$ 10,000 "To campaign against GM food"

These are just the most obvious and easy to find donations in the US -- British charity laws make it much harder to find sources and reasons behind individual donations.

But this certainly shows that Greenpeace's anti-GM campaign is not on "principle" alone -- it is a direct result of cash donations that are dependent on Greenpeace trashing GM crops and promoting "organic" foods.

Massive waste to celebrate climate change

2008-07-30T13:10:00.008+01:00

News today of yet another massive waste of taxpayers' money in the name of climate change.

NESTA, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts has announced the shortlist for its £1 million prize Big Green Challenge. NESTA is supposed to encourage innovation, skill development, research and the like. In a statement of unparalleled meaninglessness, NESTA CEO Jonathan Kestenbaum said,

“Big Green Challenge was launched to encourage communities to come together to generate new ideas on how to save the planet. We had an amazing response from a wide cross-section of groups, and these 21 finalists prove that new ideas to tackle climate change can be found within our own communities. Too often people only associate innovation with technology. The Big Green Challenge shows that people-powered, social innovation can make a difference to the big issues of today.”

The Big Green Challenge is:

"... the first project of its kind in the UK, offering up to ten community groups the chance to compete for a £1 million prize with their imaginative and successful approaches to cutting carbon emissions and tackling climate change head-on."

You've probably never heard of NESTA, but it one of the hundreds of quangos that feel free to splash around your money to ever-diminishing effect. Just take a look at the "projects" that have been highlighted in the press release (remember, these are the most exciting projects and, apparently, innovation does not have to mean new, either.):

• The UK-wide Carbon Rationing Action Groups (CRAGs). Like diet clubs for the carbon-heavy, CRAGs are support groups for people trying to cut down on their
carbon footprint. Members survey their present carbon footprints and use CRAG tools to map their own steady and achievable carbon descent path.

Rationing -- there's a forward-looking idea -- hardly "innovation" though is it? And try to appreciate that truly execrable language:

"... survey their present carbon footprints and use CRAG tools to map their own steady and achievable carbon descent path."

-- when what they mean is "use less energy."

• The Three Green Valleys - Brecon, Wales. This group aims to develop micro hydro generation on steep valley sides that will produce enough electricity to finance further installations and provide capital for habitat restoration, efficiency measures at home, and community food and transport projects.

What the hell is "micro hydro generation"? I suspect it won't rival The Three Gorges or Boulder Dams or the Rocky Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme. Perhaps they have an old water mill from the middle-ages they can use to grind corn; but the likelihood of producing "enough electricity" for "transport projects" is fanciful.

• Used Cooking Oil Alliance – Arundel, Sussex. Work This Way aims to set up a bio-fuels production programme in conjunction with Ford Prison in Sussex, collecting used vegetable oil from other prisons in the region to offer to local communities.

Oh God, the humanity, the humanity! What an incredible waste of time and (literally) energy. You can just imagine all the sandal-wearing beardies bicycling around Sussex collecting cupfulls of used Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil from all the well-meaning BBC executives who have their weekend homes in that pretty part of the world.

• Lancaster Recycling Community plan to dramatically raise levels of food waste recycling and implement a range of green initiatives to over 1,000 local households. Plans include a kitchen food waste collection scheme and the introduction of a special ‘rocket’ composter.

Excuse me, but don't we already have recycling? And the idea of a super-compost heap would be neat if loads of people ploughed up their back yards to grow veg, but they don't -- because it is much more time and energy efficient to grow food on large scale farms. I've never seen a rocket composter but I suspect what NESTA most needs is a rocket up the backside.

Ten finalists will be announced in September 2008, securing £20,000 funding to pilot their projects for a year. The judges will decide on the overall winner – or winners - in November 09, with the prize money going to those projects that can prove their ideas will have an impact on their carbon footprint.
The judges are looking for community-led initiatives that can radically reduce carbon emissions, be replicated nationwide and be sustainable in the long term.

Well, they've obviously been looking in the wrong place -- not one of these truly silly, frivolous ideas will be "replicated" or "sustainable"; they will fizzle out as soon as the government cash runs out or the one (and it's always one) true enthusiast gets fed up of having to do all the heavily lifting herself and goes back to shopping at Marks in her Range Rover and dumping her rubbish over the neighbour's fence.

Next year when this competition comes around, I'll be looking for collaborators on a true Green project. We'll seek the £1 million prize to plant GM crops across Prince Charles' Highgrove estate -- since we know that GM crops produce about one quarter of the CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions of "organic" crops; we will also use some of the money to demand more nuclear power stations.

Now, that's a Big Green Challenge that would be worthwhile.

Great site -- Climate Audit

2008-07-30T11:34:00.006+01:00

For those with a good grasp of maths and statistics and an interest in the nitty-gritty of meteorology, Climate Audit is a great site.

Steve McIntyre is a highly knowledgeable chap who can engage, and does engage with the High Priest of Global Warming, James Hansen of NASA. In a recent post, McIntyre points out that Hansen's climate predictions are pretty ropey.

In 1988, Hansen made a famous presentation to Congress, including predictions from then current Hansen et al (JGR 1988). This presentation has provoked a small industry of commentary.

Such discussions have a long pedigree. In 1998, it came up in a debate between Hansen and Pat Michaels; Hansen purported to rebut Crichton, NASA employee Gavin Schmidt on his “private time” supported. It seems like every step of the calculation is disputed - which scenario was the "main” scenario? whether Hansen’s projections were a success or a failure? Even how to set reference periods for the results. I thought it would be worthwhile collating some of the data, doing chores like actually constructing collated versions of Hansen’s A, B and C forcings so that others can check things - all the little things that are the typical gauntlet in climate science.

Here is my best interpretation of how Hansen’s 1988 projections compare to recent
temperature histories.

So, Hansen's models consistently overestimate the amount of warming (A, B and C) by as much as 0.5 degrees C -- a huge amount compared to the actual, observed warming (GISS, RISS).

For the detailed disciussion, see http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2602

Australian Nuclear Forum

2008-07-29T18:47:00.004+01:00

An excellent resource for teachers and students is the website of the Australian Nuclear Forum (ANF).

It provides a host of briefing papers on all aspects of nuclear research, radiation scares, nuclear power, uranium mining, thorium reactors and so on. Also very valuable are commentaries that clear up common misconceptions about nuclear industries and rebutt all the lies and misinformation spread by the Green lobby.

http://oznucforum.customer.netspace.net.au/

All these are available at the ANF website:

POLICY PAPERS (pdf files):
Nuclear Power for Australia
Low-Level Radiation Dose Standards
The Preservation of HIFAR
Plutonium Utilisation
Legal Controls of Nuclear Technology
Gamma Irradiation of Food in Australia
Management of Low and Intermediate Radwastes
ANSTO - Time for Change
Uranium Mining in Australia
Australian Uranium Enhancement Industries
Reactor Spent Fuel Radioactive Waste
Nuclear Education in Australia

INFORMATION PAPERS FOR SCHOOLS (pdf files):
Trace Elements in Australian Coals
Carbon Dioxide Production with Various Forms of Electricity Generation
Background Radiation
Primary Energy of Mineral Fuel Resources
Comments on Nuclear Science Content of 'Z for Zachariah'
Health Effects of the TMI and Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Accidents
Fast Neutron Reactors
Chronology of the Bomb
Thorium Reactors
How a Nuclear Reactor Works

ANF LETTERS (pdf files):
to Dr Bennett GM NSW Board Studies re 7-10 Science 8/7/06
to Ed Ministers & STAs re teaching nuclear science 28/4/06
to DEH RE Refusal to Heritage List HIFAR 25/10/05
to Fed MP Dr Jensen on Insight Program 27/9/05
to NSW Premier Carr on nuclear power for NSW 3/6/05
to AMWU Sec Cameron 4/5/05
Email to ICRP on ICRP 2005 Recommendations 24/2/05
to ED ANSTO Smith on CD for Schools 18/2/05
to Fed Minister Nelson 29/10/04
Nomination of HIFAR for Heritage List 6/5/04
to Sutherland Council 24/11/03
to Greenhse Gas Abatement 1/9/00

OTHER ANF PAPERS (pdf files):
Commentary: Rebuts to Standard Anti-Nuclear Assertions
Commentary: Rebut to L. Strauss Quote 6/9/54
Commentary: Rebuts to H. Caldicott Quotes 13/4/05, 12/8/05, 25/7/06, 8/8/07
Commentary: Rebuts to I. Lowe Quotes 19/10/05, Pamphlet 2007, 7/9/07
Commentary: Rebuts to Senator Brown Quotes 29/5/06
Technical Paper: Australia's Nuclear Power Option, 7/7/06
Technical Paper: Costs of Electricity Production, 7/7/06
Technical Paper: CO2 Emissions Accruing from Forgone Nuclear Power Generation 1990-2006, 24/7/06
Electricity Generation Alternatives for Australia 31/5/01
ANF Submission to the Australia 2020 Summit 2/4/08

OZ NUCLEAR LINKS:
Australian Uranium Association
South Australian Chamber of Mines & Energy
Australian Nuclear Association
Australasian Radiation Protection Society
Institution of Engineers Australia
Australian Institute of Energy
Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering
Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organsation
Australian Radiation Protection And Nuclear Safety Agency
Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office
Melbourne Uni Nuclear Power Study Group

OS NUCLEAR LINKS:
EFN, Environmentlists for Nuclear Energy
SONE, Supporters of Nuclear Energy
World Nuclear Association

Unfunny comedians "get environmental"

2008-07-29T14:00:00.003+01:00

It must be Environmental Disinformation Month at the BBC. Not only did we have the ludicrous “drama” ‘Burn Up', but this week’s Radio 4 book reading is a serialisation of ‘Crap at the Environment’ by a minor comedian who has suddenly discovered global warming.

It proves – if it were needed – that comedians shouldn’t try to be serious. As the aliens say to Woody Allen in ‘Stardust Memories’ -- “We like your movies, especially the early, funny ones.”

A few years ago, on Radio 4’s ‘The Now Show’ Marcus Brigstocke did a very funny routine about the smug, pompous and self-indulgent people who buy organic food – but now he, too, has discovered “the environment” and his monologues have turned it to a hectoring harangue about the evils of supermarkets, airlines etc – stuff that more up-to-date comics were doing 10 years ago.

The “Crap at the Environment” nitwit – whose name escapes me – simply repeats everything we already know about the climate change scare but with the childish enthusiasm of discovery. As Gore Vidal said of George W Bush, “When he reads his speeches, as for the first time, his voice fills with wonder at the discovery of each new idea.”

But, like a child, the comedian only has a very superficial grasp of the subject. In Tuesday’s excerpt from his book he is ashamed for eating New Zealand lamb because it has been transported across the world. If he had done some research before becoming an eco-warrior he would know that New Zealand lamb is far more energy efficient and less carbon intensive than lamb raised right here in Britain.

No doubt future excerpts will tell us of his conversion to organic produce and that he wants to live in the country – even though it is very well established that organic food causes twice the greenhouse gas emissions of traditional food and city living is much more energy efficient than living in the country.

For all the good it will do, I have complained to the relevant BBC department – with a block ‘select’ and ‘copy’ into an email from the above paragraphs.

Feel free to do the same at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/make_complaint_step1.shtml

10 years of GM benefits in developing world

2008-07-29T00:01:00.003+01:00

A new report provides an overview of the progress of genetic modification (GM) of crops throughout the world. It discredits every one of the green fundamentalist lies about the technology.

GM is providing higher yields
GM is being grown on mare land in the developing world than the west
GM is improving farm incomes
GM has reduced pesticide use by 286,000,000 kg
GM has reduced environmental impacts by 15.4%
GM has provided an additional $33.8 billion in economic benefits
GM has reduced greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to taking 6,650,000 cars off the road

Global Impact of Biotech Crops: Socio-Economic and Environmental
Effects, 1996-2006
http://www.agbioforum.org/v11n1/v11n1a03-brookes.htm

Genetically modified (GM) crops have been grown commercially on a substantial scale for eleven years. This paper updates the assessment of the impact this technology is having on global agriculture from both economic and environmental perspectives.
It examines specific global economic impacts on farm income and environmental impacts associated with pesticide usage and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for each of the countries where GM crops have been grown since 1996. The analysis shows that there have been substantial net economic benefits at the farm level amounting to $6.94 billion in 2006 and $33.8 billion for the eleven-year period (in nominal terms). The technology has reduced pesticide spraying by 286 million kg and, as a
result, decreased the environmental impact associated with herbicide and insecticide use on these crops by 15.4%. GM technology has also significantly reduced the release of GHG emissions from this cropping area, which, in 2006, was equivalent
to removing 6.56 million cars from the roads.

GM technology has had a very positive impact on farm income derived from a combination of enhanced productivity and efficiency gains. In 2006, the direct global farm income benefit from GM crops was $6.94 billion. This is equivalent to having added 3.8% to the value of global production of the four main crops of
soybeans, maize, canola, and cotton. Since 1996, farm incomes have increased by $33.8billion.

Substantial gains have also arisen in the cotton sector through a combination of higher yields and lower costs. In 2006, cotton farm income levels in the GM adopting countries increased by $2.15 billion and since 1996, the sector has benefited from an additional $9.6 billion. The 2006 income gains are equivalent to adding 13.1% to the value of the cotton crop in these countries, or 7.8% to the $27.3 billion value of total global cotton production. This is a substantial increase in value-added terms for two new cotton seed technologies.

In terms of the division of the economic benefits obtained by farmers in developing countries relative to farmers in developed countries, in 2006, just over half of the farm income benefits (53%)have been earned by developing-country farmers. The vast majority of these income gains for developing country farmers have been from GM IR cotton and GM HT soybeans. Over the eleven years, 1996-2006, the cumulative farm income gain derived by developing country farmers was $16.4 billion (48.5% of the total).

GM crops have contributed to a significant reduction in the environmental impact of production agriculture on the areas devoted to GM crops. Since 1996, the use of pesticides on the GM crop area was reduced by 286 million kg of active ingredient, a 7.9% reduction, and the overall environmental impact associated with herbicide and insecticide use on these crops was reduced by 15.4%.

In terms of the division of the environmental benefits associated with less insecticide and herbicide use for farmers in developing countries relative to farmers in developed countries, just over half of the environmental benefits (1996-2006) associated with lower insecticide and herbicide use have been in developing
countries (52%).

In 2006, the permanent carbon dioxide savings from reduced fuel use associated with GM crops was 1.2 billion kg. This is equivalent to removing 540,000 cars from the road for a year. The additional soil carbon sequestration gains resulting from reduced tillage with GM crops accounted for a reduction in 13.5 billion kg of carbon dioxide emissions in 2006. This is equivalent to removing 6 million cars from the roads for a year. In total, the carbon savings from reduced fuel use and soil carbon sequestration in 2006 were equal to removing 6.56 million cars from the road (equal to 25% of all registered private cars in the United Kingdom).

DUMB ECOLOGIST: Airports

2008-07-28T18:37:00.007+01:00

This week please panic about: Airports

The Ecologist newsletter features what is almost certainly the most ineffective protest in the history of mankind. A prize nitwit called Dan Glass, a member of the chaotic "protest" group Plane Stupid was to be presented to Prime Minister Gordon Brown as some sort of reward for doing something or other (it's not entirely clear).

He had the, quite good, idea of super-gluing himself to Brown and then delivering a lecture on the evils of airline travel while No. 10 Security tried to free the PM -- presumably with large volumes of acetone (that's nail varnish remover to all you Pony Club protesters at The Ecologist).

However, being a prize nitwit -- as every member of Plane Stupid must, perforce, be -- and completely ignorant of science in general, Mr Glass seemed to forget that super-glue sticks skin to skin. Super-glue is completely useless for sticking anything to fabric. (Cyanoacrylate glue is an anaerobic adhesive -- it binds only in the near-absence of air and then only to water-containing substances. Fabric, like the PM's woollen suit, it full of air but contains little water -- exactly the wrong thing to glue.)

Mr Glass filled his left palm with super-glue and shook hands with his right. He grabbed the PM's left sleeve but the glue did not adhere. Brown probably just thought the chap had a very sweaty palm. So, Glass was unable to deliver his lecture (just as well, it's boring as Hell, reprinted in The Ecologist) and was ushered out with no harm done.

A Downing Street spokesman said "There was no stickiness of any significance."

Glass said, "He was just grinning about it. He didn't seem to take me seriously."

What a surprise!!

After the incident Mr Glass was allowed to stay Number 10 for 40 minutes. When he left the building he tried to glue himself to the gates of Downing Street but was prevented from doing so by a police officer.

"I didn't have much glue left by that point," he said.

Carbon capture fiction

2008-07-28T15:06:00.005+01:00

On Sunday 27th July, the London Observer published an open letter to the British government from a bunch of scientists who demanded that no new coal-fired power plants be built without carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. These scientists might as well have asked that Hogwarts Academy take control of electricity generation, because CCS is, currently, magical thinking.

Nowhere in the world is CCS taking place from a commercial coal-fired power plant. A few projects are disposing of CO2 by pumping it underground, but on a very small scale and in highly specialized operations using very concentrated CO2. There is one demonstration plant in Australia and a three or four commercial plants in the US, Canada and Norway but they all extract CO2 from natural gas sources or from coal gasification.

Surprisingly, Wikipedia has a good summary of the state-of-the-art in CCS, mainly derived from an IPCC 2006 report.

The process of CCS is bewilderingly complex and vastly expensive. First, carbon dioxide must be extracted from waste gas (e.g. by bubbling it through chemical solutions or burning the coal in oxygen then cooling the exhaust gas into water and CO2), then transported to the disposal site (e.g. liquidized, by tanker) then pumped underground (e.g. by pipeline into undersea caverns).

In other words, an entire new industry must be created from nothing – with none of the technology already established, none of the infrastructure already existing and none of the safety or suitability of the disposal sites proven. A major concern with undersea disposal is that the CO2 can escape, causing ocean acidification and major destruction of the aquatic ecosystem.

CCS is so far from being practically possible that it is utterly senseless to expect it to make any contribution to CO2 reduction before 2030. CCS is, essentially, a ruse to avoid the obvious – a new generation of nuclear power plants. The cost of CCS will dwarf that of nuclear power.

The attention of the scientists who wrote to the Observer would be better directed to nuclear power and to technologies that really have a chance of lowering CO2 emissions, like genetically modified algae.

For a tiny proportion of the cost of one CCS demonstration project, existing experiments with GM algae could be scaled up to provide both CO2 reduction and a cheap source of food. GM algae can gobble up huge quantities of CO2 and convert it into hydrocarbons or protein – instead of wasting it under the sea floor.

Two good reports of work being done with GM algae:

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/Articles/307109/Late+bloomer.htm
http://epmb.berkeley.edu/facPage/dispFP.php?I=25

Food awards - vote early, vote often

2008-07-28T00:35:00.004+01:00

Readers not in the U.K. may not have heard BBC Radio 4's weekly "The Food Programme". Even though less than 1% of the food sold in Britain is "organic", The Food Programme (TFP) talks about "organic farming", "organic methods" and the "benefits of organic" almost every week. TFP producer/presenter is Sheila Dillon, a devotee of Prince Charles and every whacky farming idea.

Each year, TFP asks a panel of "experts" to judge the BBC Food and Farming Awards. Naturally, these are always a stitch up; there is no transparency about who has been nominated or what criteria are used to pick the winners. Usually, more than half the winners are "organic" farmers or distributors.

This year, who not help the BBC and nominate some people and companies who really deserve praise. The staff of TFP promise to consider each nomiationcarefully, so here are mine:

BEST TAKE-AWAY

It could be Indian, Italian, Chinese or good old fish and chips. We want to hear about excellent ready made meals that are fresh, made from carefully sourced ingredients and provide value for money.

Why not vote for: McDonalds

BEST ' DINNER LADY/MAN'

Whether it's in a school, a hospital, a care home, or the workplace - this is awarded to a cook who provides a wide range of, healthy, tasty food in any institutional setting. We're looking for meals prepared on the premises with fresh, carefully sourced ingredients.

Why not vote for: The mothers who make their kids lunch to save them from the Jamie Oliver dinners.

BEST FOOD MARKET

Awarded to the market making fresh, locally-grown food accessible to its community. As well as farmers' markets we're interested in regular, local food markets with a wide range of high quality produce - particularly in areas ill-served by other food retailers.

Why not vote for: "Dai the Fish" who takes cheap frozen fish door to door.

BEST LOCAL FOOD RETAILER

It could be your favourite corner shop, high street butcher, baker or local deli. Tell us about the retailer near you making a difference to the community - and to the producers who supply it.

Why not vote for: Aldi -- for good quality at a cheap price.

BEST FOOD PRODUCER

Open to anyone who produces food - from milk or meat to cakes or chocolates. We're looking for companies or individuals who use good quality ingredients, to provide an excellent finished product.

Why not vote for: TESCO own brands.

FARMER OF THE YEAR
The Farming Today award for someone who has risen to the challenges of farming in the 21st century and is an inspiration to anyone interested in food production and the countryside.

Why not vote for: Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution and the new GM crops revolution.

THE DEREK COOPER AWARD

For the individual or organisation that has done most to increase our knowledge and understanding of good food and the vital role it plays in our lives. 2007's winner was Compassion in World Farming.

Why not vote for: Monsanto - whose seeds have brought hope, life and prosperity to millions of poor people.

BEST RETAIL INITIATIVE

We're interested in an imaginative initiative that's changing the way good quality food is being sourced and sold. It could be a supermarket, wholesaler, website, or chain of food shops - that's transforming your access to great produce with an original idea.

Why not vote for: Lidl - another budget retailer bringing positive benefits to the low paid.

BBC FOOD PERSONALITY OF THE YEAR

It could be a writer, broadcaster, chef; a role model who inspires a passion for good food and communicates the importance of great produce with enthusiasm and clarity. Previous winners include Rick Stein, Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay and James Martin.

Why not vote for: Delia Smith - the venerable cook who said organic food is a pretentious waste of time and that food does not have to be expensive to be good.

How to nominate:

We need your name, address and phone number (and email if possible). Please tell us as much as you can about your nominee - their name, address and contact details, but most importantly (in no more than 250 words) why they best demonstrate that category's criteria. Remember, the more you tell us about why they are so special, the more you'll help our judges.

Nominate by:

Email: foodawards@bbc.co.uk

Post:

BBC Food and Farming Awards,
Room 6045,
Broadcasting House,
Portland Place,
London, W1A 1AA

Website: bbc.co.uk/foodawards

Climate Fascists

2008-07-27T17:18:00.014+01:00

As stated in the previous post, dare to question, or disagree with, the most extreme predictions about global warming and you will be accused of being in the pay of Big Oil or some right-wing Washington think-tank. Worse, you will be labelled "climate denier" -- a deliberate, dishonest and disgusting attempt to associate reasonable scientific scepticism with Holocaust denial.

Previously I have discussed how the true heirs of the Nazi are green fundamentalists, proponents of organic farming and eco-extremists who share both philosophy and policies with fascists.

Apart from Bjorn Lomborg, the number one hate figure for eco-extremists is Richard Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Despite being called a "denier", Professor Lindzen agrees with "the consensus" about climate change. "The consensus" is not the devastating "end of the world" predictions you hear from greens, it is these four statements only:

1. Global temperature has risen by about 1 degree F, 0.65 degrees C since the late 19th century.

2. Atmospheric CO2 levels have risen by about 30% since the late 19th century.

3. Man is responsible for most of the increase in CO2.

4. CO2 contributes to a warming atmosphere.

Everything else is not "consensus" it is speculation and hypothesis.

Take the supposed increase in floods, storms, climate extremes etc. In fact there is no convincing evidence that any contemporary weather events are worse (or better) because of man made climate change.

In 2005, hurricane Katrina was, almost universally, blamed on "global warming." But, as Professor Lindzen pointed out in 2006. Global warming should cause less intense hurricanes:

If the models are correct, global warming reduces the temperature differences between the poles and the equator. When you have less difference in temperature, you have less excitation of extratropical storms, not more. And, in fact, model runs support this conclusion. Alarmists have drawn some support for increased claims of tropical storminess from a casual claim by Sir John Houghton of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that a warmer world would have more evaporation, with latent heat providing more energy for disturbances. The problem with this is that the ability of evaporation to drive tropical storms relies not only on temperature but humidity as well, and calls for drier, less humid air. Claims for starkly higher temperatures are based upon there being more humidity, not less--hardly a case for more storminess with global warming.

So how is it that we don't have more scientists speaking up about this junk science? It's my belief that many scientists have been cowed not merely by money but by fear. An example: Earlier this year, Texas Rep. Joe Barton issued letters to paleoclimatologist Michael Mann and some of his co-authors seeking the details behind a taxpayer-funded analysis that claimed the 1990s were likely the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year in the last millennium. Mr. Barton's concern was based on the fact that the IPCC had singled out Mr. Mann's work as a means to encourage policy makers to take action. And they did so before his work could be replicated and tested--a task made difficult because Mr. Mann, a key IPCC author, had refused to release the details for analysis. The scientific community's defense of Mr. Mann was, nonetheless, immediate and harsh. The president of the National Academy of Sciences--as well as the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union--formally protested, saying that Rep. Barton's singling out of a scientist's work smacked of intimidation.

And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are published, standards shift. When I, with some colleagues at NASA, attempted to determine how clouds behave under varying temperatures, we discovered what we called an "Iris Effect," wherein upper-level cirrus clouds contracted with increased temperature, providing a very strong negative climate feedback sufficient to greatly reduce the response to increasing CO2. Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as "discredited."

Indeed, there is a strange reluctance to actually find out how climate really behaves. In 2003, when the draft of the U.S. National Climate Plan urged a high priority for improving our knowledge of climate sensitivity, the National Research Council instead urged support to look at the impacts of the warming--not whether it would actually happen.

Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers.

From The Wall Street Journal.

Greenpeace funding

2008-07-25T18:28:00.020+01:00

Anyone who expresses scepticism of the wilder claims of eco-fundamentalists is accused of being in the pay of oil companies, global corporations, blah, blah, blah.

Greenpeace even has a website that "exposes" donations of Exxon/Esso to various U.S. think-tanks. What Greenpeace does not expose, is that its own funding comes from extremely right-wing sources -- take a look at these donations to Greenpeace USA and the very conservative, reactionary people behind them.

No doubt this is why so many of the policies and programmes of "environmentalism" are so close to those of neofascist political parties. As the British National Party (British neofascists) says, "we are the true green party."

For more complete details on the financial debt Greenpeace owes to large foundations, fascists and right-wing billionaires, see:

http://www.activistcash.com/organization_financials_full.cfm/oid/131

Thought for the weekend

2008-07-25T17:42:00.003+01:00

Sadly, there is no full article -- sorry

Whale sushi -- Yum!

2008-07-25T12:28:00.006+01:00

I'm as much a soft-touch for a cute animal story as the next guy and, over the years have written letters to Japan, China and South Korea to protest about the eating of whales and dogs.

But, with Greenpeace there are always hidden lies and malfeasance and there is always a cash-raising objective to a campaign.

Greenpeace USA is conducting a letter-writing campaign in support of two activists who were arrested for "exposing fraud" in the Japanese government's "scientific whaling programme."

A better idea would be to write to the prosecutors asking that they investigate Greenpeace. Write to:

Keiichi Tadaki, Hon Prosecutor General,
Haruo Kasama, Deputy Prosecutor General
Supreme Public Prosecutors Office
1-1-1 Kasumigaseki
Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo-to
100-0013
Japan

See the Greenpeace USA campaign letter at:
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/assets/binaries/tokyo-prosecutor-letter

NASA - good news from Arctic

2008-07-25T00:01:00.003+01:00

Despite the gloomy prediction that the Arctic will be completely free of ice in summers by 2025 (in the BBC’s non-dramatic “drama” Burn Up) or by 2040 (in the latest IPCC report), the latest data from NASA satellites seem to show that the Arctic ice has started to recover.

Greens always get publicity when they show film from the North Pole in summers, even though the Arctic ice pack cracks up every year. For a century, cruise ships have gone to the North Pole in summer and surprised passengers by sitting at the top of the world.

In 2005 the summer ice in the Arctic was smaller in extent than ever seen before – causing ultra-gloomy predictions from the usual quarters that soon the entire ice sheet would be melted.

However, in 2006, 2007 and 2008 the ice has begun to recover. It certainly does not mean that the Arctic is back to normal – far from it – but it is a good sign that, yet again, the doom-mongers are too pessimistic.

See the Science Daily website:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080318151743.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070404162259.htm

'Burn Up' - climate hysteria with beautiful people

2008-07-23T16:52:00.003+01:00

BBC2's Burn Up, a big-budget, transatlantic TV drama from the pen of Simon Beaufoy is tedious, scarcely believable eco-porn.

If the BBC promotional department’s wildest hopes come true, eager groups of viewers will gather again tonight to watch and discuss the ‘gripping eco-thriller’ Burn Up. Rest assured, whether you watch with deep greens, climate deniers or drama critics, at the end of the two-day, three-hour epic there won’t be a dry seat in the house.

Deep greens will weep with joy at the happy ending as the world economy collapses amidst mass unemployment, starvation and a Greater-than-Great Depression; climate deniers will wet themselves laughing at the plodding scientific exposition; and drama critics will spill gin and tonic into their laps as they doze off in boredom five minutes in.

Be warned: this review is full of spoilers. But it will save you the bother of actually watching the programme.

It may seem churlish to criticise a piece of TV entertainment for sloppy science, a bit like complaining that Buffy the Vampire Slayer featured too many mythical creatures. But whereas Buffy possessed authentic metaphorical truth, emotional honesty and internal integrity, Burn Up is deceptive, dishonest and self-deluded.

There is no infamy in exaggeration in order to make a point; that is part of dramatic licence. But when a drama promises to be based on fact with the noble intention of moulding public opinion on a vital issue it should live up to those promises.

For weeks, Simon Beaufoy, the writer of Burn Up, has been boasting about its scientific rigour on the subject of climate change. In a recent interview with Mark Lawson on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, Beaufoy (who also wrote steelworkers-turned-strippers movie hit, The Full Monty) said:

‘Nothing in Burn Up in terms of the science is made up because we knew, apart from anything else, the denial industry would be cranking up and turning their guns on us and saying, “Oh it’s all made up”. So the first thing I made sure of when we started writing [was] that nothing in the film in terms of the science is even in any way exaggerated…’

Beaufoy’s language casually betrayed the source of his ‘unexaggerated’ facts. The terms ‘denial industry’ and ‘The Science’ are the shorthand of the apocalyptic, fundamentalist green lobby – precisely those for whom actual science is a dirty word, and who use ‘denial’ (with its calculated connotations of Holocaust denial) as an insult to shut down any challenge to the orthodoxy.

Earlier in the same interview Beaufoy revealed precisely why he was so susceptible to green propaganda… ignorance (perhaps, to be kinder, naivety): ‘I started the research for Burn Up about three or four years ago when oil was at $36 a barrel, when climate change and the subject of global warming was literally seen as science fiction.’

Perhaps Beaufoy has lived in total seclusion since the success of The Full Monty, but if he thought global warming was ‘literally seen as science fiction’ as late as 2005 he had an awful lot of catching up to do and little time to do it. For such a blank slate to be briefed by the likes of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and other hysterical doom-mongers must be like being love-bombed by the Moonies.

The plot of Burn Up manages the impressive feat of being entirely predictable at the same time as having characters that are constantly surprising – because they act unexpectedly. They change sides, betray friends and plot each other’s downfall on vague grounds with no motivation and little emotion.

Rupert Penry-Jones is Tom, thrust into the role of CEO of Arrow Oil (a BP-alike major player). Like Beaufoy, and despite being in the oil business since university, Tom is astonished to learn that environmentalists blame fossil fuels for climate change. ‘They’re trying to pin global warming on us!’, he complains to his best friend – evil oil industry lobbyist Mack, played by The West Wing’s Bradley Whitford.

Mack knows that oil companies are destroying the planet; it is his job to lie, cheat and murder on behalf of Big Oil and the US government (one and the same). Just in case we didn’t get the message, Mack tells Tom that he uses Arrow Oil airstrips for secret rendition flights of terrorist suspects around the world; and later he wears a black cowboy hat in a Western theme bar.

Beaufoy explained Mack’s role in the same interview with Mark Lawson: ‘He’s deliberately debasing the science of it and that’s his job. He’s based on a real person who went around the United Nations conferences on climate change deliberately undermining everybody.’ (Actually, that sounds less like a real person than a ‘Trickster’, a commonly used device in writing classes and now a key component of eco-conspiracy theories.) ‘And I think it’s really important’, Beaufoy continued, ‘to try and put the denial argument. It’s very difficult because there isn’t one … the science is not there for the denial industry.’

As an aside, the Greenpeace website about the ‘denial industry’ claims that Exxon – the sole funder of denial, apparently – paid 41 sceptical groups $2.1million last year, which is about one quarter of the money lavished on Burn Up (1).

To say Beaufoy’s characters are two-dimensional would be an insult to flat surfaces. Every character is signposted ‘good’ or ‘evil’ as soon as they appear. We know that Holly, played by Neve Campbell, is ‘good’ because not only is she young, pretty, and Arrow’s new vice president for solar panels, but is also an undercover environmental activist working for MI5 and/or MI6. But the very best example comes late in the second episode. When a new hard-line US diplomat arrives to take over climate negotiations, he steps out of a black limo while puffing a cigarette. He tosses his fag to the street and announces to the welcome party that he has throat cancer; thus every cliché is ticked – from car user to smoker to litterbug to the horrible death that awaits all evildoers.

Most of the first episode is the rapid ‘education’ of Tom (and viewers) about The Science of climate change. Although he studied under eco-guru Sir Peter Langham, Tom is flabbergasted when Langham tells him that in only five to 10 years, the Siberian tundra will thaw and release unimaginable quantities of methane, there will be runaway global warming, melting of the Arctic and Greenland, rapid sea level rise and the inevitable end of human civilisation.

There is considerable dramatic license here. No wonder Mark Lawson seemed concerned by the elision of fact and fiction: ‘There’s one speech, for example, where one of the characters says basically don’t start reading any long books … we’re all doomed, it could all be over in a few years - that is dramatic licence because we don’t know whether it will be or it won’t be…’

‘I think if you talk to most of the scientists’, Beaufoy responded, ‘they say we’re very near a critical point in terms of climate where the warming becomes irreversible and then if it is irreversible you can say categorically that civilisation, at some stage will go, so indeed that’s not made up.’ Clearly those claims did not come from ‘most scientists’, independent research by Beaufoy or any Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report – it is straight from a Greenpeace PR briefing.

If he truly wanted scientific truth, Beaufoy would have followed the IPCC quite closely – for the standard, consensus, view. He would have rejected the maverick ‘deniers’ who totally dismiss the IPCC but also rejected the shrill prophesy of impending disaster. Sadly, The Science of climate change sold to Beaufoy and expressed by the ‘good’ characters in Burn Up is an extreme pessimist viewpoint probably held by even fewer true scientists than those who reject man-made climate change entirely. The Science which Beaufoy buys into is certainly not from the global climate projections of the 2007 IPCC Report (2).

The second episode of Burn Up relies, for dramatic tension, on whether the US delegation to a Kyoto 2 climate conference can be persuaded or tricked into voting for tight restrictions on CO2 emissions. Unfortunately, it is just as exciting as it sounds. Worse, the intended build-up of pressure and drama of the vote is totally undermined when someone points out that no one actually took Kyoto 1 seriously – except the gutsy Brits, of course – rendering the entire exercise moot.

In the desperation to paint America as the ultimate evil, Burn Up invents a British government that is not just a benign presence, but an avenging angel. The (unseen) prime minister must be Hugh Grant from Love, Actually, still in office and still sticking it to the big bully US of A. The PM’s personal envoy (an enjoyably slimy, but very confusing Marc Warren) actually leads the Green Alliance campaign for strict Kyoto 2 limits on CO2 and has British security agents distribute top secret Pentagon documents that turn Mexico and other developing countries against the US.

Confirming the zeitgeist, the only country more treacherous and duplicitous than the US is China. Its delegation promises to ratify Kyoto 2 if the EU pays for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) on its coal plants; but it also promises to join the US alternative scheme if the American government pays for its new nuclear power stations – beautifully double-crossing both sets of gullible Westerners. Obviously the Chinese (like Beaufoy and his characters) do not know that CCS is (at present) an imaginary technology that, if it works at all, will reduce the efficiency of coal power so much that it will wipe out any CO2 saving.

Bradley Whitford is the only thing worth watching – even though he‘s really just playing the evil twin of Josh Lyman (his dedicated ‘liberal’ role in The West Wing). With little insight in the script, he manages to be intense and brooding one minute, then flippant, or erudite, or warm, or ruthless the next - and all the while remain convincing. It is a tribute to his charm and believability as an actor that he wrings some real emotion from a role drawn with so little sophistication.

However, even Whitford does not persuade in the final scene when, with a creaky rationale, he betrays everything he holds dear – what he has lied and murdered for – in order to help Tom reveal the ‘big secret’ to the world: that Saudi Arabia has run out of oil. Why Mack would be so loyal a friend to the weak, vacillating, stupid, and insipid Tom is anyone’s guess – because there’s no hint in the film.

Burn Up is predictable, in that no possible plot, visual or expositional cliché goes unexploited; surprising in that the characters’ lifelong opinions change in an instant and their actions serve only to move the plot along (slowly, very slowly). With three hours of screen time available, one might expect some convincing long dark nights of the soul, signs of intellectual torment or inner conflict, or careful clues scattered about for later pay-off. But no … beliefs, relationships and careers are renounced, betrayed and tossed aside like cigarette butts at a pub door.

But, if you thought it was only the writers, producers and actors who misunderstand the subject, the BBC production brief contains a classic question for cast members: ‘Do you think that living in a city makes it hard to lead a green lifestyle?’ They all think it does. If any of them had bothered to do just a little genuine research of their own they would have discovered what everyone truly interested in the subject already knows – city living is the most energy-efficient and ‘green’ lifestyle possible.

My recommendation: record Burn Up, and skim through, only pausing to watch Bradley Whitford’s scenes. You won’t miss anything worthwhile but you’ll get a feeling of the old Josh back – albeit on the ‘wrong side’.

(1) Exxon still funding climate deniers, Greenpeace USA, May 2007

(2) IPCC 2007 Report Chapter 10 Global Climate Projections

reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5498/

Wind "Power" -- Witless & Wattless

2008-07-23T00:01:00.003+01:00

This week our glorious government promised even more money would be wasted in a vain attempt to look environmental -- more £££ to wind turbines!

The reaction of environmentalists to these developments shows how apparently strong principles can be set aside in favour of certain right-on technologies. Try to sink one 15,000 tonne oil platform in the North Sea (as Shell attempted with the Brent Spar platform in 1995) and Greenpeace will vilify you, but announce a plan to plant 7,000 concrete and steel pylons - each weighing 2,000 tonnes - on the seabed and you will be an eco-hero. Pour 60million tons of concrete across the Severn Estuary to build an energy-generating tidal barrage and Sir Jonathon Porritt and his Sustainable Development Commissioners will carry you in triumph through Jerusalem.

The Severn Barrage, essentially a dam across the Severn Estuary to generate power from its 10-metre tides, is equally loved and hated by greens. It will never be built. But, to universal green approval, John Hutton has offered up Britain’s entire continental shelf for industrialisation on a scale that makes the Brent Spar look like as biodegradable as an organic ciabatta.

Read on at Spiked-online.com

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4281/

Hear a thrilling 5 minute debate on this very topic from BBC Radio Newcastle

http://www.soundupload.com/audio/98gc0d5vxhcpvh4o

The Curse of Organic Food

2008-07-22T16:38:00.004+01:00

Daily Mail, 29 December 2006

Rolling Stone, Ron Wood’s wife puts him on a diet of organic food and organic booze.

Daily Mail, 11 July 2008

Rolling Stone, Ron Wood, leaves wife for an 18 year old cocktail waitress.

Daily Mail, 29 December 2006
[Spot the clues, dear readers]

Jo Wood, bored after kids leave home, sets up her own organic business. The idea for her business came from her son Jamie. Then 20, he had long joked about his mother's obsession with all things organic. Jo had become an organic enthusiast after being diagnosed with Crohn's disease 15 years ago - a crippling digestive condition - and had tried to convert the Stones.

On tour she would lug around a huge stove, so she could always rustle up some organic baked beans for Ronnie. 'Everyone thought it was a speaker or a piece of equipment, so they didn't give it a second glance.

'I'd set the stove up in whatever hotel room we were staying in - The Ritz, The Four Seasons. I'd cook all the food myself. 'Ronnie, Mick and the others would laugh when I set off the fire alarms making toast, but they never complained about the food.'

Four years ago, Jo Wood Organics was born. First came a range of upmarket beauty products, mainly body oils and lotions. Now Jo is bringing out a book about organic living, extolling the virtues of growing vegetables and using old T-shirts as dish clothes. 'I know people laugh about it. What's the point in eating organic veg when he is pickling himself with vodka? But I'd say that he is still with us because of his diet. He's eaten only organic meals for 15 years - I've insisted on that. It's clearly helped his health.'

At first, her 'hobby' sounds like the ultimate indulgence - but she is adamant that it was about more than filling her time. Ronnie - 'lost in drink' when the matter was being discussed - wasn't supportive of his wife's venture. 'He didn't take it seriously,' Jo remembers. 'He thought it was all talk. That spurred me on.'

Her quest for self-fulfillment could easily have ripped apart their marriage. 'It could have, yes, but I think it's gone the other way. Ronnie has seen me do something with my life and make a difference, and I think he's inspired by that.

[Oh Yeah?]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-425465/Ronnie-Drink-Me.html

Daily Mail 11 July 2008

Ronnie Wood has walked out on his wife and four children to live with a teenage cocktail waitress he met in an escort bar. The 61-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist has fled to his mansion in Ireland with the 18-year- old Russian blonde.

His wife of 23 years, Jo, is said to have begged Ekaterina Ivanova not to take her husband away from her. The teenager is understood to have told friends that she replied: 'I am not taking him - he is leaving.'

[You know what to do Jo – give the poor guy back his real food!]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1034293/Rolling-Stone-Ronnie-Wood-61-runs-away-18-year-old-Russian-cocktail-waitress.html

Green Party - fascist roots, fascist policies.

2008-07-22T13:11:00.002+01:00

Forbid the purchase of corner shops by migrants; stop people from inner cities moving to the countryside to protect traditional lifestyles; grant British citizenship only to children born here; boycott food grown by black farmers and subsidise crops grown by whites; restrict tourism and immigration from outside Europe; prohibit embryo research; stop lorry movements on the Lord’s Day; require State approval for national sports teams to compete overseas; disconnect Britain from the European electricity grid; establish a “new order” between nations to resolve the world economic crisis.

Policies of one of Britain’s most influential political parties: a party that has steadily increased its vote over the last decade; a party that appeals overwhelmingly to whites; and a party that shares significant objectives with neo-fascists and religious fundamentalists.

Perhaps – the BNP? Despite its attempts to appear modern and inclusive and the soothing talk in its 2005 General Election Manifesto, of “genuine ethnic and cultural diversity.” [1]

Or UKIP? It harbours some pretty backward-looking individuals – but would they stop Britain buying electricity from France if necessary?

Or, maybe, the Conservatives? Could that be a list of recommendations from one of Dave’s lesser-known policy groups – chaired by the ghost of Enoch Powell – quietly shredded to avoid “re-contaminating the Brand”?

Actually, affiliates of the progressive consensus may be surprised to learn that all the reactionary policies in the first paragraph are from the Green Party’s Manifesto for a Sustainable Society (MfSS) or were adopted at the party’s Autumn Conference in Liverpool over the weekend of September 13-16, 2007.[2]

Of course, the Green Party will protest against the accusation of reactionary politics. However, in an article critical of the G8 leaders in June, George Monbiot, (capo di tutti capi of the green movement) advised readers to judge politicians for “what they do, not what they say.”
For example, as well as supporting ethnic and cultural diversity, the BNP says it accepts:
“… the right of law-abiding minorities, in our country because they
or their ancestors came here legally, to remain here and to enjoy the full
protection of the law against any form of harassment or hostility…” [3]

But, use Monbiot’s argument, disregard the rhetoric and look at what the rest of the BNP manifesto promises would actually do and it remains a party of racist and neo-fascist ideology – internationally isolationist and domestically reactionary.

The trouble for Greens is that their manifesto pledges would result in many of the same outcomes as the BNP programme.

Continue reading at samizdata.net.

http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2008/02/vote_green_go_b.html

GM maize in Spain - great benefits

2008-07-21T15:14:00.010+01:00

For all the so-called "environmentalists" who still oppose GM crops and still use outdated arguments, a new report summarizes the incredible success of GM maize in Spain. Farmers are getting improved yields (although the GM trait inserted was not designed to increase yield, only to make the farmers' lives easier), are using less than half the pesticides used by conventional maize farmers, are improving their incomes and turning away from growing "organic" maize.

Genetically Modified Maize in Spain -- new report

This report analyses the process of adoption by farmers of the only GM crop cultivated in Europe. Bt maize is a transgenic crop resistant to an important group of pests (the maize borers). The report used data from a survey carried out among 402 commercial maize farms, including both adopters and non adopters of Bt maize during three growing seasons (2002-2004). Farmers were based in three Spanish provinces (Zaragoza, Lleida and Albacete) situated in leading Bt maize growing areas of Spain. All farmers were producing maize for feed manufacturing.

The survey found that Bt maize, like other pest-control technologies, produced variable impacts on maize yields in different provinces, ranging from neutral to 11.8% yield increase. Yield gains for growers of Bt maize were translated into revenue increase since no differences were found in the price paid to farmers for Bt or conventional maize. Regarding production costs, Bt maize growers paid more for the seeds than conventional growers, but had reduced insecticide use and costs. On average, growers of conventional maize applied 0.86 insecticide treatments/year to control borers versus 0.32 treatments/year applied by Bt maize growers. All things considered, the impact of Bt maize adoption on gross margin obtained by farmers in different provinces ranged from neutral to EUR 122/ha and year. In the survey, the reason most quoted by farmers for adopting Bt maize was "lowering the risk of maize borer damage" followed by "obtaining higher yields".

The report concludes that the differences in yields and gross margin are attributable to the adoption of Bt maize varieties and not to differences in the socio-economic profiles or technical capability of the farmers surveyed.

Full report available from http://ftp.jrc.es/EURdoc/JRC37046.pdf

Organic Success -- Famine in Ethiopa!

2008-07-18T00:35:00.004+01:00

Famine in Ethiopia – just what the Soil Association ordered!

In 2005, the head of Ethiopia's Environmental Protection Agency, Dr Tewolde Berhan, spoke at the Soil Asociation's Lady Eve Balfour Lecture. (Lady Eve invented organic farming in the 1940s in collaboration with members of the British Union of Fascists and a few anti-semites. They were all very impressed with Adolf Hitler and his "blood and soil" philosophy that boasted of the link between pure Aryans and the "natural" world.)

In 2005 Dr Berhan invited Soil Association "experts" to Ethiopia to advise on "organic techniques." What happens in 2008?? -- famine!!

Who is responsible? Let the organic nutters speak for themselves:

Dr Tewolde Berhan Egziabher, Head of the Ethiopian Environment Agency said, "In a harsh-climate and a largely agricultural economy we need to rediscover an approach to agriculture which supports long-term food security and protects soil fertility.

"Organic farming is the way forward for Ethiopia and it is also an approach which can help to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions caused by mechanised farming and the petrochemical inputs in richer countries."Berhan endorses organic farming as the sustainable, practical way to feed the world. Farmers in Ethiopia have achieved 5-fold increases in yields by supplementing traditional methods with modern organic techniques, such as composting."

Huh? -- with a 5-fold increase in production, why is there a famine? And shouldn't he read the 2006 Defra report which shows that organic farming uses more fossil fuels and produces more environmental damage than conventional farming?

Asked why bad harvests seem to have a greater impact on Ethiopia than its neighbours, he has a simple yet stark response. "It's largely because of the lack of infrastructure," he says. "The road system in Ethiopia has doubled in the past 10 years, but is still very poor.

Oh! Nothing to do with your bloody stupid advice not to use pesticides or fertilisers then?

"Ethiopia is still an agrarian society, and there isn't one such country that hasn't had famines," he adds. "The reasons are clear: some years you have plenty and others not enough. If you don't have the technological and financial capacity and the infrastructure to store in good years, you can't make provision for the bad. People here depend entirely on the crops they produce in their fields, so when one season fails, the result is famine."

Actually, only a tiny number of "agrarian societies" have had famines in recent years, but Ethiopia always features at the top of the list. Obviously Dr Berhan doesn't have to rely on the crops he produces or he wouldn't be quite so corpulent. And no problem with the infrastructure that gets fancy western goods to him and his government cronies or send him on expensive trips to speak to Soil Association nitwits.

So, again, in close collaboration with one of Africa’s most corrupt governments, the playboys of organic farming have snatched food from the mouths of starving children. While farm output increases in most of the developing world, Ethiopia faces yet another famine.

Let's ask the heirs of Lady Eve and her fascist mates -- are Ethiopians not quite Aryan enough do organic farming properly?

Well done Soil Association!

EcoFascism - new website

2008-07-17T00:01:00.003+01:00

A fascinating new website from Canada - Environmentalism is Fascism at EcoFascism.com - aims to draw attention to the disturbing links between modern Greenism and old fashioned fascism.

This extract will be particulary interesting to all those who accuse sceptics of being funded by big business and oil companies:

'Estimates of the total amount given by America's wealthiest to the environmental movement vary from $1 billion to $4 billion per year.(All dollar amounts are in US currency.)'

'If the sums given to the population control movement are rightfully included, the overall private sector "neo-Malthusian budget" would clearly be nearer the latter figure. A decisive chunk of the money given by the rich to the green movement comes in the forms of disbursements from huge chartered institutions such as the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, W. Alton Jones Foundation, Turner Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, the Alfred W. Mellon Foundation and so on.

'The David and Lucille Packard Foundation was created in 1965 with a transfer of capital from the estate of manufacturing tycoon David Packard. Today, Susan Packard Orr is chairman of the foundation's board, with Nancy Packard Burnett and Julia E. Packard serving as co-vice-chairmen. As of December 31, 1999, the foundation owned $13 billion in revenue-generating investments. As with all American foundations, they are required by law to disburse an amount equal to 5% of total assets in grants to causes related to the foundation's charter. In 1999 the Packard Foundation handed out $411 million in grants, while the plan for 2000 is to go over $500 million.

There are several causes dear to the Packards but none so much as "population" and "environment." In 1999 they gave $87,495,556 to the environmental movement and another $79 million to the population control campaign. The environmental grants were distributed to over 180 non-profit societies in several countries. Curiously, they appear not to have ventured into BC's eco-battles save for a single $50,000 grant to the David Suzuki Foundation to stir up trouble between fishers and foresters.

'The Ford Foundation was founded in 1936 to carry on the legacy of Nazi-sympathizer and over-the-top anti-Semite Henry Ford. The Ford Motor Co. is 40% owned by the descendants of Henry, with a significant portion of the remaining stock being owned by the Ford Foundation. William Clay Ford is the Ford Motor Co.'s current board chairman. Both the Ford Motor Co. and the Ford Foundation are conducting major environmental campaigns. The Ford Foundation as of the end of 1999 had assets of $11.8 billion. Their total annual program expenditures were $578 million. These monies were spread out over the arts, medical research, education, social-justice activities, and, of course, environmentalism and population control. The Ford Foundation began cultivating what has come to be known as "environmentalism" in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They trained legions of environmental analysts.

The foundation played a decisive role in founding and/or sustaining the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense Fund, and the EarthJustice Defense Fund-all of which have grown into large outfits with multi-million-dollar budgets and scores of support staff. The Foundation also created and continues to heavily subsidize Island Press Inc.-a publisher of 30 to 35 eco-books per year. The Fords' grand enviro-pop strategy does not seem to recognize BC as especially interesting. There is little in their data banks about grants to BC enviro-groups except for a $200,000 grant in 1998 to the San Francisco based Tides Foundation to undertake anti-forestry work in BC.

'No discussion of US environmentalism would be complete if it did not mention the contribution of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and its now-departed longtime senior strategist, Paul Mellon. The Mellon Foundation was created in 1969 as a result of the merger of the Avalon and Old Dominion foundations. These two foundations were created in the early 1940's by banking magnate Andrew W. Mellon's two children, Paul and Aisla. Paul ran the amalgamated foundation until his death in 1999. Paul was also head of the National Gallery of Art for over 17 years and personally paid for massive additions to the building and its collection.

Over the years Paul Mellon gave enormous sums to Yale University, often for establishing professorships in Forestry, Divinity, and Environmental Studies. In 1998 the Mellon Foundation gave out $144,691,669 in grants. Of this, $14.8 million went to environmentalism and $11.04 million went to population control. What makes the Mellons' involvement in "environmentalism" most notable is that it started much earlier (1940s) than most foundations and hence can claim a seniority in, and sense of accomplishment about, this social movement which is now hundreds of times larger than when the Mellons first embraced it.

'Other institutions and individuals within America's super rich who are also avid patrons of environmentalism are: Bill and Melinda Gates, the Heinz family interests (over $10 million a year to the environmental movement), the Carnegie Corporation, Richard and Rhoda Haas Goldman (recent annual grants of $2.07 million to population control and $8.3 million to environmentalism, including annual awards of six prizes of $100,000 each for creative new environmentalist activity), Gordon E. Moore, and Edward P. Bass, to name but a prominent few. In all, several hundred businesses and foundations have institutionalized their bankrolling of the environmental movement.

'Although there is no institutionalized structure governing the environmental movement, there are several organizations whose chartered mission is to unite and coordinate the tens of thousands of NGOs, funding agencies, and government departments and sub-departments that make up the modern environmental movement. One centralizing institution, the Environmental Grantmakers Association, was founded in 1991 to unite the various enviro-donation fund managers of America around coordinated strategies of giving. The EGA tends to be secretive, with closed-door retreats and members-only websites. Somewhere between 128 and 200 major eco-funding agencies are members of the EGA and thus send representatives to EGA conventions etc. The collective contribution of EGA members alone to the great green crusade would exceed $1 billion per year.'

Fight crime - decriminalise drugs

2008-07-16T13:35:00.009+01:00

Politicians are scrambling around thinking of more and more authoritarian measures to "fight crime" -- no clampdown on freedom is too onerous, 42 days, ID cards, stop-and-search, universal DNA database, phone taps, anonymous witnesses ...

In just the last decade, this Labour government has breached all of the rights contained in the US Bill of Rights -- the first ten amendments to the US constitution -- all of which were originally outlined in English/British law: Magna Carta, the 1689 Bill of Rights, the Act of Settlement.

The excuse for all these breaches has been to "protect against crime and terrorism."

In fact they do not protect us from anything and all our governments, going back to the 1960s have deliberately created crime by making drugs illegal. Until 1969, registered heroin addicts could get free heroin from their GP. As a result, there was no market for illegal heroin in Britain and there were only a few drug dealers, who catered for popstars and the very wealthy who would not register because of adverse publicity.

There were only 2,000 heroin addicts in Britain when the law changed.

In 1969 the Wilson government made prescription of heroin to addicts by GPs illegal (under presssure from the Nixon administration in the US). Within two weeks, black market heroin was being smuggled into the country and the profession of "drug dealer" was born. Drug dealers then had an incentive to get customers addicted.

Now Britain has between 800,000 and 1,000,000 addicts -- as a deliberate act of government policy. But not only does heroin bugger up the lives of addicts, it buggers up their neighbourhoods and lives of law-abiding citizens whose stolen property pays for the drugs. Over 80% of property crime is committed by addicts raising money for a fix.

It also buggers up Afghanistan because the Taliban earns $100 million (a gross under-estimate) a year from the opium trade. And, therefore, it funds terrorism in the UK and USA and western targets everywhere. In the streets of Britain and the US the huge amount of drug money washing through inner cities is not used to improve the lot of the residents, but to buy guns and to enforce loyalty to ruthless criminal gangs.

Over the years we have had wave after wave of increasingly violent gangs that control the drug trade: first the Italians; then the home-grown like the Kray's; then the IRA; then the Jamaican Yardie gangs; now the worst of the lot -- Russian, Kosovan and other eastern European gangs who will kill you as soon as look at you. Young black and white kids are used to sell to locals and go armed with guns and knives.

None of the ridiculous new laws proposed by the government or the Tories will have the slightest effect on crime -- there's far too much money involved.

So the best possible crime prevention programme would be to revert to the pre-1969 laws. Get every heroin addict registered and receiving free heroin. Which has these clear (and proven) advantages:

At home:

The cost will be far, far, less than those of medical complications of using dirty heroin
Every addict would be in contact with health services so they can get into treatment
Addicts won't have to committ crime to fund their habit
There will be an 80% reduction in crime
No more blackmarket heroin imports so no heroin available on the streets
No drug dealers to offer drugs to kids
Existing drug gangs will fall apart without money

In Afghanistan:

Buy the poppy crop direct from farmers
Get farmers on our side
Cut out the Taliban middle-man
Cut off funding for the Taliban

Our current politicians are far to cowardly to even consider this for a second -- even though they all know it's true. It will take a formidable character to do what's necessary but the rewards will be rapid and immense.

Sadly there is no politician -- even on the horizon -- with the guts and intelligence to do what is needed.

Why? This may sound like a whacko conspiracy theory but it is thought that the international drug trade is worth as much as the oil trade. Banks, politicians, judges, police, huge corporations are all involved in laundering all this money -- and are all tainted by endemic corruption.

If we stopped the international drug trade maybe our whole world trade and banking systems would simply fall apart.

For a detailed discussion of the "skunk cannabis hysteria" see:

New Labour’s schizo policy on cannabis
The government is happier punishing cannabis users than admitting it cannot inspire youth to do something more interesting than get stoned. -- At Spiked-online

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5101/

DUMB ECOLOGIST: Cloned meat

2008-07-14T14:52:00.014+01:00

This week please panic about: Animal-free meat

This week’s Ecologist newsletter is almost a disappointment – the plug for the article “Flask-grown flesh” reads:

"… if radical vegan Ingrid Newkirk (of PETA) has her way, the nouvelle cuisine on vegetarian menus in five years time may be a big juicy steak."

Meat produced without animal suffering – sounds great. No more sheep, cattle, pigs kept in bad conditions; no more slaughterhouses; no more foot & mouth disease; no more sending male lambs to the abattoir. And … no more millions of animals burping methane into the atmosphere. It’s thought that up to 20% of global warming is created by animals exhaling CO2 and methane.

What’s not to like?

Just when you think there’s an article in the Ecologist that isn’t littered with platitude, misunderstanding and downright stupidity, Dumbness comes to the rescue.

In the Ecologist offices everyone is:

“... equally horrified by the idea – more so than eating dead animals.”

Why? Because PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is:

“… giving up on the battle to protect animals through social legislation and putting their faith (and money) into a technological silver bullet, a lab-cultured quick fix. It’s a familiar story: climate change campaigners, depressed by the battle to change carbon-hungry lifestyles, embrace nuclear power. Global health advocates push for pharmaceutical ‘solutions’ rather than against inequality and poverty. The argument that social change is too hard leads single-issue fanatics to depend on technological and market fixes for the heavy lifting.”

That’s right … something is only worth doing if it’s HARD.

“Zac, what’s wrong with cruelty-free meat?”

“It’s too easy. Unless an animal has suffered how do we know the meat tastes good.”

“By the taste?”

“Foolish boy. If you get something easy you don’t appreciate it.”

“You mean like you and money?”

“Exactly. That’s why I put £50,000 on a hand of poker.”

“Explain.”

“OK … well £50,000 might have saved 50,000 lives through vaccination … or doubled the pay of 50,000 peasants … or drilled 500 wells. But then those people wouldn’t suffer so much, so they could not appreciate the true value of money. By wasting a fortune I am helping the poor, sick and needy!”

“Oh you are very wise My Master” squawks Porritt the Parrot.

For a more detailed discussion of why we all eat cloned food every day and why cloned animals are a GOOD thing, see:

Cloned meat: where's the beef?
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4300/

An Axis of Reaction is furious about the idea of 'cloned meat'. Yet such meat is not only safe; it could also bring enormous benefits to both farmers and farmyard animals.

A dim future - with low energy bulbs

2008-07-14T08:01:00.005+01:00

This week, I have received 10 free “Low-energy light bulbs.” (Four from British Gas, two from E-On, two from the County Council and two from the NHS.)

They join the other eight I’ve received free over the last few years in a box in the garage. One day I hope to find a use for them – but it certainly won’t be for lighting. “Low-energy bulbs” (compact fluorescent light bulbs – CFLs) are the illumination equivalent of a Black Hole – they actually seem to suck light out of a room.

Theoretically, CFLs use up to 75 per cent less electricity than the "light equivalent" incandescent bulb. The UK’s Energy Saving Trust (another quango which wastes more energy than it saves) claims that just one CFL could save up to £7 a year on a household electric bill. Given that CFLs are said to last up to 10 times longer than incandescent bulbs, you could save £60 over the life of one lower-energy bulb.

So ... if you have simple needs and unexacting standards and don’t think of your time in terms of billable hours, you might save a few pounds a year.

A CFL that uses 13-18 watts is supposed to produce the same amount of light as a 60-watt incandescent. However, almost no one believes the "light equivalents" on the packaging of CFLs; lots of websites exist to compare the relative merits of the many brands, manufacturers and styles. In practice, to replace a 60-watt incandescent you need a 100 watt-equivalent (20-watt CFL) for approximately the same lighting level, and for maximum life expectancy you should keep your CFL on for at least 15 minutes each time. Used in the correct manner, the direct energy saving may be much less than claimed – more like 25-30 per cent than 75 per cent.

A number of factors can drastically shorten the life of your CFL bulb and reduce any cost advantage:

turning on and off too frequently (less than 15 minutes at a time)

using it upside down (ie, socket "up", light "down" – in this position the heat from the light rises and overheats the electronics)

fitting it in a recessed or enclosed position (overheating again)

fitting it somewhere cold (like Britain?!)

putting it in an incompatible dimmer system (designed for incandescents)

using it with an electronic timer, motion detector or light detector

placing it anywhere that vibrates (eg, near a garage door or in a ceiling fan)

As usual with Green “thinking,” lighting is the worst place to start saving energy (correction - "standby" switches are the worst, CFLs are second). Lighting and appliances together account for only nine per cent of total electrical usage – and less than 2.7 per cent of total energy consumption. Over 80 per cent of domestic energy use is for heating and hot water.

Normal incandescent bulbs in the home contribute a surprising amount to ambient warmth. About 85-90 per cent of the bulb’s energy is converted into heat, so the 30-40 to be found in an average four-bedroom house (totalling, say 3,000 watts) could produce as much warmth as a three-bar electric heater. Wholesale replacement of all those bulbs with CFLs will cause a noticeable drop in temperature. If the central heating is turned up there will be additional (mostly gas) energy use. Since 20 per cent of our electricity comes from very-low carbon nuclear power, the switch of fuel sources is not carbon-neutral.

In hotter countries, with air conditioning, the "waste heat" of light bulbs is a greater problem than in the UK, where "waste heat" is something of an oxymoron. CFLs also require considerably more energy to manufacture, but since all that takes place in the Far East, it is not so obvious to your average Green.

Other problems with CFLs include:

Flickering
being slow to come on and warm up to full light level
light levels fade as the bulbs age
radio-frequency interference with electronic equipment, broadband signal and remote controls.

One good thing to come out of low-energy CFL bulbs is that lighting manufacturers have been stimulated to re-engineer the conventional incandescent bulb. GE – the largest US supplier – has announced that a new, much more energy-efficient incandescent design will be available by 2010.

Although supermarkets are phasing out 150W and 200W incandescent bulbs, they can still be obtained on the web.

Buy now while stocks last!

Kids Taste Great!

2008-07-11T10:38:00.005+01:00

With the correct punctuation: Kids’ taste – great!

And yet more proof that Big Brother busybodies know less than ever.

After four years of “campaigns for healthy school meals”, expenditure of hundreds of millions of pounds and the creation of a vast new bureaucracy in the form of the School Meals Trust – more kids dislike school food than ever before.

"In primary schools, take-up rose by 2.3% to 43.6% in the year to April, after a 1% fall in the previous 12 months. But secondary school pupils continue to turn down school meals, although the decline slowed last year. The survey was carried out by caterers and the School Food Trust - set up in 2005 to promote healthier school meals. At secondary level in 2007/8, there was a 0.5% fall in take up of school meals, which followed a 5% fall in the year to April 2007. The last time take up of school meals increased in England was in 2004 - the year before TV chef Jamie Oliver began his campaign for better quality school dinners." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7497948.stm

In 2004, pupils at British schools were reasonably happy with meals and more pupils had lunch in school canteens than in the previous year.

Then … Jamie Oliver happened. The no-nothing, fat-tongued, potato-peeler was given his own television show on Channel 4 to “make school meals healthy” and promptly turned tens of thousands of kids off school meals.

Why are school meals so unpopular? Take a look at the Board of the School Meals Trust. If you want to change something you enlist the help of people with imagination: people who can look at evidence, people who do their homework, people who listen to what’s gone wrong in the past and can be adaptable in finding solutions.

The Board of the School Meals Trust is a prime collection of numbnut pencil-pushers, vested- interests and conspiracy theorists. Of the 15 members, five have links to the organic food industry – which relies on myth and superstition instead of evidence (e.g. using homeopathy to “treat” animals); four are long-time education service bureaucrats; three are trade union or employer association bureaucrats and three are in some sort of food/catering consultancy business.

You could not get a group of people less likely to achieve anything important or worthwhile.

But this government was so insecure of its own ability to run anything that it was panicked into “doing something” in response to the “Jamie’s School Dinners” programme. If any members of the government had watched it they could have spotted that:

1. Jamie Oliver is not a chef. He was spotted peeling vegetables in the River Café by a BBC producer who thought he would make good front man for a “yoof” TV cookery series. “The Naked Chef” was concocted so older women could fancy him without being sexually threatened and his bloke-ishness would be OK with men. He made quick meals on TV with minimum of fuss so most of the programme could follow his “celebrity lifestyle” with model-girlfriend. Because he did not work his way up in the restaurant business he had no mistakes to learn from – he became a “celebrity chef” before he’d even learnt to cook. His next venture, the restaurant 15 was part of another TV series.

2. Oliver was equally ignorant about catering - despite going to Catering College. He could not devise a menu, order raw food or ingredients or run a kitchen. In “Jamie’s School Dinners” it was embarrassing when he set out to design a pizza on his own – it turned into a pile of green slime on a pizza base made of rock.

3. Oliver did not understand nutrition, food preparation or children. He cooked an organic chicken then got angry when none of the kids would eat it. Just as well – at this time the Food Standards Agency (FSA) was warning parents against giving children and old people organic poultry because of the high risk of infection with the gastro-intestinal pathogens Salmonella and Campylobacter. If one of the kids had eaten it and become sick the whole programme would have been cancelled. After he tried to force one young girl to eat the chicken and she burst into tears, he promised he would not make her eat it if she lied to her friends, told them it was delicious and then got them to eat it! (Pass the poison!)

No doubt egged on by the Soil Association he made extravagant claims about children being unhealthier than ever and suffering from cancers and all sorts of nasty diseases because of the food they eat – none of which are true. Children are healthier than ever before in human history.
His programmes directed parents and viewers to Soil Association leaflets full of propaganda for organic food. The whole thing was less about school dinners than a PR exercise for organic farming. It became very clear that Oliver was just a front man for the Soil Association, which is the certification and marketing wing of the organic food business. As an “independent expert” he made claims for organic food that the Soil Association could no longer say – it was disciplined by the Advertising Standards Authority for claiming that organic food was healthier and kinder to animals.

But, instead of deciding this was all the most fantastic waste of time, our timid government gave in to press hysteria and called Oliver a hero.

Sadly, they created the School Meals Trust and spent all that money before they’d done any research. Only a couple of years later did we discover that the main reason kids don’t take school meals is the crush of people in the canteen, long queues, then a scramble to stuff it all down before classes started again.

In fact, the “promising” results claimed for the early campaign were actually the result of fewer children in the canteen at lunchtime – so they had a better “dining experience” hence the improved score they gave to the food. And with fewer kids taking school meals, the schools were able to spend more of their budget on each meal and the quality improved a little.

So, in short: the “success” of the last four years has been due to fewer children using the meals service so canteens are less crowded and the meals can have slightly more spent on them. Naturally, the School Meals Trust cannot comprehend anything so counterintuitive so it is full of self-congratulation - thinking that its briefing papers, Facts & Myths, expensive website, dozens of staff and extensive stakeholder consultations have actually worked.

Let indigenous tribes rot -- say Western charity

2008-07-11T09:00:00.004+01:00

At the end of May, newspapers around the world showed photographs of an ‘undiscovered’ Amazon tribe taken from a low-flying light aircraft that circled the tribe’s camp near the Brazil-Peru border. After the first fly-past, the tribes people scattered into the jungle; when the plane returned the men were painted red and they fired arrows up into the air.

A typical reaction on internet discussion groups was: why are you buzzing them with an aircraft if they are afraid of the outside world? According to Survival International, a campaign group that claims to support and protect indigenous peoples, ‘If they keep firing arrows they will be okay, if they stop they are doomed’.

So it seems to be a deliberate policy to stir up fear, suspicion and hostility to outsiders. Yet the generation of such hostility is exactly what has caused trouble for similar tribes in the past. Violence against outsiders – whether missionaries, loggers or charity officials – has often been the excuse for governments to go in with a heavy hand and massacre tribes people before stealing their land.

But the policies of Survival International seem more than just misguided. Behind its warm words about self-determination and indigenous rights, Survival’s literature reveals that the real hostility to the modern world comes from the organisation itself. In its pamphlet Progress Can Kill: How Imposed Development Destroys the Health of Tribal Peoples (1), a romantic view of poverty is displayed on every page. Apparently, in Africa, only the Maasai people who have ‘largely avoided the market economy’ are happy and healthy, as are tribes who ‘live on their own lands eating traditional food’. And up pops that well-worn cliché: ‘These groups may be poor in monetary terms but are rich in many other ways.’

As the UK Sun reports, Miriam Ross, one of Survival International’s ‘lost tribes specialists’, believes life in an ‘undiscovered tribe’ is a bit like a hippy Shangri-La: ‘They live communally and do not recognise chiefs… a hunter shares the meat he has killed among friends and family.’ (2) And their life is not at all arduous! ‘It takes [the tribe] less than four hours a day to satisfy all their material needs … much time is left for leisure and social activities’, says Ross. Tribal womenfolk work mainly in the fields to harvest edible plants and collect insects and larvae for the ‘table’. A slight concern, for Survival, is the regular wars between tribes in which large numbers of adult men are slaughtered.

Survival strongly approves of such a ‘healthy’ lifestyle and boasts that ‘life span and child mortality rate [are] not so different to what was observed in Europe a few centuries ago’ (3). That a campaign group can congratulate itself on maintaining infant (and maternal) mortality rates at 40-50 per cent, and life expectancy of only 35-40 years, demonstrates quite staggering contempt for the people they are supposed to be helping.

With outside contact, Survival apparently worries that tribal people might get used to clean water on tap and regular meals: the Amazonians might eat too much salt and junk food and become obese. They might take a liking to booze, fags and sugary drinks and will get cavities - they might even end up wearing hoodies!

It is true that many of the interactions between ‘hidden tribes’ and the outside world have ended disastrously – although most of Survival’s examples are from centuries or decades ago. Encroachment on tribal peoples by missionaries, miners and loggers can end in massacres, disease and rapid destruction of the indigenous peoples. But it need not be so. There are alternatives to the patronising imprisonment in poverty offered by Survival.

Survival International estimates that just under half of the world’s ‘undiscovered tribes’ can be found in the isolated valleys at the heart of the island of New Guinea. Although by no means perfect, the Papua New Guinea experience demonstrates that ‘first contact’ and its aftermath need not be characterised by massacres and epidemics.

I grew up in Papua New Guinea (PNG), the eastern half of the island (the western half is occupied brutally by Indonesia). After the Second World War, Australian administered PNG as a United Nations Trust Territory and prepared it for independence. In the 1960s, the PNG highlands still contained tribes who remembered their first contact with white men. Perhaps fortunately, the initial oil exploration that opened up the interior was largely unproductive and it proved uneconomic to exploit the gas reserves that were discovered under the rain forest.

In previous decades, particularly 1900-1920, there had been several encounters between white men and the tribes of the interior. The parade of missionaries, explorers and miners had been met with great violence from the tribesmen – and it took many years of ‘peaceful penetration’ before suspicion was overcome.

Author with Chimbu tribesmen 1967.

The Australian government followed a sensible, enlightened policy that allowed the indigenous people to develop at their own pace. They stopped encroachment by missionaries and miners, set up regular trading posts in the interior, and simply waited for the native people to approach. Contrary to the view of groups like Survival, native peoples are not stupid. They have always heard a great deal about the white men from contact with other tribes. They know that ‘white man’s medicine’ offers better treatment for many conditions than the tribal shaman. They know the value of metal tools and matches – simple implements that can mean the difference between starvation and survival. They know their lives are hard and not as full of ‘social and leisure activities’ as Survival’s ‘experts’ believe.

They would prefer not to have to lose their wives during childbirth, that half their children would not die within the first two years of their lives, and for outsiders to stop the brutal retaliatory wars between tribes that often start as an accident but must then escalate as ‘payback’. They quickly understand the value of disease-prevention (by vaccination or malaria eradication).

Provided contact is sensitively initiated, tribal people can and will benefit greatly from the outside world. My parents worked all over PNG in Australian-sponsored projects to set up schools and clinics and teach native people to grow cash crops with which to buy what they needed from the outside world. The indigenous people enthusiastically embraced the better ways of growing crops and new sources of income. Like parents everywhere, they want a better life for their children and they welcome education (even for girls, since an educated girl will fetch more pigs from a prospective husband).

An example of at least one indigenous man who knew about what the white man could offer is contained within the photograph above. A few hours before it was taken, the warrior in the middle had been given a supply of bully beef and a can opener by a well-meaning government official. With a cry of delight, he opened the can and gave the disgusting slop to his dog, tore off its label and attached both the can-opener and shiny empty can to his grass skirt. It was of no interest to him as food, but as decoration the can was ideal.

Just like ‘real people’, not exotic zoological specimens, indigenous people realise the advantages of the outside world but must be allowed to adapt in their own time. Enforced isolation – only to be photographed from the air by patronising Western eco-activists – is as unwelcome as forced
assimilation.

(1) Survival of a lost rainforest tribe, Sun, 31 May 2008
(2) Progress Can Kill, Survival International, 2007
(3) Progress Can Kill, Survival International, 2007

This article originally appeared on Spiked-online.com

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5305/

Fot the convenience of Norwegian readers, this article was republished, in translation, on the web version of Dagbladet magazine:

http://www.dagbladet.no/magasinet/2008/06/17/538434.html

Høy spedbarnsdødelighet, ødeleggende sykdom, knugende fattigdom. Dette er livet til urfolket i Amazonas slik det hylles av Survival.

Soil Association -- Faked Figures

2008-07-10T13:52:00.003+01:00

"Organic" is a food fad for the scientifically and environmentally ignorant -- dilettantes, nitwits and playboys with more money than sense.

To promote this fascist yet fashionable idea, the wealthy white westerners who run the Soil Association (Britain's organic PR agency in chief) invents statistics to pretend "organic" food is more popular than it really is.

Lord Melchett, Policy Director of the Soil Association, claims that sales of organic food were £1.937 billion in 2006 (the latest year available). When that figure first appeared – in a September 2007 Soil Association press release – it was reported without question in the “quality press” and has now become an official Defra (Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) statistic.

Defra always relies on imaginary numbers but good journalists question “facts” that are suspiciously precise. No such luck, in media circles the Soil Association’s word is law and no self-respecting correspondent would be seen dead with a non-organic ciabatta.

What some eagle-eyed hack should have noticed was that the Soil Association claimed organic sales of £260 million in 1996. Add exactly 25% annual compound interest for 10 years and the result is £1.937 billion. Either the organic-food consuming public has been extremely predictable for a decade, or the Soil Association makes up its statistics on the back of an envelope.

Melchett continued to put his mouth where his money is and complained that organic farming does not get enough research funding – although his country estate in Norfolk received £287,427 in EU farm subsidies and grants during 2002-2005 and undisclosed amounts in the last three years.

(An interesting side note: despite press reports that he “farms organically” in 2000 and being employed by the Soil Association since 2002, financial statements reveal that Melchett had still not fully converted his estates to organic standards by 2006 – a process that should only take three years.)

Perhaps Lord Melchett could pool “research resources” with other citizen farmers. When wealthy hacks or media types need a hobby, tax deduction and EU handout all in one, they buy a farm and go organic. Celebrity “organic farmers” include Jonathan Dimbleby, John Humphrys, Rosie Boycott, Monty Don, Zac Goldsmith, Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall, Alex James (of popular beat combo ‘Blur’) and of course Prince Charles – whose Duchy enterprises rake-in millions of pounds in subsidies every year.

The courting of celebrities has been very profitable. In 2005 the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) forbade the Soil Association from repeating claims that organic food and farming is healthier or more humane to animals than conventional food and farming. But “celebrities” do not have to stick to ASA rules; they can (and do) make outrageous statements about the benefits of organic food – from curing asthma and hyperactivity in children to reducing the risk of cancer to being kind to cuddly animals to saving the planet.

As well as individual “organic” celebs, BBC Radio 4 is practically the Voice of the Soil Association. Unfortunate listeners to The Archers, the Food Programme, Farming Today and “consumer” programmes are regularly subject to barrages of hectoring about the dangers of “conventional” farming, the eco-benefits of organic farming and the wholesome tastiness of organic food.

Illustrative of the BBC’s infiltration by organic nuts was the response to the Countryfile programme which conducted a blind taste test of four differently-reared chickens. All eight participants (nutritionists and veterinary students) chose the cheapest, intensively reared, chicken over organic, free-range and corn-fed. When Farming Today discussed the results, it was very sour about the fact that cheap chicken tasted best; instead of welcoming the benefits to consumers, the presenter suggested that the population need to be “re-educated.”

Friends of Biofuel

2008-07-10T01:29:00.006+01:00

With people like this around we're never going to save the planet:

"After a long newsletter and attachments last month, this one could well be short, as I’ve just come back from holiday from Bahrain in fact, where the petrol costs 15p per litre and you can imagine how keen people are to conserve it when Saudi Arabia virtually gives it to them! Quite depressing, especially when there is so much sunshine and wind! Politics!!"

Who would be so irresponsible and carbon-profligate as to go on holiday ... to Bahrain?

A: George W. Bush
B: Bjorn Lomberg (Oops, I had to stop Auto Text insterting BASTARD)
C: Satan
D: Jack the Ripper

Guess again tadpoles. The answer is E: Friends of the Earth.

Well, not the whole organisation, obviously. Just their Guildford & Godalming branch (that's Hilary, Francesca and Jonty). Actually, to be fair, it was just Hilary. And it was way back in 2005, before anyone had even heard of global warming.

But to get to the sad, awful nitwittery of the rest of the February 2005 newsletter:

Remember to demand biofuel next time you fill up the tank with petrol.

Now we (apparently) know that biofuels are BAD, Friends of the Earth has managed to purge the Interweb of all (most) mentions of its campaign for more biofuels -- except for that G&G newsletter. This year, FoE is campaigning against biofuels. Stay tuned for news that petrol is good and evil is evil -- expected some time in 2006.

"Rebecca Smith, Network Developer attended our lively meeting last month. Thanks to all of you that attended and led her to say such positive comments about what a friendly well informed lot we are!."

Oh dear ...

(And it's "... all of you who attended ..." Hilary, not "... that attended ..." -- keep your mind on the books and off Pony Club.)

Environmental Truth Foretold -- in 1828

2008-07-08T20:42:00.003+01:00

In last week's Spectator magazine was a facsimile copy of its first issue in 1828.

Thus proving that politics and history simply repeat as farce, here is a description of "The Liberal" who, in 2008 sounds awfully like a number of our current politicians and their environmental obsessions:

For the new Tory "greens":

While the Briton of the old school may possibly carry his principle to an extent which is not right, he of the new or Liberal school will most probably tumble through sheer weakness into what is wrong.

For Gordon Brown:

In the Liberal there is a total absence of the sound healthy firmness,
which is absolutely essential to eminent usefulness; he yields this; he concedes that; he compromises the other thing; he winds, and twists, and hesitates; and when he wants to accomplish a thing, chooses rather to do it by a trick or stratagem, than by candour and plain dealing.

For all poiticians who think Climate Change is the world's greatest threat:

Even his principles he yields to circumstances, and he is particularly deferential to a vague impalpable something, which he is pleased to call 'the spirit of the age', but which, on investigation, appears to be nothing more than the affected tone of the weak trash which the press pours forth in such quantity.

He floats about upon the wide sea of the world's opinion, and is blown hither and thither by every gust which may come from the various quarters of the globe. He neglects the interests of the people round about him, while he considers what may promote the prosperity of the new kingdom of the new world, and sacrifices the most important interests of his own country in a paroxysm of general philanthropy and universal benevolence.

For the Aristocratic/Old Money Greens who run environmentalism in the UK:

But in every thing he does, he is most anxious that he himself should appear; he is not only of opinion that he knows better than all who have gone before him, but that the world should see that he is the person who has made the grand discovery that every one else was wrong ... a confused mass of crude ideas upon every subject, who went buzzing and fizzing about a-telling of the wonderful wonders of political economy, of their own philosophical and enlightened views, and pronouncing the subversion of our constitution, and of all our ancient institutions.

For Hilary Benn, our Environment Secretary:

All this time, however, nothing solid is done; your Liberal is the worst man of business in the world; it is true, he seems busy, but it is in making speeches, and devising plans and complicated refinements upon what works well enough already, while the more arduous and important concerns of the State are frequently neglected, because they afford no opportunity for display, or for showing off the advantages of the new and improved system.

DUMB ECOLOGIST: Nuclear Power

2008-07-06T17:45:00.004+01:00

This week please panic about: Nuclear Power

In this week's Ecologist newsletter, a Solar Panel salesman called Jeremy Leggett, brings up the old canard that the government is "suppressing" investment in "renewables" in order to favour nuclear power. If he had bothered to check the real figures he would find that the British government spends £2 billion a year subsidizing "renewables" - which supply less than 1% of our electricity - and just £1.4 billion a year subsidizing waste processing for our (ageing) nuclear plants - which supply 20% of our electricity. (Which one is the bargain?)

New nuclear plants will receive no government subsidy but "renewables" will require more than £40 billion a year if they can ever possibly provide 20% of our electricity - which is very unlikely.

The Ecologist should read this article from Spiked-online.com:

Ten Myths About Nuclear Power

Greens opposing nuclear power muddle every issue from terrorism to uranium supplies, in order to besmirch the only proven safe and cost-effective way to generate large amounts of electricity that won’t produce large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. One would think that greens don’t want a world with abundant energy and a stable climate!

These are some of the myths we are likely to hear from greens debating nuclear power over the next few weeks:

1) Uranium is running out
According to Greenpeace, uranium reserves are ‘relatively limited’ (1) and last week the Nuclear Consultation Working Group claimed that a significant increase in nuclear generating capacity would reduce reliable supplies from 50 to 12 years (2).

In fact, there is 600 times more uranium in the ground than gold and there is as much uranium as tin. There has been no major new uranium exploration for 20 years, but at current consumption levels, known uranium reserves are predicted to last for 85 years. Geological estimates from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) show that at least six times more uranium is extractable – enough for 500 years’ supply at current demand (3). Modern reactors can use thorium as a fuel and convert it into uranium – and there is three times more thorium in the ground than uranium (4).

Uranium is the only fuel which, when burnt, generates more fuel. Not only existing nuclear warheads, but also the uranium and plutonium in radioactive waste can be reprocessed into new fuel, which former UK chief scientist Sir David King estimates could supply 60 per cent of Britain’s electricity to 2060 (5).

In short, there is more than enough uranium, thorium and plutonium to supply the entire world’s electricity for several hundred years.

The other myths:

2) Nuclear is not a low-carbon option

3) Nuclear power is expensive

4) Reactors produce too much waste

5) Decommissioning is too expensive

6) Building reactors takes too long

7) Leukaemia rates are higher near reactors

8) Reactors lead to weapons proliferation

9) Wind and wave power are more sustainable

10) Reactors are a terrorist target

Read about all the myths at:

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4259/

DUMB ECOLOGIST: Nanofoods

2008-07-03T17:23:00.006+01:00

If you do not get the Ecologist weakly newsletter in your Inbox you are missing a good belly laugh. If ever there was a publication written by idiots for idiots this is it. Which is why Zac Goldsmith should have stayed at school until he was 16.

The Ecologist provides all the scientific accuracy of 'Heat' with the insightful analysis of 'OK' and the laugh-riot humour and self-deprecation of Naomi Klein.

This week, please panic about: NANOFOODS

The Ecologist asks:

"Friends of the Earth called for a moratorium on the commercial release of new nanofoods, asserting that products are entering the food chain ‘in the absence of mandatory product labelling, public debate or laws to ensure their safety’. Can it be possible that the concerns expressed by this and other NGOs are justified?"

To which the obvious answer is -- NO, you bloody morons!!!

The author (a lawyer, which may account for her weak grasp of fact) never actually says what nanofoods are, why they might cause problems, or what problems there might be. She just thinks they are BAD -- perhaps because they have a weird foreign name, "nano."

Imagine the discussion in the Ecologist's offices (lit by sustainable whalefat candles).

"Hey Zac, what's a nano?"
"One of those Indian cars." Says Goldsmith.
"Nano is Keanu Reeves he, like totally defeated the Matrix in that film ... Star Wars." Jamie Oliver spits, finally able to talk proper after tongue-liposuction.
"Nah," riposts Jonathon Porritt, who drove over on an under-maid, "A nano is a Walkman."
"Captain Nano is an evil Frenchman with a submarine who travels the oceans being a global multinational." Pipes up Lord Melchett, who has dropped by on a chip-fat-powered peasant to deliver a local organic veg box (pineapple tops and banana skins).
"Oh NO!!" say all (ZG, JP, JO, LM and seven other offspring of multi-millionaires) "that's unethical!"
"Then we oppose it!" Zac cries, "Have a serf bring my BlackBerry on a silver tray so my PA may fax a Professor of Nitwittery who knows nothing about the subject and commission an in-depth analysis by Glooogle Interweb. Beam her to my Underground Lair (I mean organic farm) by helicopter so we may condemn this vile Captain Nano and all his carbon-profligate works."
"Thy will be done Master." Say the loyal retainers whom Zac has inherited from his uncle Ed (who now lives in The Maximum Security Twilight Home for the Terminally Bewildered But Still Stinking Rich).

Maybe, at law school, they did not explain that "nano" means (excuse my Latin):

"Small -- very small -- so extremely bleeding small you can't see it -- even if you haven't already gone blind from Vitamin A deficiency with all those shrivelled organic carrots you eat."

Subscribers to the Ecologist will be frantic to discover that air is composed of nanoparticles -- e.g. oxygen molecules and nitrogen molecules. Everything we eat is composed of nanoparticles -- e.g. proteins, sugars, fats, minerals. All our food (even an organic ciabatta) is broken down by gastric nano-acids and nano-enzymes into nanoparticles -- otherwise we could not digest them -- all food IS nanofood!

If a non-nano lump of food gets from your guts into your blood stream you've probably got a perforated colon.

Hack calls kettle Climate Denier!

2008-06-30T19:18:00.004+01:00

Venerable media journalist Peter Wilby, in the Guardian today, condemns tabloid newspapers because only 77% of their "climate change" stories reflect the scientific consensus.

That is, 23% of climate stories in the Sun, Mirror, Mail and Express, say that maybe global warming won't be such a bad thing, or won't be as hot as the doomsayers predict, or maybe it isn't all totally the fault of Man and carbon dioxide.

Wilby thinks that 100% of scientists agree about 100% of the Man Made Climate Change Story. In fact every IPCC meeting is full of squabbles, foot stamping, hissy fits and compromise exactly 0% of scientists agree with 100% of any IPCC report.

For example: one IPCC computer model predicts significant global cooling ... at the other extreme another model predicts warming by over 6 degrees C by the end of this century.

One certainty: The truth will be somewhere in the middle.

But Mr Perfect Wilby should cast out the mote in his own eye. The overwhelming majority of scientists (i.e. the consensus) say that nuclear power has an important role to play in the attenuation of global warming and GM crops are an essential part of providing enough food in a future of increased temperatures.

But ... about 99% of the Guardian's coverage disagrees with the overwhelming scientific consensus! If it is naughty of a crappy tabloid to contradict the scientific consenus, how much worse is it for a "serious" newspaper to do the same?

Wilby says the reason for the tabloids' ignorance of climate change is that none of their commentators has "anything more than a science O-level."

Well, which of these world famous and authoritative rent-a-quote environmental commentators has more than a science O-level?

(Clue -- NONE.)

Peter Wilby - Guardian media expert
Prince Charles - Prince & layabout & adulterer & all-round loony
Lord Melchett - heir to ICI fortune, hobby farmer
Al Gore - heir to Gore fortune & Senate seat, electoral failure
Zac Goldsmith - heir to strip-mining and deforestation fortune, playboy Jonathon Porritt - heir to Baronetcy of Hapstead, Prince Charles-lover
Dr Caroline Lucas - Green Party MEP, not a real doctor - PhD in Eng Lit
Mark Lynas - New Statesman green correspondent
Jonathan Dimbleby - publishing heir, hobby farmer
James Murdoch - publishing heir of evil right-wing Rupert
Jamie Oliver - really really bad, fat-tongued cook
Sting - "singer" & wifey Trudie, Ugly, Weeply Styler
Chris Martin - "singer" & wifey Gwyneth Paltrow - Hollywood heiress
Thom Yorke - "singer" & public school socialist
Madonna - "singer" but at, least a self-made millionaire unlike the rest.

From what we can tell there are only two eco-types who have a degree in a
science subject:

George Monbiot - heir to a biscuit fortune and son of two ardent Tories but he can spot the difference between CO2 and the crack in your arse.
Tony Juniper - now with Friends of the Earth but formerly a bird-botherer so may no longer be able to tell the difference between CO2 and the crack in your arse.
PLEASE CONTRIBUTE
MORE GOOFY SCIENTIFIC CLAIMS OR
MISUNDERSTANDINGS
OF ANY OF THE ABOVE

DUMB ECOLOGIST: Flouride

2008-06-20T11:42:00.007+01:00

This week, please panic about: FLOURIDE IN THE WATER

We all know that Ecologist contributors can barely count to 10 -- so the fact that they have misunderstood the statistics on flouridation will surprise no one.

Anyone who visits the United States will be familiar with their observation that the Brits all have terrible teeth. Sadly, this is true because very little of our drinking water is flouridated.

Flouride is essential for the healthy human body and was a very common component of our diet while we were evolving, living by oceans, eating fish and drinking water from rivers and lakes -- which contain good concentrations of all sorts of essential minerals. Flouride seeps into the surface enamel of growing teeth and protects against bacteria that cause tooth decay.

Sadly, these days our water comes mostly from reservoirs filled by rainwater.

Although eco-freaks may think that rain water is "natural" it is not natural enough for modern humans -- no minerals at all. We who grew up in developing countries where we had to collect rainwater in huge tanks got almost no flouride as children. As a result, I have had three extractions and most of my teeth are just a few chunks of yellowing enamel held together by fillings (hence, such a hit with the chicks).

But, those who believe that aliens are broadcasting thoughts into in their brains also believe that putting flouride in our reservoirs is a sinister attempt by Zionists, the One World Government and the United Nations (under control of the Beast 666) to poison us all.

In this week's Ecologist newsletter, a representative of these nitwits (the National Pure Water Association -- formerly the Oh God The Aliens Just Anally Probed Me Association) trots the old "causes cancer" argument. He writes:
US National Toxicology Program (NTP) ... carr[ied] out cancer studies in rats. The results came in 1990 and showed a dose-dependent increase in osteosarcoma (bone cancer) among male rats treated with sodium fluoride.

Of course he didn't read the study carefully enough. If he had he would have noticed that it was published in 1991 (not 1990) and studied mice and rats. He also didn't notice that the amount of flouride added to human drinking water is only 1 part per million (ppm) but in the US NTP study mice and rats were given up to 79ppm -- i.e. 80 times the dose in human water supplies.

Only one male rat (out of 50) in one sub-study and 4 male rats (out of 80) in another sub-study developed a form of bone cancer. No mice and no female rats developed any disease and led long happy lives. In fact the scientists who conducted the studies were doubtful if the cancers had anything to do with the huge doses of flouride.

Perhaps the Ecologist author does not realise that rats are not humans (though, working with the Ecologist one can understand the confusion). The fact that only male rats -- not the females and none of the mice -- developed bone cancer could well be a quirk of male rat physiology. For example -- when given aspirin, some pregnant rodents spontaneously abort their pups; cats given paracetamol may die. Not all animal experiments are directly relevant to humans.

Please feel free to check -- something the Ecologist "Fact Checking Department" * did not do.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2071234?dopt=Abstract

*Meanwhile, deep in the Ecologist extensive fact checking department:

"Zac, what's a fact?"
"A lie spread by big business."
"But ... but ... doesn't all your money that supports the Ecologist come from big business?"
"What???"
"You know, your father who was an assett-stripper, open-cast miner, deforester and tax-dodger."
"You are an infiltrator. Drag him out my minions!"
"Yes master." The office hunchbacks, Meacher, Melchett and Porritt, dressed
only in smelly organic cotton rags, cast the former employee to the pit of utter darkness (Starbucks).

Peep show extract

2008-05-29T21:48:00.000+01:00

2008-05-07T13:40:00.000+01:00