Cynical lies designed to pressure big food companies

Warming would make great new areas of Northern Canada and Siberia suitable for grain farming.  So the problem would be TOO MUCH food, not too little.  And if some of the soils there are poor, adding supplements of various sorts is already routine

The price of cereals such as Corn Flakes could surge by as much as 44 percent in the next 15 years because of climate change, Oxfam has warned.

The charity has claimed the 'Big 10' food and drink companies combined emit more greenhouse gases than Scandinavia, and has warned these firms could face financial ruin if they do not do more to tackle climate change.

Oxfam says were companies Associated British Foods, Coca-Cola, Danone, General Mills, Kellogg, Mars, Mondelez International, Nestl‚, PepsiCo and Unilever a country, they would rank as the 25th most polluting.

In its new report Standing on the Sidelines, the international agency says these firms emit 264 million tons of greenhouse gases, according to the latest available figures, more than the combined 250 million ton total for Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland.

Oxfam says food supplies are being affected by storms, floods, droughts and shifting weather patterns caused by climate change, which is leading to more hunger and poverty.

It has been predicted that by 2050 there will be 50 million more people made hungry because of climate change, and Oxfam has suggested that the price of key products like Kellogg's Corn Flakes could rise by 44 percent by 2029.

In its critical report, the charity has called on the firms, which is says generate œ650 million a day in revenues - equivalent to the total gross domestic product of all the world's lower income countries - to cut their combined emissions by 80 million tons by 2020.

'By failing to cut emissions adequately the 'Big 10' are putting short term profits ahead of the long term interests of both themselves and the rest of us,' said Oxfam's director of UK campaigns and policy Sally Copley.

'Their influence and wealth are the perfect ingredients to stop putting their businesses at risk and making climate change worse.

'They need to look at the whole picture from how their ingredients are grown to how their goods are produced to cut emissions.

'They also need to pressure businesses and governments to do what is needed to tackle climate change and help build a future where everyone has enough to eat.'

Oxfam says that the food industry drives around 25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and that these emissions are growing as demand for food rises.

'Experts say that if the world is to avoid warming of more than 2C, rising emissions from deforestation and agriculture need to be reversed by 2050 and agriculture and forests need to together become a carbon sink - effectively removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere,' said an Oxfam spokesman.

'Their influence and wealth are the perfect ingredients to stop putting their businesses at risk and making climate change worse'

Oxfam says some of the companies, Unilever, Coca-Cola, and Nestle, had taken steps to tackle climate change, and that Pepsico UK had committed to reduce emissions from its agricultural supply chain by 50 percent in five years.

But it singled out Kellogg, which produces cereals including Corn Flakes and Rice Crispies, and General Mills, which encompasses brands including Haagen-Dazs and Jus-Rol, as two of the 'worst' on climate.

In its report the charity called on these companies to lead the other firms towards more responsible policies and practices. Oxfam also urged the firms to disclose their agricultural emissions and biggest polluting suppliers, and set targets to cut emissions from their supply chains.

A spokesman from Kellog told MailOnline: 'Kellogg is committed to doing what's right for the environment and society. As part of this commitment, we are working to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions - along with energy use and water use - by 15-20 percent at our manufacturing facilities by 2015.

'We're pleased to see that Oxfam has recognized our commitment to working with global palm oil suppliers to source fully traceable palm oil, produced in a manner that's environmentally responsible, socially beneficial, and economically viable. We've also made continuous improvements in the areas of Land, Women, Climate and Water.

'We value continued engagement and discussion with Oxfam, and other external stakeholders on the important issues of environmental and social sustainability.'

A General Mills spokesperson added: 'Climate Change is a serious issue, and as a food company we are very aware of the impact that climate change could have on agriculture and the world's food supply.

'General Mills has been actively engaged in positively influencing climate policy and has been taking steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in its operations for many years.'

SOURCE

Comment by William Happer received by email:  Meyers is an "instructor in medicine" and research scientist at the "Harvard Center for the Environment." This is not a very prestigious position. But if Meyers continues to produce horror stories like this for the establishment, it will soon bring him fame and fortune, just as environmental fanaticism has done for so many already, including Obama's Presidential Science Advisor and Al Gore. As for content, Meyers's paper sounds like rubbish to me. As best I know, grain is not the main source of nutritional zinc and iron anyway. And somebody should get the environmental enforcers after the growers of hothouse tomatoes, cucumbers, etc., who persist in doubling, tripling and quadrupling the CO2 levels in their greenhouses.





Judith Curry leaves the plantation

Doing science by consensus is not science at all, says the climatologist all the alarmists love to hate. Not that the enmity bothers Judith Curry too much -- and certainly not as much as the debasement of impartial inquiry by which the warmist establishment keeps all those lovely grants coming

When climatologist Judith Curry visited Melbourne last week she took the time to chat with Quadrant Online contributor Tony Thomas. The professor and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, she  is something of a stormy petrel in the climate-change community, as she has broken ranks with alarmist colleagues to question the articles and ethics of the warmist faith. This has made her less than popular in certain circles, even inspiring Scientific American, house journal of the catastropharians, to brand her "a heretic" who has "turned on her colleagues." [only religions have heretics]

Such criticism leaves Curry unmoved. If anyone needs counselling, she says, then it is those academics who continue to preach the planet's sweaty doom despite the fact that no warming has been observed for almost two decades.

The edited transcript of Curry's conversation with Thomas is below:

TONY THOMAS: If the skeptic/orthodox spectrum is a range from 1 (intense skeptic) to 10 (intensely IPCC orthodox), where on the scale would you put yourself

(a) as at 2009, 7

(b) as at 2014, 3

and why has there been a shift (if any)?

JUDITH CURRY: In early 2009, I would have rated myself as 7; at this point I would rate myself as a 3.  Climategate and the weak response of the IPCC and other scientists triggered a massive re-examination of my support of the IPCC, and made me look at the science much more sceptically.

THOMAS: The US debate has been galvanised in recent weeks by strong statements against CO2 emissions by President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. What is your view of the case they made out, and your thoughts about why the statements are now being made?

CURRY: I am mystified as to why President Obama and John Kerry are making such strong (and indefensible) statements about climate change.  Particularly with regards to extreme weather events, their case is very weak.  Especially at this time, given that much of the rest of the world is pulling back against commitments to reduce emissions and combat climate change.

THOMAS: Re the halt to warming in the past 15-17 years, has this been adequately explained to the public? If it continues a few more years, is that the end of the orthodox case?
CURRY: Regarding the hiatus in warming, I would say that this has not been adequately explained to the public, the IPCC certainly gave the issue short shrift.

The hiatus is serving to highlight the importance of natural climate variability.  If the hiatus continues a few more years, climate model results will seriously be called into question.  When trying to understand and model a complex system, there is, unfortunately, no simple test for rejecting a hypothesis or a model.

THOMAS: What empirical evidence is there, as distinct from modelling, that `missing heat' has gone into the deep oceans?

CURRY: Basically, none.  Observations below 2 km in the ocean are exceedingly rare, and it is only since 2005 that we have substantial coverage below 700 metres.

More HERE




The fanaticism of Paul Watson

It's not only whale meat but ALL meat he wants us not to eat.  There are certainly some problems with animal husbandry but, in the developed world, these problems are already heavily regulated.  It is telling that most other environmental organizations do not agree with him.  And the tales of destruction below are mostly mere assertions, not scientific facts

Veganism is real conservation in action.  It validates a conservationist as virtuous and courageous in facing and exposing the most inconvenient truth of all

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is one of the very few, if not the only marine conservation organization in the world that actively promotes and practices veganism.

Why? Because we see the connections between animal husbandry and pollution in the ocean, diminishment of life in the seas, the destruction of the rainforests and climate change.

Veganism is real conservation in action. It goes beyond talking about climate change and diminishment of biodiversity and actually does something to address the problems.

Sea Shepherd ships have been vegan vessels since 2002 and before that vegan options were always provided. The ships were vegetarian vessels beginning in 1979.

The Sea Shepherd Conservations Society is not a vegan or vegetarian organization however, nor are we an Animal Rights or an Animal Welfare organization. We are a marine wildlife and habitat conservation movement.

So why are all the meals on Sea Shepherd ships vegan?
The answer is because vegetarianism and especially veganism are powerful alternatives to eight billion human beings and their domestic animals eating the oceans alive.

The diversity in our ocean is being diminished more and more every day and when diversity collapses, interdependence between species collapses and the result is a dead ocean.

And a dead ocean means death to all creatures big and small because if the ocean dies, we all die. The ocean is the heart of the planet and it sustains all life both on land and in the sea.
We are ruthlessly overfishing the seas and much of it is being done illegally.

Virtually every commercial fishing operation in the world is in a state of collapse. We are polluting the ocean with plastic, petro-chemicals, agricultural run-off and sewage. We are inflicting acidification, noise pollution and destroying coastal habitats for development.

The Sea Shepherd position's is that all commercial fisheries must be shut down so fish can have a chance to recover. The only relatively “sustainable” fisheries are artisanal fishing by fishermen working from very small boats out of tiny ports in India, Africa, etc.

We need to remove the corporations, the big trawlers, seiners, and long-liners, the heavy gear, the big nets, the long lines and the factory ships if our oceans are going to be saved.

So what has this got to do with anyone eating a hamburger, bacon and eggs or chicken? These creatures don’t live in the sea.
Yet they live off of the sea. Like us, they are land dwellers collectively eating the sea alive and they are doing it against their will to benefit the most destructive creature to ever venture into the ocean – the homo sapiens.

A third of all the marine life the fishing industry takes is called forage fish and it is extracted from the sea specifically to feed pigs, chickens, mink, foxes, domestic salmon, and house cats. In fact chickens are eating more fish than albatross, pigs are eating more fish than sharks and housecats are eating more fish than all the seals in the sea.

There are 1.5 billion cows on the planet, 1.2 billion sheep, more than a billion pigs, a half a billion dogs and 2 billion domestic and feral housecats.

Ten percent of the forage fish goes to feed cats. Fifty-five percent goes to pigs, the rest to chickens, mink, foxes, and domestic farm raised salmon.

There are 2 billion cats and a half a billion dogs in the world and less than fifty million seals in the sea. There are 18.6 billion chickens in the world far outnumbering all of the seabirds.

When you eat chicken you may be eating fish. When you eat bacon you may be eating fish. When you drink milk or eat eggs you maybe consuming marine wildlife.

Fishermen whine about seals eating all the fish. Just today there were 38 sea lions in the Columbia River and more than 500 anglers on the shore with their fishing rods but the government was gunning for the sea lions because they “eat fish.”
And on top of that we have the fact that animal husbandry produces more greenhouse gases than the transportation industry. When you consider it takes 600 barrels of water to produce one hamburger, the waste is simply unacceptable.

So Sea Shepherd decided many years ago that promoting veganism was in fact practicing good conservation ethics.

From 2003 to 2006 I was a national director of the Sierra Club in the United States. All of my attempts to address the environmental impact of animal husbandry were not only dismissed, they were laughed at. The Sierra Club absolutely refused to address human population growth and the escalating consumption of factory-farmed animal products as a significant factor contributing to climate change and habitat destruction.

Why?  For the same reason that Greenpeace, Conservation International and numerous other large environmental groups willfully ignore the great inconvenient truth that it is the eating of animals that produces more greenhouse gas than the entire transportation industry. Even Al Gore conveniently neglected to mention that very important fact in his documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth."

Why did he not mention it and why do the big groups refuse to even discuss the relationship between eating meat and climate change?
It is because they do not want to upset the public that gives them donations. Their big fear is that they will alienate their donor base.

And they are probably right. Sea Shepherd has lost support from people who eat meat because they have gotten angry about our message. But the difference between Sea Shepherd and these big groups in denial is that we want to save our oceans and our planet no matter how inconvenient people may think that is.

Change comes about because of action, not because of words. I resigned from the Sierra Club Board because the nation’s oldest environmental organization whose founder John Muir was a vegetarian and an anti-hunter is now pro-hunting and pro-animal husbandry. When I left I called them the Siesta Club Hunting and Conversation Society.

The planet will not be saved just by taking shorter showers, recycling your trash or driving in an electric car. It takes one hell of a lot of short showers to equal the six hundred barrels of water required to make that one hamburger.

In fact a vegan driving down the highway in a Hummer is contributing less to creating greenhouse gases than a meat-eater riding a bicycle.

The meat industry consumes more water than any other industry on the planet. It uses more land. It produces more waste. It produces the most greenhouse gases, especially methane.

There is a new documentary being released called "Cowspiracy" that investigates the contradictions by large environmental organizations that refuse to discuss or take seriously the connection between the meat industry and rising levels of global warming gases.

The filmmakers are addressing a forbidden subject and focusing on the big elephant in the room that mainstream conservation groups willfully refuse to see. In the film, Greenpeace will not even agree to meet with the filmmakers to discuss the project. The filmmakers went to the Greenpeace office after Greenpeace refused to answer their emails only to be told that Greenpeace had no interest in discussing anything to do that connects meat eating with climate change.

More HERE




Vermont Maple Syrup Producer Complains: NBC Edited My Remarks to Support `Global Warming'

Sometimes the truth is much sweeter than the syrupy environmentalism of the national media.

While hyping the alleged effects on climate change, NBC's May 6 "Nightly News" tried to localize the impact by citing a different problem in each region. The broadcast played a clip of Burr Morse, a seventh-generation maple syrup producer from Montpelier, Vermont, stating that this season's weather had been too warm. Contrary to this clip's implications, Morse told the MRC's Business and Media Institute that cold weather actually did more to harm this year's maple syrup season.

Morse complained that NBC had selected a short sample of his full remarks to "support their point which was global warming." Morse said he didn't want "to be the cause of any hysteria," emphasizing that he is confident in the future of the maple syrup industry and its ability to "circumvent the weather with technology."

NBC White House Correspondent Peter Alexander told "Nightly News" that "Short winters are already harming Vermont maple syrup famer Burr Morse." Then, NBC played a clip of Morse saying "It didn't quite get cold enough at night."

Anybody who spent the 2013/14 winter on the East Coast should immediately have become suspicious as the winter remained cold through March, incidentally when the maple syrup harvest typically begins.

In fact, Morse claimed that winter "hung on a month longer than it usually does." Because of this lingering cold, Morse started tapping his maple trees in April instead of March. By April, however, the nights were slightly too warm for the ideal 20 degree temperature, hence the actual context for NBC's excerpt.

Rather than suffering from the heat, Morse described this season's primary hardship as cold, saying a "big part of the season was that it was too cold."

Morse expressed distaste for the way NBC handled his remarks. He told BMI that NBC took a video of his remarks but "only selected the words to support their point which was global warming."

Contrary to climate alarmists' repeated assertions in publications like the Huffington Post and USA Today, Morse maintained that the maple syrup industry is not in trouble. In fact, he made sure to tell BMI that "I don't want to be the cause of any hysteria."

Morse admitted that "we've had our challenges" but maple syrup producers were experimenting with new technologies to extract sap. For example, he told BMI the details of new vacuum technology that can get sap "in weather that isn't ideal." Morse appeared confident in "the ability to, in some ways, circumvent the weather with technology."

SOURCE




Politico Notices TV Meteorologists 'More Skeptical' of Climate Change Than Other Scientists

Politico's Darren Goode surprisingly highlighted the skepticism of many on-air meteorologists in a Monday item about President Obama's interviews with "some of television's most popular celebrities - weather forecasters - to ratchet up the volume on the administration's latest scientific assessment of climate change." Goode pointed out that "not all broadcast meteorologists have been conducive to the climate science message."

The writer cited Weather Channel founder John Coleman, who labeled global warming "the greatest scam in history" back in 2007. He also outlined the reason for many of the weather personalities' skepticism:

One explanation...which more than one meteorologist...shared with Politico is skepticism over climate modeling that tries to predict changes decades down the road. At least mathematically, these models aren't much different from the modeling that TV meteorologists use to forecast weather mere days in advance, which often can prove challenging to do accurately.

Goode quoted from Keith Seitter, executive director of the American Meteorological Society, in his article, "Obama tries weather outreach on climate." The AMS oversees certification "seals" for on-air meteorologists. Seitter praised the President's interviews with the broadcast forecasters as "absolutely...a great move," but later acknowledged the skeptics' viewpoint: "They know their own models become unreliable very quickly, and it makes it hard for them to become comfortable with a lot of the climate modeling being used to forecast many years rather than just a handful of days."

The Politico journalist also spotlighted a "June 2011 survey by the George Mason center [that] found that while 82 percent of TV meteorologists were convinced that the climate is changing, many don't think human activity has been the primary cause of changes over the past 150 years."

Later in his write-up, Goode underlined that "climate researchers counter that climate - which changes over decades and centuries - is much different from day-to-day weather." He also noted that "the official position of the American Meteorological Society since 2012 is that there is 'unequivocal evidence' and that the 'dominant cause of the warming since the 1950s is human activities.' 'This scientific finding is based on a large and persuasive body of research,' says the society, which represents about 14,000 members, about 10 percent of them involved in broadcasting."

One meteorologist that the journalist didn't mention is former AccuWeather forecaster Joe Bastardi, who lambasted Bill Nye the "Science Guy" and former CNN host Piers Morgan in a series of Twitter posts in December 2012. Back in May 2010, CBS Evening News also devoted a full report to the climate change skepticism of many broadcast weather forecasters.

SOURCE





Democrat Told President Nixon in 1970: It'll Be 7 Degrees Hotter and Sea Level Rise Will Wash Away NYC and DC by the Year 2000

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT from Limbaugh program

RUSH: Well, well, well, looky here. Koko Jr. at RushLimbaugh.com just sent me a quick note. "Documents released Friday..." This is from July of 2010, folks, so it's from the archives at RushLimbaugh.com. "Documents released Friday by the Nixon Presidential Library show members of President Richard Nixon's inner circle discussing the possibilities of global warming more than 30 years ago.

"Advisor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, notable as a Democrat in the [Nixon] administration, urged the [Nixon] administration to initiate a worldwide system of monitoring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, decades before the issue of global warming came to the public's attention." Here is the nub: Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned Richard Nixon in 1970 that unless the Nixon administration took drastic action to limit greenhouse gases, it would be seven degrees warmer in the year 2000 and parts of America would be underwater.

In 1970.

This is five years before the famous Newsweek cover on the coming ice age. Moynihan, in 1970, warned Nixon to act on global warming or parts of the country would be underwater by 2000. In fact, here's what he wrote: "This could increase the average temperature near the earth's surface by seven degrees Fahrenheit. This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye, New York.

"Goodbye, Washington, for that matter," by the year 2000. That's 14 years ago. In 1970, Nixon was told we gotta act now or by 30 years from now, in 2000, New York City's gone, Washington's gone, and we're gonna have temperature raise of seven degrees! There's nothing that has changed. There's nothing new. The predictions are the same. They never come true. All these predictions of doom and gloom and destitution never come true. What does happen?

While all of these predictions are out there, liberal policies are put into place, and they do cause havoc.

Paul Ehrlich was also in the 1970s.

SOURCE

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