Sunday, June 05, 2022



World Economic Forum Urges People To Eat Seaweed, Algae, Cacti To Save The Planet

World Economic Forum technocrats are urging people to ditch meat and other foods deemed to be harmful to the planet and instead consume “climate beneficial foods” such as seaweed, algae and cacti. No word on whether that was on the menu at Davos.

The WEF made the call as it wrapped up the 2022 meeting of global elitists in Switzerland.

A video summary was posted to Twitter in which the WEF promoted alternatives to a food system it claimed is responsible for two thirds of global carbon dioxide emissions.

A starter list published by the organization triumphs algae as being “an ideal replacement for meat” because it has a “carbon-negative profile” and is high in “essential fatty acids and high vitamin and antioxidants content.”

The guide also highlights cacti as containing “high amounts of vitamins C and E, carotenoids, fibre and amino acids,” noting that it is already commonly eaten in Mexico.

“This food crisis is real, and we must find solutions,” World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said.

Back in December 2020, the World Economic Forum published two articles on its website which explored how people could be conditioned to get used to the idea of eating weeds, bugs and drinking sewage water in order to reduce CO2 emissions.

Earlier this year, Vanderbilt University Professor Amanda Little argued that everyone in the world needs to start dining on insects and that the EU’s approval of them conferred a form of “dignity” to their consumption.

In February, billionaire-owned news outlet Bloomberg said Americans should cope with soaring inflation by eating lentils instead of meat.

A group of environmental economists in Germany also demanded that huge taxes be imposed on meat products to fight climate change, with calls for beef to be 56 per cent more expensive.

“There is no record of exactly what was served to the 2,500 invited delegates dining at the elite gathering in Davos and whether or not the WEF’s own dietary instructions were followed by participants,” writes Simon Kent.

If the Cop26 climate change summit in Scotland last year was any indication, algae and cacti weren’t on the menu.

Attendees there enjoyed dishes full of animal-based ingredients that were at least double the ‘carbon footprint’ of the average UK meal.

So the global elites want us to eat things that would probably make us all ill, while they continue to indulge their lavish meat-filled banquets.

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Wrong, LiveScience, Global Weather Not Worsening

Near the top of the search results on Google news for the term “climate change” is a story from LiveScience claiming that climate change is causing worsening weather events globally, for example, flooding and drought, hurricanes, and cold snaps. These claims are false. Data show there is no measurable worsening trend for any of these weather conditions globally.

An article on LiveScience by writer Patrick Pester, titled “Is climate change making the weather worse?” quotes retired historian and physicist Spencer Weart, claiming human caused climate change is making weather worse.

Pester writes:

Experimental data and climate models suggest this warming will affect weather in a variety of ways, making it hotter and colder, more extreme, more chaotic and in a word, “worse.” For example, as the world gets warmer, more water evaporates from the surface of dry areas and increases precipitation in wet areas, according to Weart. In other words, dry areas get drier and wet areas get wetter. More moisture in the atmosphere in a warming planet can also lead to heavier snowfall during the winter.

Weart’s claims demonstrate either that he is not, in fact, familiar with actual weather-related data, or he more concerned about generating political action to fight climate change rather than following the evidence and describing current weather data factually. Real world measurements of droughts, floods, and snowfall refute the claims made by Weart in the LiveScience article.

Concerning floods, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admits that there is only “low confidence” that there is any change in the flooding resulting from severe rainfall worldwide, even as they say precipitation has increased over mid-latitudes. The IPCC also reports “low confidence” about any trends in drought globally, as explained in Climate at a Glance: Drought.

Pester notes these extreme weather forecasts are based climate models and “experimental data.” Why not use actual data, one might ask? Especially since, as pointed out on Climate Realism on multiple occasions, such as here, here, and here, the model simulations used by scientists run way too hot, unrealistically so. Over time, these models have become less accurate, not more, as they have become larger and more complex. Recent publications in Nature identify the problem with these models, and chastise scientists who seem to prefer using the most extreme of the models in order to paint a more alarming picture.

Discussing hurricanes, Pester writes:

“Weart pointed to severe North Atlantic hurricanes in the Caribbean and U.S. in recent years, as well as hurricanes, or tropical cyclones, around the world as examples of worsening weather. ‘There’s very little question that everywhere the hurricanes are getting worse,’ he [Weart] said.”

This is simply false. As discussed in Climate Realism posts like “New Data: Increasing Hurricane Frequency Due to Better Observation, Not Climate Change,” there is no evidence hurricanes are becoming more frequent. A fact confirmed in the IPCC’s most recent Sixth Assessment report. Science indicates, any increase in the number of reported hurricanes is due to better detection and tracking of hurricanes at sea, not an actual increase in the number of hurricanes forming. Nor, as reported in repeated Climate Realism posts show, for instance, posts here, here, and here, does data support the assertion that the hurricanes that have formed during the decades of recent warming are becoming more powerful. There is no detectable trend in major, Category 3 and above, landfalling hurricanes, (See figure below). Indeed, as discussed in Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes, the United States recently went more than a decade—2005 through 2017—without a major hurricane making landfall. That is the longest such period in recorded history.

LiveScience also uncritically repeats Weart’s unverified claim that “global warming could be causing colder snaps,” in reference to recent polar vortex weather events in North America. Data presented in Climate at a Glance: Cold Spells, show that there has been no increase in the frequency or severity of cold snaps. The formation of large polar vortexes during recent winters, is not historically unique and was due to a weakened jet stream. Such events have been known to science and observed for more than a hundred years.

Data verification is critical improving our knowledge of the world and to scientific advances. If Patrick Pester and LiveScience were interested in sound science or good honest journalism, the article would have presented some actual data and the points of view of scientists who disagreed with Weart’s analysis. Instead, LiveScience uncritically published demonstrably false claims made by a single scientist, based on faulty attribution modelling. That’s bad science compounded by bad journalism

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Organic farming is turning a food crisis into a catastrophe

Long simply a fashionable trend for the world’s 1 per cent, environmental activists have increasingly peddled the beguiling idea that organic farming can solve hunger.

The EU is pushing for a tripling of organic farming on the continent by 2030, while a majority of Germans actually think organic farming can help feed the world.

However, research conclusively shows that organic farming produces much less food than conventional farming per hectare. Moreover, organic farming requires farmers to rotate soil out of production for pasture, fallow or cover crops, reducing its effectiveness. In total, organic approaches produce between a quarter and half less food than conventional, scientific-driven agriculture. This not only makes organic food more expensive, but it means that organic farmers would need much more land to feed the same number of people as today – possibly ­almost twice the area.

Given that agriculture currently uses 40 per cent of Earth’s ice-free land, switching to organics would mean destroying large swathes of nature for less effective production. The catastrophe unfolding in Sri Lanka provides a sobering lesson. The government last year enforced a full transition to organic farming, appointing organics gurus as agricultural advisers, including some who claimed dubious links between agricultural chemicals and health problems. Despite extravagant claims that organic methods could produce comparable yields to conventional farming, within months the policy produced nothing but misery, with some food prices quintupling.

Sri Lanka had been self-sufficient in rice production for decades, but tragically has now been forced to import $US450m worth of rice. Tea, the nation’s primary export crop and source of foreign exchange, was devastated, with economic losses estimated at $US425m.

Before the country spiralled downward toward brutal violence and political resignations, the government was forced to offer $US200m in compensation to farmers and come up with $US149m in subsidies.

Sri Lanka’s organic experiment failed fundamentally because of one simple fact: it does not have enough land to replace synthetic nitrogen fertiliser with animal manure. To shift to organics and keep production, it would need five to seven times more manure than its total manure today.

Synthetic nitrogen fertilisers, mostly made with natural gas, are a modern miracle, crucial for feeding the world. Largely thanks to this fertiliser, agricultural outputs were tripled in the past half-­century, as the human population doubled.

Artificial fertiliser and modern farming inputs are the reason why the number of people working on farms has been slashed in every rich country, freeing people for other productive occupations.

In fact, one dirty secret of organic farming is that, in rich countries, the vast majority of existing organic crops depend on imported nitrogen laundered from animal manure, which ultimately comes from fossil fuel fertilisers used on conventional farms.

Without those inputs, if a country – or the world – were to go entirely organic, nitrogen scarcity quickly becomes disastrous, just like we saw in Sri Lanka.

That is why research shows going organic globally can only feed about half the current world population. Organic farming will lead to more expensive, scarcer food for fewer people, while gobbling up more nature.

To sustainably feed the world and withstand future global shocks, we need to produce food better and cheaper.

History shows that the best way to achieve that is by improving seeds, including by using genetic modification, along with expanding fertiliser, pesticides and irrigation. This will allow us to produce more food, curb prices, alleviate hunger, and save nature.

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Vulnerable suffering at hands of climate catastrophists

It should be a source of national shame that in a first-world nation blessed with abundant natural resources we have so many unable to warm their home in winter.

The climate catastrophists who shriek the loudest about global warming being an existential crisis that threatens lives are rather blasé about a deadly crisis they’ve helped create.

They claim “people are dying” due to global warming when the truth is that cold weather kills in greater numbers than any warming.

And tragically, soaring energy costs will undoubtedly see more vulnerable people die with increasing numbers of Australians not adequately heating their homes in the coldest months.

It should be a source of national shame that in a first world nation blessed with abundant natural resources we have so many people failing to cool their homes in summer and warm them in winter.

As the winter chill takes hold, consider the plight of pensioners, low-income earners and even some middle income households where crippling energy costs see people opting to remain cold rather than risk bill shock by turning on the heater.

There are people who should be enjoying their golden years staying in bed until early afternoon, not because they fancy a sleep-in but because it is the warmest place in the house and it means they can delay turning on the heating.

Three years ago I wrote about research conducted by doctors at The Alfred and academics from Monash University showing people who had been indoors presenting to hospitals with hypothermic emergency. The 2019 paper published in Internal Medicine Journal revealed that in just two inner-city emergency departments, more than 200 patients presented with hypothermia, with 23 people dying, over a seven-year period to 2016.

About 80 per cent of the patients presenting with hypothermic emergency were found indoors and close to three quarters of all patients were pensioners. If that is not appalling enough, consider that those stats reflect what happened in just two emergency departments and only up to 2016.

As we know all too well, energy costs have increased and are about to skyrocket further due largely to self-inflicted harm caused by policies to reduce emission targets. Interestingly, the author of the aforementioned study is now the member for Higgins, Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah. She said back in 2019: “We’re seeing patients who are clearly coming in profoundly hypothermic and being found indoors. Hypothermia is generally not something that happens suddenly ... when you get to a certain temperature, you’re vulnerable to sudden death.”

During the election campaign there was not much said about hypothermic patients but plenty about slashing emissions and ‘meaningful action on climate change.’

Never mind that such action, as we have seen in Europe and North America, invariably lead to greater unreliability and significantly higher costs.

National Seniors chief advocate Ian Henschke told the Herald Sun heating and cooling are important in keeping elderly people healthy but many pensioners do not properly heat or cool their homes due to soaring costs.

“We know during heatwaves they don’t put on airconditioning and in winter stay in bed to keep warm,” he said. “Australia has too much pension poverty. We’re wealthy a country that can do better. That’s why we want an independent tribunal to set the rate of the pension and rules changed to allow poor pensioners to work more without penalty. We hope the new government will fix this.”

Meanwhile, Mr Henschke urges all seniors to check their eligibility for discounts by using the National Seniors Concessions Calculator.

Around 6.5 per cent of deaths in Australia are attributed to cold weather while hot weather accounts for 0.5 per cent, according to Yuming Guo, head of Monash University’s Climate, Air Quality Research Unit and professor of Global Environmental Health and Biostatistics.

Sadly, the numbers of Australians whose health will deteriorate due to prolonged exposure to cold temperatures is set to increase in line with higher heating costs.

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My other blogs. Main ones below

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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1 comment:

Bird of Paradise said...

My mom used to eat Seaweed called Dulse but eating something different all over fake crisis is totaly irresponsible