Brits would be told to eat bugs under bonkers green plans by civil servants
A leaked Whitehall draft of the Carbon Budget proposed the “development of more sustainable protein sources for human diets”. Along with promoting a vegan diet, it said that “insects may offer environmental benefits”.
Both references were axed from the final document published last month. It only says more research is needed on “alternative protein”.
Government insiders were especially angry at moves to copy the EU with plans for a creepy-crawly diet. Earlier this year, Brussels approved crickets and mealworms to be sold as “novel foods” for humans.
Scientists claim insects have a smaller carbon footprint as they require fewer resources to be farmed.
But Countryside Alliance chief Tim Bonner said: “Civil servants need to get real about what the public are prepared to swallow and I can’t see there being very much of an appetite for mealworm burgers.
“We already have a vastly sustainable red meat sector in this country that has incredibly high animal welfare standards.”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/22219500/brits-eat-bugs-bonkers-green-plans-civil-servants/
************************************************The climate scaremongers: How the ‘world disaster’ figures lie
According to AP last year: ‘A disaster-weary globe will be hit harder in the coming years by even more catastrophes colliding in an interconnected world, a United Nations report issued Monday says. If current trends continue the world will go from around 400 disasters per year in 2015 to an onslaught of about 560 catastrophes a year by 2030, the scientific report by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction said. By comparison from 1970 to 2000, the world suffered just 90 to 100 medium to large scale disasters a year, the report said.
‘The number of extreme heat waves in 2030 will be three times what it was in 2001 and there will be 30 per cent more droughts, the report predicted. It’s not just natural disasters amplified by climate change, it’s Covid-19, economic meltdowns and food shortages. Climate change has a huge footprint in the number of disasters, report authors said.’
Last week it was the turn of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) to bang the climate change drum. Their State of the Global Climate 2022 report commented: ‘From mountain peaks to ocean depths, climate change continued its advance in 2022 . . . Droughts, floods and heatwaves affected communities on every continent and cost many billions of dollars. While greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and the climate continues to change, populations worldwide continue to be gravely impacted by extreme weather and climate events.’
The WMO is, of course, a UN body, so unsurprisingly this report has little to do with science and everything to do with politics.
But have natural disasters become so much more common in recent years? A closer look at that graph above reveals that the number of disasters has actually been declining since 2000, a fact which should immediately cast doubt on the ‘global warming is making everything worse’ meme.
The real reason for the ‘increase’ is that many natural disasters in years past were never officially logged in the UN database, called EM-DAT, which is compiled by CRED, the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. The database was not created until 1998, and CRED relied on informal reports for disasters prior to that year.
CRED has acknowledged that many events were missed by them in the past. In their 2006 report, they warned that earlier data was incomplete and should not be used for comparing long-term trends. In particular, over the past 30 years development in telecommunications, media and increased international cooperation has played a critical role in the number of disasters reported. In addition, increases in humanitarian funds have encouraged reporting of more disasters.
In fact the unreliability of the database in earlier years is much worse than we thought. Take a look, for example, at the official data for the number of deaths from floods in the UK:
Now look again, and see if you can spot what is missing. Yes, the North Sea floods in 1953, recognised as one of the worst natural disasters ever to hit Britain, and which left 307 dead on the east coast alone. The death toll in 1952, by the way, reflects the Lynmouth disaster, which killed 34.
How any supposedly reputable database can omit an event like the 1953 flood and still claim to be credible is beyond me. Other bad flooding events have also been missed, such as those in Somerset in 1968 which killed 15 people.
Flooding events in the UK have been thoroughly recorded as far back as the 19thC and beyond. If CRED cannot even get accurate data for the UK, what chance is there of compiling full and accurate data for the rest of the world?
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Energy security first: Norway set to accelerate Arctic oil and gas drilling
Companies operating in the Norwegian Continental Shelf are planning for more drilling in the Arctic areas in the Barents Sea, encouraged by Norway’s government which wants more oil and gas discoveries to boost energy security and help European partners with energy supply.
At a conference on the Barents Sea in Hammerfest last week, Norway’s Petroleum and Energy Minister Terje Aasland called on oil and gas companies to fulfill their “social responsibility” and “leave no stone unturned” to find more natural gas resources in the Barents Sea, the area estimated to hold most of Norway’s undiscovered oil and gas resources.
“The petroleum adventure in the north has only just started,” Aasland said, adding that the government would help the Barents Sea industry as Norway must develop, not liquidate, its petroleum industry.
Apart from being in a harsher environment so far north, the Barents Sea poses another roadblock to developing oil and gas resources—the north lacks the infrastructure in the more developed areas on the shelf that would make tie-ups and resource development easier.
Still, operators are not giving up.
“Even if we want to maintain production, we have to explore more, we have to find more,” Torger Rod, CEO of Barents-focused energy producer Var Energi, told Bloomberg in an interview.
In March, Var Energi confirmed an oil discovery in the Countach well in a production license northwest of Hammerfest near Goliat, one of two operational oil and gas fields in the Barents Sea.
Var Energi will consider potential commercial development options and tie-in of the discovery to Goliat FPSO.
“This discovery is yet another in a series of successful exploration wells in the Barents Sea in recent years, including Lupa – the largest discovery on the Norwegian shelf in 2022. At the same time, the discovery confirms our exploration strategy and our position in the area,” said Rune Oldervoll, EVP Exploration and Production in Var Energi.
Equinor, which plans to start production from the Johan Castberg field in the Barents Sea at the end of 2024, is also betting on obtaining more licenses in the Arctic.
Early this year, the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy proposed including additional areas in the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea in the next licensing round for Awards in Predefined Areas (ARA) expected to be awarded in early 2024.
“The North has always been important for us,” Grete Birgitte Haaland, senior vice president for exploration and production north at Equinor, told Bloomberg.
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Ford is losing roughly $60,000 for every electric vehicle sold
Ford lost tens of thousands of dollars per electric vehicle sold in the first quarter of 2023, as the division remained on track for roughly $3 billion in yearly losses, according to the company’s Tuesday evening earnings report.
Ford’s electric vehicle division — which was separated from its traditional gas and professional-grade vehicle departments in a late March reorganization — lost $722 million in the first three months of 2023, while selling just 12,000 units, according to the company’s first quarter earnings report. This amounts to a roughly $60,167 loss for each vehicle sold, according to calculations made by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Because the auto industry is very capital intensive and has high fixed costs that need to be spread out over thousands of units, it is not uncommon to have steep losses initially which are followed by profits,” Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Imagine, for instance, needing to retool a factory and rebuild an assembly line to build different vehicles. That is much more expensive than the revenue from the first few vehicles that are produced.”
Despite this, however, Antoni characterized the decision to go “all-in” on electric vehicles as a “tremendous risk” that required ongoing support from government subsidies. Private analysts expect that the total cost of the green manufacturing subsidies offered by President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act will top $1 trillion, with subsidies for the electric vehicle battery packs alone topping $130 billion.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/05/03/ford-losing-tens-of-thousands-per-ev/
***************************************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)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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