Carbon offsetting is a 'waste of time': Scientists say tree-planting schemes loved by celebrities as an excuse for flying are actually HARMING nature
Planting trees in vast schemes to 'offset' carbon emissions is harming nature, an Oxford study has claimed.
Celebrities and tycoons including Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Elton John, Emma Watson and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have all said they have used offsetting to cancel out the greenhouse gases emitted by activities such as flying in private jets.
But when offsetting involves planting large numbers of a single types of tree, it can actually degrade the environment, the authors argued.
Single species plantations are harmful to biodiversity and put forests more at risk of fire, it is argued, while they do little to suck up greenhouse gases.
Instead, the authors said we should prioritise conserving and restoring intact ecosystems.
Writing in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, scientists from the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University said the focus on offsetting carbon at all costs damages other aspects of the ecosystem.
Author Dr Jesús Aguirre-Gutiérrez said: 'Despite the broad range of ecosystem functions and services provided by tropical ecosystems, society has reduced value of these ecosystems to just one metric – carbon.
'Current and new policy should not promote ecosystem degradation via tree plantations with a narrow view on carbon capture.'
Although some projects reforest degraded land, most involve what is known as afforestation – planting forests in undegraded and previously unforested regions such as grasslands.
Tropical ecosystems are highly biodiverse, and provide multiple ecosystem services, such as maintaining water quality, soil health, and pollination.
In comparison, carbon-capture plantations are usually monocultures and are dominated by just five tree species, teak, mahogany, cedar, silk oak, and black wattle, grown for timber, pulp, or agroforestry.
The result is that these plantations usually support a lower level of biodiversity.
For example, in the Brazilian Cerrado savannah, a 40 per cent increase in woody cover reduced the diversity of plants and ants by approximately 30 per cent.
In fact tropical grasslands and savannahs are already carbon sinks and, unlike trees, are less susceptible to disturbances such as drought and fire.
These plantations can also directly degrade ecosystems by reducing stream flow, depleting groundwater, and acidifying soils.
Dr Aguirre-Gutiérrez said: 'The current trend of carbon-focused tree planting' is creating monocultures for 'little carbon gain'.
He added: 'An area equivalent to the total summed area of USA, UK, China, and Russia would have to be forested to sequester one year of emissions.'
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Not the Onion: Climate Change Created a ‘Wetter’ Storm That Hit NYC and Caused Those Insane Floods
Is everyone hitting the crack pipe at The Guardian, or do they think people are this stupid? While this unabashedly left-wing publication has good moments covering international news and live blogging terror attacks in Europe, they did take a rake to the face here regarding the epic New York City floods last weekend. The Big Apple turned into a swimming pool. Anywhere from four to seven inches of rain dumped on the city from the remnants of Tropical Storm Ophelia. Subways became raging rivers. At the Central Park Zoo, the water levels got so high that the sea lions could escape. It got so bad that Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency—it was bedlam.
And now, the experts are telling us that the “type of storm” that struck New York City caused—I can’t even believe this is real—the storm to be 10-20 percent “wetter.” Excuse me, what (via Guardian):
The unmistakable influence of the climate crisis helped cause New York City to be inundated by a month’s worth of rain within just a few hours on Friday, scientists have warned, amid concerns over how well the city is prepared for severe climate shocks.
A new rapid attribution study, released by scientists in Europe, has found that the type of storm seen on Friday is now 10-20% wetter than it would have been in the previous century, because of climate change.
Flash flooding soaked large parts of the US’s largest city, turning roads into rivers, following intense rainfall that broke records. John F Kennedy international airport measured 8in of rainfall in one day, the most since records began, while Brooklyn received a month’s worth of rain in just a few hours. People had to be rescued from swamped basement apartments, subway and bus services were canceled and sewage backed up in overwhelmed pipes.
Climate scientists have stressed that such pounding rainfall is a symptom of a warming planet, with a hotter atmosphere able to hold more moisture that is then unleashed in torrential downpours.
“Human-driven climate change plays a dual role, both intensifying these storms and warming the atmosphere,” said Davide Faranda, a scientist at the Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace in France. “Deeper storms yield more intense phenomena, while a warmer atmosphere can accommodate a greater amount of rain.”
So, past tropical storms were less wet and hellacious? What is this? Also, I’m chuckling that a tropical storm already known to be a water-logged event is somehow 10-20 percent wetter, thanks to global warming. They had to have known this narrative was dead on arrival.
Water was not as wet, but it’s now wetter due to climate change. Unreal stuff here, folks.
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New York farmers’ futures depend on a single Hochul decision
Gov. Kathy Hochul has a tough decision to make, one that will test her political courage and demonstrate whether she’s a real leader or just another pandering pol.
Hochul must choose whether to sign or veto a bill banning a certain class of insecticides that are used worldwide and save up to 71% of farmers’ crops.
Steamrolled through the Democrat-ruled Legislature after environmental activists’ intense lobbying — including one screaming at a lawmaker at a farmers’ market — the ban would devastate New York’s farmers and upstate communities.
The Natural Resources Defense Council claims “bees and other pollinators are dying off in droves,” endangering “food security,” and neonicotinoid (“neonic”) insecticides are “a primary culprit.”
But even The New York Times just admitted the “bee-pocalypse” hysteria — which it helped foment — is not only bogus but has done more harm than good.
Neonics function by protecting crops as seedlings grow, as well as under the soil line after planting. Because profit margins are thin for many crops, the availability of neonics can make the difference between profitability and foreclosure.
Extensive Cornell University field studies have shown that up to 66% of corn crops grown without neonic-treated seeds suffered economically damaging losses.
These losses were particularly high in fields utilizing cover crops because New York corn’s primary pest, the seedcorn maggot, is attracted to high levels of organic matter.
Cover crops are an essential component of sustainable agriculture, contributing to soil health, water quality, pest management and climate-change mitigation.
Neonics have no suitable replacements. So-called “alternatives” are less effective and more expensive.
If New York bans them, the state’s farmers will have higher input and labor costs, even as they watch their incomes literally being consumed by insects in the field.
They will be at a competitive disadvantage with states that have more enlightened policies, and the population exodus from New York’s rural counties, already the state’s highest, would intensify.
The neonic-ban legislation should be ripe for a veto, but the 800-pound gorilla threatening Hochul in this fight is New York City’s Natural Resources Defense Council.
With a yearly war chest exceeding $200 million and a huge staff of political activists and lawyers, the NRDC wields considerable political clout and has ties to the financial networks of hedge-fund managers, corporate executives and other 1-percenters who raise big money for political campaigns.
In the calculus of electoral politics, these people are probably much more important to the governor’s political survival than the farming families that would be damaged — or even dispossessed — by the neonic ban.
Hochul should have no illusions about the NRDC’s agenda, which is, as usual, based on ideology, not science.
The NRDC still propagandizes against genetically modified crops, for example, despite the overwhelming scientific consensus they’re safe, increase yields and lessen runoff and CO2 emissions.
And for years, the NRDC has campaigned against neonics on the grounds that they’re driving honeybees extinct, even as bee populations were steadily rising.
The Times reports the number of honeybee hives has increased 26% worldwide in the last decade.
The Obama administration created a special White House commission to investigate bee health in 2013.
It tasked the Environmental Protection Agency to perform a special review to ascertain whether neonics are a threat to pollinators.
The regulators examined hundreds of high-quality studies and state-of-the-art field trials. Their determination: Neonics can be used safely without harming bees.
Jim Jones, then-EPA’s assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention, noted neonic seed treatments (which account for up to 98% of neonic usage in many field crops) appear in mature crops at such minute levels that it’s almost as if the neonics are not there.
So how did this ban get passed?
Activists misled legislators with a single Cornell report from 2020 with serious credibility problems that implausibly concluded neonics are unnecessary.
Its flaws included the absence of any new research, confusion about key concepts such as the difference between toxicity and risk, reliance solely on lab studies rather than real-world field data and the failure to understand the difference between systemic and foliar uptake.
It also lacked any consideration of actual pesticide-use patterns by New York farmers.
In the end, lawmakers decided that despite what the EPA, the broader scientific community and farmers think, neonics can be banned.
If a field does happen to be destroyed by insects, the ban proponents reasoned, farmers can always replant it, a hugely costly undertaking and rarely practical in New York because of the short growing season.
If Gov. Hochul truly cares about New York’s $3.3 billion agriculture industry and public policy that makes sense, she will veto the bill.
https://nypost.com/2023/10/03/new-york-farmers-futures-depend-on-a-single-hochul-decision/
*****************************************************Britain's Energy Secretary: Net Zero has ‘become a religion’
Claire Coutinho defended her party’s decision to water down elements of its net zero strategy, including delaying the ban on petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035.
She said it would be “immoral” to “impoverish” people in the UK because of the net zero by 2050 target when emissions were rising in other countries.
She told Tory activists in Manchester: “The likes of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, funded by the same people who fund Labour, do not get it.
“For them, net zero has become a religion. For us it is a practical mission to be achieved.
“They want to force people to behave a certain way or face punitive taxes. And more than that they show sheer condescension about people’s normal way of life.”
Ms Coutinho added: “For too many people, [net zero] has started to feel like an intolerable cost, at a time when, after the last few years, they feel that they can least afford it.
“Across Europe, we are seeing the consequences when the public feel they are being forced into the wrong decisions for their homes and their families.
“If we are to succeed, net zero can’t be something that is done to people by a privileged elite. We cannot force people to make the wrong decisions for their families, and it’s immoral to put forward policies that will impoverish people here when emissions are rising abroad”.
She concluded by saying it was eco-zealots who posed a greater risk than climate change deniers, because they were putting people off green measures.
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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)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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