Here we go again: Foods That May Disappear Thanks to Climate Change

Even the opening sentence below is wrong.  Global warming is NOT making the world a different place.  Why? Because warming is  not happening.  So it can't cause anything. So the various phenomena they list may or may not be happening but they are not caused by global warming.  That graph again:



And all the foods they list are plant products.  And plants LOVE warmth.  You just have to see how lush the tropics are to know that. And plants love CO2 as well.  They grow bigger with more of it.  Why do you think greenhouse owners pump CO2 into their greenhouses?  The CO2 level in greenhouses is typically more than twice that in the open atmosphere.

And warming would open more of Northern Canada and Siberia up to farming.  And do you know how big Siberia is?  It is 5 million sq. miles.  Australia, Canada and CONUS are each about 3 million sq. miles. So a suddenly temperate climate in Southern Siberia would grow all the temperate climate crops you like.  The latitudes in which the various crops grow could change but grow they will. So warming would in fact produce food ABUNDANCE.  It's cooling that would be dangerous


Climate change is making the world a different place. There are more floods, droughts, wildfires, heat waves and other extreme weather events. Animal species around the world are either shifting habitat locations or simply dying off. Even humans are migrating due to a warmer world.

But there is one effect that will hit many of us right in the gut: Certain foods could disappear thanks to our changing climate. Brace yourself: here are 10 foods you’ll probably be sad to see go.

1. Guacamole

Around 8 million pounds of guacamole are consumed during the Super Bowl, but football fans might soon have to find something else to dip their tortilla chips into. Scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory predict as much as a 40 percent decrease in avocado production over the next 30 years due to increasing temperatures brought on by climate change.

As a result, the fast food chain Chipotle, which goes through 97,000 pounds of avocados a day — 35 million pounds every year — has warned that if climate change worsens, it may be forced to stop serving guacamole. The company says it "may choose to temporarily suspend serving menu items, such as guacamole or one or more of our salsas, rather than paying the increased cost for the ingredients.”

2. Apples

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces," the German theologian Martin Luther said, “I would still plant my apple tree.” He didn’t figure that there might be a tomorrow in which apple trees can’t properly grow. In 2011, an international team of scientists published a study which found just that: Temperate fruit and nut trees like the apple tree, which need a certain period of winter chill to produce economically practical yields, could be affected by global warming as winter temperatures rise. They said farmers should prepare for a warmer future by breeding cultivars with lower chilling requirements.

Such apples will likely taste different from the ones we have today, according to a Japanese study which found that rising temperatures are causing apple trees to bear fruit sooner, making them softer and sweeter. “If you could eat an average apple harvested 30 years before and an average apple harvested recently at the same time, you would really taste the difference,” said Toshihiko Sugiura of the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization in Tsukuba, Japan, the study’s lead author.

3. Beer

It’s sad, but true. Beer is already a victim of a changing climate, with brewers increasingly finding it more difficult to secure stable water supplies. According to a 2010 report commissioned by the National Resources Defense Council, about a third of counties in the United States "will face higher risks of water shortages by mid-century as the result of global warming." Between 2030 and 2050, the difficulty in accessing freshwater is “anticipated to be significant in the major agricultural and urban areas throughout the nation.”

Some specialty hops used by craft brewers have already become harder to source, since warming winters are producing earlier and smaller yields. “This is not a problem that’s going to happen someday," said Jenn Orgolini of Colorado's New Belgium Brewery. “If you drink beer now, the issue of climate change is impacting you right now.” She said that in 2011, the hops her brewery normally uses weren’t available due to Pacific Northwest weather conditions.

4. Rice and Beans

The late comedian/philosopher Bill Hicks once said, “The American dream is a crock. Stop wanting everything. Everyone should wear jeans and have three T-shirts, eat rice and beans.” He didn’t live long enough to find out that climate change could threaten the ability to follow his wise suggestion. It’s hard to overstate the importance of rice to world. It is a food staple for almost half of the world's population. But climate change could significantly impact rice yields in this century.

According to a 2005 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “temperature increases, rising seas and changes in rainfall patterns and distribution expected as a result of global climate change could lead to substantial modifications in land and water resources for rice production as well as in the productivity of rice crops grown in different parts of the world.” A 2005 report by the United States Department of Agriculture found that the viability of rice-growing land in tropical areas could decline by more than 50 percent during the next century.

Beans feed the majority of the human population in Latin America and much of Africa and are a part of the daily diet of more than 400 million people across the developing world. But beans may also experience declines due to a warming world. According to a report the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), higher temperatures could reduce bean yields by as much as 25 percent. “Beans are highly sensitive to heat, and the varieties that farmers currently grow do not yield well under night temperatures over 18 or 19 degrees Centigrade,” writes Nathan Russell of CIAT. “Higher temperatures drastically reduce seed fertility, leading to lower grain yields and quality.” Thankfully, CIAT scientists have identified about 30 “elite” bean lines that have demonstrated tolerance to temperatures 4°C higher than the crop’s normal “comfort zone.”

More idiocy HERE





Bernie Sanders: A completely nutty Greenie

On the campaign trail in nearby New Hampshire, Democrat presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders bangs the drum for a carbon tax and single-payer health care – despite the failure of both in his home state of Vermont.

When it comes to progressive causes, the left has no greater champion than Vermont’s junior senator. On the environment, Sanders proposes a national tax to cut carbon levels by 80 percent by 2050. His campaign site calls it “one of the most straightforward and cost-effective strategies for quickly fighting climate change.”

But in Vermont, where a proposed carbon tax is now in its second year of seeking legislative support, backers are struggling to convince the public the policy is environmentally or economically sound.

The carbon tax legislation calls for a $100 per ton of carbon emissions tax on gasoline, propane, natural gas and other fossil fuels. Proponents say a carbon tax will slash Vermont’s carbon emissions by 2 million tons annually and direct tax revenue to weatherization and energy efficiency programs. Critics blast the tax as regressive, arguing it will harm Vermonters whose pocketbooks are sensitive to fluctuations in gas prices.

Either way, the tax is projected to boost the cost of gasoline by up to 88 cents per gallon, assuming fuel distributors pass the cost on to consumers. A gallon of propane would rise 58 cents; heating oil and diesel fuel could jump $1.02 per gallon.

While the tax may nudge many Vermonters to fill up vehicles in nearby states like New York and New Hampshire, there’s a bigger problem: carbon-tax backers admit it won’t change global CO2 levels.

Faced with the prospect that Vermont’s carbon tax can do little – maybe nothing – to help global warming, Paul Burns, executive director of the pro-carbon-tax Vermont Public Interest Research Group, recently said during a Montpelier debate, “Alone, sure, we can’t do it.”

Perhaps not even together. In that debate, panelists were considering the provocative findings of economist Bjørn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. CO2 reduction initiatives in the just-wrapped 2015 Paris Climate Summit agreement, Lomborg concludes, will reduce global temperatures by only one-sixth of one degree by the end of the century.

Such policy-killing admissions occur frequently in Vermont, where the state is on track to create an all green-energy economy that runs on 90 percent renewables by 2050.

Asa Hopkins, Vermont’s policy chief at the Department of Public Service, spoke to Watchdog about the impact an all-green Vermont would have on global warming. His analysis was surprisingly honest, if self-defeating.

“Climate change is a classic tragedy-of-the-commons problem where no one person’s actions, no one state, or even one country’s actions is attributable to even more than maybe a few percent of the global challenge,” Hopkins said.

Convincing Vermonters to sacrifice money and comfort for a policy that does nothing to avert a supposed climate apocalypse looks like a losing political battle. In fact, the tax is so steep and ineffective that Vermont’s Democratic governor doesn’t endorse it.

State lawmakers aren’t biting either. Earlier this month, the chair of the House Energy Committee, Rep. Tony Klein, D- East Montpelier, told Watchdog “everybody knows that there will be no carbon tax bill seriously moved forward in any way, shape or form this session.”

When it comes to pushing a carbon tax on the nation, Sanders seems not to have gotten Vermont’s memo.

Sanders’ embrace of a single-payer health care system has fared no better in his home state.

In a rousing back-and-forth with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at Saturday’s Democratic presidential debate, Sanders reaffirmed his belief in a Medicare-for-all single-payer health care system. That policy met crushing defeat exactly one year ago in Vermont.

Democrat Gov. Peter Shumlin, the top pitchman for a single-payer system in states, worked tirelessly for years to sell a government-run health care system that covered all 630,000 Vermonters. But after two years of concealing the system’s financing plan under executive privilege, and after consultant – and Obamacare modeling expert – Jonathan Gruber discredited himself in a series of candid video moments, Shumlin quietly killed single-payer.

“As we completed the financing modeling it became clear that the risk of economic shock is too high at this time to offer a plan I can responsibly support for passage in the Legislature,” Shumlin said at the news conference announcing the event. “The taxes required to replace health-care premiums with a publicly financed plan that would best serve Vermont are, in a word, enormous.”

The new taxes required to pay for single payer were estimated at $2.6 billion for 2017, increasing to almost $3.2 billion in 2021. Estimates showed taxpayers couldn’t pay for single-payer even with a massive 11.5 percent payroll tax on all businesses and a sliding-scale income tax of up to 9.5 percent.

Sanders’ continued support of government-run health care and the carbon tax may have a simple explanation: despite their dramatic failings in Vermont, both underscore Sanders’ image as a democratic socialist. Sanders founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the 1990s, and pushed for single-payer in Obamacare’s so-called public option. Touting progressive policies out on the stump has certain appeal with voters who appreciate Sanders’ do-gooder politics.

But as word leaks about the failure of progressive policies in his own backyard, Sanders may find it harder to convince national audiences they’ll work for America.

SOURCE





Expensive Green Energy Program Saves No Energy

Hawaii's Green Energy Market Securitization program (GEMS), financed with $145 million in bonds, was touted as a program to help poor  homeowners and renters obtain energy-saving technologies they otherwise could not afford. Yet, in the first ten months of its existence, despite receiving nearly 150 completed applications, GEMS has not granted a single loan.

A report by the Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism submitted to the Public Utilities Commission showed the program launched in November 2014 received 149 completed loan applications as of September 30. Forty three of applications came from non-profit organizations, 41 of which were classified as “under review,” while two were declined. Another 106 came from residences, 35 of which were declined, five withdrawn, and 66 remain listed as “under review.”

While GEMS has yet to make any loans, financial documents indicate it is spending and collecting a fair amount of money. A financial summary of the program reported that GEMS’ current assets amounted to $145,891,273.34, from bond offering, as of September 30, with expenditures topping $111,909, all for the cost of administering the program. Yet, according the Hawaii Free Press, the financial summary fails to reveal the whole story. A worksheet from Hawaiian Electric covering the period of December, 2014 through June 30, indicated the company anticipated collecting more $7,976,862.60 in Green Infrastructure Fees from utility customers, 45 percent from residential ratepayers, with the entire amount slated to pay principal and interest on the GEMS bonds. In addition, by the end of 2015, the utility will need to collect $7,940,691.56 more to fulfill “revenue requirements” for GEMS.

What this means, according to Patricia Tummons of Environment Hawaii, is “Framed another way, GEMS has cost electric ratepayers more than $15 million since November of 2014. And as of September 30, the state had not one kilowatt of renewable energy installed to show for it.”

SOURCE





Global Warming Is Not the Problem. Global Governance Is.

by James Delingpole

Media Matters for America – George Soros’s pet attack poodle site – has published a list of the 15 Most Ridiculous Things Conservative Media Said In 2015.

I’m proud to say that I come in at number 6 (though obviously I would have preferred higher) with my statement that alarmist climate scientists are “a bunch of talentless low lives who cannot be trusted.”

In retrospect I wish to apologise for that sentence.

What I really should have said is that these are a bunch of lying, cheating, scum-sucking, bottom-feeding, third-rate tosspots who don’t even deserve the name “scientists” because what they practise isn’t really science but data-fiddling, cherry-picking, grant-troughing, activism-driven propaganda. Posterity will grant them about as much respect as we now accord the 17th century quacks who bled their patients using leeches, or the early 20th century German scientists who helped Hitler compose his diatribe against the discredited Jewish science of Einstein, or the scientists who ganged up on Alfred Wegener for his novel – but correct – theories on continental drift.

Really, if none of them ever published another paper in their lives and all their grant funding dried up at midnight tonight, the cause of climate science would not suffer one jot – and the world would become a much better (and richer) place.

Having read through all the other items on the Media Matters list, I can’t find much fault with any of them either.

Take Mark Steyn telling Fox News that “[ISIS leader] al-Baghdadi will be sawing Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) head off, and he’ll be saying as his neck is being sliced, ‘If only we’d had an emissions trading scheme.'”

Apart from being very funny it also happens to be true. The attempts by Bernie Sanders – and many others including the Prince of Wales and US Secretary of State John Kerry – to link “climate change” to terrorism are both hysterical and wrong, as I demonstrate here, here and here.

Worse than that, though, these claims are fraudulent. They represent a deliberate conspiracy by our political class (and their amen corner in the media) to mislead us about the relative urgency and risks of the threats facing us in the coming years.

To anyone with even half an eye on world events, it’s perfectly obvious that there are many more desperate problems – fundamentalist Islam, say – than the imaginary problem of man-made global warming. So why do our political class persist in pretending to us, in defiance of all the evidence, that “climate change” represents the only global issue serious enough to justify the convening of a conference like the recent one in Paris attended by 40,000 delegates and the leaders of over 150 nation states?

The answer to this is too complicated for one sentence – for the full story read this book – but the consequences can be summed up in two words: global governance.

This was always the masterplan of the sinister Marxist billionaire who invented the global warming scare – Maurice Strong. (You can read more about him here and here). Environmentalism, he understood early on, was the perfect excuse to override the democratic process: after all, when the future of the world is at stake, it only makes sense to ignore the little people and concentrate power in the hands of enlightened technocrats like Maurice Strong and his eco-fascistic control freak pals….

Here’s how he once put it:

    "The concept of national sovereignty has been an immutable, indeed sacred, principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental co-operation. It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation states, however powerful. The global community must be assured of global environmental security."

There’s the plan: One World Government in the name of “global environmental security”. And it’s happening across the world right now. Never mind the facts that COP21 was a bit of a flop and that the Pope’s encyclical on the environment was widely ridiculed. The great global governance caravan is trundling on regardless: it’s now a business, remember, worth $1.5 trillion a year. There are an awful lot of snouts stuck in that trough and they’re not about to leave it any time soon.

Yet it’s something that is almost never mentioned in the mainstream media. How many times have you read or heard, anywhere in the MSM, about Agenda 21? It has been the guiding force behind most environmental policy across the world since it was born at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit (established by Maurice Strong) which in turn spawned all the big eco conferences we’ve had since, such as the recent COP21 in Paris. But no one ever talks about it. It just sounds like too much of a crazy right-wing conspiracy theory.

And that, I’m afraid, is also part of The Plan. Anyone who dares question the “consensus” on global warming – see Media Matters above – is dismissed as a fruitcake: journalists are marginalised, scientists lose tenure or funding, politicians are denied preferment, businesses lose contracts. Speaking out against climate change is the modern equivalent of being Galileo before the Inquisition…

So that’s going to be one of my jobs in 2016 – telling it like it is, regardless of what the bastards say.  I consider it both a pleasure and privilege

SOURCE  (See the original for links)





At Idaho Legislature, Many Doubt Scientific Consensus on Global Warming Cause

“Listen to Rush Limbaugh once in a while,” Rep. Dell Raybould said. “See what he thinks about it. He’ll tell you that this is just a bunch of nonsense.”  Raybould was talking about the idea that burning fossil fuel causes climate change. The Rexburg Republican is chairman of the House Resources and Conservation Committee and the Legislature’s expert on water issues.

Climate change skepticism is fairly common in Idaho, especially among its elected lawmakers.

Many Idahoans don’t accept the consensus among qualified scientists that global temperatures are rising due to human activity.

A June poll by Idaho Politics Weekly found that 44 percent of Idahoans believe both that the climate is warming and that it constitutes a crisis. Another 26 percent said it was changing but not too harmful, and 21 percent said they don’t think climate change is happening at all.

Whether or not you’re a skeptic depends largely on what political party you identify with. The same poll found that only 20 percent of Republicans think there’s an ongoing climate crisis, while 84 percent of Democrats hold that view.

That fits with a broad trend throughout the nation, according to polling by the Pew Research Center.

It will be difficult to build support for state policies to combat a problem many Idahoans don’t think exists.

Even among lawmakers who accept the consensus view, there isn’t a clear vision of what the state can do about it.

Although scientists say dramatic action is needed immediately, there is no indication such action will take place in Idaho.

Senate Pro Tem Brent Hill, R-Rexburg, said he believes that the climate is warming, but it’s unclear how much is caused by human activity.

Rep. Tom Loertscher, R-Bone, belongs to the camp that sees recent climate change as part of natural cycles.

“We get climate change four times a year — it’s called the four seasons,” Loertscher said. “… I think we’re pretty vain if we think we can control the climate.”

Loertscher, the chairman of the House State Affairs Committee, sent along two articles that he said support his view.

One is an article from a London tabloid listing 100 reasons climate change is natural.

The other is an article by Edmund Contoski, an author and speaker for the Heartland Institute, who is not a climatologist. The Heartland Institute is a think tank that rejects the consensus view on global warming, as well as the view that secondhand smoke is unhealthy.

Loertscher’s view isn’t at the extreme end of the Legislature. Of nine lawmakers who responded to a four-question survey sent to all members of the Legislature by the Post Register, two said they don’t believe global temperatures are rising at all.

The Impact on Policy

Rep. Jeff Thompson, R-Idaho Falls, is chairman of the House Environment, Energy and Technology Committee which oversees many issues that involve greenhouse gas emissions such as energy policy.

Thompson thinks scientists broadly disagree about whether the climate is warming at all.

“You can find people who say that it’s not happening and people who say that it is happening,” Thompson said in an interview.

Thompson recently authored an op-ed in the Idaho Statesman, calling on Attorney General Lawrence Wasden to join a court case challenging the legality of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules requiring greenhouse gas reductions at power plants.

“My biggest concern is what it’s going to do to electric rates for the citizens of Idaho,” Thompson said.

Although Idaho doesn’t contain any coal-fired power plants, and its two major natural gas power plants are up to EPA standards, Idahoans do import a significant amount of coal-generated electricity from Montana, Wyoming, Nevada and Oregon. So higher standards there could have a big impact on Idaho electrical rates, Thompson said.

While EPA had initially called for Idaho to cut its emissions by some 33 percent, recent revisions to the rule mean the cuts will be significantly smaller, said John Chatburn, administrator of the Idaho Office of Energy Resources.

The group is still analyzing the 500-page rule to determine what it will mean for the state, Chatburn said.

House Speaker Scott Bedke, R-Oakley, said he is “somewhat skeptical” of the scientific consensus. But he said state and federal water regulators should be ready to make changes if predictions of lower snowpacks come true.

The state should work to build more reservoirs and to do more aquifer recharge in order to mitigate possible low flows late in the irrigation season, he said.
Idaho’s Contribution

But even with imported coal-generated electricity, most of Idaho’s greenhouse gas emissions come from other sources.

The biggest source is transportation, and the second-biggest is agriculture, according to a 2008 report from the Center for Climate Strategies commissioned by the Department of Environmental Quality.

The good news is that the report projects agricultural greenhouse gas emissions — mainly methane produced by livestock — will level off on their own in coming years.

But emissions from transportation — mainly fuel burned in commercial and passenger vehicles — are projected to continue rising rapidly, by about 11 percent between 2010 and 2020.

Senate Minority Leader Michelle Stennett, D-Ketchum, said there are lots of state policies she thinks should be enacted to combat climate change, but political realities don’t leave much hope that will happen. “What I think and what’s plausible are two different things,” she said.

House Minority Leader John Rusche, D-Lewiston, accepts the consensus view on climate change. But he said cutting emissions from vehicles in the state is a hard problem. Significant portions of Idaho’s population live in rural areas where driving is a necessity.

And it’s also hard to see how emissions from livestock could be cut without significant changes in the American diet, he said.

Pro Tem Hill said the state should focus on promoting technological innovation, such as work on nuclear power occurring at Idaho National Laboratory.

Stennett said she doesn’t think the Legislature will take any significant action on climate change until it becomes a clear economic necessity. If anti-climate change measures can be sold as an economic boon, they have a shot, she said.

Rusche said the state is already seeing the effects of rising temperatures, and sooner or later it will have to deal with the issue.

“The Legislature has been trying to deny and ignore it, but the fact is that we’ve been having to respond to some of the impacts of climate change, whether it’s the economy in ski areas or the water in the East Snake Plain Aquifer,” he said.

SOURCE





Bob Hawke Says Nuclear Waste Dump 'A Win-Win' For Australia

Being arguably the most popular Leftist Prime Minister Australia has had, Hawke still has influence on the Left, so this is significant.  The Labor Party Premier of South Australia is of the same mind

Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke is still pushing for Australia to become the world's nuclear waste dump, calling the plan "a win-win" that could "transform our own fiscal situation."

Hawke was an advocate for nuclear waste to be stored securely in Australia's remote regions from the time of his Prime Ministership which ended in 1991; now, a quarter of a century later, the Labor Party elder statesman said he still wanted to see the idea come to fruition.

Speaking at the embargoed launch of cabinet papers from 1990 and 1991 -- the turbulent period which saw him elected to an unlikely and record fourth term as PM, then quickly dumped from the top job as Paul Keating's second leadership spill saw him seize power in December '91 -- Hawke spoke widely on both historical and contemporary issues.

"In my last final period as prime minister, I had a world economic group of geologists and experts commissioned to find out where are the world’s safest remote sites for storage of waste, and all the sites were in Australia," he said.

"We would negotiate with the countries to take the waste and we’d make the world a safer place by having all this unsafe stuff around the world stored safely, and at the same time we’d transform our own fiscal situation. This is what my Chinese friends call a win-win situation."

SOURCE

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