When global warming isn't global

Warmists have cottoned on to the fact that their feared 2 degree temperature rise doesn't sound very fearsome to most people. Most of us experience a temperature range of around 10 degrees in any 24 hour period -- sometimes a lot more. So Warmists now want to say that 2 degrees is only an average and that some places on earth will experience a temperature rise of much more than 2 degrees even if the average is 2 degrees. That is reasonable enough. It's basic statistics. An average implies a range.

Note firstly, however, that their study is of climate EXTREMES only, not of averages.  The two are presumably related but to what degree is not pursued.  Let's be charitable, however, and assume that what they tell us applies to averages too.

They seem rather lost, however, to explain just why some regions will be hotter.  The best they can do is to note that the oceans warm more slowly so an average which includes the oceans will imply land temperatures that are hotter than 2 degrees.

And from that they trot out climate models that purport to study large regions of the earth separately. And they find, for instance, "a 2.2°C warming of extremes around the Mediterranean basin". That doesn't sound too scary, however. So they add: "At 1.5°C we would still see temperature extremes in the Arctic rise by 4.4°C". But how scary is that? Arctic temperatures are way below the freezing point of water so even a 4.4 degree rise would not melt anything. And most Arctic ice is sea ice anyway so melting that would have no effect on the sea level -- as Archimedes showed around 3,000 years ago

But it's all based on modelling and the authors themselves supply in their paper a long list of reasons why it could all be wrong.  So their general point is reasonable but any specific temperature projection has to be taken with a large grain of salt

Given their alarmist aims, the projections should in fact probably be taken as maxima.  So, in that light, they are rather reassuring about the regional effects of any future global warming

Popular article below followed by the journal abstract


Regions around the Arctic may have passed a 2°C temperature rise as far back as 2000 and, if emissions rates don't change, areas around the Mediterranean, central Brazil and the contiguous United States could see 2°C of warming by 2030.

This is despite the fact that under a business as usual scenario the world is not expected to see global average temperatures rise by 2°C compared to preindustrial times until the 2040s.

New research published in Nature led by Prof Sonia Seneviratne from ETH Zurich with researchers from Australia's ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science (ARCCSS) has quantified the change in regional extremes in a world where global average temperatures have risen by 2°C.

The research shows worldwide warming extremes over land generally exceed the rise in this scenario, in some cases by as much as 6°C. "We even see starkly different rates of extreme warming over land even when global average temperatures reach just 1.5°C, which is the limit to the rate of warming agreed to at the Paris talks," said lead author Prof Seneviratne.

"At 1.5°C we would still see temperature extremes in the Arctic rise by 4.4°C and a 2.2°C warming of extremes around the Mediterranean basin."

The extreme regional warming projected for Alaska, Canada, Northern Europe, Russia and Greenland could have global impacts, accelerating the pace of sea-level rise and increasing the likelihood of methane releases prompted by the melting of ice and permafrost regions.

"The temperature difference between global average temperatures and regional temperature extremes over land not only has direct climate impacts, it also means we may have to reconsider the amount of carbon dioxide we can emit," said co-author and Director of ARCCSS Prof Andy Pitman.

"For instance, to keep extreme temperature changes over the Mediterranean below a 2°C threshold, the cumulative emissions of CO2 would have to be restricted to 600 gigatonnes rather than the 850 gigatonnes currently estimated to keep global average temperatures increase below 2°C."

According to the researchers, if global average temperatures warm by 2°C compared to preindustrial times this would equate to a 3°C warming of hot extremes in the Mediterranean region and between 5.5 -- 8°C warming for cold extremes over land around the Arctic. Most land-masses around the world will see an extreme temperature rise greater than 2°C.

One of the few exceptions is Australia -- famously known as a land of droughts and flooding rains. The projections show little difference between global average temperatures and a change in its extreme regional temperatures.

"This might be something peculiar about Australia's climate, or perhaps it highlights problems with the climate models," said Prof Pitman.

"If the latter, there is a risk Australia will lack warnings about the increases in extremes that are now clearly available to Northern Hemisphere countries."

He said this potential hole in understanding of climate extremes climate needs urgent resolution with more focused model development in the southern hemisphere.

The researchers also note the paper did not take into account unexpected changes in the climate system.

"What this research cannot take into account are abrupt climate shifts known colloquially as "tipping points"," said ARCCSS co-author Dr Markus Donat.

"We have no way of knowing when our climate may change abruptly from one state to another meaning we could potentially see even greater regional variation than these findings show."

SOURCE  

Allowable CO2 emissions based on regional and impact-related climate targets

Sonia I. Seneviratne et al.

Abstract

Global temperature targets, such as the widely accepted limit of an increase above pre-industrial temperatures of two degrees Celsius, may fail to communicate the urgency of reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The translation of CO2 emissions into regional- and impact-related climate targets could be more powerful because such targets are more directly aligned with individual national interests. We illustrate this approach using regional changes in extreme temperatures and precipitation. These scale robustly with global temperature across scenarios, and thus with cumulative CO2 emissions. This is particularly relevant for changes in regional extreme temperatures on land, which are much greater than changes in the associated global mean.

SOURCE  





Organic farming 'could be key to feeding the world!

Forgive me while I laugh. A lot of "organic" farmers do sneak in some chemical fertilizers and pesticides.  When your whole  crop is being devoured by some insect, it is hard not to reach for the spray.  And Mischa Popoff has shown that they almost all get away with it.

But based on studies that do use organic methods exclusively, it appears that, compared with modern farming, organic farming can take up as much as twice the land to produce the same output.  How that could "feed the word" boggles the imagination.

And note that some things that they identify below as organic are in fact routine practice.  Crop rotation are as old as the hills, as it the use of legumes to restore soil nitrates.  I grew up in a house surrounded by farms and I remember well the fields that were full of apparently useless weedy crops --legumes such as cowpeas. It wasn't visible to me at the time but their associated bacteria were busily grabbing nitrogen from the air and transforming it into nitrate fertilizers.

But the biggest laugh below is that organic crops withstand drought or semi-drought better. And that is supposed to give them the edge in droughts caused by global warming. But global warming will not increase droughts. It will evaporate more moisture off the oceans, which will fall as INCREASED rainfall. The true believers below should revisit basic physics -- if ever they studied it in the first place


Organic farming – long held to be irrelevant in tackling world hunger – could be key to feeding the world as global warming takes hold, one of the biggest studies ever to be carried out into the “contentious” practice has concluded.

The research, which has reviewed hundreds of studies stretching back over four decades, not only overturns conventional wisdom but contradicts Britain’s official Food Standards Agency, which has repeatedly attacked chemical-free agriculture. It adds to emerging evidence that it may be more productive and profitable than conventional farming in the long term, especially in developing countries, and says it can provide an “ideal blueprint in addressing climate change”.

Published this month in the leading journal Nature Plants, the study admits that “organic agriculture has a history of being contentious” and is still considered by its many critics as “an inefficient approach to food security and a farming system that will be become less relevant in the future”.

It adds that the practice is regarded as “ideologically driven”, with “many shortcomings”, not least because it “relies on more land to produce the same amount of food as conventional agriculture”, And it quotes a 1970s US Agriculture Secretary, Earl Butz: “Before we go back to organic agriculture in this country, somebody must decide which 50 million Americans we are going to let starve or go hungry”.

Yet, the study – led by Professor John Reganold of Washington State University – goes on, “organic food and beverages” are now “a rapidly growing market segment in the global food industry”. Worldwide sales increased fivefold to US $72bn (£50bn) between 1999 and 2013, and are expected to double again by 2018. The practice is certified in 170 countries and the current US Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, describes it as “one of the fastest growing segments of American agriculture” driven by “growing consumer demand.”

The research also acknowledges it produces lower yields than chemically driven agriculture, but at 8 –25 per cent, the reductions are less than often supposed. Another mammoth study – at the University of California 14 months ago – found that the deficit could be more than halved by rotating crops and avoiding monocultures: for leguminous produce such as beans, peas and lentils there was no difference at all and overall it could be “a very competitive alternative to industrial agriculture”.

But it is climate change that may give organic farming the edge. As the new research underlines, “organically managed farms have frequently been shown to produce higher yields than their conventional counterparts” during droughts, because the manures they use retain moisture in the soil. And severely dry conditions “are expected to increase with climate change in many areas”.

As other studies have shown, organic fertilisers also increase the amount of carbon in the soil, while intensive agriculture denudes it, increasing erosion and reducing its fertility. Wheat, for example, has traditionally produced much higher yields in conventional than in chemical-free farming, but these have now stagnated for some 20 years after almost tripling during the previous 50 years.

Losses of organic matter from British soil now cost the country £82m a year and the Government admits that this is “not sustainable in the long term”. But it has done little about it: there is not even any countrywide monitoring of soil health.

Organic techniques, moreover, are even more effective in developing countries, where most farmers cannot afford to buy much artificial fertiliser or pesticide. One UN report which looked at 114 projects, involving nearly two million African farms found that they more than doubled yields.

Another, led by the University of Essex – which examined projects in 57 countries, covering three per cent of the Third World’s cultivated area – revealed an average 79 per cent increase.

Chemical-free farming is also more profitable in both developed and developing countries, the new report adds: four decades of studies covering 55 crops grown on five continents found they yielded a 22-35 per cent better return than conventional produce. This was, of course, due to the premium organic producers can charge, but even slashing the price differential several times over would still leave them better off. And they employ more people.

More predictably, the report finds that organic farming is better for nature and wildlife and reduces exposure to toxic pesticides both on the farm and in food. And it adds that 80 per cent of major studies into its nutritional value have suggested that it is better for consumers, contradicting the position of the Food Standards Agency.

It stresses that “no one farming system alone will safely feed the planet”, but calls for “the untapped potential role” of chemical-free agriculture to be realised by blending it with the best practices of its conventional counterpart.

SOURCE  





Tax oil to subsidize wind?

Obama wants to punish the oil industry to advance climate agenda. So do Hillary, Bernie and Mike

Paul Driessen

If you want more of something, mandate it, subsidize it and exempt it from regulations. If you want less of something, punish it with taxes and regulations. Put more bluntly, the power to tax and regulate is the power to destroy. This is the First Rule of Government.

No presidency has ever come close to the Obama Administration in employing the rule to advance its ideologies and agendas. No industry has been so favored as renewable energy over the past seven years. No sector has been so thoroughly vilified and subjugated as fossil fuels during that period.

Thankfully, Congress refused to impose a cap-tax-and-trade regime on carbon-based energy and U.S. jobs, families, economic growth and living standards. However, EPA and other Obama agencies simply replaced unsuccessful legislative initiatives with regulations, often employing highly innovative statutory interpretations to justify its actions – and courts too often bowed to this “agency discretion.”

Nowhere was this more heavy-handed and destructive than in the coal and climate change arena, where a regulatory tidal wave inundated mines, power plants, companies, families, communities and entire states. Other EPA and Interior Department rules blocked leasing, drilling, fracking and other energy activities on millions of acres of government-administered lands, onshore and off, and even on state and private land.

Thanks to determined efforts by state attorneys general and other parties, however, a number of these regulations were stymied in courts of law. Nowhere was this more important than this week’s Supreme Court decision to block implementation of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan while lower courts consider some 30 lawsuits over its legality, state sovereignty, the scope of agency discretion in interpreting and rewriting federal laws, and the plan’s effects on energy, jobs, health and welfare.

That means this noxious regulation will be “vacated” for the remainder of Obama’s presidency.

The president, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and their allies are not happy. They promise to charge ahead with their “fundamental transformation” of the United States, via other tactics and edicts.

The oil patch is one of the few industries that kept the Obama economy (and presidency) afloat – primarily because of fracking, which slipped in under the EPA/environmentalist radar but is now under constant attack by Interior and Big Green. It created millions of jobs, channeled billions of dollars to local, state and federal treasuries, brought gasoline prices below $2 per gallon, and saved American families billions: every penny not spent on gasoline puts $1 billion a year back into our pockets.

So how does Obama intend to repay the industry, now that it has fallen on hard times? Amid a sluggish global economy and record oil and gas production, oil prices have plunged below $30 a barrel – forcing the oil patch to lay people off, many companies to retrench or ponder bankruptcy, and many communities to confront reduced employment, consumer spending, real estate values, and revenues.

But as part of his last-gasp, $4.1-trillion, $503-billion-deficit 2017 federal budget, the president wants Congress to slap a $10.25 tax on every barrel of domestically produced or imported oil. He says this will raise some $400 billion over the next ten years.

This will allow him to increase EPA’s budget to $8.3 billion, pour $1.7 billion a year into the “climate fund,” and channel hundreds of billions into high speed rail, wind, solar, biofuel, “eco-friendly” cars and other “green” energy schemes. It thus means more opportunities for unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats to pick winners and losers, expand their fiefdoms, and pad their bonuses and pensions.

Thankfully, the proposal is “dead on arrival” in Congress. Enough members understand (even if the president does not) that this tax will not be “paid for by the oil companies.” It will only be collected by oil companies – and then passed along to every American family and business, in the form of higher gasoline prices and higher costs for everything produced or transported using petroleum: food, clothing, plastics, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, housing, healthcare, and countless other products and services. Even ethanol and other biofuels require petroleum, as do organic food and electric cars.

Mr. Obama, however, sees additional advantages to a 35% oil tax. It lets him stigmatize Big Oil yet again.

It advances his goal of ending our “addiction” to fossil fuels that still provide 82% of US and 87% of global energy – because they are the most abundant, reliable, affordable energy sources available today; because they sustain modern economies and living standards, and help lift billions out of poverty and disease. Would Obama also have us end our “addiction” to food, shelter and human companionship?

An oil tax would also help him promote the climate treaty he signed in Paris. The Supreme Court’s slap-down of EPA’s plans to regulate fossil fuels into oblivion means the United States is far less likely to implement the president’s unilateral commitment to the accord’s emission reduction demands (and massive wealth transfers, via climate “adaptation and reparation” payments) – even assuming the Senate ultimately approves the treaty, under its “advice and consent” authority. That in turn means developed and developing nations alike are even less likely to slash their CO2 emissions, carbon-based energy use, economic growth and living standards, for no progress in controlling nature-driven climate change.

Finally, all that devoutly wished for tax revenue would enable Mr. Obama to repay his debts to crony corporatist friends like Elon Musk. His Tesla Motors company continues to hemorrhage investor money despite massive infusions of taxpayer cash in the form of CO2 rules, subsidies, loans, $7,500 tax credits per car purchased, and free charging stations, so that the wealthiest 1.0 or 0.1 percent will buy the pricey cars. In 2015 alone, Tesla lost another $889 million, on revenues of $4.05 billion.

We’ve come to expect this from President Obama. Equally depressing, we also expect it from Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, former DemoRepublican candidate-in-waiting Michael Bloomberg, most of today’s Democratic politicians, too many Republican pols, most government “public servants,” and certainly those who are “feeling the Bern” or think “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women” by voting for a certain candidate. (Hint: Ms. Albright didn’t mean Carly or Sarah.)

Indeed, Mrs. Clinton wants to have a half billion more solar panels deployed during her first four years in office, “enough clean energy to power every home” in America, at an estimated cost to taxpayers of $200 billion a year. Plus free education, free universal healthcare, and more. Senator Sanders doubtless agrees.

It is a sad, painful assessment of their economic literacy – and of our high schools, colleges, business communities and politicians’ ability to empower students and voters through economic literacy, a grasp of socialism’s abject failures and horrid excesses, and an appreciation of free enterprise capitalism’s incomparable record of improving the health, living standards and prospects of billions.

It’s also a sad commentary on liberal-progressive “climate justice” and “compassion” for coal mine, power plant and oil patch workers and families who have been pummeled by their policies – and for poor, minority and blue collar families that would be hit hardest by the Obama oil tax. Those families pay a far larger share of their incomes on energy, food, clothing and other necessities than do Barack, Hillary and Michael’s upper-crust friends, Bernie’s Wall Street benefactors, or even middle class families:

Families making less than $30,000 a year spend 26% of their after-tax income on energy, while families that make over $50,000 a year spend only 8% – and those in upper 1% spend only a fraction of 1 percent.

Were President Obama to succeed on his oil tax, “stop climate change” and “leave all fossil fuels in the ground” agenda, his “legacy” would be making tens of millions more Americans jobless, energy deprived and impoverished – and keeping billions beyond our borders mired in abject poverty, disease, malnutrition and despair. It’s up to informed citizen-voters to ensure this does not happen.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Via email





ExxonMobil Report: 80% of Global Energy Demands Met By Oil, Natural Gas, Coal In 2040, Emissions Down

In a global energy forecast report issued on Jan. 25, ExxonMobil said that in the 2040 market, oil, natural gas, and coal will meet 80% of the world’s energy needs and that carbon emissions should peak by 2030.

Noting that the future of energy production and consumption will be influenced by government policies, including those aimed at combating climate change, the report  says that up to the year 2040 it is expected that “oil, natural gas and coal [will] continue to meet about 80 percent of global demand.”

“For a century, these sources have been the foundation of the modern energy that has enabled modern living,” the report states. “Today, they remain abundant, reliable and affordable, and available on the scale required to serve 7 billion people 24 hours a day.”

The report anticipates the largest growth to be in the natural gas sector, with 40% of energy demand growth from 2014 to 2040 being met by gas, but renewable energy and nuclear power will also see growth over this time period, according to the report.

And, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), will peak by 2030, according to the report.

“Policies to address greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will increasingly influence the energy landscape,” the report states.

“In our view, after rising more than 50 percent from 1990 to 2014, global energy-related CO2 emissions will likely peak around 2030,” the report states, citing energy efficiency as one factor.

“We expect the CO2 intensity of the global economy to be cut in half by 2040,” the report claims.

The report also forecasts global demand for energy rising by 25% from 2014 to 2040, with oil and natural gas meeting most of that demand.

“To keep pace with demand, the world will need to pursue all economic energy sources,” the report states. “In 2040, oil and natural gas will likely be nearly 60%  of global supplies, while nuclear and renewables will be approaching a 25% share.”

Oil alone is expected to provide 1/3 of the world’s energy in 2040, the report states.

The constantly evolving energy landscape presents challenges, but it remains a fact that abundant energy improves the way people live, according to the report.

“Meeting growing energy demand is an ongoing challenge, recognizing the scale of supplies required to meet the needs of 7 billion people each day,” says ExxonMobil.

“The use of oil alone – representing just one-third of the world’s energy consumption – is now approaching 95 million barrels a day, enough to power a car 100 billion miles, or 4 million times around the world,” reads the forecast.

It continues, “Several themes remain true today: Modern energy is fundamental to our standards of living; practical options for meeting people’s energy needs continue to expand, including those related to efficiency; and the energy industry is huge, growing and connecting regions through trade.”

SOURCE




Poll: Alaskans are sure about global warming, but not its cause

Three-quarters of Alaskans are sold on the existence and seriousness of global warming, but far fewer are convinced that it's caused by human activity, according to a poll commissioned by Alaska Dispatch News.

Those results largely mirror the opinions of Americans at large, according to recent polls, including one recently conducted by CBS and the New York Times that asked the same questions.

Debate over climate change -- and what to do about it -- has become a deeply partisan issue in Washington, D.C., in recent years. Just last week, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily halted the Environmental Protection Agency's major climate change regulations for the nation's power plants for the duration of an ongoing legal battle. But on the international stage, major countries have agreed that curbing greenhouse gas emissions is essential to lessen the environmental impacts of global warming.

Alaskans were asked two questions about global warming as part of a 750-person survey conducted in January by Ivan Moore Research for Alaska Dispatch News. The quarterly "Alaska Survey" included questions from multiple clients on a variety of topics. It had a 3.6 percent margin of error, meaning the results represent the total state population within 3.6 percentage points either way.

The first question was whether global warming is an environmental problem that is causing a serious impact now, in the future, or never at all. Just more than half -- 54.3 percent -- said global warming is already having serious impacts, and 20.7 percent said the impacts will happen sometime in the future. One-fifth of those polled said global warming will have no serious impacts, and 4.7 percent were not sure.

Where people live in Alaska seemed to affect their feelings on the existence and urgency of climate change. Those polled in rural Alaska, Southeast and Anchorage were more likely to say that climate change is already having serious impacts, compared to people elsewhere in Southcentral Alaska and Fairbanks.

And of those polled in rural Alaska, lessr than 5 percent thought climate change would have no serious impacts, ever.

Alaskans who identified as registered Democrats or Republicans fell along predictable lines: 73.4 percent of Democrats said global warming is having a serious impact now, compared to 27 percent of Republicans.

But the largest portion -- more than half -- of Alaskans polled who said they were registered voters claimed no party. Of those with no party affiliation, a common choice in this state, 64.9 percent said global warming is already having a serious impact.

Across the board, women were much more likely than men to see global warming as a present and serious threat.

Alaskans' answers to the second question indicated that while most believe global warming is happening, only half would attribute it to human activity.

Most climate scientists and a wide range of scientific organizations say that current global warming is caused by human activity, particularly due to burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

Few of those polled -- 7.4 percent -- answered that global warming does not exist. That’s slightly lower than the 9 percent of non-believers who answered the CBS/NYT national poll asking the same questions.

The more common answer -- 38 percent of Alaskans polled -- is that global warming exists but is caused by natural patterns in the Earth’s environment.

The remaining 3.8 percent of those polled weren’t sure.

Again, answers fell along party lines, with 79.9 percent of Democrats attributing climate change to human activities, such as burning fossil fuels, and 59.6 percent of registered Republicans convinced climate change is natural. Those claiming no party were more divided, with 54.5 percent pointing to human activity and 36.8 percent going with “natural patterns.”

SOURCE  





Science journalist Chris Mooney is at it again: Condemns Teacher Skepticism of Global Warming Dogma

Washington Post  "energy and the environment" (Global Warming) writer, Chris Mooney, has discovered climate heresy among middle and high school teachers in the form of skepticism which he finds very upsetting. Yes, there are actually teachers who raise an eyebrow when, for example, 2016 is declared to be the warmest year on record before the year even starts. Mooney, who performed the same shtick at Mother Jones, has noted such skepticsim in his column and issues the proper condemnation of the teachers daring to not completely buy into the new Lysenkoism aka Global Warming:

A major new survey of U.S. middle school and high school science teachers has found that across the country, a majority are teaching about climate change in their classrooms — but a significant percentage are also including incorrect ideas, such as the notion that today’s warming of the globe is a “natural” process.

"Incorrect ideas" meaning politically incorrect ideas. Shame on those teachers expressing skepticism about the Global Warming dogma that reinforces itself with such efforts as "hide the decline" as was revealed during Climategate with this infamous email from a prominent climate change directors to fellow scientists invested in the cause:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline

The same group of emails also revealed this gem sent to Michael Mann:

Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming ? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low.

Now back to Mooney's angst over skeptical teachers:

One of the most striking findings: 30 percent of teachers said in the survey that they tell students that the current warming “is likely due to natural causes” — contradicting major scientific assessments of the matter. Thirty-one percent of teachers also said that they include both the scientific consensus position — that global warming is human-caused — but then also a “natural causes” position that contradicts it, thus presenting “both sides,” in the study’s words.

GASP! The absurd idea that the sun might have a role to play on earth's temperatures is positively heretical. And presenting both sides of a theory is impermissible!

The study also found that most teachers are unaware of the strength of the scientific consensus about the human causes of climate change. The survey asked them “what proportion of climate scientists think that global warming is caused mostly by human activities?” For middle school teachers, 30 percent chose the option “81 to 100%,” which the researchers identified as the correct answer. High school teachers were only a little better, at 45 percent.

Hmmm... Any chance that question could be amended to "what proportion of climate scientists NOT receiving government grants or other such funding think that global warming is caused mostly by human activities?"

A key problem, Plutzer emphasizes, is how many teachers are presenting climate change as something to be debated in class.

Case closed! It is so decreed. Any evidence to the contrary will be instantly dismissed by the purveyors of the new Lysenkoism.

SOURCE  

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

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