Tuesday, April 27, 2021



The old food scare again

Malthus call your office! The real-life problem with food production is glut. But the Greenies "created a model" so there!

While the global population continues to rise, a new study indicates agricultural productivity has plummeted due to the effects of climate change.

Worldwide, farmers are growing 20 percent less food than they would be if environmental conditions were the same as they were in the 1960s.

The primary is changing weather patterns, researchers say, including increased flooding and droughts in different areas.

The drastic and unexpected shifts associated with climate change make it harder for harmers to plan productive strategies to yield the most successful harvest.

Topical regions like Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa have been hit the worst, with agricultural growth a third of what it could be.

Total factor productivity is a measure of economic efficiency commonly used to determine how industries are growing, typically by comparing the ratio of input to results.

But, in agriculture, farmers aren't in control of all the factors affecting their output, making productivity tricky to calculate.

'When a farmer makes an economic decision like what to plant in June, we won't necessarily know the outcome of that decision until six months later,' said Robert Chambers, a professor of agriculture at the University of Maryland.

'So there is a distinct break between input and output, and random events like weather can severely affect that,' added Chambers, co-author of a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change.

'Productivity calculations for agriculture haven't historically incorporated weather data, he said, 'but we want to see the trends for these inputs that are out of the farmer's control.'

Chambers and Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, an economist at Cornell University, created a model to calculate productivity both as it is now and where it would be if weather patterns had stayed where they were decades ago.

They found a 21 percent reduction in global agricultural productivity since 1961, the equivalent of losing the last seven years of growth.

With a world population of nearly 10 billion expected by 2050, scientists warn that it's essential agricultural productivity doesn't just stabilize, but grows faster than ever before +3
With a world population of nearly 10 billion expected by 2050, scientists warn that it's essential agricultural productivity doesn't just stabilize, but grows faster than ever before

The effects, however, are not uniform: Warmer regions like Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean have experienced slows in growth of between 26 percent and 34 percent, the study concluded.

The US only saw declines in growth of approximately 5 percent to 15 percent.

'Some people think about climate change as a distant problem, something that should concern primarily future generations,' said Ortiz-Bobea. 'Our study finds that [man-made] climate change is already having a disproportionate impact on poorer countries that depend primarily on agriculture,' he added.

The technological progress that's led to better pesticides and hybrid crops 'has not yet translated into more climate resilience,' he added.

With a world population of nearly 10 billion expected by 2050, Chambers warned that it's essential agricultural productivity doesn't just stabilize, but grows faster than ever before.

'This gives us an idea of trends to help see what to do in the future with new changes in the climate that are beyond what we've previously seen,' he said.

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Biden opens global summit with ambitious new US climate pledge

Declaring that the United States and other big economies must “get this done”, President Joe Biden has opened a global climate summit aimed at getting world leaders to dig deeper on emissions cuts.

The US pledged to cut in half the amount of climate-wrecking coal and petroleum fumes it is pumping out.

“Meeting this moment is about more than preserving our planet,” Biden said on Thursday, local time, speaking from a TV-style set for a virtual summit of 40 world leaders. “It’s about providing a better future for all of us,” he said, calling it “a moment of peril but a moment of opportunity.”

“The signs are unmistakable. the science is undeniable. the cost of inaction keeps mounting,” he said.

His new commitment to cut US fossil fuel emissions up to 52 per cent by 2030 marks a return by the US to global climate efforts after four years of withdrawal under former president Donald Trump. Biden’s administration is sketching out a vision of a prosperous, clean-energy US where factories churn out cutting-edge batteries for export, line workers re-lay an efficient national electrical grid and crews cap abandoned oil and gas rigs and coal mines.

Japan, a heavy user of coal, announced its own new 46 per cent emissions reduction target on Thursday as the US and its allies sought to build momentum through the summit.

The coronavirus pandemic compelled the summit to play out as a climate telethon-style livestream, limiting opportunities for spontaneous interaction and negotiation. The opening was rife with small technological glitches, including echoes and random beeps and voices.

But the US summit also marshalled an impressive display of the world’s most powerful leaders speaking on the single cause of climate change.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose country is the world’s biggest emissions culprit, followed by the US, spoke first among the other global figures. He made no reference to non-climate disputes that had made it uncertain until Wednesday that he would even take part in the US summit, and said China would work with America in cutting emissions.

“To protect the environment is to protect productivity, and to boost the environment is to boost productivity. It’s as simple as that,” Xi said.

India, the world’s third-biggest emitter of fossil fuel fumes, has been pressing the United States and other wealthier nations to come through on billions of dollars they’ve promised to help poorer nations build alternatives to coal plants and energy-sucking power grids. “We in India are doing our part,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi told participants. “We have taken many bold steps.”

The pandemic made gathering world leaders for the climate summit too risky. That didn’t keep the White House from sparing no effort on production quality. The President’s staff built a small set in the East Room that looked like it was ripped from a daytime talk show. Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris addressed the summit from separate lecterns before joining Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and White House climate envoy John Kerry at a horseshoe-shaped table set up around a giant potted plant to watch fellow leaders’ livestreamed speeches.

The format meant a cavalcade of short speeches by world leaders, some scripted, some apparently more impromptu. “This is not bunny-hugging,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said of the climate efforts. “This is about growth and jobs.”

The Biden administration’s pledge would require by far the most ambitious US climate effort ever, nearly doubling the reductions that the Obama administration had committed to in the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord.

The new urgency comes as scientists say that climate change caused by coal plants, car engines and other fossil fuel use is already worsening droughts, floods, hurricanes, wildfires and other disasters and that humans are running out of time to stave off most catastrophic extremes of global warming.

But administration officials, in previewing the new target, disclosed aspirations and vignettes rather than specific plans, budget lines or legislative proposals for getting there.

Biden planned to join a second session of the livestreamed summit later in the morning on financing poorer countries’ efforts to remake and protect their economies against global warming.

With the pledge from the US and other emissions-cutting announcements from Japan, Canada, the European Union and the United Kingdom, countries representing more than half the world’s economy will have now committed to cutting fossil fuel fumes enough to keep the earth’s climate from warming, disastrously, more than 1.5 degrees celsius, the administration said.

As of 2019, the last year before the pandemic, the US had reduced 13 per cent of its greenhouse gases compared with 2005 levels, which is about half way to the Obama administration goals of 26 to 28 per cent, said climate scientist Niklas Hohne of Climate Action Tracker. That’s owing largely to market forces that have made solar and wind, and natural gas, much cheaper

Biden, a Democrat, campaigned partly on a pledge to confront climate change. He has sketched out some elements of his $US2 trillion ($2.6 trillion) approach for transforming US transportation systems and electrical grids in his campaign climate plan and in his infrastructure proposals for Congress.

His administration insists the transformation will mean millions of well-paying jobs. Republicans say the effort will throw oil, gas and coal workers off the job. They call his infrastructure proposal too costly.

“The summit is not necessarily about everyone else bringing something new to the table – it’s really about the US bringing their target to the world,” said Joanna Lewis, an expert in China energy and environment at Georgetown University.

Political divisions in America that were exposed by Trump’s presidency have left the nation weaker than it was at the 2015 Paris accord. Unable to guarantee that a different president in 2024 won’t undo Biden’s climate work, the Biden administration has argued that market forces – with a boost to get started – will soon make cleaner fuels and energy efficiency too cheap and consumer-friendly to trash.

Having the US, with its influence and status, back in the climate game is important, said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air in Helsinki.

But hoping the world will forget about the last four years seems like wishful thinking, he said.

“There is too much of an impulse in the US to just wish away Trump’s legacy and the fact that every election is now basically a coin toss between complete climate denial and whatever actions the Democrats can bring to the table,” he said.

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Kerry Returns to the White House to Promise 'Green Jobs' That Don't Exist

Former Secretary of State and Biden Climate Czar John Kerry returned to the White House briefing room Thursday afternoon and promised blue collar workers a transition into green jobs...that don't exist.

"The jobs are growing there [green energy]. I'm not offering that job to somebody who may feel, 'oh my god I have a better job, I don't want to lose that job,' etc. But the job market here is going to be gigantic for electricians, plumbers, pipe fitters, steel workers, heavy equipment operators, all of these people, building out America's grid and transitioning us to this new future is going to happen in countries all over the world and we need to make sure we aren't left behind," Kerry said, citing predictions from the Bureau of Labor Statistics rather than open and existing positions.

Last time Kerry was in the briefing room he told oil workers who have lost their jobs as a result of President Joe Biden's so-called "green" energy agenda, which includes killing thousands of Keystone XL pipeline jobs, to "build solar panels."

"What President Biden wants to do is make sure those folks have better choices, that they have alternatives, that they can be the people to go to work to make the solar panels,” Kerry said earlier this year.

As a reminder, the majority of solar panels are made in China.

“The recent wave of investment and capacity expansion announcements by China’s largest solar manufacturers threatens the (U.S. solar) recovery with massive overcapacity that will drive producers out of the business, and establish Chinese domination of the entire solar power manufacturing supply chain,” says Jeff Ferry, chief economist with the Coalition for a Prosperous America in a report published on January 28.

China’s big solar multinationals, like Jinko and JA Solar, have announced new expansion projects throughout southeast Asia as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s industrial strategy to dominate key Western supply chains.

While Kerry advocates for blue collar workers to give up high paying jobs in the oil industry, he continues to fly around the world on his family's private jet.

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Earth Day is Killing Us

Earth Day destroyed more of America than any environmental catastrophe ever could.

Grouches complain that a lot of fake holidays are created by companies, but Earth Day is actually a fake holiday created by a sharp Madison Avenue ad agency, and the name comes to us from the same guy who coined, “Timex: It takes a licking and keeps on ticking".

The Earth takes a licking much better than Timex watches, but it’s the job of ad agencies to convince us that consumer products are permanent, while the world is ephemeral.

Madison Avenue supplied the name, but Senator Gaylord Nelson, the eugenicist Democrat, had come up with the idea for the event. Gaylord’s Earth Day kickoff hit a bump when Indians showed up and threw garbage on the stage to protest his environmental plan to seize their land for a national park. But the media excised this inconvenient truth from Earth Day history.

Real inconvenient truths don’t appear in Al Gore’s documentaries.

It was 1970. Nixon’s Vietnamization was underway and the Left, sensing that its antiwar protests had a limited future, was looking to build a new movement. The idea came from Gaylord, the name came from Madison Avenue, but the culture war needed young radicals to organize, show up, protest, and tell their parents that they wanted Democrats running America forever.

That’s where Ira Einhorn, a young radical, who co-founded Earth Day and acted as the master of ceremonies at its first rally, came in. Einhorn had started out as an anti-war activist, but like Gaylord and other Democrats, he could see that the anti-war publicity machine was going away.

Everyone from politicians to ad agencies to aspiring gurus like Einhorn was looking for the next big cultural phenomenon that would speak to the narcissism of the luckiest generation in history. Einhorn realized that civil rights and anti-war rallies were getting old. The future was a new environmentalism that would make the old environmentalist eugenics look cool and hip.

Einhorn ended up committing totally by killing his girlfriend and composting her body. Then he fled to Europe where the same lefty activist network went on protecting him from prison.

Happy Earth Day.

Earth Day didn’t do anything for the environment except make a huge mess. Parade floats filled with garbage were used to warn about pollution. Students chalked messages on the street. Everyone drove out in cars for Earth Day to warn about the dangers of driving cars.

Gaylord’s Earth Day speech was revealing of what environmentalism was and wasn’t.

"Environment is all of America and its problems. It is rats in the ghetto. It is a hungry child in a land of affluence. It is housing that is not worthy of the name; neighborhoods not fit to inhabit. Environment is a problem perpetuated by the expenditure of billions a year on the Vietnam War," Gaylord rambled.

Environmentalism was everything and nothing. It was every Democrat agenda rolled into one. It was the welfare state and the anti-war movement.

If the Democrats were going to run on it, then it was environmentalism. And if they weren’t, then it wasn’t.

At no time in his speech did Gaylord address any actual environmental problem. Instead he focused on urban blight, caused by his own party, and shamed Americans for their prosperity.

“Our goal is a new American ethic that sets new standards for progress, emphasizing human dignity and well being rather than an endless parade of technology that produces more gadgets, more waste, more pollution,” Gaylord insisted, invoking the faux spirituality already in vogue.

Finally he declared an "environmental war" to save America's cities that would only take "$20 to $25 billion more a year in federal money than we are spending or asking for now."

Joe Biden, who first ran for office that year, wants to spend $174 billion on just electric cars.

The endless war on the environment is starting to cost more than any actual war.

Billions have been spent with little to show for it except more cash in the pockets of environmentalist Democrats like Al Gore who built a $300 million fortune with his advocacy.

The planet is no better and no worse off since 1970. The same isn’t true of America.

In 1970, 62% of aggregate income went to the middle class. Today it's only 29%. The winners of the environmental economic war on Americans were the upper crust Earth Day crowd.

There are more gadgets than ever, but fewer Americans can afford them.

Environmentalist policies helped push jobs out to China while leaving American cities and towns barren. There are more rats in the ghettos and housing not worthy of its name than ever before.

The current big objective of the environmentalist movement and the Biden administration is to crush coal while taking another huge bite out of the remnants of the American middle class.

“Secretary Kerry trying to equate the job of an electrician in a coal mine who makes $110,000 to a solar tech, who might make $35,000 to $40,000, is not a good analogy for our state," Senator Shelley Moore Capito argued.

But it’s a great analogy if you’re trying to turn more of the middle class into the lower class.

Jimmy Carter made Denis Hayes, a key organizer of Earth Day, the director of the Federal Solar Energy Research Institute. Hayes had an undergraduate degree in history from Stanford. Despite never having a degree in anything science related, he became a visiting professor at Stanford's School of Engineering and the CEO of Earth Day. He remains a board member of Earth Day alongside such notables as the President of Finland, the head of the Wells Fargo Foundation, and a woman whose bio lists her as an “internationally renowned chef.”

The Earth Day store offers "premium organic" t-shirts urging "Make Every Day Earth Day" for $28 bucks "Far out, man! This classic tie-dye T-shirt is bringing the 60’s back in style," the ad copy declares. The details mention that the actual fabric is imported. You can guess from where.

The same goes for the rest of the expensive junk in the Earth Day store.

In 1970, there were 18 million manufacturing jobs in the United States. Today there are 12 million and that’s after a period of record growth under President Trump.

China has built a manufacturing empire. It happily celebrates Earth Day because every advent of the fake Madison Avenue headline means more American jobs and dollars headed its way.

Earth Day, according to Senator Gaylord Nelson, was supposed to address poverty in America. Instead Earth Day has been the biggest machine for creating poverty, hunger, and misery in America. Environmentalism didn’t fight poverty, it spread it, trading American jobs and social mobility for the smugness of upper class students seeking a new political fight after Vietnam.

As much as the anti-war movement hurt America, the environmental movement did worse.

Almost as many Americans kill themselves in one year as died in the entire Vietnam War. The suicide rate shot up 35% in the last twenty years.

Losing America was much worse than losing Vietnam.

Every Earth Day comes with the usual recitation of political dogma with which children are indoctrinated before they can even read. On one side are piles of trash and on the other side are whales and polar bears happily dancing arm-in-fluke. The truth is that on one side there are Ivy League colleges and environmentalist think tanks while on the other side there is the Rust Belt, there are millions of Americans without jobs and without hope, and millions more waiting to see if the Biden administration will take away their jobs, their homes, and their futures.

The wages of Earth Day are ‘Love Canals’ all over America with dying towns, workers permanently out of work, dying of meth, committing suicide in unprecedented numbers.

Earth Day is America’s Chernobyl, an environmentalist catastrophe that is killing us. And Earth Day has destroyed more of America than any environmental catastrophe ever could.

It’s time to end the great hoax from Madison Avenue, from a brutal killer and a political hack, before it destroys what’s left of America.

Kill Earth Day before it kills America.

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My other blogs. Main ones below

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

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

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

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

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only

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

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Thursday, April 15, 2021



The world will break through the more ambitious Paris climate target of 1.5 degrees as soon as 2030 but may still avoid a more catastrophic 2 degrees of warming if governments act immediately to dramatically reduce emissions, according to a new report.

Just another prophecy based on guesswork and bound to be as wrong as all the ones before it

The Climate Council report, Aim High, Go Fast, is based on new data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and echoes similar findings by the Australian Academy of Science issued last week, but has prompted a dissenting report from one prominent Australian climate scientist, Bill Hare.

It warns that the more ambitious Paris target of holding warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels cannot be achieved without what it calls “significant overshoot” and “drawdown”. Drawdown refers to the possibility of using as yet non-existent large-scale carbon dioxide removal technology to help cool and stabilise the climate after overshooting the target.

In the report the Climate Council says that in view of Australia’s historical contribution to global warming, its high emissions and its natural advantages in renewable energy generation, the government should now aim to reduce emissions by 75 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and reach net zero by 2035.

So far the government has committed to reducing emissions by 26-28 per cent by 2030 and has set no net-zero target, but said it would prefer to reach that milestone earlier than 2050.

Barrier Reef doomed as up to 99% of coral at risk, report finds
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is expected to face more pressure to commit to more ambitious actions at a climate summit to be hosted by United States President Joe Biden next week and during the lead-up to the next UN climate talks in Glasgow in November.

Asked if such an abrupt reduction was possible, one of the report’s authors, executive director of the Australian National University Climate Change Institute Will Steffen, cited the example of allied nations transforming their economies in five years to defeat the Axis power in World War II.

“The point is, it’s going to be a tough decade, no doubt about it,” he said. “There’ll be some disruption soon, but it’ll be an exciting decade and it’ll set us up for a much brighter future after 2030.”

To reach such targets Professor Steffen said the government would need to immediately halt the expansion of coal and gas and plan to support affected communities as fossil fuels were phased out. Secondly, Australia would have to reach almost 100 per cent renewables in its energy system by 2030.

The report finds “multiple lines of evidence” that the world will break through 1.5 degrees: the increasing pace at which the world has been warming since 2016; new scientific understanding of the climate system’s sensitivity; and the increasing rate of sea levels rising. There is also an analysis of global greenhouse gas emissions which are now in line with the highest of four scenarios considered in the fifth assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN’s lead climate change body.

“We now face a more dangerous future, with further risks and damages locked in,” says the report.

“We have reached the endgame and if we are to limit further disruption then we must dramatically step up the scale and pace of action. Inaction or delay in the face of so much evidence is in fact an active commitment to massive global climate disruption and damage.”

Counting the increasing costs of droughts and flooding rains
Professor Steffen said the impact of temperature rises did not go up in a linear fashion, and that 2 degrees of warming was far worse than 1.5 degrees.

“The issue here is that past inaction on climate change has cost us dearly. There is plenty of momentum in the climate system, it is like trying to turn a battleship around,” he said.

“The mantra I keep going back to is that every tenth of a degree matters.”

But Bill Hare, a lead author on the fourth IPCC assessment and founder of Climate Analytics, said he believes both the Climate Council and the Australian Academy of Science had found further evidence for the need for immediate and dramatic action. But he did not agree with the view that holding global temperatures rises to 1.5 degrees was virtually impossible.

His dissenting report, co-authored by his colleague Dr Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, said it is not possible to draw conclusions on temperature rises over short time periods used by the Climate Council report; that sea level rise is a lagging rather than leading indicator of climate change; and that the Climate Council had made mistakes in its interpretation of so-called carbon emissions budgets. They further question the report’s analysis of climate sensitivity.

“The evidence presented in the Climate Council of Australia report itself does not support their claim that 1.5°C will be exceeded,” they write.

Mr Hare told the Herald and The Age he believed the evidence of physics and economics showed that 1.5 degrees was still achievable and that the target itself was a critical policy tool supporting international efforts to tackle climate change.

“[The 1.5 degree target] has become mainstream in the global climate debate, it is why nations are talking about net zero by 2050 rather than 2070.”

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NASA measures direct evidence humans are causing climate change

The so-called "direct evidence" is in fact a series of estimates, with all the frailties inherent in that. Viscount Mockton comments:

"The paper says that previously the Earth's energy imbalance was detected by models, and then says that it is now detected by "radiative kernels" - which are models. Same difference.

Actually, radiative imbalance is measured both by satellites and by the ARGO bathythermographs. The paper on which IPCC (2021) will chiefly rely, Von Schuckmann et al. (2020), finds the radiative imbalance - i.e., the fraction of the total forcing in recent decades that has not yet resulted in warming - to be 0.87 Watts per square meter. Of this, 70% is anthropogenic (Wu et al. 2019, Scafetta 2021), so that the anthropogenic contribution to the imbalance is 0.61 Watts per square meter - if anything, a little more than the 0.53 given in the paper now being spun by the Marxstream media.

One can work out equilibrium sensitivity to doubled CO2 directly from this imbalance, together with a few other items of data: it is equal to 0.7 x 1.04 x 3.52 / (3.2 - 0.7 x 0.87), or 1.0 K, not the almost 4 K imagined by official climatology."


It may come as a surprise, given the extensive body of evidence connecting humans to climate change, that directly-observed proof of the human impact on the climate had still eluded science. That is, until now.

In a first-of-its-kind study, NASA has calculated the individual driving forces of recent climate change through direct satellite observations. And consistent with what climate models have shown for decades, greenhouse gases and suspended pollution particles in the atmosphere, called aerosols, from the burning of fossil fuels are responsible for the lion's share of modern warming.

In other words, NASA has proven what is driving climate change through direct observations — a gold standard in scientific research....

What NASA has done in this study is to calculate, or quantify, the individual forcings measured from specialized satellite observations to determine how much each component warms or cools the atmosphere. To no one's surprise, what they have found is that the radiative forces, which computer models have indicated for decades were warming the Earth, match the changes they measure in observations.....

Specifically, this study has been able to calculate solid numbers for the changes in heat trapped in the Earth system from the individual contributors that influence heat transfer, like radiation, clouds and water vapor, for the period 2003-2019. The researchers did that by analyzing satellite observations and applying what they call "radiative kernels" to disentangle the various components controlling the transfer, absorption and emission of heat inside the Earth system and what is sent back out into space. Up to this point, satellite observations of Earth's radiation budget had only measured the sum total of radiation changes, not the individual components.

Then there are also feedbacks in the climate system which account for a smaller but still important amount of warming. One example of this is the fact that as the atmosphere warms it can hold more water vapor, and that means it can trap more heat, further allowing for more water vapor to build up. This is a positive feedback which perpetuates warming.

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My other blogs. Main ones below

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

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

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

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

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only

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

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Saturday, April 03, 2021



Stunning Israeli Discovery About Reducing Cancer Mortality

They have rediscovered radiation hormesis. We have known about it since the 1930s but no matter

Israeli researchers looked at radiation and cancer data for the entire United States and reaching a stunning conclusion that people living in areas with higher background radiation actually have lower incidents of some key cancers, Ben-Gurion University (BGU) reported this week.

The earth always has a low level of normal background radiation that comes from the sun and cosmic rays as well as from terrestrial sources. The BGU research team took massive amounts of data for radiation levels in the United States and how it affects the entire American population and cancer rates.

The scientists noted that since the 1960s, the general thinking has been that any radiation is bad, and as a result, hundreds of billions of dollars are spent around the world to reduce radiation levels as much as possible.

“We examined whether background radiation impacts human longevity and cancer mortality. Our data covered the entire US population of the 3139 US counties, encompassing over 320 million people,” said the report, written by BGU professors Vadim Fraifeld and Marina Wolfson and Dr. Elroei David of the Nuclear Research Center.

Their findings were stunning and showed that the traditional thinking about background radiation appears to have been completely wrong.

“Exposure to a high background radiation displays clear beneficial health effects in humans,” the scientists reported in their study that was published in the medical journal Bioge​​rontology.

They found that higher background radiation levels lead to lower levels of lung, pancreatic and colon cancers in men and women as well as lower rates of brain and bladder cancers in men.

With higher radiation levels, life expectancy increased.

The team used the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s radiation dose calculator, retrieved data about background radiation from the entire country, and compared it with cancer rate data and life expectancy.

At the same time, they noted that the higher background radiation levels produced no decrease in leukemia or cervical, breast or prostate cancer.

“All in all, it is reasonable to suggest that a radiation threshold does exist, yet it is higher than the upper limit of the natural background radiation levels in the U.S.,” the researchers wrote, concluding that it is time to revise the apparently outdated thinking that all radiation is bad.

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Climate Change is 'Big One' of 'Emerging Risks,' Says Treasury Sec.

Democrats found another opportunity to tackle their pet project of climate change. On Wednesday, Sec. of Treasury Janet Yellen made her inaugural remarks as head of the Financial Stability Oversight Council.

In reporting on Sec. Yellen's remarks, Politco's Victoria Guida wrote, with added emphasis:

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday called climate change “an existential threat” and the biggest emerging risk to the health of the U.S. financial system, pledging to marshal regulatory forces to guard against its harmful effects.

Yellen made the promise during her inaugural appearance as the head of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a panel of top regulators tasked with policing Wall Street behavior that has the potential to crash the entire economy.

The council held its first public meeting under Yellen's leadership Wednesday and focused on climate for the first time since Congress established the body in 2010. The group includes the heads of the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“We cannot only look back and learn the lessons of last year,” Yellen said at that meeting. “We must also look ahead, at emerging risks. Climate change is obviously the big one.”

Sec. Yellen didn't waste any time then. It doesn't come as too much of a surprise though. Earlier this month, the secretary met with Jubilee USA Network, as well as leaders of the Jewish faith, Reuters reported. According to the Treasury, "She noted that the Administration is committed to using the full power of the U.S. federal government to address climate change as part of the Build Back Better plan."

Not everyone was on board, however, especially when it comes to concerns with the FSOC. As Andrew Ackerman and Kate Davidson wrote in their reporting for the Wall Street Journal:

Conservative critics have for years attacked the FSOC as too political, opaque and overreaching. Michael Piwowar, a former Republican member of the Securities and Exchange Commission, described the council in a 2014 speech as a “Firing Squad on Capitalism,” over what he described as its lack of accountability.

“It will be up to Secretary Yellen to determine how transparent she wants the FSOC to be,” said Mr. Piwowar, now executive director of the Milken Institute Center for Financial Markets, in an interview Tuesday.

Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, questioned the FSOC’s work on climate. “I remain concerned that FSOC members may seek to advance a progressive social agenda on global warming, which is beyond the scope of their respective missions and authorities,” he said in a statement Wednesday. “This effort is not grounded in science or economics, but is instead a self-fulfilling prophecy: claim there are future regulatory risks for carbon intensive industries, then use unelected, unaccountable financial regulators to impose regulatory costs on those activities.”

Earlier this month, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) raised eyebrows when she referenced "climate change" when it comes to the crisis at the border. As Beth reported:

According to Pelosi, illegal aliens are crossing the border in hopes of finding work. She cited corruption in Mexico and "climate change" in the Northern Triangle – El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras – that makes farming almost impossible, as reasons the migrants make the trek to the United States.

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EPA’s Totalitarian Frontal Assault on America

Biden-Harris Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan is clearly on a mission. He has “bold aspirations, and a long to-do list,” says The Washington Post. But to succeed, the Post acknowledges, he must “help the EPA get its groove back.” As Reagan put it, “We’ve got a lot of work to do, starting with rebuilding staff morale and getting all our staff back to feeling as if they matter, their voices matter.”

Regan says his job is “to restore the scientific integrity and the utilization of data, of facts, as we move forward, and make some very important decisions.” His second goal is to increase “cooperation” between the EPA and its “subordinate” state environmental agencies. EPA will dictate; states will fall in line.

A big step toward that goal was extending a Memorandum of Agreement between the EPA, the Environmental Council of the States, and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. According to Regan, “EPA is committed to building on the values of transparency, respect, and an open dialogue that are the cornerstone of a successful partnership with the states.” As EPA defines the terms.

An Obama-appointed federal judge just restored the EPA’s use of “secret science” in formulating regulations that businesses and industries must follow just because the EPA says so – with “scientific evidence” that cannot be cross-examined. U.S. District Judge Brian Morris (in Great Falls, Montana) took just hours before vacating the Trump EPA rule that would have ended this Star Chamber style rule.

For decades, the EPA relied on unreviewable studies to impose draconian restrictions on businesses and industries, and thus on the U.S. economy. Trump wanted to bring true transparency to the process. Opponents claimed the Trump secret science” rule would block the use of critical public health studies kept secret supposedly to protect the identities of trial participants – which of course was not the case.

As Trump EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler explained, the “secret science” rule in no way blocked previous “secret” studies; rather, it created tiers in which preference is given to studies with public data. Peer reviewers looking at a study’s raw data did not need to know any of the subject’s names, so no patient confidentiality was at risk. Moreover, in most cases, a review of basic methods, statistics and results is sufficient to determine if they actually support the study’s conclusion. Wheeler also noted:

“Too often Congress shirks its responsibility and defers important decisions to regulatory agencies. These regulators then invoke science to justify their actions, often without letting the public study the underlying data. Part of transparency is making sure the public knows what the agency bases its decisions on.”

Now the Biden-Harris EPA has revived its old policy based on a failed 2015 (Obama-Biden) rulemaking that twists the Clean Air Act language in an effort to destroy auto racing as a sport in the USA.

The EPA claims modifying a vehicle previously certified for street driving for use as a competition-only racecar is unlawful even for vehicles that are trailered and never driven on public roads again. This policy seeks to end a 50-year-old American tradition. It has no precedent; even California exempts racing vehicles from regulation.

Not only does the EPA claim it is illegal to convert a vehicle for racing by modifying its emission system; it claims manufacturing, selling or installing race parts for such vehicles is likewise unlawful. It’s even said enforcement actions against high performance parts – including superchargers, tuners and exhaust systems – will now be a top priority.

This policy constitutes a direct assault on the nation’s 1,300 racetracks, tens of thousands of participants and vehicle owners, and millions of racing fans nationwide. It is also a death blow to retail sales of racing products, a $2 billion a year industry. The move appears to be part of the Obama-Biden-Harris EPA strategy to rid the planet (or at least the USA) of internal combustion engines by taking away the romance of the racecar.

To try to thwart this EPA power grab, the Specialty Equipment Market Association has filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in a lawsuit filed by Gear Box Z, Inc. challenging the racecar conversion ban. The industry group is also supporting the Recognizing the Protection of Motorsports Act (RPM Act), which reaffirms the legality of converting street vehicles into race-only vehicles and confirms the legitimacy of producing, marketing and installing racing equipment.

They should prevail. But with today’s courts, do even the most specific laws still matter?

A recent Wall Street Journal editorial says the Biden-Harris EPA has a secret plan to force massive CO2 emissions reductions under the Clean Air Act, using ozone as its vehicle of choice. “Plan B” is the fallback strategy to be implemented once it is clear that even the Democrat-controlled Congress will not enact economy-killing anti-fossil fuel legislation. The ultimate goal is total fossil fuel eradication.

Under Plan B, EPA will reset the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for ground-level ozone to zero – way below natural levels that Mother Nature herself emits! The “science” is based on a questionable 2017 study from Harvard’s T. C. Chan School of Public Health, which claims there is no safe level of ozone in the atmosphere. How do you prosecute Mother Nature?

Plan B responds to the failure of the Obama-Biden Clean Power Plan, which was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court. It reflects former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s blunt admission that it is technically infeasible and even legally questionable to regulate CO2 as a “criteria pollutant” under the Clean Air Act.

The simple reasons are fundamental. CO2 is what humans and animals exhale. It is what plants inhale to support photosynthesis and produce the oxygen that most life on Planet Earth requires to exist. It does not cause asthma or other diseases. CO2 emissions generated in a locality cannot be measured reliably and certainly cannot be reduced within the 10-year timetable for criteria pollutants. CO2 is not a pollutant.

Using ozone and the NAAQS to regulate CO2 is reportedly the brainchild of Joe Goffman, whom the Biden-Harris Administration has installed as principal deputy assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. Goffman, a chief architect of the Obama era Clean Power Plan, is known as EPA’s “law whisperer.” His specialty is “teaching old laws to do new tricks.”

Goffman’s plan was jump-started on January 19, 2021, when 16 Democratic state attorneys-general filed a legal challenge to the EPA’s recently reauthorized ozone NAAQS. Their one-paragraph sue-and-settle lawsuit claims the standards are “unlawful, arbitrary and capricious and therefore must be vacated.”

The Trump EPA in December 2020 had retained the ozone NAAQS at levels set in 2015 by the Obama-Biden Administration. That action marked only the second time since the 1970 Clean Air Act was enacted that EPA completed its ozone NAAQS review within the mandatory 5-year timeframe.

As the Wall Street Journal explains, Democratic AGs, green groups and top Biden environmental regulators intend to impose the Green New Deal on states through backdoor regulations, because they know they can’t get it through the front door of Congress, even this sycophantic Congress.

Under this nefarious scheme – which could be imposed this year without any “open dialogue” in Congress – every state would be forever out of compliance, JunkScience.com director Steve Milloy emphasizes. It is simply impossible to eliminate natural background levels of ozone. But this action would give EPA effective and arbitrary control over the entire economy, especially fossil fuel use.

Giving unelected bureaucrats and a like-minded political cabal “effective and arbitrary control” over the entire U.S. economy creates a dictatorship of faceless and nameless totalitarians whose diktats the political class can claim they are powerless to upend. This is where America is headed, unless we stop these power-crazed autocrats.

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Biden threatens American energy while Beijing is waiting in the wings

China’s economy is emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic better than ever while America’s economy looks to regain its footing after an entire year lost. Lockdowns decreased oil demand and forced shutdowns at many American refineries, costing thousands of jobs across the country. China’s refineries are outperforming expectations as the rest of the world looks to recover from the coronavirus crisis. China has overtaken the U.S. in crude oil imports, yet President Biden is attacking America’s energy sector. Biden’s energy policy threatens our nation’s small refinery workers and endangers the competitive edge the United States maintains over China.

President Biden’s attack on the American energy sector is an extreme governmental overreach threatening both good paying jobs and the free market. If these small refineries and their workers disappear, we will suffer skyrocketing energy prices and risk a near total collapse of our economy. Meanwhile China and its communist dictators gather strength and position themselves to replace America as the world’s leader.

American energy jobs are being systematically wiped out by President Biden and his allies. As a former public affairs chief of staff at the Department of Labor, it is incredibly disheartening to see the executive office take such harmful actions against honest workers and blatantly undermine American economic interests. Biden shut down the Keystone XL pipeline and threw the region into a state of economic uncertainty. Eastern Montana stands to lose one of its largest taxpayers and nearly 4000 jobs. Biden ally Gretchen Whitmer’s assault on the Line 5 pipeline, a lifeline for refineries and jobs in Michigan and Ohio, is another example of a harmful government overreach undercutting the American energy sector.

Refineries in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, and across the country are in desperate need of waivers to burdensome Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) requirements, but President Biden is ignoring their pleas and instead supporting overly restrictive requirements for RFS waivers, taking the side of big government versus American workers. Between the shutdowns of critical infrastructure and denials of RFS waivers, America’s small refiners and their employees are being squeezed out of the global marketplace.

Despite Biden’s claim to be “tough” on China, his actions against American energy are playing right into the Communist Party’s hands. President Biden has an opportunity right now to begin to put to rest the lingering suspicion that he is bought and paid for by China by ending this interference into the American energy market which directly benefits the very Chinese government which embarrassed the Biden administration in Anchorage, Alaska earlier this month. Biden’s policy reversals are bolstering the Chinese efforts to surpass

American refineries in crude oil processing. In fact, for several months in 2020 during the worse of the pandemic, China actually processed more crude oil than net inputs of crude oil to U.S. refineries.

These recent developments in the Chinese energy sector are cause for serious concern. They are indicative of a more aggressive China, who no longer fears retaliatory actions from the United States. Recently, a senior Chinese foreign policy official claims the United States can no longer speak from a position of strength when criticizing China. If President Biden continues to attack domestic energy, the Chinese official’s claim will become reality.

If our leaders in Washington D.C. wish to maintain economic parity with China, then President Biden must cease his needless attacks on our energy economy. As an advocate for limited government and a free market, I worry that Biden’s actions will cause energy infrastructure to collapse, causing undue harm throughout the country and allowing China’s totalitarian, oppressive regime to capitalize on what would amount to little more than a US energy capitulation.

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My other blogs. Main ones below

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

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

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

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

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only

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

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Thursday, April 01, 2021



Climate change to blame for early cherry blossom season in Japan

Like most of the rest of the world, Japan has been slowly warming for the last century or so. So that could have some effect on cherry blossoming. Pretending that global warming is the only infulence or even the major influence is however slipshod.

The obvious influence is urbanization. Urban centres are warmer and that is even more so as society becomes ever more energy intensive. The more people use air-conditioners in summer and heaters in winter the greater will be the heat output into the urban environment. Much warmer cities rather than the trivial increase in global warming would be the major influence on cherry blossoming


About 63 million people in a normal year flock to Japan to see its most famous flower in full bloom.

Cherry blossoms, or sakura, hit their peak bloom in April, when they paint the country’s parks and gardens with shades of pink and white and fuel a multimillion spring tourism boom.

But this year, in the ancient capital city of Kyoto, the cherry blossoms hit peak bloom too early, on March 26 – the earliest since the Japan Meteorological Agency began collecting data on the flowers 70 years ago.

Others say the bloom is even earlier than what’s been noted in diaries and poetry from Kyoto that date back hundreds of years, AP reported.

According to the 2021 data in Kyoto, the cherry blossoms reached peak bloom 10 days ahead of the 30-year average, and it was a similar story in other cities across Japan.

Scientists fear climate change is to blame.

“We can say it’s most likely because of the impact of the global warming,” Shunji Anbe from the Japan Meteorological Agency told AP, adding the trees were sensitive to temperature changes.

The average March temperature in Kyoto, a key destination for cherry blossoms, rose to 10.6C in 2020, up from 8.6C in 1953. This March, the average temperature was even higher, at 12.4C.

Of the 58 benchmark trees across Japan that are tracked by the agency, 40 reached their peak bloom before the start of April, with 14 blooming in record time, according to AP.

It normally takes about two weeks for the first bud to appear and all the blossoms to fall from the tree.

Benjamin Cook, a research scientist at Columbia University, told The Washington Post the cherry blossom peak bloom date had been relatively stable for about 1000 years, from the years 812 to 1800, before a sharp shift to earlier in spring.

“Since the 1800s, warming has led to a steady trend toward earlier flowering that continues to the present day,” he said.

“Some of this warming is due to climate change, but some is also likely from an enhanced heat island effect due to increased urbanisation of the environment over the last couple of centuries.”

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Carbon War Pits Politics Against Reality

President Joe Biden is taking “aggressive action,” the White House recently announced, to ensure that the United States achieves a “carbon pollution-free power sector” by 2035 and a “net-zero economy” just 15 years later.

On the other side of the pond, Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister, has pledged that the United Kingdom will reduce its carbon emissions by 68% in the next nine years, while the European Parliament has voted to reduce emissions by 60%.

In an ideal world, this would be great news. In the real world—one in which renewable energy is still way too inefficient and dependent on subsidies from governments already drowning in debt—such objectives are unrealistic.

Global debt was expected to reach an estimated $277 trillion, or some 365% of the globe’s entire gross domestic product (GDP), by the end of last year, the World Economic Forum has estimated. The U.S. fisc is equally out of whack. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows that U.S. debt has exceeded annual GDP every year since 2015, long before the multi-trillion-dollar COVID-19 “relief” packages were passed. From a financial perspective alone, therefore, the administration’s objectives invite skepticism.

They also invite skepticism from an energy perspective. Take the International Energy Agency (IEA), whose World Energy Outlook sets the objective of reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 60% in 20 years.

To achieve that goal, the IEA aims for a 25% drop in energy demand. But according to a recent analysis by Goehring & Rozencwajg, an investment firm specializing in commodities, this is unlikely to happen. While energy demand has dropped by 10% over the last 20 years in wealthy, developed countries, the analysis found, it has increased by 65% in developing countries, which have been driving world economic growth in recent years.

The IEA also assumes that the concentration of CO2 per unit of energy will decline by half. This is also unlikely, since the developed countries that have been attempting to reduce emissions have achieved only about a 10% reduction. Even Germany, which gets nearly 40% of its electricity from renewables, has been unable to come close to this goal, achieving little better than the United States, where wind and solar account for less than 9% of generated power.

To achieve President Biden’s goal of carbon-free electricity by 2035, the United States would need to build a staggering number of new nuclear plants (a much cleaner source of fuel than hydrocarbons) or even greater numbers of new solar and wind power installations.

Without such increases, Reason magazine science correspondent Ronald Bailey has calculated that it would take some 50 years for renewables to replace existing fossil-fuel based sources of electric power—at a cost of additional trillions of dollars in federal spending.

The lesson here is not that we need to opt for pollution or renounce our clean-energy ideals, but that we also need to consider current financial realities, the added costs such a shift would entail and the very real technological constraints.

Human kind cannot bear very much reality, wrote T.S. Eliot in his “Four Quartets.” He might have been thinking of politicians and climate change.

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Prosperity frees people to protect the environment

True Environmentalists Should Prioritize Economic Prosperity

The COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying lockdowns reduced global CO2 emissions by 7 percent last year. Some environmentalists, such as the University College London professor Mariana Mazzucato, have thus wondered about the feasibility of future “climate lockdowns … to tackle a climate emergency.” Yet even if we ignore the negative consequences of the lockdowns on broader health outcomes and human psychology, Mazzucato appears to fail to account for the well-known correlation between economic prosperity and environmental quality.

Lockdowns have contributed to around 100 million people, most of them living in the developing world, sliding back into extreme poverty. While they may have lowered the CO2 emissions in the short term, by increasing absolute poverty, the lockdowns may cause massive environmental destruction in the long term. Simply put, people can afford to care about the environment only when they have enough income to cover their basic needs. If their survival depends on killing an endangered animal or cutting down a rare tree, then so be it.

The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis posits that environmental damage increases in tandem with economic growth, but only until a certain level of income is reached. Once people are wealthy enough not to have to worry about day-to-day survival, environmental degradation stops, and ecosystems begin to recover. The environmental scientist Jesse H. Ausubel, for example, suggests that once a nation achieves a GDP per capita of $6,200 (in 2021 dollars), deforestation stops or afforestation occurs.

In fact, forest coverage is growing in China, Russia, India, and Vietnam – all emerging economies that reached the $6,200-mark. The curve is even clearer in wealthy regions like North America and Europe – both of which have more trees today than they did a century ago. The UK, for example, has more than doubled its forest area in the last 100 years. Conversely, deforestation continues in poor African and Latin American countries. Scientists have found that the EKC holds true in all manner of environmental domains, including water pollution, carbon dioxide emissions, nitrogen, sulphur, and biodiversity.

While it is too early to gauge the impact of the lockdowns on forest coverage, the lockdowns have already wreaked havoc on endangered species and protected habitats in the developing world. In Kenya, the killing of giraffes has skyrocketed. Given that a tonne of giraffe meat is worth about $1,000 (i.e., almost seven months of the average Kenyan salary), it is unsurprising that desperate locals have resorted to slaughtering the endangered animal. Kenya’s Mara Elephant Project also recorded that illegal logging in the region peaked in the months following the first lockdown. In Botswana, government workers had to evacuate dozens of critically endangered black rhinos from the Okavango Delta after six of the animals were found dead after the lockdowns were implemented.

In Colombia, the poaching of endangered pumas and jaguars has also rapidly increased. In India, tiger numbers were steady, as incomes have increased, for the last two decades. But, since the lockdowns were imposed, various reports have highlighted an upsurge in tiger poaching and illegal hunting. Similarly, in India’s Western Bengal region, where over a million jobs have been lost due to the lockdowns, the local authorities have reported the first-ever instance of illegal ivory poaching in the region. The problem of illegal poaching is exacerbated by the fact that park rangers in some countries have been left without work and income. The animals, in other words, have lost their human protectors.

The World Economic Forum recently acknowledged that the significant increase in bushmeat harvesting and wildlife trafficking in Africa “is directly linked to COVID-19-related lockdowns.” Similarly, the UK-based wildlife charity called People’s Trust for Endangered Species has warned that “unintended consequences” of lockdowns could undo “decades of work” devoted to animal protection.

Fortunately for mother nature, as economies begin to recover from the government-mandated lockdowns, the number of people who rely on illegal activities will decrease, and biodiversity will slowly recover. However, the EKC and the wretched impact of lockdowns on poverty and biodiversity teaches us an important lesson – true environmentalists should seek to prioritize economic growth, not lower it. Poverty-reducing policies, such as strong property rights, freedom to trade, lower regulation, and few burdensome taxes, as shown annually in the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World Report, remain some of the most reliable ways of raising economic prosperity for all.

In conclusion, poor people depend on mother nature to survive. Rich people, in contrast, can decouple themselves from the environment, protect wildlife for future generations, and return vast swathes of land to nature. Now, what environmentalist wouldn’t want that?

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Another stupid prophecy about the reef

What the future temperature will be nobody knows. But the report below assumes a large rise. Even if that came to pass, it would not mean the end of the reef. Corals grow in wildly different temperatures -- from Iceland to the Persian gulf. So we might expect some turnover of species but that is all

It's boring to have to point this out again but Australian corals have the greatest diversity in the Torres Strait, where the temperature is always HIGH. Corals THRIVE in high temperatures. Some species may not but there are plenty that do


A damning new report has painted a grim picture of Australia’s future, with one of the nation’s most renowned natural wonders set to suffer.

Up to 90 per cent of the world’s coral reefs are expected to vanish, even at low levels of warming, and there are grave fears for one of Australia’s most famous natural wonders. The outlook for the Great Barrier Reef is considered “very poor”, according to a new report by the Australian Academy of Science.

And climate change is a major driver.

At 1.5 degrees of warming, the world will lose between 70 and 90 per cent of coral reefs.

“Substantial losses in ocean productivity, ongoing ocean acidification, and the increasing deterioration of coastal systems such as mangroves and seagrasses are projected to occur if global warming exceeds 2C,” the harrowing report states.

Scientists said the target set by the Paris Climate Agreement of keeping global warming to 1.5C was “virtually impossible” as they painted a grim picture for Australia’s ecosystems.

It is more likely that global temperatures will soar by up to 3C. "Critical thresholds in many natural systems are likely to be exceeded as global warming of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels continues,” the report said.

“These impacts will increase as global warming reaches 2C and beyond, with iconic ecosystems such as the Great Barrier Reef and the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park being severely affected.

“At 3C of global warming, many of Australia’s ecological systems would be unrecognisable.”

A leading figure within the European Union has even sounded the alarm on the Great Barrier Reef.

The EU’s commissioner for environment, oceans and fisheries, Virginijus Sinkevičius, told Guardian Australia he feared for the natural wonder. “As long as we do not change our behaviours, things will not improve,” he said.

Global warming has already triggered mass bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef that have destroyed at least half of the world’s largest reef system. It has also contributed to droughts and bushfires.

Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, who chairs the expert panel that developed the report, said a rapid transition to net zero greenhouse gas emissions was required if the international community was to limit warming to well below 2C.

“Current international commitments to greenhouse gas emission reduction, if unchanged, would result in average global surface temperatures that are 3C above the pre-industrial period in the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren,” he said.

“The evidence presented in this risk-assessment report, which is based on peer-reviewed scientific literature, indicates that this would have serious consequences for Australia and the world.”

But scientists said it was possible for Australia to meet its climate goals.

Australian Academy of Science president John Shine said the new report suggested while the planet was warning, science had its solutions.

“Australia is well positioned to meet the climate change challenge by combining our scientific knowledge with economic opportunities associated with moves to net zero greenhouse gas emissions,” Professor Shine said.

The report makes 10 recommendations, including scaling up the development and implementation of next-generation zero greenhouse gas technologies and exploring how food production and supply systems can prepare for climate change.

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My other blogs. Main ones below

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

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

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

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

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only

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

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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