Biofuels Lead To Food Crisis

This is unfortunately so predictable.  It has been said here by me, and others all along, that using food crops to make fuel is insanity.  What is worse is it being done in the name of "stopping global warming" (now they call it climate change) by using less of those evil fossil fuels (oil, gas, and coal).  And these people call this being "green".....and call themselves "Progressives".  They're not progressive in any way.  To put it politely, they are regressive.  They would have us living in the stone age, or using horses and buggies, if that.

It is becoming painfully clear that solar power and wind power and geothermal energy can not meet the demand either.  Thank goodness we've discovered what can be done with hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and horizontal drilling to increase the production of oil and gas, the only fuels that can meet the world's demand.  See here for more information on oil and gas: http://geopetesview.blogspot.com/
Peter

The Biofuels Disaster: ‘Green’ Politicians Cause Another Food Crisis

Written by Dr. Benny Peiser, GWPF | July 20 2012

A United Nations expert has condemned the growing use of crops to produce biofuels as a replacement for petrol as a crime against humanity. The UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said he feared biofuels would bring more hunger. The growth in the production of biofuels has helped to push the price of some crops to record levels. It was, he said, a crime against humanity to divert arable land to the production of crops which are then burned for fuel. --Grant Ferrett, BBC News, 27 October 2007
The world is running short of corn. That is the message being delivered by the market, where on Thursday prices pushed above $8 a bushel for the first time. With no obvious abundance of international suppliers to make up for the drought-ravaged US corn crop and stocks close to record lows, traders and analysts believe demand must be pegged back.The biggest potential for a reduction in corn demand comes from the ethanol industry, which is using roughly 5bn bushels of corn, or nearly 40 per cent of the US corn crop, each year to make fuel for cars and animal feed. -- Financial Times, 19 July 2012

read the remainder of the article here:

A Moving View Of North America At Night From Space: Energy? Who Needs Energy?

A moving view from the space station of North America at night, from Mexico to New Brunswick.  Look closely and you will recognize the Great Lakes and major cities.  Pay particular attention to all of the lights.  What would America, or anyone anywhere for that matter, do without electricity?  We would be in a world of hurt.  And some people think we can substitute all the energy we get from those "evil" fossil fuels and dangerous nuclear power plants with solar and wind power?  Oh, and today Obama is suggesting pouring money into a cockeyed scheme to make fuel from.....hold on to your coffee......algae.  Yes, that would amount to about a fart in the wind.

Someone ought to send Obama up to the space station and have him orbit the Earth a few times like in the following video.  Ask him to look down at all the lights, imagine all the people, all the activity, the work and productivity, and then ask him if it can really be replaced by his bird-brained (sorry George) alternative energy ideas.  Sure let's do some research on alternatives, but not at the cost of bankrupting ourselves.  Obviously our "community organizer" President knows nothing about energy, and amazingly, neither do his advisers, or are they his "handlers"?
Peter

Mexico to New Brunswick

www.youtube.com

For High Resolution version, visit our video page: http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Videos/CrewEarthObservationsVideos/#mexbrunswick_iss_20120130 This video was taken...

Thank You Very Much Global Warming Alarmists --- More Job Losses, More Human Suffering

Yes it is a long hot summer, but not as uncomfortable as it is becoming in Britain where energy costs are rising and availability is shrinking. There is one major group to blame: those promoting the myth of man-caused global warming. They say: "stop the use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) they cry; save the planet from all that global warming carbon dioxide! And if we can't get people to voluntarily comply then these fuels must be taxed into non-existence." The global warming alarmists (some of them) actually believe this will be a good thing. If people have to suffer, they insist, it is for their own good.

If only this were some kind of academic game. Unfortunately this is deadly serious business and real people are already beginning to suffer. At the top of my list of utter idiots and hypocritical scoundrels are the infamous, discredited embarrassments to humanity Al Gore and John Kerry. Do a search of this blog for those two alone. Their dirty laundry list is appalling.
Peter

Ta Ta, Tata (source)

The UK may be waving goodbye to Tata Steel and some other large industrial concerns as the government piles on more green costs, making it almost impossible for global businesses based there to compete.

Companies including Tata Steel Ltd. and GrowHow U.K. Ltd. may leave the U.K. as climate-protection policies boost electricity and natural-gas costs.

Factories will pay 18 percent to 141 percent more for gas, electricity and carbon-reduction programs by 2020, adding about 7 million pounds ($11 million) to the bill for a typical large energy consumer, the London-based Energy-Intensive Users Group and Britain’s Trades Union Congress said in a report on the impact of climate policy released today.

“The combined impact of the government’s climate change policies is imposing significant costs on the U.K.’s energy- intensive industries, and without urgent review could see some companies leaving the U.K. for good,” according to the report.

…

It’s the second report this month suggesting potential job losses in Britain because of climate policy.

the future, not so bright green after all

Large industrial concerns are likely to quit Britain not just because of direct cost increases, but also because soon there just won’t be enough power available to them, thanks to a completely clueless Energy Minister:

…in the real world, the £100 billion-plus energy question that confronts us all in Britain today is how we are going to fill that massive, fast-looming gap in our electricity supplies when the antiquated power stations which currently supply us with two-fifths of the power needed to keep our economy running are forced to close.

The headline answer given by Mr Huhne is that we must build thousands more giant wind turbines.

As a 24-carat green ideologue, he is viscerally opposed to replacing the ageing nuclear and coal-fired plants which currently provide us with more than half our electricity.

Like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown before him, he dreams we can somehow fill that gap by erecting 6,000 wind turbines in the seas around Britain’s shores, and thousands more across many of the most beautiful parts of our countryside.

What is truly terrifying about Mr Huhne as our energy minister is that he seems so astonishingly ignorant about even the most basic principles of how electricity is produced.

He boasts about how the 3,000 wind turbines we have already built have the ‘capacity’ to generate 4.5 gigawatts of electricity.

Capacity is the crucial word here. As he could see from figures on his own department’s website, thanks to the fact that the wind blows only intermittently, the amount of power these windmills actually produce is barely a quarter of that.

In other words, the amount of electricity generated by all those turbines put together, at a cost of billions of pounds, is no more than that provided by a single medium-size conventional power station – equivalent to a mere two per cent of the electricity we need.

Good luck Britain, you’re going to need it.

Earth Temperature History - Why The Panic Now?

The following is a graph showing temperture changes during the last 450,000 years. The data was derived from ice cores taken from the Antarctic Ice Sheet. The data is considered reliable because it correlates with temperature calculations from other sources, such as ocean and lake sediments, tree growth rings, and fossil evidence. What is immediately obvious is the Earth's climate is continually changing, in ways comparable to what we are seeing today. Long, long before we began burning fossil fuels.
Peter





Global temperature variation for the past 425,000 years. The present is at the right. The horizontal 0 line represents the 1961-1990 average global temperature. The numbers on the left show the variation from that baseline in °C.

The data were derived from an analysis of ice cores taken at the Vostok station in Antarctica. Find out more about how temperature estimates are made from proxy data.

Image based on data from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.


The present day is at the far right of the chart. What do we see? First of all, there’s quite a bit of fluctuation. There are long periods of time when the average global temperature was as much as 9°C colder than now. These were Ice Ages. Much of the northern part of the world was covered with thick sheets of ice, much like we see today in Greenland and Antarctica. The most recent Ice Age ended about 12,000 years ago. There were also times when it was warmer than today. On the whole, we are in a relatively warm period. What causes these changes in climate? There are many factors. Find out more…

Global Warming-- Can You Trust Wikipedia?

Well, I guess we live and learn. The revolutionary online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which allows anyone and everyone to enter and edit information, has proven inaccuracies and is being banned as a reference source by many major universities. This is unfortunate because when seeking information on a subject such as global warming, it provides a wealth of information.



It seems there are more than a few unethical people publishing inaccurate and biased information on Wikipedia. People who have an agenda, an ax-to-grind, people who purposely want to mislead us, mold us, and shape our opinion. It sounds a lot like Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany's Propaganda Minister at work, doesn't it? He was master of "the so-called Big Lie technique of mass propaganda."



This unfortunate revelation about Wikipedia is rather ironic and timely, because it makes me think about the mass of distorted and frightening information being spread by the people claiming we have a looming crisis of global warming and catastrophic climate change caused by mankind's burning of fossil fuels. Could it be that Propaganda Minister and Prophet Al Gore is spreading a big lie about global warming?


By insisting that students not rely on Wikipedia, by making them think for themselves and cross reference their information, universities are taking a step in the right direction. I hope I will be swamped by people vigorously defending Wikipedia, because it truly is a wonderful source of information. The lesson is don't trust everything you read.



To see the article about universities banning Wikipedia, go here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17740041/