There is nothing that can be done about the changing weather patterns that are leaving havoc in their wake, for example, extreme amounts of snow and ice followed by lots of flooding.
It takes a decent respect for the obvious truth to admit that mankind has no control over the climate. What is occurring, however, based on actual and anecdotal information, is a trend toward global cooling. Between rising food costs driven by an environmental agenda and real, not imagined climate change, the word famine is going to be heard more often.
We are seeing (1) weather related crop failures and (2) the artificial increase of the cost of food because crops like corn have been diverted to make ethanol. In the rush to cash in on the higher price for corn, farmers who would otherwise plant wheat and other grains are creating shortages.
Take away “biofuels” and you take away the imbalances being seen and felt worldwide.
However, there is nothing that can be done about the changing weather patterns that are leaving havoc in their wake, i.e., lots of snow and ice followed by lots of flooding. At the same time that Al Gore has announced a $300 million propaganda campaign to secure global warming legislation, Mother Nature is getting colder.
California experienced a five-day freeze in January 2007 that ruined $1.42 billion worth of produce. In April 2007, a freeze destroyed 95 percent of South Carolina’s peach crop and 90 percent of North Carolina’s apple harvest, as colder weather is increasing around the world.
In late March, the website www.longrangeweather.com posted an article by climatologist Cliff Harris asking, “Are We Entering a Period of Sudden ‘Global Cooling’?” in which he noted that, “The total extent of snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere at the end of February was at the highest level since the same period 42 years ago in 1966.”
“According to my climatological colleagues in Britain, Japan, and the U.S., the winter months of December, January, and February were likewise the coldest as a whole since at least the late 1970s, in some cases dating back to either the 1930s or even the 1880s.”
“In southeastern China, the winter of 2007-2008 has been the worst since 1210, nearly 800 years ago!” Severe winter conditions killed at least 40% of the 2007-2008 rapeseed crop (canola), a staple in China.
On March 24, the Associated Press reported from Asia that the rising cost of food staples was due in part because “freak weather is a factor.” But it is not freak weather. It is part of a trend toward cooling.
Peter Brabeck-Letmache, the president of Nestle, the world’s largest food and beverage company, spoke out in March, saying, “If as predicted we look to use biofuels to satisfy 20 percent of the growing demand for oil products, there will be nothing left to eat.”
What makes this shift particularly obscene is the fact that there is ample crude oil to meet the world’s need for gasoline and diesel. The mandate to use alternative fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel has the secondary effect of exacerbating food shortages because the cost of fuel to plant, harvest, and transport crops has increased.
The weather, however, is a mitigating factor. As one farming publication noted recently, “Extreme weather shifts over the past two years have reduced wheat harvest worldwide by nearly ten percent.” Depending on varying analysis, wheat supplies are at their lowest since either 1973 or 1940.
It’s not just wheat or soy. On March 20, an article in the New York Times reported that, “Rising prices and a growing fear of scarcity have prompted some of the world’s largest rice producers to announce drastic limits on the amount of rice they export.” The price of rice has nearly doubled.
Aggravating the shortages and increasing the prices are the steps being taken by nations placing curbs on the export of some of their food crops. As often as not this leads to further food shortages because local farmers then change what they plant.
The result is an increasing number of food-related disturbances worldwide in places like Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia, Mexico, Morocco, Uzbekistan, and Yemen, to name just a few. In the United States, bakers recently marched on Washington, DC to call attention to wheat shortages and its rising price.
A combination of many factors, government imposed environmental dictates, export curbs, and crop losses resulting from the cooling weather cycle could generate further shortages of food. My crystal ball tells me we are going to read and hear a lot more about food protests around the world.
ACaruba@aol.com
http://www.anxietycenter.com/
Read more articles by Alan Caruba
I see the coming food scare has change y'alls rhetoric from "global climate change is a myth and man didn't do anything to change the weather" to "global climate change is REAL, but man CAN'T do anything to change the weather BACK."
Whether a locality experiences hotter/drier or cooler/wetter phenomena is irrelevant to the issue of radically changing patterns relating to the unavailability of food. That is, while whatever places you cite that are experiencing flooding and freezing, just as many if not more are feeling the effects of drought and desertification. Local weather is not the issue, food scarcity is.
As you rightly note, food scarcity is CAUSED BY two things: changing weather patterns and competition for grain in use for fuel. BOTH of these things are caused by only ONE thing: our obsession with burning stuff for energy. Coal, oil, and gas are to blame for this. Isn't the most logical conclusion then, rather than burn more stuff (ie, open ANWR), to find ways to power our future while burning much much less carbon fuel?
(Hint: like my friend said just yesterday, "It's almost as though there's this giant ball of fire in the sky radiating energy down on us.")
Comment by Chasm | April 15, 2008
So, solar energy is going to change both global freezing AND global cooling, depending on your locality, and create fertile land to produce food crops and solve global food scarcity? Quite a tall order for any energy source, really, but how do you suppose solar will do all of that?
Comment by Patrick Mulligan | April 16, 2008
Typo: That should read "global freezing AND global warming". I'd hate for a typing error to take away from the seriousness of my comments…
Comment by Patrick Mulligan | April 16, 2008
I didn't say anything about 'changing' anything. I'm simply amused that it has finally taken world famine to wake your side up to the fact of climate change, and doing my darnedest to keep you guys from blaming the clear consequences on the DFH's rather than the foot-dragging anti-science crowd.
I'm not going do debate your hotter/colder nonsense. The author goes to great lengths to mention the places that have had a cold, wet winter, but leaves out places like Atlanta, which is experiencing extreme drought. But utilizing selective facts to fabricate your point is pretty much SOP, so it's not worth my time.
I know you've read my other posts, so I know you know that I know that solar's no panacea. But it's a start, and a lot better idea than continuing to burn stuff like there's no tomorrow.
Buy your children land in Minnesota. There's plenty of water and in 20 years the winters will be much milder.
Comment by Chasm | April 16, 2008
"utilizing selective facts to fabricate your point is pretty much SOP, so it's not worth my time."
I didn't use any facts at all, let alone to fabricate my point. But as long as we're on the subject, I think it's kind of ironic that a drought in Atlanta is proof-positive of a decimating, man-made global heatwave, but a crop freeze in California is "utilizing selective facts" to make one's point.
I think you missed the forest for the trees in this article. The point was that weather conditions (cold ones, in this particular case) affect crops, and burning our food sources for energy harms global supply. I fail to see how solar electricity will change weather conditions (even if you're an anthropogenic global warming guy, you can't possibly think that the United States of roughly 300 million people can radically change the climate of a 6 billion person planet all by itself by simply supplementing it's electrical generation with solar), or appreciably have an effect on food supply - remember that we're converting food supplies into ethanol to supplement our gasoline; we're not burning it in our electrical generators.
I guess the real moral of the story is that it doesn't really matter whether earth is freezing, or baking, or has been doing either or both for the last hundred years - it's going to affect food output, and we're all going to die. Doom, I say!
Comment by Patrick Mulligan | April 16, 2008
Truly.
Patrick, by 'you,' I didn't mean you personally, just 'you all,' as in conservative intellectuals. Imprecise language, my bad. Also, I didn't offer Atlanta as proof positive of anything. It's just a data point that contradicts the 'cooling' talking point that folks like Mr. Caruba use to deny that scientist actually know what they're talking about. And I didn't miss nothin about nothin. Except for the editing of data points in an attempt to be a 'global warming' contrarian, I pretty much agree with what Mr Caruba has to say: burning fossil fuels is causing famine and food shortage, and it's gonna get worse.
However, you're unfortunately probably right that we cant 'undue' whatever direction we have taken our climate. We have created an imbalance, pushed the pendulum so to speak, and there may be many unpredictable occilations before this comes to rest and equilibrium is restored. MY point with pushing solar these last few days is that, in terms of responding to the swinging pendulum, is that it seems logical to do whatever we can to avoid giving it extra pushes. There has been more than one post on this blog in the last week dealing with our environmental problems. Some seem to want to push that pendulum even more, burning up everything as fast as we can. Others feel we should big up on nuclear, which might slow the present trajectory, but also may cause other harmful resonances down the road. Political and practical purposes dictate that both will probably happen. But there will be a market for solar (the Spanish are WAY ahead of us on this - they're building one of the plants in Arizona) as well as wind and thermal. Leaving these technologies out of an assessment of future energy portfolios makes it look like you're peddling something. Get with it man!
Comment by Chasm | April 16, 2008