The rush for biofuels could harm the world’s poorest people, Oxfam has said.
In a new report, the UK aid charity appears to be joining a growing chorus of concern about the side-effects of Europe’s drive to get fuel from plants.
BBC News website: ‘Biofuel rush harmful, Oxfam warns’
Perhaps Oxfam should stop pushing climate change propaganda via ‘film parties’ etc.
Yes, it’s that science fiction film ‘AIT’ again.
“A recent study, Richey et al 2007, showed a warm MWP in the Pigmy Basin, Gulf of Mexico. Julie Richey made an effective presentation at the AGU Session showing an elevated MWP from her foram studies and, together with Alicia Newton who made a similar presentation. Richey said that they had faced unusual opposition from one reviewer who threw many roadblocks towards publishing their results – something that was unprecedented in their experience in presenting empirical results from a qualified laboratory.”
From Climate Audit: Richey et al 2007 and Cariaco
“But we know that Linah Ababneh updated the Sheep Mountain data in 2002. We also know that Linah Ababneh’s update, aside from finding a difference between strip bark and whole bark chronologies, did not replicate Graybill’s results and had no HS shape whatever. (Figures for Sheep Mountain for strip bark and whole bark from 1600 on are shown separately in the thesis.) So the Sheep Mountain chronology had been updated – why wouldn’t this update have been used, aside from it not having a HS shape?”
Ababneh Fig. 5. Cold and warm periods as inferred from tree ring widths chronology (Ababneh, 2006, This study) fluctuations above and below the mean after normalizing, whole-bark and strip-bark chronologies are grouped together from two sites Patriarch Grove and Sheep Mountain.
From Climate Audit: ‘Hughes and the Ababneh Thesis’
Last week I drove from Brisbane (south eastern Queensland) to Barham on the Murray River.
Listening to the news in Brisbane I was getting the impression the Murray River was nearly empty of water.
In fact there is still a lot of water in the river but the Hume and Dartmouth dams are very low. Also, some of the tributories of the river are being shut-off with cod dying in the ‘shrinking’ billabongs. And many river red gums on the flood plains are looking very stressed from the drought.
But as this picture shows, the river itself is still magnificent and the red gums along the river beautiful.
No one can deny that in recent years the need to “save the planet” from global warming has become one of the most pervasive issues of our time. As Tony Blair’s chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, claimed in 2004, it poses “a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism”, warning that by the end of this century the only habitable continent left will be Antarctica.
Inevitably, many people have been bemused by this somewhat one-sided debate, imagining that if so many experts are agreed, then there must be something in it. But if we set the story of how this fear was promoted in the context of other scares before it, the parallels which emerge might leave any honest believer in global warming feeling uncomfortable.
The Sunday Telegraph: ‘The deceit behind global warming’
New Book:
Scared to Death: From BSE To Global Warming — How Scares Are Costing Us The Earth by Christopher Booker and Richard North (Continuum, £16.99)
A vividly coloured fish could be the key to saving the Caribbean’s coral reefs from plummeting into terminal decline, scientists claim.
Their research forecasts that reefs risk being damaged beyond repair by the influx of seaweed.
BBC News website: Parrotfish to aid reef repair
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
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