Dennis Avery

Biotech: To Survive The Mega-Droughts

CHURCHVILLE, VA—When, O Lord, will the public turn its back on the ill-founded “concerns” of the Green movement that misinformed us about DDT, salmon extinction, deformed frogs, man-made global warming, and a host of other fake “calamities”? When will we support more high-yield farming research to meet redoubled world food needs in 2050? Especially since the alternative would be to plow down more wild species’ habitat to plant additional low-yield crops.

3 Billion and counting: The cost of banning DDT

CHURCHVILLE, VA—3 Billion and Counting is a new documentary film on the awful human cost of banning DDT. The film’s producer, medical doctor Rutledge Taylor, circled the tropical world, finding that malaria has claimed some three billion human lives throughout history—and the toll of needless deaths is continuing to mount by perhaps 1.5 million per year.

Higher Yields: The Only Farming Answer

CHURCHVILLE, VA—Is the Green Movement finally ready to face the global need to triple crop yields over the next 40 years—and drop its dedication to land-selfish organic farming? Maybe yes, and none too soon. The planet’s wild biodiversity is at stake.

Obama and FDR: They really are alike!

CHURCHVILLE, VA—Quoting from an L.A. Times blog of Aug. 20:

“Just a few things to catch up on for the weekend now that the Fundraiser in Chief has gone on another vacation. . . . The Congressional Budget Office says the 2010 Federal deficit will be in excess of $1.3 trillion, as in $1,000,000,000,000+ . . . initial unemployment claims jumped a half-million last week, the worst since last November, as national unemployment remains at 9.5% and the economy sheds 131,000 more jobs . . . But before leaving for his ninth presidential vacation, 10 days at a secluded estate on Martha’s Vineyard, Obama devoted four minutes in the White House driveway to a special statement on the latest disappointing jobs numbers. According to the President, he’s been ‘adamant’ with Congress for months now about a new jobs bill to help small businesses.”

Extreme weather? Not yet!

Churchville, VA—The death toll from recent “extreme weather events” has been sharply declining since the 1920s, as my valued colleague Indur Goklany has valorously pointed out. Air conditioning, flood control, earthquake proofing and better weather forecasting have all helped. Despite vast media coverage, extreme weather now causes only a half-percent of global deaths. A large part of the gains came through crop production increases using fossil-fueled industrial fertilizers and irrigation pumps. This meant the world had fossil-fueled food to share with countries suddenly caught by devastating (but short- term) drought or flood.

Taxes, dust and oysters: Feds are busy but wrong

CHURCHVILLE, VA—The Obama administration seems deeply committed to policies that can’t work.

Probably not the ‘hottest year’

Churchville, VA—James Hansen of NASA, an ardent believer in man-made warming, announced recently that “The 12-month running mean global temperature in the Goddard Space Institute analysis has reached a new record in 2010 . . . NASA, June 3, 2010. The main factor is our estimated temperature change for the Arctic region.” The GISS figures show that recent temperatures in the Arctic have been up to four degrees C warmer than the long-term mean.

Is America’s west doomed for drought?

Churchville, VA—Does the modern warming doom the western U.S. to drought? Two climate experts have just noted that the region now has “the worst drought since measurements began,” and they predict a future of soaring temperatures and declining snow-packs.

California snowfall unchanged over past century

Churchville, VA—California’s southern Sierra snowfall has not changed over the past century, according to John Christy, a native Californian and atmospheric researcher who’s now in charge of the global temperature-measuring satellites. Christy reconstructed snowfall records at Huntington Lake, CA, from 1916–2009. The station’s data since 1972 had been missing, but Christy found two nearby stations had very high correlations with Huntington Lake. That allowed him to assess southern Sierra snowfall over nearly the past century.

Shrimp farming has grown up

CHURCHVILLE, VA—In the 1980s, poor rice farmers in Asia and Latin America began digging out shrimp ponds to meet the soaring world demand for seafood. The environmental movement was, perhaps justifiably, aghast. The shrimp farmers had cut down lots of mangrove trees to make room for the ponds. Also, the effluent from the shrimp ponds was substantial, though we have to remember the ocean’s ability to dilute and disarm pollution quickly.

Modern farming best for the planet

Churchville, VA—Stanford University recently startled the world with its conclusion that conventional high-yield farming is far better for the planet than low-yield farming. And this includes the First World’s current icon, organic farming.

Making good science decisions

CHURCHVILLE, VA—I can’t help but praise Michael Specter’s new book: Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives. Specter warns that we live in a world where the leaders of African nations prefer to let their citizens starve to death rather than import genetically-modified food grains. Childhood vaccines have proven to be the most effective public health measure in history, yet people march on Washington to protest their use. Fifty years ago pharmaceutical companies were regarded as vital supports for our good health and lengthening life spans; now they are seen as callous corporate enemies of health and the environment.

Pay attention to sunspot forecasts

CHURCHVILLE, VA—The sun is currently producing fewer sunspots than it has in more than a century. Florida State researchers tell us this may predict bad U.S.hurricane seasons. They say that when the sunspot numbers peak, within the (roughly) 11-year sunspot cycle, the U.S. has less than a 25 percent chance of being hit with a hurricane. The odds of a hurricane rise to 64 percent in the lowest-sunspot years. Even more important, the probability of three or more hurricanes hitting the U.S.in a season increases dramatically during low-sunspot periods.

How to prevent a “dust bowl” Africa

CHURCHVILLE, VA—People and wild species are at more risk in Africa than on any other continent. Huge numbers of people are trying to subsist on hunting scarce animals and unsustainable slash-and-burn farming. If this continues it will undoubtedly trigger a Dust Bowl like that of the American Midwest in the 1930s along with massive famine.

Prepare for a bit of cooling predicts geologist

“Global warming is over—at least for a few decades,” geologist Don Easterbrook, professor emeritus from Western Washington University told the Heartland Institute’s Fourth International Conference on Climate Change on May 19. He warned, however, us not to rejoice. Colder winters kill twice as many people as hot weather while crop production suffers from shorter growing seasons and weather-disrupted harvests.

Presidential Chemo-phobia?

CHURCHVILLE, VA—The newly published President’s Cancer Report puts this quote in bold type:

Species safe even if world warms

Churchville, VA—Biologists are again predicting massive species losses as the world warms. But where are the corpses? There have been few findings of extinctions among continental bird and mammal species over the past 500 years. The species extinctions have been virtually all on islands, as humans have brought such alien predators as rats, cats, and Canadian thistles to places where they had no natural enemies.

Green jobs or shale gas? The numbers talk

CHURCHVILLE, VA— The shale gas industry’s boom is creating 100,000 jobs in Pennsylvania during 2010, according to Penn State University. Only a few of these new jobs are on drill rigs; many of those jobs go to highly-skilled oil patch veterans from out of state. But the gas industry’s expansion has created jobs by the tens of thousands in steel production, construction, and services.

Losing the organic debate

Churchville, VA—I lost a debate on organic food last week—to the city of New York

Why are U.S. trees growing faster?

Trees in the U.S. are growing 2–4 times as fast as their long-term norm. The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center at Edgewood MD says it is because of global warming, according to a recent press release. Don’t bet on that.