Dennis Avery

No-till farming: Landslide protection?

Vegetable growers in the Philippines are finding that no-till farming not only saves their topsoil but may even lessen the danger of landslides!

Energy Secretary Admits We Don’t Understand Climate Change

Energy Secretary Stephen Chu recently spoke on global warming to the scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory—and told them we don’t understand it. “We don’t understand the downward trend that occurred in 1900 or in 1940. We don’t fully understand the plateau that’s happened in the last decade,” he concluded.

Food production in a warming world

“Radical New Direction Needed in Food Production to Deal with Climate Change!” says the press release. Crop yields may fall 20-30 percent by 2100 because the earth will be too warm for optimum photosynthesis, warns a February 12, 2010 “Perspectives” article in the journal Science. (“Radically Rethinking Ag for the 21st Century”).

Climate warming created farming

Churchville, VA—A new study by Dr. Shahal Abbo of Israel says the invention of farming wasn’t due to climate change because farming depends on a relatively stable climate. Dr. Abbo isn’t looking at the picture broadly enough.

Losing jobs with green technology

CHURCHVILLE, VA—President Obama has allocated $4 billion in “stimulus funds” to help advance the “smart grid,” which is intended to seamlessly integrate all our new solar and wind power into the national supply of electricity. Much of the $4 billion will be spent to install 20 million new digital “smart meters.” These meters will instantly tell the power company how to deploy its varied generating sources most effectively.

U.S. temperatures: Adjusted or Massaged?

Churchville, VA—My neighbor, physicist Edward Long, is afraid our temperature records have been falsified to support the man-made global warming scare. Dr. Long recently chose two sets of U.S. meteorological stations from the master list offered by the National Climate Data Center. One data set was rural, one urban. Each had a site in each of the lower 48 states. From the 1890s to 2006, the urban set of measurements showed an increase of 0.72 degrees—but the rural set showed only 0.11 degrees of warming.

Another failing biofuel “miracle”

My wife is complaining about our increased costs at the supermarket. I remind her that every pound of meat, milk, and butter we buy requires several pounds of corn to produce—and biofuel mandates have shoved the corn price up from about $ 2 per bushel to $3.60. Many hog producers, dairymen, and egg farms have gone bust due to the inevitably higher cost of feed for livestock.

IPCC Science scandals aren’t new

The UN’s climate change panel is reeling from a series of scandals about unsupported claims in its 2007 report.

Indian sets up independent global warming panel

CHURCHVILLE, VA—India is setting up its own climate research unit because it no longer trusts the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I’ve been predicting such a move for years—partly due to the IPCC’s biased science, but more because India simply cannot afford to curtail its desperately needed and energy-powered economic growth. India’s government’s stability depends on expanding prosperity for the all of its people. That means more energy, and over half of India’s electricity comes from coal.

A chill hits wind power

CHURCHVILLE, VA—As I write, a strong wind is blowing across the Alleghany Mountains onto my house. It’s bringing an “Arctic Clipper” that will drop my temperatures this weekend to a frigid and unusual 6 degrees F. Why can’t I get some good from this chill wind—with a wind turbine to harvest the “free” energy?

Haiti’s desperate food crop outlook

In a normal year, Haiti must start now preparing for the spring planting season, which ends in May. The spring crop usually produces 60 percent of the country’s food. Unfortunately, many families have had to eat or share the seeds they were saving for the next crop. Any improved seed varieties brought in now as aid are all too likely to be hijacked for immediate consumption by the portside mobs and thugs. Almost no chemical fertilizer is available, and Haiti has neither trucks nor usable roads to get it to the farms.

Greenpeace opts for millions of blind kids

The earthquake in Haiti has caused more than 100,000 deaths and destroyed the homes of 1.5 million people. It’s a devastating blow to Haiti—but we don’t know how to prevent earthquakes. All we can do is help Haiti rebuild.

USDA misleads on farming’s climate future

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has issued new report that attempts to forecast the impact of climate change on American farming in the next 50 years. USDA seems to expect serious climate-related farming problems ahead, but the recent changes in global climate have been tiny—and in the “wrong” direction! The earth’s temperatures are now slightly cooler than when NASA’s James Hansen first warned the U.S. Senate about “runaway global warming” in 1988.

Copenhagen dashes 3rd world expectations

Once again the “rich countries” have managed to yank prosperity away from the Third World. And at Christmas too.

The Winter Games in Copenhagen

CHURCHVILLE, VA—Copenhagen was two weeks of uninterrupted game-playing: CFACT conned their way aboard a Greenpeace vessel with donuts—then unfurled a banner overside reading “Ship of Lies.”

Why not the Sun?

Why do global warming researchers ignore the sun, the ultimate source of earth’s heat? Especially as we know virtually all of our warming occurred before 1940 while 85 percent of the human-emitted CO2 came after 1940? Dennis Bray of Germany’s Institute for Coastal Research just polled an international group of climate researchers on what they believe and why. In light of the recent leaked documents from East Angelia University’s Climate Research Unit, the poll seems to provide important answers.

Germans tried to warn us of Climate Fraud

The airwaves are full of the “secret” codes and emails from Britain’s Hadley climate research center. New Zealand is looking at the upward trend in the “official” graph of its recent temperatures—while the country’s raw temperature data show no warming. Now researchers are digging into the Hadley data to find if the rest of the world’s climate data have been similarly “adjusted.”

Hadley hack-in reveals hidden truths

Copenhagen has predictably brought out a new round of claims that humanity is frying the planet. Mother Nature, however, has told us to expect only about 0.5 degree of further warming over the next several centuries. Which is right, Mother Nature or the computerized global climate models championed by Al Gore?

Greens again bait and switch on energy

Back during the bad old Bush presidency, the eco-movement loudly endorsed ethanol, particularly cellulosic ethanol, as a good eco-substitute for gasoline. Now they’ve changed their minds.

Extreme activists take the reins at EPA

The Environmental Protection Agency, in a George Orwellian move, has just announced that it has suddenly decided to put the herbicide atrazine through yet another regulatory wringer, despite having just completed a comprehensive, multi-year regulatory review of the safety of atrazine begun in 1994.