Dennis Avery

What’s the real cost of Global Warming taxes

The leftish Brookings Institution and the U. S. Chamber of Commerce basically agree that the energy taxes in the House Waxman-Markey bill could total $9 trillion over ten years. As an economist, I look at these forecasts and wonder “How can we possibly know?”

Bill Gates bets a billion on AG Research

“Environmentalists are standing in the way of feeding humanity through their opposition to biotechnology, farm chemicals and nitrogen fertilizer”—straight talk from billionaire Bill Gates at the World Food Prize Symposium in Des Moines October 15th

A tale of two Nobel Peace Prize winners

I was still mourning the loss of my friend, 1970 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug, at age 95, and reminiscing on his magnificent life when the news flashed across the wires that President Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009. What a startling contrast!

Drought: The real and unstoppable danger of global warming

CHURCHVILLE, VA—By 2050, 25 million more children will go hungry as climate change leads to food crisis, says the highly respected International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C. IFPRI, however, incorrectly links the prediction and the solutions, to man-made global warming. The food challenge will occur whether the warming is man-made or part of a natural cycle.

Science to save the Chesapeake Bay

CHURCHVILLE, VA: The Chesapeake Bay is in eco-collapse. The once-clear waters are clouded with sediment, so the eel-grass cannot grow across the bottom for baby crabs to hide in. The oysters, which once filtered every bit of the bay’s water twice daily, have mostly succumbed to such viral diseases as MSX and Dermo.

Borlaug: Feeding The Hungry, Saving The Wildlife

CHURCHVILLE, VA—It was 1950. World War II, with its 40 million deaths, was over. Doctors were conquering smallpox with vaccines, protecting millions from malaria and typhus with new pesticides, and treating infections with the miraculous new antibiotics.

Ohio offers new approach to animal rights

Meat production has always been somewhat awkward, both for the farmer and the consumer as it always involves the death of the meat animals. Milk and eggs have meant “protective custody” for the dairy cows and laying hens.

Saving trees with kerosene

If a traveler on Continental Airlines pays an optional $5 surcharge to plant a tree as a “carbon offset” how much difference will it make to the planet? Traveling Americans are paying millions of dollars to plant hundreds of thousands of additional trees. Many of these new trees are being planted in the tropics; where tree-planting does the most good in cooling the earth.

The fatal error in organic: Fertilizer

CHURCHVILLE, VA—Rudolph Steiner, a founder of organic farming in the 1920s, started the “great organic nitrogen swindle” that threatens the world with hunger to this day. Steiner didn’t believe in nutrients, he believed in “vital forces.” He said a cow has horns to send into itself “astral-ethereal formative powers.” He claimed you could fertilize a whole farm by burying a handful of manure inside a cow’s horn for a year—so that the manure is “inwardly quickened.”

Britain donating millions for Biotech crops

Britain has pledged more than US$150 million over the next five years to support high-tech food crops for the world’s poorest countries—primarily through genetic engineering.

Trying to replay the 1980s Salmon Crisis

British Columbia’s Fraser River is suffering a salmon collapse, says Canada’s Globe and Mail. “It’s beyond a crisis!” warns a fishing advisor to the Fraser’s Indian tribes. The Watershed Watch Salmon Society says the Fraser should have had 10–13 million spawning sockeye salmon this season—but has gotten less than 2 million. Canada’s government has closed its ‘biggest salmon river’ to commercial and recreational fishing for the third year in a row.

Giving up meat to save the planet?

One of the persistent, shallow global food myths is that the world could feed more people if we gave up eating meat. Ezra Klein wrote another misguided column about this—“The Meat of the Problem”—in the Washington Post of July 29. Klein cites as his authority a naïve “study” by the kids at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Organic food: Just a superstition

The Green Movement has been called “the new religion.” It surely isn’t that. Religion is a belief in a higher power than humanity. The Green movement believes nothing is more powerful than a press release from the Sierra Club or a lawsuit filed by Greenpeace.

Tropical rains dampen alarmist agenda

The Obama carbon taxes will cost the U.S. trillions of dollars and may permanently cripple our economy. They’re meant to “save the planet” from excess greenhouse gases—but new evidence from tropical rain patterns seems to further refute the claims that recent global warming has been man-made.

Wildlife ‘keeping up’ with climate change

CHURCHVILLE, VA—Global warming alarmists say at least a million wildlife species will ultimately be lost because the plants, trees and animals won’t be able to “keep up” with the rapid pace of man-made global warming. Laying aside the fact that global temperatures are currently declining instead of warming, how can the wild species hopefully adapt to further warming?

NY Times targets renewable energy

CHURCHVILLE, VA—Just as congress is set to tax fossil fuels out of the U.S. economy, the New York Times has reasserted its utterly foolish demand that we tear out existing hydroelectric dams—the dams that provide most of our renewable energy in the form of water-generated electricity..

How to live longer

I learned last week how to live longer.

Eco-Minister Flunks Global Warming Test

CHURCHVILLE, VA—When last we heard from Australian Senator Steve Fielding, he had paid his own way to a Washington, D.C. conference of climate skeptics—and armed himself with some questions about why Australia needs heavy carbon taxes on its energy use.

Overheated White House campaigns

It was only a matter of time before First Lady Michelle Obama sprang to the wall of the White House Organic Garden and demanded more organic food—a heartfelt campaign fully as sincere as her husband’s ongoing demand that the affluent countries fight off man-made global warming by taxing away most of their energy. However, both the First Lady’s and the President’s campaigns share the same problem: Both are based on politically-correct illusions.

Australia leads media debate on Global Warming

CHURCHVILLE, VA—A major country is getting media debate on the science of global warming for the first time ever—thanks to Australia’s Senator Steve Fielding. As one of a half-dozen swing votes on Prime Minister Rudd’s massive carbon tax bill, Fielding recently spent his own money to attend an international conference of climate skeptics in Washington, D.C.