Dennis Avery

If “no new nukes”—Wind won’t keep us warm

CHURCHVILLE, VA—The air over northeastern Japan is slightly radioactive—not at dangerous levels for people, but an indicator that higher levels might come. The newspapers in Japan and here are talking earnestly about failures in pressure vessels and falsified safety reporting, as they should.

Toxins move up on worry list

Churchville, VA—Forty thousand researchers and clinicians have just written to the journal Science —through their professional societies—asking for broader and quicker testing of “new chemicals in our environment.” Eight societies, including the geneticists, endocrinologists, developmental biologists and others say that 12,000 new substances are being registered with the America Chemical Society every day. They admit that not many of these “new substances” will ever make it into the environment.

Fearing EPA’s Carbon Tax

Churchville, VA—Farmers, along with the rest of us, could get hit with a triple jolt of regulatory shock if the Environment Protection Agency goes forward with its announced controls on carbon emissions. Consumers are already paying heavily for the federal mandate that puts a huge chunk of our corn crop, as ethanol, into our gas tanks instead of into our meat, milk, and eggs. While food costs soar, along with fuel costs, it is a waste of good corn as it contributes almost zero to our energy independence.

More biofuels, More greenhouse gases

CHURCHVLLE, VA—A new study from the University of Illinois estimates that the world has more than 702 million hectares of marginal land suitable for growing biofuels. The researchers assessed land around the world based on its soil quality, slope, and regional climate. They added degraded or low-quality cropland but ruled out any good cropland, pasture, or forests; they also assumed no irrigation. They came up with the surprising total 2.7 million sq. miles of marginal land that could be available for switchgrass or other biofuel crops.

Krugman flunks flood—and history

CHURCHVLLE, VA—Paul Krugman is a big deal: Princeton professor, New York Times columnist and Nobel laureate (2008). Krugman wrote last week about the “food crisis, the second one to hit the world in the last three years.” His key statement: “what really stands out is the extent to which severe weather events have disrupted agricultural production. And these severe weather events are exactly the kind of thing we’d expect to see as rising concentrations of greenhouse gases change our climate—which means that the current food prices surge may be just beginning.”

Have The Greens Finally Trapped Biotech Crops?

CHURCHVILLE, VA—When our new knowledge of DNA permitted genetically modified crops, the environmental movement “flipped out.” Here was a new technology that promised to raise crop yields, protect our food supply from pests, and create a second Green Revolution for “over-populated” places such as Africa and India. The activists believed viscerally that more food would mean more people—and they were apparently terrified that more little brown and yellow people would “use up” such resources as copper and antelope.

Who could oppose “Clean Energy”?

CHURCHVILLE, VA—President Obama didn’t mention carbon constraints in his State of the Union message. Such carbon constraints would force the nation to give up most of the energy that currently keeps us warm and productive. Instead, the President proposed a new “clean energy” program—which would force the nation to give up most of the energy that currently keeps us warm and productive. A study by the Beacon Hill Institute in Boston estimates the President’s “clean energy” proposal might well cost the economy $4 trillion over 20 years, and force huge numbers of U.S. jobs overseas.

New study affirms natural climate change

CHURCHVILLE, VA—It’s nice when people validate your work. Fred Singer and I—co-authors of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years—are currently basking in the glow of a new paper that affirms the earth’s long, moderate, natural climate cycle. The study is by Dr. U.R. Rao, former chair of India’s Space Research Organization. He says solar variations and cosmic rays account for 40 percent of the world’s recent global warming.

Food chain not stretched to limit—yet

CHURCHVILLE, VA—The cable network MSNBC is warning that the world food chain “has been stretched to the limit” by rising world demand and a series of crop failures in several countries. The TV network’s warning is premature. The U.S., in fact, could ease the current global food price spike with one administrative action—limiting the amount of U.S. corn that gets turned into corn ethanol.

Saving Polar Bears by Killing Them?

CHURCHVILLE, VA—A recent article in the British journal Nature warns that polar bears are increasingly mating with grizzly bears—because man-made climate change is rapidly melting the Arctic sea ice on which the polar bears love to hunt seals.

A step change in Earth’s Climate outlook

Churchville VA—As Britain suffers through its third straight harsh winter, a British watchdog group is calling for an inquiry into the failed recent long-range weather forecasts of the British Meteorological Office. The Met Office has long one of the leading promoters of man-made warming fears and therefore has tended to see warming around every corner.

India and the next Green Revolution

CHURCHVILLE, VA—Until recent decades, India was famous for its famine, not its computer industry. India’s dense population and erratic monsoon rainfall put it constantly at food risk—with a crop failure about every seven years. Two crop failures in a row often meant famine and sometimes there were three bad years in a row. During the Great Famine of 1876–78, five million Indians starved and another 6–10 million died of related dysentery, cholera, and opportunistic fevers.

Muddy rivers: Don’t blame farmers

CHURCHVILLE, VA—When people hear that I’m an advocate of high yield farming to feed the world and protect the environment, assertions of farm runoff into the rivers are raised to support charges against modern farming methods. Urban dwellers, even some of my rural neighbors, tell me their concerns about large-scale farming ruining our rivers “because the rivers are muddy.” They worry about even more soil erosion as farmers gear up to double food production over the next 40 years to feed a peak population of 9 billion people.

Big Green Bus has flat tires

CHURCHVILLE, VA—If the Big Green Bus hasn’t actually stalled, it’s at least got a couple of newly-flattened tires. And the suddenly-Republican U.S. Congress’s opposition to energy taxes is only part of it.

Biodiversity: Losing which species?

Churchville, VA—The UN has held another Green Summit in Nagoya, Japan to save the wild species—again. The planet’s temperatures have failed to increase for 12 years, and the public is losing interest in man-made global warming. So, back to the cuddly wild animals as the excuse for shutting down the modern world.

Why are Republicans climate skeptics?

CHURCHVILLE—VA: The New York Times marvels editorially that none of the Republicans running for the Senate accept the “scientific consensus that humans are largely responsible for global warming.” Maybe that’s because the Republicans come from more rural (Red) states that haven’t had any warming—man-made or otherwise.

City farming—Pigs in the Sky?

CHURCHVILLE, VA—Green visionary, Dixon Despommier, of Columbia University has proposed growing our food in city high-rises, to cut food transport energy use. The bad news is that city farming would be impossibly expensive—as it always has been. The good news: the high-rise farms will never be built.

Lessons learned from Swedish temperature records

CHURCHVILLE, VA—The ten coldest winter-spring temperatures out of the last 500 in Stockholm, Sweden, were almost all during the Little Ice Age. No surprise there. The coldest was 1569, followed by 1573.

Why tolerate deadly food bacteria?

CHURCHVILLE, VA—We’re into the second wave of anguish about the 1600 people made ill by salmonella-contaminated eggs, which caused the recall of a billion fresh eggs.

UN Millennium goals flunk reality check

CHURCHVILLE, VA—On the10th birthday of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, officials are lamenting that the world has made little progress in meeting them. No one should be surprised.