The Radical Greens’ Role In Africa’s Locusts Crisis
In this newsletter:
1) Europe’s Anti-Science Plague Descends On Africa
James Njoroge, European Scientist, 17 February 2020
2) The Radical Greens’ Role In Africa’s Locusts Crisis
Richard Tren and Jasson Urbach, CapX, 28 February 2020
3) Trump Administration Begins Work on Next National Climate Report
E&E News, 18 February 2020
4) Climate Crisis? What Climate Crisis? India To Harvest Record Rice, Wheat Crops
Reuters, 18 February 2020
5) Pontificating Politicians Plan To Outlaw The Engine, But Forecasters Say Nothing Much Changes
Neil Winton, Forbes, 16 February 2020
6) Germany’s Green Suicide: Auto Heartlands In Peril As 'Golden Age' Fades Fast
Reuters, 18 February 2020
7) And Finally: How To Turn Ever More Britons Into Climate Sceptics
Climate News Network, 18 February 2020
Full details:
1) Europe’s Anti-Science Plague Descends On Africa
James Njoroge, European Scientist, 17 February 2020
European activists are putting lives at risk in East Africa, turning a plague of insects into a real prospect of widespread famine.
The fast-breeding desert locust has invaded Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, creating a state of emergency.
The pests recently landed in Djibouti, Eritrea, Oman and Yemen. Swarms have also struck Tanzania and Uganda. They won’t stop on their own. According to the Food Agriculture Organization (FAO), “this is the worst situation in 25 years.
These beasts consume every plant in their path, leaving behind devastated croplands and pastures, and can migrate up to 150km in a day. They’ve already covered a million hectares in Kenya, with no signs of slowing down.
The human toll is staggering. Twenty-five million people have been left hungry, by Oxfam’s estimate.
Yet, instead of rallying around African nations in this time of great peril, more EU-funded NGOs have descended on the Kenyan parliament to demand that the government disarm itself in the battle against locusts. They want the Kenyan government to outlaw the pesticides used to fight locusts, the only effective tool that can stop these insects, and prevent the crisis from spiraling out of control.
According to experts, a pesticide like fenitrothion will play a key role in eliminating locusts in Kenya and other African countries. Properly applied, it can thwart the desert locust swarms. But Kenya lacks the supplies it desperately needs.
“The pesticide fenitrothion is very effective. It kills locusts within forty minutes to six hours of spraying,” says Salad Tutana, the Chair of Northern Kenya Locust Control Coordination team. Mr. Salad says they are experiencing a shortage of fenitrothion, but that fresh supplies of the pesticide have recently arrived from Japan.
More planes are needed for spraying. Currently, there are only five planes being used to spray the available insecticides.
Kenya has already set aside $2.5 million to combat locusts through spraying, but this is hardly enough as the situation continues to worsen. The U.N. FAO agreed to contribute $70 million to the spraying effort, but thus far only $15 million has made its way to the region.
Desperation in affected communities is real and more needs to be done. “We have resigned ourselves to crude methods, like shouting, burning tires, and blowing whistles, to chase away the insects,” Says Muthuri Murungi, a resident of Meru town in Eastern Kenya.
Africa’s agricultural community is still reeling from the incursion of another malignant pest, the Fall Army Worm, which in one year deprived Kenyan maize (corn) farmers of 70 percent of their crop. This voracious larval moth is kept in check in the Americas — where it is native — by pesticides and genetically modified Bt crops.
But, here too, the NGO activists are trying to dictate policies that will allow the insect plagues to continue, unchecked.
Full story
2) The Radical Greens’ Role In Africa’s Locusts Crisis
Richard Tren and Jasson Urbach, CapX, 28 February 2020
The tragic consequences of UN, European and environmentalist campaigns to deny insect-resistant GMOs and modern pesticides to developing nations.
Two weeks ago a Boeing 737 on final approach to Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, flew into a massive cloud of locusts swarming above the airport. The insects were sucked into the plane’s engines and splattered across the windshield, blinding the pilots to the runway ahead.
Throttling up to climb above the swarm, the pilot had to depressurize the cabin so he could reach around from the side window and clear the windshield by hand. Diverting to Addis Ababa, the plane was able to land safely.
The locusts that almost brought down the 737 are part of the worst infestation to hit Africa in 75 years.
Swarms of locusts can blanket 460 miles at a time and consume more than 400 million pounds of vegetation a day; and the grasshopper-like insects increase logarithmically, meaning locust swarms could be 500 times bigger in six months.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) calls the threat “unprecedented,” but attempts at aerial spraying have been too little, too late — largely because of FAO’s own politically-driven agenda to limit pesticides — and experts fear Africa may once again be tilting toward widespread famine.
As poor farmers futilely shoo the voracious insects away with sticks, this modern plague highlights the urgent need for pesticides to protect crops and save lives. It also casts into stark relief the tragic consequences of UN, European and environmentalist campaigns to deny these life-saving chemicals to developing nations.
Over the last decade, development organizations and activist NGOs have increasingly pushed organic-style agriculture on the poorest nations, making assistance dependent on a highly politicized version of “agro-ecology” that arbitrarily limits pesticides, bans advanced hybrid crops and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and extols the virtues of “peasant” farming. The result is that Africa has been left virtually defenseless against successive natural assaults to the continent’s ability to feed itself.
The locusts arrive on top of Africa’s on-going struggle with the Fall Army Worm (FAW), which has already spread to some 44 countries. It feeds on a range of plants, but prefers corn, the staple food for most Africans, and has reduced yields by 50% in many regions.
In the Americas, FAW is kept in check by a combination of insect-resistant GMOs and modern pesticides. Yet most African countries have not authorized GMOs because of well-funded environmental propaganda campaigns demonizing the technology — claiming GMOs cause everything from impotence to cancer and autism — and fear of losing their primary export market in Europe, which has arbitrarily restricted critical pesticides used in every other advanced, developed region of the world. The FAO, while discouraging pesticides and GMOs, advises farmers to pick off the insects one by one and crush them with their hands.
Add to this epidemics of Wheat Rust (potential crop loss 100%); Banana Wilt (50% crop loss); and Cassava Mosaic Virus (up to 90% loss). There are thousands of pests around the world that attack agricultural plants, and they don’t just kill crops. Molds that can only be controlled with pesticides produce highly poisonous metabolites called mycotoxins that, if they don’t kill you immediately, can give you cancer and destroy your immune system. They probably constitute the number one food health threat even in wealthy nations, but we keep levels safe with pesticides, GMOs, and expensive food inspection regimes — all things Africa is being denied or can’t afford.
Then there are the insect-borne diseases like Malaria, Zika, Dengue, and countless other parasitic and viral infections. When Zika or West Nile threaten our cities, we haul out the spray cans and ignore the griping of environmentalists. In Africa, however, the anti-pesticide groups hold sway. At their urging, Kenya may soon ban over 200 pesticides that evidence-based regulatory agencies around the world have deemed safe and that Kenya’s farmers desperately need.
Those who think small-scale organic farming is friendlier to mother nature are wrong. Organic farmers use lots of pesticides. They’re simply “natural” ones, like copper sulfate or neem oil, which are highly toxic to people and wildlife. They’re also less effective against pests, so they have to use more of them. Modern pesticides are among the most carefully tested and regulated chemicals in use, and they are used increasingly in targeted, precise ways to limit wider environmental impacts.
Most importantly, modern farming allows us to produce more food on less land. According to Rockefeller University’s Jesse Ausubel, US corn production has quintupled on the same amount of land. He estimates that if American farming techniques were to be adopted globally, an area the size of India could be returned to nature over the next 50 years.
“Better Living Through Chemistry” was the catchy DuPont slogan of the 1960s. The slogan rings true for those of us living longer, healthier lives of plenty, with more food than at any time in human history. But if the campaigns against chemicals and the demonization of modern agriculture are successful, these gains may well be reversed.
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3) Trump Administration Begins Work on Next National Climate Report
E&E News, 18 February 2020
The next National Climate Assessment is beginning to take shape at a time when President Trump warned world leaders to reject “alarmists” and as his conservative allies make plans to intervene in the report’s preparation to question the findings of mainstream scientists.
Kelvin Droegemeier (left) is the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.Credit: White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
The Fifth National Climate Assessment is scheduled for release in 2022, about halfway through Trump’s potential second term. Planning for the report is already underway, with requests to researchers to submit their work and a project leader expected to be chosen within a few months, according to Donald Wuebbles, a climate scientist at the University of Illinois who oversaw the last assessment.
The White House stands to have an influential role in the report’s construction through the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which is overseen by Trump’s science adviser, Kelvin Droegemeier. Wuebbles said Droegemeier, an extreme-weather expert whom he has known for years, will work to produce an accurate assessment that’s free of Trump’s erroneous assertions about climate change.
“Kelvin would fight that,” Wuebbles said.
But critics of climate science (sic) close to the White House believe the effort could take a more adversarial approach compared with earlier versions. Steve Koonin, a physics professor at New York University, said he has pitched Droegemeier on the idea of incorporating a red-team review into the National Climate Assessment. The exercise could allow science critics to use discredited theories to challenge consensus research on rising temperatures, scientists have said.
Koonin was part of the aborted White House effort to conduct an adversarial review of the last National Climate Assessment. Though that effort failed, Koonin is confident that it “chastened” White House officials against releasing the 2022 report without challenging alarming new climate findings.
“I’d like to see a good, hard scrub of the thing, done in an open way,” Koonin said in an interview. “I hope we have other ways of getting an honest portrayal of the science out there. I haven’t given up.”
Officials in the White House science office did not respond to a request for comment.
William Happer, a former director on the National Security Council who led the failed attempt last year to formally dispute mainstream science through a red-team process, told McClatchy last week that he hopes to be a contributing author of the next National Climate Assessment.
Happer previously revealed that the Trump administration obstructed the timing of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, which was started during the Obama administration, by releasing it the day after Thanksgiving. He also said the president was angry that it had been released at all.
The fourth assessment went through two reviews involving multiple federal agencies with expertise in climate science as well as additional rounds of scrutiny from experts assembled at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. It also went through a public review that generated more than 3,400 comments.
Full story
4) Climate Crisis? What Climate Crisis? India To Harvest Record Rice, Wheat Crops
Reuters, 18 February 2020
MUMBAI/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India is expected to produce a record 106.21 million tonnes of wheat this year, the farm ministry said, as favourable weather conditions helped to improve crop yields, with output far exceeding demand and further boosting stocks at grain bins.
Wheat output in India, the world's second-biggest producer, is expected to go up by 2.5% in the crop year to June 2020, the farm ministry said in its second crop forecast for 2019/20.
Rice output in the world's biggest exporter and No. 2 producer is estimated to rise by 0.9% to 117.47 million tonnes.
The farm ministry forecast this year's total grains output at a record 291.95 million tonnes against 285.21 million tonnes produced in the previous year.
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5) Pontificating Politicians Plan To Outlaw The Engine, But Forecasters Say Nothing Much Changes
Neil Winton, Forbes, 16 February 2020
Virtue signalling politicians compete with each other to bring forward the theoretical day when carbon dioxide (CO2) is eliminated from our cars, trucks, ships and airliners, but experts say this is not going to happen any time soon and traditional engines will retain dominance for years to come.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared Britain would bring forward the day new gasoline, diesel and hybrid powered cars and SUVs would be banned from sale to 2035 from 2040. Countries like Denmark have already declared 2030 to be the year when everybody must only buy battery-electric powered cars, or fuel-cell ones if available. The European Union (EU), minus Poland, has a target of going net carbon neutral by 2050.
The EU has decreed that by 2030, the average fuel consumption of internal combustion engine-powered vehicles must be 92 miles per U.S. gallon, which is just another way of saying all new cars must be battery-electric vehicles (BEV). That’s a problem given they are unaffordable to average income buyers.
Forecasters in the real world paint a different picture. According to investment bank Morgan Stanley, global sales of BEVs will only reach 24% by 2030, from about 2% in 2019 and 11% in 2025. And that is a stretch if you look at IHS Markit’s projection of BEV production reaching only 15.9% by 2030, while output of gasoline, diesel, and mild-hybrids cars and SUVs would still account for just over 70% of sales.
Either way, a big gap is opening up between what politicians say, urged on by high-profile environmentalists like Greta Thunberg, and what is happening in the real world. The key point surely is that politicians making unrealistic claims for short-term gain will probably be retired when their plans implode, and the rioting starts. Forecasters have to stick around and live with their predictions.
Professor Gautam Kalghatgi, visiting professor for Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London, and Engineering Science at Oxford University says the politicians and environmentalists declared aims are not possible.
“Internal combustion engines (ICE) are going to power transport to a very large extent for decades to come, so the best way to ensure the sustainability of transport is to improve ICE engines. It is imperative to improve such engines to improve the sustainability of transport,” Kalghatgi said in a speech to the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
“Even by 2040, transport will be dominated by combustion engines and 85 to 90% of transport energy will come from oil,” Kalghatgi said, quoting the U.N. accredited World Energy Council data.
Tell that to the British government, which this week said its planned ban on the sale of new gasoline, diesel and hybrid autos might well be brought forward to 2032 from 2035.
Britain’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) applauds the British government’s motives in seeking to ban ICE vehicles but believes this isn’t the fastest way to get rid of CO2. It argues that because of the 300 million plus number of ICE cars on Europe’s roads with an average life span of about 12 years it would be impossible to replace them quickly with battery-electric vehicles. So it would make sense to invest in making current ICE technology more efficient.
“Whilst we rightly continue to invest in electric vehicles we must also pursue and invest in renewable and low carbon fuels made from sustainable and net zero sources. These alternative fuels would be able to use the existing infrastructure, reducing consumer impact at the fuel pump and potentially avoiding the cost associated with new infrastructure to support electric vehicle adoption at pace,” IMechE said in a statement.
In an earlier report IMechE said policy makers need to be aware that electric vehicle technology is far from zero-emissions when it is subject to life-cycle or “cradle to grave” analysis.
“This analysis shows that an electric vehicle produces about half the greenhouse gas emissions over its lifetime as a (gasoline) vehicle when taking into account emissions produced as a result of the manufacture of the vehicle, mainly the battery pack, and the source of power used to charge it,” IMechE said.
Kalghatgi said in an interview that BEVs can’t possibly meet the goals assigned to them. They don’t save much CO2, they are too expensive to replace affordable mass market cars and SUVs, the charging network and power generation requires massive investment, and raw materials required in the production of batteries look to be in short supply with the inevitable price spikes as demand increases.
Electric cars like the Tesla Model S with a 100 kWh battery start life with a 20 ton CO2 deficit compared with an ICE model. In countries where energy is oil, gas or coal based, electric cars aren’t very clean or green, he said.
“So there is significant scope for improving the efficiency of ICE engines, with lean burn, turbocharging, and compression ignition. Further improvements of up to 50% are possible with light-weight materials, vehicle down-sizing and partial electrification,” Kalghatgi said.
Partial electrification, otherwise known as “mild-hybrid” engines, use higher voltage to provide additional electrical power to drive an increasing number of electrical components in ICE cars. The higher power can be combined with a belt-starter generator to assist acceleration and can increase fuel efficiency by between 10 and 15%.
“I don’t think what the politicians suggest is possible. Governments have chosen the technology – electric – but they aren’t zero CO2 by any stretch of the imagination. A small car like a Nissan Leaf might save say 20% of the CO2. Common sense and peer reviewed papers shows CO2 saved in battery electric vehicles depends on how the electricity is generated and the battery components footprint,” Kalghatgi said.
“Not only will this destroy the car industry because people won’t be able to afford electric cars, but when the public realizes that this is going to cause them a lot of heartache with many people effectively barred from driving, there will be a day of reckoning,” Kalghatgi said.
That suggests that the French “gilets jaunes” movement, which still mounts violent protests because of its government’s decision to suddenly raise standard-of-living- threatening taxes on diesel and gasoline, might well spread across Europe as the EU rules tighten.
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6) Germany’s Green Suicide: Auto Heartlands In Peril As 'Golden Age' Fades Fast
Reuters, 18 February 2020
BAMBERG, Germany (Reuters) - When Kristin and Thomas Schmitt took out a mortgage and bought a house last summer, the German couple’s dream looked as if it was coming true. Two months later, they learned that the tire factory where both work would be shut down early next year.
A malaise in Germany’s mighty automobile industry, caused by weaker demand from abroad, stricter emission rules and electrification, is starting to leave a wider mark on Europe’s largest economy by pushing up unemployment, eroding job security and hitting pay.
“It’s a nightmare. This is pulling the rug out from under our feet,” said Kristin Schmitt, 40, of the plant closure in the Bavarian region of Bamberg, one of Germany’s auto supplier hubs.
The couple, who have three children, still hopes managers at their Michelin tire factory change their mind, but the risk of unemployment looms large - and not only for the Schmitts.
The German auto sector is expected to cut nearly a tenth of its 830,000 jobs in the next decade, according to the VDA industry association.
Some think-tanks and government officials fear that the toll will be higher as electric cars provide less assembly work than combustion engine vehicles, simple work steps are replaced by automation and companies relocate production.
This is not yet 1970s Detroit, a U.S. car center that was plagued by urban decay as factory relocations, cheaper imports and higher fuel prices destroyed jobs.
But the danger is growing, automotive companies, workers, as well as regional and labor leaders, told Reuters.
Full story
7) And Finally: How To Turn Ever More Britons Into Climate Sceptics
Climate News Network, 18 February 2020
All UK airports must close by 2050 for the country to reach its target of net zero climate emissions by then, scientists say.
London’s Heathrow airport: Soon to be mothballed? Image: By Ohole12, via Wikimedia Commons
LONDON, 18 February, 2020 − If it is to achieve its target of net zero climate emissions by 2050, all UK airports must close by mid-century and the country will have to make other drastic and fundamental lifestyle changes, says a report from a research group backed by the government in London.
With the UK due to host this year’s round of crucial UN climate talks in Glasgow in November, a group of academics has embarrassed the British government by showing it has currently no chance of meeting its own legally binding target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to nothing within 30 years.
Their report, Absolute Zero, published by the University of Cambridge, says no amount of government or public wishful thinking will hide the fact that the country will not reach zero emissions by 2050 without barely conceivable changes to policies, industrial processes and lifestyles. Its authors include colleagues from five other British universities.
All are members of a group from UK Fires, a research programme sponsored by the UK government, aiming to support a 20% cut in the country’s true emissions by 2050 by placing resource efficiency at the heart of its future industrial strategy. The report was paid for under the UK Fires programme.
As well as a temporary halt to flying, the report also says British people cannot go on driving heavier cars and turning up the heating in their homes.
Full story
The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.
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