Eco-friendly? Environmentalism

[Soldier4Christ]

Yep  ...  donkeys in Congress.

 

[HisDaughter]

    Now you're cracking me up!  I actually laughed out loud on that one ,with customers sitting in my lobby! 

[Soldier4Christ]

 

[Shammu]

Biofuels 'crime against humanity'
By Grant Ferrett
BBC News

A United Nations expert has condemned the growing use of crops to produce biofuels as a replacement for petrol as a crime against humanity.

The UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said he feared biofuels would bring more hunger.

The growth in the production of biofuels has helped to push the price of some crops to record levels.

Mr Ziegler's remarks, made at the UN headquarters in New York, are clearly designed to grab attention.

He complained of an ill-conceived dash to convert foodstuffs such as maize and sugar into fuel, which created a recipe for disaster.

Food price rises

It was, he said, a crime against humanity to divert arable land to the production of crops which are then burned for fuel.

He called for a five-year ban on the practice.

 Within that time, according to Mr Ziegler, technological advances would enable the use of agricultural waste, such as corn cobs and banana leaves, rather than crops themselves to produce fuel.

The growth in the production of biofuels has been driven, in part, by the desire to find less environmentally-damaging alternatives to oil.

The United States is also keen to reduce its reliance on oil imported from politically unstable regions.

But the trend has contributed to a sharp rise in food prices as farmers, particularly in the US, switch production from wheat and soya to corn, which is then turned into ethanol.

Mr Ziegler is not alone in warning of the problem.

The IMF last week voiced concern that the increasing global reliance on grain as a source of fuel could have serious implications for the world's poor.

Biofuels 'crime against humanity'

[Soldier4Christ]

The move is on to use sweet-stalk sorghum instead of corn. It’s earhead produces grain,
which can be used for making bread, its sweet stem has nearly the same amount of sugar as in
sugarcane and hence the juice can be fermented and used for ethanol production. The bagasse,
left after juice extraction, together with leaves is an excellent fodder for animals. Thus from the
same piece of land one can get food, fuel and fodder. No other crop gives all these three things
together. Besides sweet sorghum uses nearly 50% less water than sugarcane to produce the same
amount of sugar and is a 4-month crop so farmers can grow two crops/year from the same piece
of land. Sorghum can also be grown on less fertile soil than corn or sugar cane and can be grown in conjunction with other crops. Sorghum is also excellent for putting more nutrients back into the soil than is taken out of it by other crops. Also the energy output/input ratio of producing ethanol from sweet sorghum is very positive. Thus about four times more energy is produced by burning ethanol from sweet sorghum than goes in its growing and production. This in effect would solve the problem that is in mentioned in that article. Farmers would make more money as would the processing plants and there would not be a problem with a food shortage.

Besides that it has been proven that ethonal produced from sugar cane and corn produces more CO2 than gas, diesel fuel or oil.

[Soldier4Christ]

Forecasters Blow It, Again: '07 Hurricane season may rank as most 'inactive' in 30 years...

 2007 Yearly Tropical Cyclone Activity to Date

 Unless a dramatic and historical flurry of activity occurs in the next 9 weeks, 2007 will rank as a  historically inactive TC year for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole. During the past 30 years, only 1977, 1981, and 1983 have had less activity to date (January-TODAY, Accumulated Cyclone Energy). For the North Atlantic basin, Tropical Storm Noel is currently too weak to impact any of these results. However, one should always be prepared for late-season developments since hurricane season ends on November 30.

For the period of June 1 - TODAY, only 1977 has experienced LESS tropical cyclone activity than 2007.
There are currently two worldwide tropical cyclones: Tropical Storm Noel and Unnamed Arabian Sea TS...

The North Atlantic hurricane season is currently nearly 30% below normal in terms of a well-known activity metric called ACE. While the number of named storms is above normal, their integrated intensity has not matched the hyper-active expectations of many seasonal forecasters (e.g. NOAA 140-200% above median). The Eastern Pacific off the western coast of Mexico is also experiencing record inactivity. NOAA Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook Update

Note: on average to date (1970-2006), the Eastern Pacific season is 97% completed, Western Pacific 82%, North Atlantic 93% and overall Northern Hemisphere 87%.

[Shammu]

Forecasters Blow It, Again: '07 Hurricane season may rank as most 'inactive' in 30 years...

[HisDaughter]

Dreamweaver!  You crack me up with that little dog laughing all the time!
Cheers!

[Shammu]

Dreamweaver!  You crack me up with that little dog laughing all the time!
Cheers!

Better to be cracked up, then a cracked egg....................

don't drop the egg.........................................




Oops

[HisDaughter]

Hahahahahaha!  Love your humor! 

[Soldier4Christ]

Biofuels bonanza facing 'crash'
U.N. environmental chief warns against producing more CO2 than negated

The biofuels bonanza will crash unless producers can guarantee their crops have been produced responsibly, the UN's environment agency chief has said.

Achim Steiner of the UN Environment Programme (Unep) said there was an urgent need for standards to make sure rainforests weren't being destroyed.

Biofuel makers also had to show their products did not produce more CO2 than they negated, he told BBC News.

Critics say biofuels will lead to food shortages and destroy rainforests.

They point to the destruction of Indonesia's peat swamps as an example of biofuel folly.

The swamps are one the richest stores of carbon on the planet and they are being burned to produce palm oil.

Mr Steiner implied that because of Indonesia's inability to police its land use, biofuels from palm oil grown by the nation might never be deemed to be sustainable.

But he said some biofuels could be considered sustainable. He highlighted ethanol production in Brazil, and a dry land crop called jatropha, which is resistant to pests and droughts.

Mr Steiner urged investors not to turn their backs on developing second or third generation fuels that would use non-food crops and burnable waste.

He feared that beneficial biofuels might be lost as part of a consumer backlash.

Mr Steiner made his comments in response to criticism from a group of independent scientists who said they had written to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) complaining that the climate body's comments on biofuels have been naive.

The independent scientists pointed to two phrases in reports by the IPPC, of which Unep is a co-sponsor, which the scientists said could not be substantiated.

One stated that biofuels were an effective solution in at least a number of countries, while the other suggested that biofuels in the transport sector would generally have positive social and environmental benefits.

False economy

One of the scientists, Tad Patzek from University of California Berkeley, US, said: "In the long-run, the planet cannot afford to produce biofuels because we're going to run out of the land and water and environmental resources.

"In addition, because of the land use changes, drying up peat-swamps, burning tropical forest, these biofuels involve up-front enormous emissions of greenhouse gases that will never be recouped by their later use," he told BBC News.

Professor Patzek also doubted Mr Steiner's confidence in Brazilian ethanol. "The [IPCC] description of Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol production as 'highly advanced' and 'a model' is somewhat of an exaggeration.

"It's neither good nor a model," he said.

Brazilian producers are adamant that their bio-crops are not grown on rainforest land - but the environmental group Friends of the Earth Brazil claim that peasant farmers - dispossessed by biofuel conglomerates - are moving to the Amazon to seek new land.

Mr Steiner said Brazil had enough land to ensure that biofuel cropping could be sustainable.

The group of scientists said their letter to the head of the IPCC, Professor Pachauri, had not been answered.

BBC News has not been able to obtain a comment from Professor Pachauri, though this may be hardly surprising given that the final summit on the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (A4R) is currently underway in Valencia, Spain.

Mr Steiner said Unep had set up a high-level task force to study the life-cycle implications of all biofuels. The group is expected to publish its findings next year.

By then much of the Indonesian peat swamps - one of the most valuable stores of carbon in the world - will have been torched.

The only way of stopping may not be through the UN or the Indonesian government, but through one or more private philanthropist with a burning desire to own an Indonesian swamp.

[Soldier4Christ]

Heather Mills: Drink rat's milk to save planet 
Paul McCartney's ex-wife pushes alternatives to dairy products from cows

Heather Mills has urged the nation's latte drinkers to fight global warming – by switching to rats' or cats' milk instead.

Sir Paul McCartney's estranged wife made another pitch for attention yesterday, delivering a sermon from Speaker's Corner in London's Hyde Park.

But this time she was not preaching about landmines – or the ex-Beatle – but urging people to move towards a vegan diet, to help 'save the planet'.

She and animal rights' charity Viva! say meat and especially dairy products are causing huge damage to the environment by boosting global warming.

Viva! says livestock is the second largest source of greenhouse gases, producing 18 per cent of global emissions, due to the impact of deforestation.

This is more than the 13.5 per cent from all the world's transport modes combined.

Their claims are based on a recent report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

But even as she delivered her eco-message in Hyde Park, her gas-guzzling Mercedes 4x4 sat with the engine running and piles of Selfridges carrier bags in the back.

Mills, who announced her conversion to veganism in May, said: 'It's mad that we are having cows' milk. Even cows don't drink it after [the age of] one year, but we continue for ever.'

She told her Hyde Park audience of campaigners, journalists and bemused tourists: 'There are fields and fields of grain just miles from starving children in Africa being shipped to Europe to feed our livestock.

'There are 25 alternative milks available in health shops and supermarkets. Why do we not drink rats', cats' or dogs' milk?'

Mills said she was turned on to the benefits of giving up cows' milk lattes by Ethiopian famine survivor Birhan Woldu, who was pictured starving in 1984 but appeared healthily on the Live 8 stage two years ago.

She said she did not expect people to become vegan overnight but suggested that they 'cut down on one or two meat and dairy and fish dishes a week'.

'If everyone went vegan, which in 20, 30, 40 or 50 years could happen, there would be no such thing as starvation and famine,' she added.

[Soldier4Christ]

I think this person has been standing on her head for too long.

[Soldier4Christ]

Natural disasters quadruple in 2 decades 
British study largely blames events on global warming

More than four times the number of natural disasters are occurring now than did two decades ago, British charity Oxfam said in a study Sunday that largely blamed global warming.

"Oxfam... says that rising green house gas emissions are the major cause of weather-related disasters and must be tackled," the organisation said, adding that the world's poorest people were being hit the hardest.

The world suffered about 120 natural disasters per year in the early 1980s, which compared with the current figure of about 500 per year, according to the report.

"This year we have seen floods in South Asia, across the breadth of Africa and Mexico that have affected more than 250 million people," noted Oxfam director Barbara Stocking.

"This is no freak year. It follows a pattern of more frequent, more erratic, more unpredictable and more extreme weather events that are affecting more people."

She added: "Action is needed now to prepare for more disasters otherwise humanitarian assistance will be overwhelmed and recent advances in human development will go into reverse."

The number of people affected by extreme natural disasters, meanwhile, has surged by almost 70 percent, from 174 million a year between 1985 to 1994, to 254 million people a year between 1995 to 2004, Oxfam said.

Floods and wind-storms have increased from 60 events in 1980 to 240 last year, with flooding itself up six-fold.

But the number of geothermal events, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, has barely changed.

Oxfam urged Western governments to push hard for a deal on climate change at a key international meeting that runs December 3-14 on the Indonesian island of Bali.

Rich Western nations and the United Nations must act to "make humanitarian aid faster, fairer and more flexible and to improve ways to prepare for and reduce the risk of disasters," it said.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference in Bali aims to see countries agree to launch a roadmap for negotiating cuts in climate-changing carbon emissions from 2012.

The Oxfam study was compiled using data from the Red Cross, the United Nations and specialist researchers at Louvain University in Belgium.

[nChrist]

I think this person has been standing on her head for too long.

   YES - The story on Heather Mills is outrageous and shows the ultimate hypocrisy. Her recommendations for alternative milk sources is all over the news, especially the rat's milk. If someone finds me worried about this, please slap me up side the head and wake me up. If you catch me drinking rat's milk, please call the white coats to take me away. This is almost as ridiculous as Al Gore's global warming baloney.

YES - the natural disasters are getting wild, but there just might be another reason for it. If these are the last days of this age, GOD said things like this would happen. Further, things will get much worse.