Fossil fuels help to feed the planet and also to make it greener

‘Climate change is already affecting agriculture and food security, which will make the challenge of ending hunger, achieving food security, improving nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture more difficult…’

This view was expressed in 2018 by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Food Programme, and the World Health Organisation.

This is a weighty bunch of global institutions. But are they correct? Data recently put together by Indur Goklany for the Global Warming Policy Foundation suggests not. In Impacts of Climate Change: Perception and Reality, a paper published earlier this year, Dr Goklany argues that ‘the detrimental effects of carbon dioxide and fossil fuels are overwhelmed by other concurrent changes that are beneficial’.

Dr Goklany was a member of the American delegation that helped establish the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and he subsequently served as a delegate to that organisation. 

Citing figures from the FAO, he shows that both cereal yield and food supplies per capita have increased in all major regions of the world, while chronic hunger has dropped in all major regions. Between 1961 and 2017 the global increase in cereal yield was 201%. Between 1961 and 2013 the global increase in food supplies per capita was 31%. Between 1989 and 2016, the proportion of people around the world who were chronically hungry dropped by 28%.  

These changes for the better all happened despite increases in the global population. Thus the period (1961-2013) that saw a 133% rise in the global population also saw a 31% rise in per-capita food supplies. More people, more food, less hunger.

Dr Goklany argues that most of the increase in yield has been due to the use of technologies that rely on fossil fuels. Nitrogenous fertilisers and synthetic pesticides rely almost entirely on fossil fuels, both as feedstocks and to provide energy for the manufacturing process. Irrigation needs energy for transporting and distributing water. Carbon dioxide fertilisation has also helped to increase yields.  

Increased efficiency in agricultural production has meant that the 31% increase in food supplies per capita was achieved with an increase of only 8% in agricultural land. This implies, writes Dr Goklany, “that on average, one hectare of agricultural land produced 2.8 times as much dietary energy in 2013 as it did in 1961”.

Without the increases in farm productivity, much more land would have been required for the same output. Dr Goklany calculates that the additional land that would have been required would have amounted to 8.9 billion hectares – instead of which the increase was limited to 300 million hectares.

Dr Goklany writes that a total of 12.2 % of the global terrestrial area (excluding Antarctica) is devoted to cropland. Fossil fuels are responsible for half of global food production. Without them food would be scarcer and prices higher. Also, to maintain food supply without such fuels, the extent of croplands would have to more than double from 12.2% to at least 26% of the world’s land area (outside Antarctica). Add in the 25.2% devoted to pasture, and the human footprint on the planet would increase from 37.4% to 51.2%.     

Since the start of the industrial revolution in about 1750, the population of the planet has grown from some 800 million to almost eight billion. ‘The need to feed and clothe these billions has led to a massive conversion of natural habitat to agricultural lands, including lands for crops and pastures,’ Dr Goklany writes.

However, the rise in productivity in recent years means that agricultural land use peaked around the year 2000. This means that habitat loss has now been ‘contained’.

One consequence is a greener planet. Dr Goklany cites satellite data showing that ‘the world has become greener and more productive as atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has increased’. This, he says, confirms the long-standing observation that ‘higher carbon dioxide levels raise the intensity of vegetable life’.

The satellite data shows that from 1982 to 2009, between 25% and 50% of the global vegetated area has become greener, and only 4% ’browner’. This, he writes, ‘is mostly due to carbon dioxide fertilisation, which increases the rate of photosynthesis and water-use efficiency of most plants’.

‘Contrary to prevailing wisdom,’ writes Dr Goklany, ‘tree cover globally has grown by over two million square kilometers between 1982 and 2016, an increase of 7%.’ The ‘global leaf area’ grew at 2% or more per decade between 2000 and 2017, a disproportionately large share of this greening being accounted for by China and India.        

Dr Goklany concludes: ‘The earth is greener and more productive. Increased land productivity – a result of the use of fossil fuels – means that the area of land converted to human uses peaked in around 2000. As a result habitat lost to human uses has been halted, despite population increases. These are the very definitions of success for a species.’ 

 https://dailyfriend.co.za/2021/03/01/fossil-fuels-help-to-feed-the-planet-and-also-to-make-it-greener/           

 

 Pope Francis Warns of Second ‘Great Flood’ from Global Warming

63

Hulton Archive/Getty

THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, PH.D.

1 Mar 2021

ROME — Pope Francis has warned of the possibility of a second great flood, like that of Noah’s time, if humanity fails to address global warming.

“God’s wrath is directed against injustice, against Satan,” the pope states in a book titled Of Vices and Virtues due for release Tuesday. “It is directed against evil, not that which derives from human weakness, but evil of Satanic inspiration: the corruption generated by Satan.”

“God’s wrath is meant to bring justice, to ‘clean up,’” the pontiff declares in an advance excerpt of the book published by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera Sunday.

“The Bible says that the flood is the result of God’s wrath,” Francis continues. “It is a figure of God’s wrath, who according to the Bible has seen too many bad things and decides to obliterate humanity.”

“The biblical flood, according to experts, is a mythical tale,” the pope states, parenthetically adding his hope that no one writes that “the pope says the Bible is a myth.”

“But myth is a form of knowledge,” he says. “The flood is a historical tale, archaeologists say, because they found traces of a flood in their excavations.”

“A great flood, perhaps due to a rise in temperature and the melting of the glaciers, is what will happen now if we continue along the same path,” the pope warns.

“God unleashed his wrath, but he saw a righteous one, took him and saved him,” he says. “The story of Noah demonstrates that God’s wrath is also salvific.”

The pope’s new book recounts conversations between the pontiff and Father Marco Pozza, chaplain of the prison of Padua in the north of Italy.

Francis has made care for the environment and opposition to climate change a hallmark of his almost eight-year pontificate, taking to task world leaders who have shown too little resolve in their battle against global warming.

He said last year that it is “evident” that climate change is to blame for a number of humanity’s social ills, as well as disrupting the balance of nature.

“It is evident that climate change not only upsets the balance of nature, but causes poverty and hunger, affects the most vulnerable, and sometimes forces them to leave their land,” the pope told a group gathered in the Vatican.

The pope’s audience consisted of participants in a meeting of members of the Laudato Sì community, named after the pontiff’s 2015 encyclical letter on the environment, which bears the same name.

“We need a real will to tackle the root causes of the ongoing climate upheavals,” Francis insisted. “Generic commitments are not enough — words, words.”

https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2021/03/01/pope-francis-warns-of-second-great-flood-from-global-warming/

I'm a conspiracy theorist and you should be too

 I'm a conspiracy theorist and you should be too

1 March 2021

I’ve been labelled a bunch of hilarious things over the years, from “racist” to “homophobe” to “misogynist”, and the newest glorious addition is “conspiracy theorist”. Even my Wikipedia page is framed in such a way, and it’s fantastic.

The more labels, the better.

But the reason I’m labelled a “conspiracy theorist” is because I don’t blindly accept stuff I’m told by the media. Specifically, most things relating to this fake pandemic. Instead, I think critically about things which, as it turns out, is becoming a bad idea.

What is a conspiracy theory?

In short, it’s “a theory seeking to explain a disputed case or matter as a plot by a secret group or alliance rather than an individual or isolated act”.

Bohemian Grove, a place where the world’s elite gather annually to drink and hold secret discussions, doesn’t exist, and the conception of the Manhattan Project (the atomic bomb) didn’t happen there in 1942.

Except that, well, the above is actually true.

But you see, apparently, conspiracies don’t happen, which is why theorising that they do gets you ostracised by the establishment.

Until after the fact, that is.

Because once the truth has been revealed, then it’s all good.

Did you know that the Washington press corps was secretly followed between 1963 and 1973? It was known as Operation Mocking Bird and it involved the CIA wiretapping their phones to keep tabs on their activities and who, at the same time, quietly paid journalists to publish propaganda.

In spite of the secret plot later being uncovered by conspiracy theorists, it’s easier rather to believe that it didn’t happen, fellow sheep.

Speaking of the CIA, there was speculation that MKUltra existed, in which thousands of unsuspecting people were secretly given LSD to test mind control techniques, and in which around 1600 NAZI scientists were employed. Wernher von Braun, for example, worked on American military ballistics and was involved in the moon landing. He also developed the Jupiter-C rocket, which was used to launch America's first satellite.

Conspiracy theorists - or critical thinkers, as noted by The New York Times - turned out to be correct.

Here’s the thing.

Believing that there are not nefarious, powerful people trying to control our lives from a local level to a global level, is profoundly naive and, quite frankly, stupid.

And no, this doesn’t mean that everything is a conspiracy.

From physical wars like those of Alexander The Great, to invisible wars like those involving releasing of viruses and capturing personal data, conspiracies are absolutely part of our human experience.

James Corbett has a great explainer video.

It’s not a conspiracy theory if they’re openly telling you what they’re doing.

https://jermwarfare.com/blog/conspiracy-theories

 

Coke Goes Woke and Broke

Brands go woke because they’re going broke.

Mon Mar 1, 2021 

Daniel Greenfield

 

25

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

“Get woke, go broke”, is a conservative meme about the cost of political correctness that has it the wrong way around. Brands don’t go broke because they get woke, they go woke because they’re going broke, and don’t know how to stop the slow but steady collapse of their business.

The big brands that go woke infuriate conservatives because, like Coke, Gillette, or Nike, they have a storied name that seems entwined with America and the success of capitalism. But it’s those old, familiar brands that go woke because their products and business models are dated. Virtue signaling is their way of adapting to a changing market without really innovating. Behind every big woke brand is a company slowly going broke and with no clue what to do about it. 

The wokeness vocabulary joins the thesaurus of corporate buzzwords used by executives trying to hide from their investors that they don’t know what they’re doing. Making headlines for their wokeness changes the conversation from their business model to their politics. Touting a brand as socially responsible evades questions about its financial viability.

Take Coke, please.

Coca-Cola’s global sales fell 28% in the second quarter of 2020 from $10 billion to $7.15 billion. The corporate giant blamed the pandemic which had shuttered movie theaters and bars, and began cutting its small brands while concentrating on its big signature brands. 

But Coke was struggling even long before the pandemic. 

Despite all the international marketing, North America is still the biggest soda market. And the average American is down to drinking 40 gallons of soda from 50 gallons two decades ago. The shift was driven by the same demographic that tends to go woke, young white urban lefties, who became more likely to drink bottled water. Coke chased them by going into bottled water and vitamin drinks, but also by shifting away from a family brand once associated with Santa.

Santa and the polar bears reflected a Coke that was marketed to children. But fewer parents are comfortable with their children living off soda. That’s why one survey found that the number of children drinking over 3 cans of soda a day fell from 10% to 3.3%. The drop in soda consumption, once again, was heaviest among younger and wealthier urban white lefties. 

The economic consequences of young white wealthy lefties dropping soda wasn’t just a sales issue. Wokes are a politically narcissistic demographic that legislates its tastes into law, pursuing the legalization of drugs, and bans on soda. Both drug legalization and soda bans were, as usual, done in the name of oppressed minorities, but had little impact on them.

Legal drugs are too expensive for minorities and the infamous soda taxes don’t work. But the soda industry remembers what happened to tobacco and other lifestyle habits that fell afoul of the cultural values of the new woke ruling class. That’s another reason why it went ‘woke’.

Banning soda from schools and taxing it in stores precedes the class action lawsuits and national legislative activities that would effectively eliminate sodas from the marketplace.

Coke isn’t just virtue signaling to prop up sales in a declining market: it’s also afraid.

And it should be. Bloomberg isn’t just fighting coal and guns, he’s also spending a fortune pushing his soda ban in cities and states around the country. The soda industry has ramped up spending to defend itself against everything from soda taxes to its links to slave labor. But it understands that the real threat is cultural as the new woke ruling class destroys the habits of the old America that it associates with conservative, working class, and flyover country. 

That’s why cigarettes are a deadly menace, but pot is a civil rights crusade. The health issues are a pretext for a cultural revolution. And Coke went woke to convince the wealthy young urban lefties to incorporate its signature products into their lives by joining the cultural revolution.

The Left bet that if it could radicalize the children of the wealthy that Corporate America would bend the knee. And that’s exactly what happened. The radicals used their leverage over academia and the entertainment industry to create radical generations. But that radicalism was heavily concentrated among the Ivy League and the children of the elites who would become the corporate leaders and also be the consumers with the most disposable income.

Economics, like politics, proved to be downstream of the culture. Capturing the ecosystem at its base allowed the Left to take over the economy and turn some of the country’s biggest brands into megaphones for its propaganda. But these are corporate brands that have all the qualities of the ossified elites that have always been an easy target for the revolutions of the radicals.

Coke, like the average big woke brand, has a majority share of a declining market. It has limited growth potential within that market. Coca Cola’s fortunes are closely tied to movie theaters, which were in a catastrophic state of decline even before the pandemic, and to McDonald’s. 

McDonald’s, like a lot of traditional fast food places, is experiencing its own slow decline. The clown joint, like Coke, tried to reinvent its brand as being about healthy food and leftist politics. Just like Coke, going ‘woke’ hasn’t stopped its decline, or the threat of the cultural Left regulating it out of business to protect minorities from the pernicious threat of its Happy Meals.

When McDonald's brought in its new British CEO Steve Easterbrook, he promised to make it over as a "modern progressive burger company". The company hired Robert Gibbs, Obama's press secretary, to head communications. McDonald's flipped its arches upside down to celebrate International Women’s Day. And then Easterbrook was forced out for allegedly having affairs with three female employees. Meanwhile the decline in foot traffic is still going on.

The Coca Cola Company meanwhile has a British CEO who pledged allegiance at Davos to a "new social contract" and an "economy that works for everyone". He took over from the company's previous Turkish CEO, and the Turkish CEO’s South African predecessor. The head of Coca Cola in North America is a Honduran who came out of its Latin American division.

The other thing about these iconic American brands is that they don't have American leaders.

Coke won’t shut up about social justice and the evils of whiteness because that’s a better conversation than its failed portfolio of new brands, dumping its bottling operations, and its desperate efforts to refocus by launching a thousand different varieties of Coke aimed at the one lefty demographic that holds its future in the palms of its soft white manicured hands. 

Otherwise its whole massive distribution network will be used for little more than moving orange juice, vitamin drinks, and milk around as soda and fast food go the way of cigarettes. 

Coke is going woke because its future is broke. That’s true of most of the big woke brands. And the closer Coke gets to the cliff, the more hysterical its performative wokeness will become.

‘Wokening’ is a social disease of stale companies with stale brands whose products are overpriced and have fallen out of touch with the needs of many consumers. And the country’s consumer marketplace is dominated by these collapsing giants whose leaders are just marking time and cashing big checks while trying to co-opt the revolution threatening to destroy them.

European monarchs tried to co-opt leftist revolutions because they no longer had confidence in their own roles and had no idea what to do next. Coca Cola and the woke corporate giants share the same decadent sense of decline and their urban elites are selling out their rural base to appeal to the young radical generation to which their children and their social circle belong.

Wokeness is the consequence of a moral and economic brokenness among the nation’s elites. The Left conquered the corrupt infrastructure of a decaying political and economic system. Now it’s using that infrastructure to brainwash and suppress the country’s middle and working classes by lecturing them on their racism, and redefining them as domestic terrorists. 

It’s not just Coke that went woke and broke: it’s the entire system that’s going broke.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/coke-goes-woke-and-broke-daniel-greenfield/

 

Indian Man Killed by Own Rooster During Illegal Cockfight

A man who tied a knife to the leg of his rooster for an illegal cockfight was killed after the bird panicked and stabbed him in the groin, police in Lothunur village in Telangana state, India, said Sunday.

Thangulla Satish, 45, attached a 3-inch blade to the rooster’s leg, which is standard practice to prepare the birds for the brutal sport. The bird fluttered and the knife hit Satish in the leg, causing massive blood loss. He died on the way to the hospital, officials reported.

Thousands of roosters die every year in underground fights. Bets are taken on which of the two roosters will win, “often under the watch of powerful, local politicians with big-money bets,” the New York Post reported.

Injuries to humans from the fighting roosters happen fairly regularly. The Daily Mail reported recent incidents in India, including previous injuries and also deaths:

Last month a spectator was killed when a razor blade attached to an escaping bird cut his stomach.

Last year, a man was killed when a blade attached to his bird’s leg hit him in the neck during a cockfight in Andhra Pradesh.

In 2010, a rooster killed its owner by slashing his jugular vein in West Bengal state.

The rooster was not hurt, and police said they will keep it until it can be moved to a farm. Police also said they were looking to arrest 16 people involved in organizing the illegal fight,

India banned cockfights in 1960, however, they continue in some of the southern states, and can attract hundreds of spectators.

https://www.breitbart.com/sports/2021/02/28/indian-man-killed-by-own-rooster-during-illegal-cockfight/

CAT ATTACKS pilot in mid-air

 

Plane forced to land in Sudan after CAT ATTACKS pilot in mid-air, ‘hijacking’ cockpit

1 Mar, 2021 02:08 / Updated 1 hour ago

© Sputnik / Natalia Seliverstova; © Facebook / Tarco Aviation

A passenger plane was forced to return to an airport in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum after an angry cat, which somehow got into the cockpit, attacked the pilots shortly after takeoff, local media report.

Wednesday's flight of the Sudanese Tarco airline bound for Qatar’s capital, Doha, was proceeding in a totally routine manner – that is, until a most unlikely passenger caused an emergency in mid-air.

Having departed from Khartoum International Airport, the plane was in the air for roughly half-an-hour when an unregistered passenger was spotted inside the pilot’s cabin. The passenger in question was a ferocious cat, according to a report by the local news outlet Al-Sudani. 

The feline clearly wasn’t a big fan of flying, as it acted aggressively and attacked the crew. Apparently, after all attempts to restrain the furry hijacker failed, the pilot made a decision to turn the plane around and return to the Sudanese capital.

In its quest to investigate the incident, Al-Sudani obtained information showing that the aircraft had spent a night stationed at a hangar at the Khartoum airport ahead of the flight. Their source suggested that the cat likely sneaked aboard during cleaning or engineering review and hid inside the cabin to surprise the pilots later.

As baffling as the incident may sound, this is not the first “hijacking” attempt of its kind. In 2004, a Belgian airliner with 62 people on board was forced to return to Brussels after one “well-traveled” feline called Gin went berserk in the cockpit following an unexplained escape from a travel bag. The stressed cat sneaked into the pilot cabin when a meal was being served to the crew and then became “very aggressive and scratched the co-pilot,” leading to the unexpected landing.

The very same year, a seemingly unrelated cat attack took place on board the national Bangladeshi air carrier. A pilot was reportedly offered first aid after being pounced on by a stray cat en route to Dhaka – but the crew decided to complete the flight regardless. The attacker then bizarrely managed to evade security and initially escaped, only to be caught in the airport hours later.

In 2013, a Saudi cargo flight from Riyadh to Hong Kong was canceled at the last moment after the pilot scared a furry stowaway by starting the engine – and paid for it with a few scratch injuries. Local media claimed the cat was never found.

https://www.rt.com/news/516829-cat-plane-emergency-landing-sudan/

Murder most fowl? Fighting cock that killed owner with three-inch knife to appear in court in India

27 Feb, 2021, by Russian News RT

https://www.rt.com/news/516763-fighting-cock-appear-court-india/

Illustration: © cottonbro from Pexels

A rooster named Raja will appear in court in India after he killed his owner with a knife while attempting to flee an illegal cockfight.

The incident took place on February 23 in the Jagtial district in the Indian state of Telangana.

Raja was brought by his owner Thanugula Satish to a cock fight at the Yellamma temple on the outskirts of Lothunur village in Gollapalli mandal. Satish affixed a three-inch knife, known as kodi kathi, to his rooster’s leg before sending it into the fighting arena.

When Raja attempted to flee the fighting ground, Satish caught him but the blade attached to the cock’s leg pierced the man's groin. He bled to death soon after, while en route to the hospital.

Raja has been cooped up at a local police station since the incident, though no fowl play is suspected. Instead, the rooster will soon be produced in court, as part of the evidence in a case against some 15 people who participated in the cockfight.

“We are searching for the other 15 people involved in organizing the illegal fight,” local police officer B. Jeevan said.

They will reportedly be held partly responsible under Indian law for contributing to Satish's death through their own negligence, by having engaged in illegal activity likely to cause death, but without any intention to do so. They could also potentially be charged with manslaughter, illegal gambling and hosting a cockfight.

Cockfighting is banned across India but remains common in rural areas.

Recommend this post and follow The Coconut Whisperer