Filed under: agriculture, amazon, amazon rainforest, Argentina, aristocrats, Australia, biofuels, Canada, ethanol, Eugenics, famine, food crisis, food market, food prices, food shortage, Genocide, George Bush, george soros, global elite, health and environment, Henry Kissinger, internationalist, malthusian, malthusian catastrophe, NWO, Petrol, rainforest, ruling class, Russia, UN, united nations, US Crops, World Bank | Tags: corn, grain, wetlands, World Food programme
One quarter of US grain crops fed to cars – not people
A grain elevator in Illinois, US. In 2009, 107m tonnes of grain was grown by US farmers to be blended with petrol. Photograph: AP
London Guardian
January 22, 2010
One-quarter of all the maize and other grain crops grown in the US now ends up as biofuel in cars rather than being used to feed people, according to new analysis which suggests that the biofuel revolution launched by former President George Bush in 2007 is impacting on world food supplies.
The 2009 figures from the US Department of Agriculture shows ethanol production rising to record levels driven by farm subsidies and laws which require vehicles to use increasing amounts of biofuels.
“The grain grown to produce fuel in the US [in 2009] was enough to feed 330 million people for one year at average world consumption levels,” said Lester Brown, the director of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington thinktank ithat conducted the analysis.
Last year 107m tonnes of grain, mostly corn, was grown by US farmers to be blended with petrol. This was nearly twice as much as in 2007, when Bush challenged farmers to increase production by 500% by 2017 to save cut oil imports and reduce carbon emissions.
More than 80 new ethanol plants have been built since then, with more expected by 2015, by which time the US will need to produce a further 5bn gallons of ethanol if it is to meet its renewable fuel standard.
According to Brown, the growing demand for US ethanol derived from grains helped to push world grain prices to record highs between late 2006 and 2008. In 2008, the Guardian revealed a secret World Bank report that concluded that the drive for biofuels by American and European governments had pushed up food prices by 75%, in stark contrast to US claims that prices had risen only 2-3% as a result.
Since then, the number of hungry people in the world has increased to over 1 billion people, according to the UN’s World Food programme.
“Continuing to divert more food to fuel, as is now mandated by the US federal government in its renewable fuel standard, will likely only reinforce the disturbing rise in world hunger. By subsidising the production of ethanol to the tune of some $6bn each year, US taxpayers are in effect subsidising rising food bills at home and around the world,” said Brown.
“The worst economic crisis since the great depression has recently brought food prices down from their peak, but they still remain well above their long-term average levels.”
The US is by far the world’s leading grain exporter, exporting more than Argentina, Australia, Canada, and Russia combined. In 2008, the UN called for a comprehensive review of biofuel production from food crops.
“There is a direct link between biofuels and food prices. The needs of the hungry must come before the needs of cars,” said Meredith Alexander, biofuels campaigner at ActionAid in London. As well as the effect on food, campaigners also argue that many scientists question whether biofuels made from food crops actually save any greenhouse gas emissions.
But ethanol producers deny that their record production means less food. “Continued innovation in ethanol production and agricultural technology means that we don’t have to make a false choice between food and fuel. We can more than meet the demand for food and livestock feed while reducing our dependence on foreign oil through the production of homegrown renewable ethanol,” said Tom Buis, the chief executive of industry group Growth Energy.
Filed under: agriculture, AGW, amazon, carbon dioxide, climate change, climate science, climategate, Co2, EPA, famine, food crisis, food market, food prices, food shortage, Global Warming, global warming hoax, greenhouse, health and environment, Hoax, malthusian, malthusian catastrophe, man made global warming, netherlands, o2, oxygen, photosynthesis, rainforest, scandal, third world | Tags: ammonia, Anthropogenic Global Warming, aspen forest, aspen tree, bigger yields, co2 farming, dr. sherwood idso, forest trees, greenhouse gases, Jan van Duijn
Forest Trees Growing Like Crazy From CO2 Level Increase
Mike Adams
Natural News
December 21, 2009
Scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Minnesota at Morris have found that increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have led to the rapid growth of certain tree species. The quaking aspen, a popular North America deciduous tree, has seen a 50 percent acceleration in growth over the past 50 years due to increased CO2 levels.
Trees are necessary climate regulators since they process carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. Humans process oxygen and give off carbon dioxide, working harmoniously with natural plant life to maintain proper atmospheric composition. Since natural forests represent about 30 percent of the earth’s surface, they are highly effective at segregating greenhouse gases.
The quaking aspen is a vibrant, dominant tree found in both Canada and the United States. It is considered to be a “foundation species”, meaning that it helps dictate the dynamics of the plant and animal communities that surround it. Roughly 42 million acres in Canada and 6.5 million acres in Wisconsin and Minnesota are composed of aspen trees.
Elevated levels of CO2 will naturally lead to increased plant growth since CO2 is a precursor to plant food. Tree-ring analyses verified that aspen trees have been growing at an increasingly accelerated pace over the years because of this phenomenon.
Because accelerated growth was not seen in other tree species like oak and pine, scientists admit they will have to further investigate the issue. Similarly, drier regions where the trees were found did not experience the same rapid growth rates as those found in the wetter regions.
Comments by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
An interesting side effect of increased carbon emissions by human activity is that plants will grow more quickly. CO2 is to plants as oxygen is to humans, so the more CO2 is in the atmosphere, the more quickly many plants can grow.
Of course, plants produce oxygen as the “waste” product of their respiration, and that’s a poison to other plants, so there’s a natural balancing effect that keeps oxygen and CO2 levels in balance over the long haul.
This is why greenhouse gases are called “greenhouse gases”, by the way — because they turn the planet into a really effective greenhouse where plants grow like crazy. Of course, the clear-cutting of rainforest in the Amazon (and elsewhere) kills any chance of those regions taking part in that accelerated plant growth. Even in a high-CO2 environment, human beings can destroy plant life with bulldozers.
It’s interesting that plants and humans breathe the same air but extract very different chemical elements from it: Humans need oxygen while plants need carbon dioxide. For both species to survive, the air needs to contain both chemicals in balance. Currently, the oxygen content of the air is roughly around 20% (and falling).
Carbon Dioxide: The Breath of Life
Dutch aubergine grower yields big after piping CO2 into greenhouses
Telegraph
December 14, 2009
Jan van Duijn, however, walks proudly through his greenhouse, a vast glass and metal structure spread out over five hectares (12.3 acres) where millions of aubergines are doing very nicely thank you.
He’s happy because thanks to a deal with a supplier, he’s getting hot water piped in from the factory, which produces ammonia, to maintain the temperature at a constant 68 degrees F (20C).
The chemical site, five kilometres (three miles away), also supplies carbon dioxide which helps his aubergines grow more abundantly.
“We’re pioneers in a way,” van Duijn said, while admitting that what drove him to try this business model was cost.
The water from the Yara factory, where it is used as a coolant, flows along underground pipes and into his greenhouse at a temperature of 90 degrees C.
There it is circulated in pipes between the rows of aubergines, sharing its heat among the beds of rockwool they grow in, before being pumped back to the factory as coolant again.
Similarly, CO2 released during the manufacture of ammonia is injected into the greenhouse to stimulate growth.
“It’s the basic principle of photosynthesis,” van Duijn said. Combined with water and light, the plants convert the carbon dioxide into organic compounds, releasing oxygen as a side product.
The level of CO2 inside is three times higher than outside, giving a crop yield that according to van Duijn is two to three times greater.
He reckons the project will produce 2.5 million kilogrammes (5.5 million pounds) of aubergines a year, adding to the millions he already cultivates under glass on his land in the southern Netherlands.
Filed under: amazon, cancer, chevron, contamination, corporations, corporatism, corruption, crude, Dictatorship, drinking water, Ecuador, Empire, Fascism, health and environment, Oil, oil dumping, Petrol, texaco, toxic earth, toxicity, water contamination | Tags: Daryl Hannah
Chevron Sued For Dumping Toxic Waste in Amazon
Celebrity support for the cause … actress Daryl Hannah in Ecuador’s oil region in the Amazon two years ago. Photo: AP
Sydney Morning Herald
November 17, 2009
Tens of thousands of Amazonians are suing Chevron, the American oil company, for poisoning their waterways in what is billed as one of the biggest environmental cases in history.
The Ecuadorean claimants said the company illegally dumped toxic waste from its oil production, which filtered into the lakes used by thousands of people for washing and drinking.
The result, they claimed, was one of the worst environmental disasters in history, which led to a public health crisis with rising levels of cancer, birth defects and miscarriages.
Some 30,000 Amazonians are behind a case to be heard by an Ecuadorean judge. Experts said the company might have to pay damages of up to $US27 billion ($29 billion).
The company said there was no proof that any illnesses were caused by its operations. It said the responsibility for cleaning the area lay with the Ecuadorean government and Petroecuador, the state oil company.
The court case is the result of the exploitation of the indigenous population by US trial lawyers and a corrupt government, according to Chevron.
The Amazon campaign has attracted high-profile supporters including actor Daryl Hannah. Chevron’s reputation for corporate social responsibility has already taken a blow.
The issue is the subject of Crude, a critically acclaimed documentary. The rags-to-riches tale of the most senior Ecuadorean lawyer fighting the case has earnt it a place on the front cover of Vanity Fair.
Texaco, which is owned by Chevron, started operating in Sucumbios, Ecuador, in 1964. Over 26 years it made more than $500 million, producing 1.7 billion barrels of oil. As the operator of a consortium with Petroecuador, it drilled hundreds of wells.
Pits were created for each well in which to put the water produced as a byproduct of the oil. Those fighting Chevron claimed that the 68 billion litres of water in the pits were toxic and were allowed to overflow into nearby rivers. They also claimed that Texaco spilt an additional 64 million litres of crude oil.
The contamination allegedly increased cancer rates in the area threefold, and led directly to 1400 deaths.
”Texaco treated Ecuador’s Amazon like a garbage dump,” said Douglas Beltman, a former official at the US Environmental Protection Agency who is a scientific consultant to the indigenous groups.
Filed under: amazon, biofuels, BP, brazil, carlyle group, ethanol, famine, food crisis, food market, food prices, gas prices, GE, George Bush, george soros, health and environment, malthusian catastrophe, Mexico, Oil, Pakistan, Petrol, shell, UN, washington, wheat | Tags: corn, grain, grasslands, malaysia, rain forest, rainforest, soybean, wetlands
Destroying the Amazon Rainforest to Fight Global Warming
Biofuel industry to destroy valuble wetlands, grasslands and forests to cash-in on the global warming trend
Time
March 30, 2008
From his Cessna a mile above the southern Amazon, John Carter looks down on the destruction of the world’s greatest ecological jewel. He watches men converting rain forest into cattle pastures and soybean fields with bulldozers and chains. He sees fires wiping out such gigantic swaths of jungle that scientists now debate the “savannization” of the Amazon. Brazil just announced that deforestation is on track to double this year; Carter, a Texas cowboy with all the subtlety of a chainsaw, says it’s going to get worse fast. “It gives me goose bumps,” says Carter, who founded a nonprofit to promote sustainable ranching on the Amazon frontier. “It’s like witnessing a rape.”
The Amazon was the chic eco-cause of the 1990s, revered as an incomparable storehouse of biodiversity. It’s been overshadowed lately by global warming, but the Amazon rain forest happens also to be an incomparable storehouse of carbon, the very carbon that heats up the planet when it’s released into the atmosphere. Brazil now ranks fourth in the world in carbon emissions, and most of its emissions come from deforestation. Carter is not a man who gets easily spooked–he led a reconnaissance unit in Desert Storm, and I watched him grab a small anaconda with his bare hands in Brazil–but he can sound downright panicky about the future of the forest. “You can’t protect it. There’s too much money to be made tearing it down,” he says. “Out here on the frontier, you really see the market at work.”
This land rush is being accelerated by an unlikely source: biofuels. An explosion in demand for farm-grown fuels has raised global crop prices to record highs, which is spurring a dramatic expansion of Brazilian agriculture, which is invading the Amazon at an increasingly alarming rate.
Propelled by mounting anxieties over soaring oil costs and climate change, biofuels have become the vanguard of the green-tech revolution, the trendy way for politicians and corporations to show they’re serious about finding alternative sources of energy and in the process slowing global warming. The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol–ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter–in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Europe has similarly aggressive biofuel mandates and subsidies, and Brazil’s filling stations no longer even offer plain gasoline. Worldwide investment in biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, thanks to investors like Richard Branson and George Soros, GE and BP, Ford and Shell, Cargill and the Carlyle Group. Renewable fuels has become one of those motherhood-and-apple-pie catchphrases, as unobjectionable as the troops or the middle class.
But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it’s dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.
Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.’s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn’t exactly tranquil when flour was affordable.
Biofuels do slightly reduce dependence on imported oil, and the ethanol boom has created rural jobs while enriching some farmers and agribusinesses. But the basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple, given that researchers have ignored it until now: using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon.
Backed by billions in investment capital, this alarming phenomenon is replicating itself around the world. Indonesia has bulldozed and burned so much wilderness to grow palm oil trees for biodiesel that its ranking among the world’s top carbon emitters has surged from 21st to third according to a report by Wetlands International. Malaysia is converting forests into palm oil farms so rapidly that it’s running out of uncultivated land. But most of the damage created by biofuels will be less direct and less obvious. In Brazil, for instance, only a tiny portion of the Amazon is being torn down to grow the sugarcane that fuels most Brazilian cars. More deforestation results from a chain reaction so vast it’s subtle: U.S. farmers are selling one-fifth of their corn to ethanol production, so U.S. soybean farmers are switching to corn, so Brazilian soybean farmers are expanding into cattle pastures, so Brazilian cattlemen are displaced to the Amazon. It’s the remorseless economics of commodities markets. “The price of soybeans goes up,” laments Sandro Menezes, a biologist with Conservation International in Brazil, “and the forest comes down.”
Deforestation accounts for 20% of all current carbon emissions. So unless the world can eliminate emissions from all other sources–cars, power plants, factories, even flatulent cows–it needs to reduce deforestation or risk an environmental catastrophe. That means limiting the expansion of agriculture, a daunting task as the world’s population keeps expanding. And saving forests is probably an impossibility so long as vast expanses of cropland are used to grow modest amounts of fuel. The biofuels boom, in short, is one that could haunt the planet for generations–and it’s only getting started.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/01/biofuels.energy
Analyst Predicts Corn Rationing In 2008
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/5662307.html
noworldsystem.com 