As seen in the above graph, for month ending January 2011, UAH
(University of Alabama in Huntsville) satellite data confirms that global
average temperature anomalies stood at -0.01 C. From a high in March last year,
this is a whooping 0.6 C plunge in 10 months and a 0.2 C plunge in just one
month. The trendline (blue) captures the rapidity of the global cooling trend.
What Cancun Climate Meet cannot do even if they came up with a global treaty,
natural climatic variations does it in a jiffy - erasing century’s net warming
effortlessly.
This is certainly the kind of data that the so called Climate Justice Movement
and their publications like India Disasters Report would never tell you. Though
temperatures go up and down all the time, the latter create hysteria by
focusing only on record temperature highs but keep tightly mum when
temperatures touch record lows. It is this selectivity that indicates their
lack of fundamental integrity; the whole global warming hysteria is just a
scam.
India’s premier environment organization, (CSE) Centre for Science and
Environment (read our archive with dateline April 15, 2010 here) and the India
Disasters Report 2010 (read our archive with dateline June 17, 2010 here) were two such
instances confronted by our blog. Both last year drew attention to record high
temperatures, suppressing the fact that it was an El Niño year, a natural
oceanic phenomenon that causes global temperatures to temporarily spike
upwards. In fact the El Niño 2009-2010 was a super El Niño which was the
reason why last year was one of the warmest in recorded history.
Now
with their hysteria running its course, global warmist are trying to keep the
scam alive by claiming that global warming causes global cooling, remarkably
treating the public as imbecile idiots. This is a clear indication of the
desperation of Climate Justice Movement. In fact, they are not only destroying
their own credibility but are taking down the credibility of the whole NGO and
environment sector.
Meanwhile the world is paying a huge price because these climate loonies impact
policies. This winter is estimated to have so far knocked out 0.5% of the GDP
of the UK. And that’s a preliminary estimate as the current thaw experienced by
Europe is to give way by mid of this month to harsher winter conditions.
According to Office for National Statistics, there were more than 25,000
additional deaths this winter so far in the UK than previous winters. Why? The
UK Met Office predicted wrong their winter forecasts. As the UK
government based their response on a mild winter, they under-provided for snow
ploughs, grit and salt.
In
Australia, the comprehensive 1999 Brisbane River Flood Study made alarming
findings about predicted devastation to tens of thousands of flood-prone
properties, which were given the green light for residential development since
the 1974 flood. The engineers and hydrologists involved in the study warned
that the next major flood in Brisbane would be between 1m and 2m higher than
anticipated by the Brisbane town plan. Despite this, global warmist induced policies
moulded planning to combat drought instead of floods and the result was the
Queensland Floods last month. The preliminary cost estimated at $ 30 million!
In Sri Lanka, Tsunami rehabilitation programmes of some of the members of the
Climate Justice Movement likewise promoted “sustainable agriculture” designed
to fight droughts and the result was that last month’s floods reduced the
country to a net food importer!
But all these pale into insignificance the
kind of political instability as we watching in the Arab world, introduced by
these climate loonies by promotion of bio-fuels and carbon trading. The
desperate act of an unemployed university graduate living in the Tunisian town
of Sidi Bouzid sparked a wave of popular unrest that in January 2011 overthrew
the authoritarian regime of the president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The
self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi has been echoed in other parts of the Arab
world.
In Algeria, riots and demonstrations in
protest against steep rises in basic foodstuffs (the price of sugar and cooking
oil, for example, went up by 30% on 1 January 2011) forced the authorities to
rescind the increases; the protests continue in Egypt and elsewhere, even in
the face of deaths and injuries, and have broadened into demands for greater
freedom.
A World Bank report published in 2009 stresses that Arab countries import more
than half their food, and that they are the greatest importers of cereal in the
world. In other words, Arab countries depend on other countries for their food
security - as sensitive to floods in Australia and big freezes in Canada as on
the yield in Algeria or Egypt itself. In 2009, Arab countries’ food imports
cost $30 billion. The rising prices on global markets from mid-2008 already
caused waves of rioting in dozens of countries around the globe.
Biofuels are conservatively estimated to have been responsible for at least 30
percent of the global food price spike in 2008 that pushed 100 million people
into poverty and drove some 30 million more into hunger, according to the
report, Meals per gallon, released by the UK charity ActionAid in February
2010. The number of chronically hungry people now exceeds one billion.
Tragedy is that despite such researches the ActionAid, ChristianAid, Oxfam,
Save the Children etc still are members of the Climate Justice Movement. With
blood dripping from their hands, no longer can they champion the cause of fight
against hunger in developing countries, without attracting the charge of hypocrisy.
UPDATE
Ethanol has proven to be an inadequate
solution to the problem of foreign oil, but it has toppled at least one Arab
ruler and may not be done yet. The Soros backed college students and the
Islamists have done their part in the protests, but the Tunisian and Egyptian
mobs would never have made their showing without a goad. And the goad was high wheat
prices. Part of the spike in wheat prices was due to the shift to ethanol
production.
Wheat_spike. Remember when Americans were lining up with cans of gasoline
during the OPEC oil boycott? Arab Muslims are now in the same boat, except with
bread, rather than oil. Arab countries are frantically buying wheat, especially
after the events in Tunisia and Egypt. Regime stability in the Middle East is
now tethered to wheat prices. The Arab has prided itself on the power to
pressure America using the price of oil, but the United States has now proven
that it can do the same thing to the Arab world with the price of wheat. The
price of oil may be climbing in America, but in Saudi Arabia the price of wheat
is up by more than half.
The Arab-American relationship was built on a power inequity. They had a
resource that we needed. But now we have a resource that they need even more
badly. While you can do a lot of things with oil, you can't eat it. And while
Americans may get angry when oil prices go up, unlike the Arabs, we don't
overthrow the government. Of course anyone can grow wheat. China and India are
the world leaders in wheat production. Behind them, Russia, America, Australia
and Canada. But Russia has just stopped exporting grain. China uses most of its
wheat domestically too but is ramping up export production. Wheat however is
only one commodity. There are others.
The Arab Muslim world has held American foreign policy hostage using the one
commodity they had that we needed. But as a side effect of their own terrorism,
we adopted a course that unintentionally spiked up the price of a commodity
they needed. They acted as if violence and chaos could only benefit them by
driving up the price of oil, but the rising price of wheat is blowback. We of
course did not set out to hammer the Muslim world with ethanol subsidies
(though a smarter and cannier administration might have done that) and that is
the beauty of it. Instead while trying to untangle ourselves from foreign oil
because of their behavior, the net effect was to demonstrate their own
instability.
It's more than a lesson in the interconnectedness of the world in the age of
globalism. It is also a reminder that we may have more power than we realize.
We don't need to invade a country and then occupy it for years at the cost of
billions of dollars and thousands of lives. As it turns out we can topple
regimes even faster with ethanol subsidies. Of course this isn't actually a
solution. Wheat prices hit the poorer Arab countries the hardest. That being the
countries without the oil. The net beneficiaries of populist protests will be
the Islamists. And wheat won't be a permanent lever. China will ramp up its
wheat production more aggressively in response to higher prices. We lack the
wheat equivalent of OPEC to function as a price setting cartel. And the current
conditions which brought together droughts in China, flooding in Australia and
ethanol subsidies in America are close to unique. But what they do is show our
power.
Ethanol is controversial on the left because it raises food prices and
controversial on the right because it is built on subsidies and regulation. As
a substitute for oil, it's inadequate, but as an economic weapon it raises
certain possibilities. The United States is an economic superpower, but that is
a power we rarely leverage. While the Muslim world has conducted a multipronged
assault using lawfare, economic warfare and proxy terrorist groups-- we
responded with charm offensives and massive armed offensives. But it can't hurt
to take a page out of their book. To also use more subtle weapons. Including
economic warfare. And as has already been demonstrated, price volatility can
have a more explosive impact than a bomb.
The Muslim world has a small upper class, a sliver of a middle class and a huge
underclass. While the trappings of the 21st century are there, from cell phones
to the internet, there is more than a slight whiff of the feudal about the
whole arrangement. Tyranny and brutality won't upset the applecart, but food
availability does. (Medieval revolts were often triggered by high food prices.)
What a feudal system needs above all else is stability. The illusion of a
timeless order. A way of life in which change does not even exist. Instability
is like lighting a match in a crowded room filled with fumes. And we have
already seen what that match can do.
Arab Muslim rulers have bought peace at home by exporting their surplus
populations and their terrorists to America and Europe. They have spun hateful
fantasies about America and Israel to direct the anger of their own citizens
away from the government. And we have been paying the price for it. Their
artificial stability fuels our terrorism and the rape gangs and murders in our
cities. The blowback from their terrorism has rebounded against them before.
But always in a limited way. And with plenty of warning. This time though there
was no warning. Just an economic tidal wave headed their way.
The rise in the price of wheat has hurt Americans. Particularly working
families. But it has hurt the Muslim world far more. With the Obama
Administration's continued commitment to ethanol subsidies, wheat prices are
likely to keep on rising. And even with a Republican congress, that may not
change significantly, because subsidies develop an interest based appeal of
their own. Iowa is a swing state and ethanol is big business. The ethanol tax
credit and tariff went through the Senate in December at 81 to 19 and 277 to
148 in congress. Throw in a cold winter and wheat prices are only going to keep
rising.
In
2007-2008, Egypt saw major food riots break out. As did Yemen,
Somalia and Bangladesh. The UN and the Davos summit have already issued urgent
warnings about political instability due to food prices. The Islamists and
Soros' boys have successfully piggybacked on this year's food riots, making it
seem as if they had a massive following in the streets and a mandate for
change. They succeeded in Tunisia, but Egypt is still up for grabs. But whoever
replaces the dictators will not do any better. The Muslim Brotherhood wants to
burqa all the women and start a war with Israel. That will certainly make the
average Egyptian temporarily forget about the price of bread, but will make
matters much worse.
Pushing women out of the workplace is economically feasible in Saudi Arabia,
wallowing in its own oil. It's feasible in generally rural Afghanistan or Gaza
which lives off foreign aid anyway. But it doesn't even fly in Iran and would
mean economic disaster for Egypt. Cutting ties with America and beginning an
expensive war with Israel wouldn't reduce the population much, but would cost a
whole lot, and unlike 1967 and 1973, the Russians won't be footing the bill.
And what would the price of bread look like then?
The Islamists have two weapons on their side. Oil and the birth rate. But the
former can't be eaten and the latter must eat.
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