AL'S GONE QUIET ON BIO-FUELS...
Saturday, April 26, 2008 at 09:52AM Oh dear! The campaign against reality "climate change" could be set back by the global food crisis, as foreign populations turn against measures to use foodstuffs as substitutes for fossil fuels.
Ethanol was initially promoted as a vehicle to cut back on foreign oil. In recent years, biofuels have also been touted as a way "to fight" climate change, but the food crisis does not augur well for ethanol’s prospects. The environmentalists, led by the Rev Gore, have been adocating the increasing use of crops to produce ethanol. Problem is this is leading to massive hikes in food costs and food riots around the third world! Curiously, when asked to comment on this, Gore has remained silent. I wonder why? We are now beginning to see the folly of listening to the environmental lobby as their imagined cures for global warming turn into global starving.
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Reader Comments (26)
The Oil Companies are a much better source of truth.
Thank goodness he remained silent, that old blowhard has said enough already.
I was reading an article on the food shortage and stockpiling of basic foodstuffs, like rice an cereal, yesterday. The writer said that biofuels were only half of the problem, the other half was caused by the booming Chinese and Indian economies that have pushed tens of millions of people out of poverty and into the middle class. This rising middle class can afford and is demanding more food, this has put pressure on the availability of certain crops. Sounds like it's a good time to be farmer.
I think bio-fuels will prove to be a dead-end. They have succeeded in Brazil, but only at the expense of clearing the rainforest to grow them. The EU is already back-pedalling on its target of 10% biofuels in petrol by 2015.
Nuclear, solar, wind, tidal, and clean coal will have to be the main alternative sources of energy for the next 20 years, unless there is an unforseen tehcnological break-through, such as cold fusion. That, and vastly increased efficiency in everything from household insulation to engine efficiency.
Because the food crisis has direct effects on everybody, it is real and undsputed. MMGW is still a theory and is coming under serious examination now that science is freeing itself from political constraints.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/04/scariest-photo.html
Another factor which will cause our so-called green government problems is that they are now seen as using 'the environment' as a pretext for taxation.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/24/nlevy124.xml
Daphne,
The man is not old! He only turned 60 last month. Ageist!
As to the issue at hand, I blame Monsanto:
Alan, I meant old as in stale, played out, tired, etc......:-)
Off the subject, but only slightly, I see that Big Al's Oscar winning film documentary has now reached Sky TV. Is it going to be shown prefaced with the learned Judges comments or does that only apply if it is to be shown in a school?
government and eviro-wackos are the problem. There is no oil shortage and there is no man made global warming period
They'll sort bios out. There is a terrific in depth analysis in the Times that looks at it objectively and sensibly instead of writing it off. Basically folks its bio or bust.
Peter - Brazil was awesome on the stuff. Just got back. It's cheap so they won't ever change that, they couldn't give a rats arse about green there!
And read the Times piece, it even looks at the land situation where they can grow the stuff sensibly, the amazing bi products of producing it and all sorts of fascinating bits, you will enjoy it. Ill find it for you.
Centralized command control of economies - exemplified by this current govt. biofuel fiasco - never works.
Peter T posted:
is it going to be shown prefaced with the learned Judges comments
The "learned" judges' comments were found to be rubbish. Just like their sentences in fact.
Troll posted:
government and eviro-wackos are the problem. There is no oil shortage and there is no man made global warming period
No, it's neo-con creationist petrol-head neanderthals like you that are the problem. There is an oil shortage and there is man-made global warming. Period.
I am not a CREATIONIST
BUENOS AIRES -- (AP) -- Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore warned Friday that the drive to produce alternative fuels to combat global warming must not create new forms of environmental damage.
''Every potential solution much be handled carefully and the danger with biofuels is that extremely valuable forests will be destroyed unnecessarily,'' said Gore, whose global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth won an Academy Award this year. ``Another danger is that, if it is not pursued carefully, it will drive food prices up.''
Al Gore, May 2007
Here is the article i referred to for anyone with an open and objective view on the issue
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3489640.ece
Troll posted:
I am not a CREATIONIST
Yes you are. You believe in so-called "intelligent design" which is the modern version of creationism, as you should know.
Peter
Please tell me where I have EVER stated that I believe in inteligent design?
You have made that comment repeatidly and I have NEVER stated that I am a supporter of inteligent design.
But as with most of your arguments FACTS mean nothing to you.
Frank
Rightworld doesn't give a shit about the rainforests. They're just another natural resource to be expolited for profit.
Alison
Thanks for the link. Very informative.
GM / Troll (which is it?)
Do you believe in Darwin's theory of evolution by means of natural selection?
It's Troll
I believe in natural selection as example: two sets of moths one yellow one brown they are both on a tree branch and the birds eat the yellow one because they can see it, therefore the brown species survives and the yellow line dies out.
As for my concept of God and intelligent design. I believe God created the universe. He put in it all the building materials of life. Life then evolved where the conditions were right.
Did he sit down and design a Man, a bear, a fly? No.
The more we discover with science the more we understand the building blocks that God used to foment the growth of life that the particular conditions will allow to evolve.
Over the past decades we have discovered that the basic ammino acids that all life on this planet have as their base building blocks originate in star dust. So you can look at them and view them as the seeds of life strewn out a sun that when they land in the right conditions they grow.
Do I see this as Gods handi work Yes.
Do I believe the Earth is only six thousand years old and all of Mankind came from Adam and Eve No.
GM/T
Thanks for that. So you do believe in "Intelligent Design" but you're not full-on creationists. I can appreciate the difference.
I have struggled with this evolutionary question for a long time. Although much of Darwin's work (and the theories that have sprung from it) seem reasonable enough, in my Christian life there remains (or rather, there remained, until recently) one big problem:
The Bible says that all mankind became sinners due to the sin of one man, Adam. Now, I don't find his name all that important, but for a long time I couldn't grasp this whole thing. It seemed wholly unfair to me: Why should I be constituted a sinner, just because Adam sinned? It's not that I disagree that I am a sinner - I totally agree that I am one. But still, why should it be so? (If my dad had robbed a bank, why should I be arrested and imprisoned for his offence?) I just didn't get it. I used to think, Wasn't God being very unfair in "including me in Adam"?
The answer is that I was "in Adam" when he sinned. I came from his seed and from Eve's womb, therefore I inherited what was in him. And his sin was a huge, life-altering, species-altering event, more so than we recognise. His sin fundamentally altered the whole of creation, and changed the very basis of God's relationship with man. What he did was so terrible that it could not help but be passed down to all his offspring.
The point of this is, that this whole hypothesis requires "Adam" to have been the "first man" - not merely an evolutionary step up from his predecessor, but a very definite first step, quite different from any other creation. Man was created from first principles as "man number one", and not as "[almost-a-man] monkey plus 0.0000000001% genetic modification". No, there had to have been a definite first man.
How did I come to accept such a strange situation? Well, I wanted to experience the "deliverance from sin" that Christ apparently achieved. But how could I do so, I thought? I am not Christ, so how can I possibly share in what he is, or what he did? Again, the Bible tells me that "I (ie, my old sinful humanity, everything that has been passed down to me from Adam) was crucified with Christ", and that although as yet unborn, God put me "in Christ" when he died. Therefore everything that Christ is and has, devolves unto me upon my acceptance of him as "the last Adam" and "the second Man", as Paul describes him.
So, as unfair as it sounds, that God decrees that I was "included in Adam" when he disobeyed and sinned against Him, by the same standard, God decrees that I was "included in Christ" when he obeyed, and was crucified. He placed me (and all believers) "in Christ" by his own will, and thus he "nulls and voids" all that I inherited from Adam, and instead freely gives me all that is inherited from Christ.
So, in the same way as I am told to accept by faith that I am made righteous in God's eyes, not due to anything I have done, but due to the obedience of one man (Christ), so it follows that I can accept that I was made un-righteous in the first place by the disobedience of one man (Adam). Christ came to "translate" us out of the "old territory" of Adam, and into the new territory of himself. If there was no Adam in the first place, then all of that is sheer nonsense, of course. But I find Christ working within me, very slowly but surely guiding me into his new life, and so surely there was an Adam, as surely as there was (and is) Christ. It is through discovering (by the work of the Holy Spirit) who Christ is, and the importance of what He did on the cross, that I have, by corollary, discovered the reality of who Adam was and what he did, and how his actions affected who I am.
PS, as I type this, I'm still unsure whether to post it or to delete it, as I'm well aware that to the non-Christian it may well say nothing intelligible, and may come across as mad religious raving. But what the heck, I'll post it. Let me just say that, as time goes by, I am more and more inclined to accept the traditional Biblical version of creation rather than Darwin's theories. The Biblical version fits in with what I am in the process of discovering about the person of Christ. And that's my main criteria.
That was amazingly wonderful Tom.
I recently found out that ethanol is now being produced as a by-product in cheese making.....surely good news and more reason to push ahead with the promotion of and R&D of bio-fuels.
Now I must go for my morning soda bread and gouda!!!!