Biofuels Policy May Kill 200,000 Per Year in the Third World
TUCSON, Ariz., March 28, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- U.S. and European policy to increase production of ethanol and other biofuels to displace fossil fuels is supposed to help human health by reducing "global warming." Instead it has added to the global burden of death and disease.Global warming? Recent winter storms consistent with warming planet, scientist says | SierraSun.com
Increased production of biofuels increases the price of food worldwide by diverting crops and cropland from feeding people to feeding motor vehicles. Higher food prices, in turn, condemn more people to chronic hunger and "absolute poverty" (defined as income less than $1.25 per day). But hunger and poverty are leading causes of premature death and excess disease worldwide. Therefore, higher biofuel production would increase death and disease.
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — Global warming could make record-setting snowstorms in some parts of the country more common, but not in the Sierra Nevada, according to scientists with the Union for Concerned Scientists.
“Heavy snowstorms are not inconsistent with a warming planet,” said Jeff Masters, director of meteorology for www.wunderground.com, in a statement from the Union. “In fact, as the Earth gets warmer, and more moisture gets absorbed into the atmosphere, we are steadily loading the dice in favor of more extreme storms in all seasons, capable of causing greater impacts on society.”
...
But a northward shift of the jet stream, North America's storm engine, could make it less likely for the Sierra Nevada snowpack to benefit from the heavier storms, Masters said.
Average snowpack in the Sierra Nevada has decreased by about 10 percent over the past century, according to a report from the California Department of Water Resources.
...
“If the climate continues to warm, we should expect an increase in heavy snow events for a few decades, until the climate grows so warm that we pass the point where it's too warm for it to snow heavily,” Masters said.
Posts
3 comments:
Am I reading this right...? Jeff Masters is a Union of Concerned Scientists member and he runs www.wunderground.com?
If so, isn't this putting the fox in charge of the hen house?
Yes, it is. I stopped using wunderground. I need to stop using google, too.
About 2002 the newspapers weather page started shifting the average annual rainfall totals for Sacramento from the old number 17.44 inches - which had prevailed throughout the 70's 80's and 90's - to the new improved annual average (based on the last thirty years) of 19.87 inches.
The thing is if you compute the number from all the available data (1902-present) you come up with an average of 18 inches (on strength of the rainy eighties and nineties).
It's only by deleting the first 70 years of data that the Bee can pretend Sacramento gets close to 20 inches in a year.
What happens in Sacramento invariably happens in the Sierra.
By their own records Sierra snowpack has increased on average by 10 percent.
Either The California Dept of Water Resources, an agency which is used as a cash cow for termed out Bay Area Assemblymen and State Senators, is lying, or 100 years of newspaper reporters were.
Post a Comment