Diary Of The Last Age

That's the subtitle of a new book, Seeds of Science, by Mark Lynas , a former anti-GMO activist for Greenpeace , who is now an advocate for the safe use of GM technology.  This is a point I've been making for some time.  I am of course a strong environmentalist but I've long believed that we need GM methods in order to have any hope of feeding the 8 billion people that will be on this planet by 2050. Lynas' book has just been reviewed in the latest issue of Science  (behind paywall).  The review explains how his views have completely turned around about GMO's. Most major global scientific organizations have firmly stated that science backs the efficacy and safety of genetic engineering.  Yet in the minds of many, consuming food with a GM organism (GMO) - free label is a must. So what went wrong?  Lynas argues that applying GM technology first to herbicide-resistant crops was a mistake that aligned the chemical manufacturing industry--which was alrea...

It is common for those denying global warming to cite the failure of forecasting.  Well, such a declaration was premature.  In 2013 it looked like the temperatures were leveling off.  However, that didn't happen.  The deniers were wrong.  We have here the forecasts made by Dr. James E. Hansen in 1988, 30 years ago, and the observed temperatures up to 2018. Hansen was invited to testify before the United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on June 23, 1988. [75] Hansen testified that "Global warming has reached a level such that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming...It is already happening now" [52] and "The greenhouse effect has been detected and it is changing our climate now...We already reached the point where the greenhouse effect is important." [76] Hansen said that NASA was 99% confident that the warming was caused by the accumul...

I've posted extensively about the carbon tax , or fee, and now dividend .  As I've tried to emphasize, this is the best, and possibly only way for our planet to survive.  It is an economic solution.  You can tell people not to use gasoline in their cars, or not to eat beef, but no one is going to pay attention until the true value of using gasoline or eating beef is imposed on them.   As I've posted, conservative groups like the Cato Institute , and bipartisan groups like the World Bank,  partisan groups like the Young Republicans , and even oil companies , have come out for a carbon tax. Now a new group that includes conservatives is coming out for a "carbon dividend" Proponents of a market-oriented plan to fight climate change by taxing greenhouse gas emissions and giving the revenue to American taxpayers are starting a campaign to run advertisements as early as this fall and introduce legislation in Congress as early as next year.  Th...

Climate Change Denial Should Be A Crime In the wake of Harvey, it's time to treat science denial as gross negligence--and hold those who do the denying accountable. In August 2016, months after Houston had been hit by the second of two back-to-back “hundred year floods,” Mike Talbott, then the head of Houston’s flood control district, told The Texas Tribune and ProPublica that he still had no plans to study climate change or its potential impacts on the county — Harris, the third-largest in the nation — that he was charged with protecting. Talbott criticized scientists for being “anti-development,” and not only ignored but denigrated studies — even those conducted by his own department, one of which he called “absurd” — that suggested development was worsening flooding, or that urged him to leave prairies intact to absorb floodwaters. When the Tribune told Talbott that a host of scientific experts had said the contrary, his reply was blunt.  “You need to find some better...

I've been posting for four years about global warming, about the risks, the consequences, about what we should expect to happen.  But there is one thing, in my opinion, more important than all other issues, refugees.  People fleeing droughts, famine, social disorder is only going to get worse as global warming advances.  I urge everyone to support UNHCR .  In my opinion there is no more important issue.  I urge everyone to look more closely into this .   Imagine your having to flee from very difficult circumstances into countries that are resisting your migration.  There are millions of families in very desperate situations and UNHCR is in many cases the only help they have.