It seems to be the fashion just now for people to declare themselves “climate change sceptics.” They say that it’s all to do with sun-spots, the Earth’s tilt or natural cycles. All these may be having some effect, but experts say they would expect change to happen much more slowly from these causes.
To a non-scientist like me, the greenhouse effect is simple. The natural greenhouse effect has been well understood and accepted for many years. Greenhouse gases trap heat energy, reducing the amount that is radiated from the earth back into space, acting as a partial blanket and causing a difference of about 21ºC between the average temperature that we would have and the actual average of the earth surface temperature. If there were no greenhouse gases the earth would not be habitable for humans.
If a certain level of greenhouse gases warms the earth by about 21ºC, it would not be surprising if higher levels would warm it further and this is exactly what is happening. The planet is reacting as we expected.
The sceptics, who think we should not reduce CO² emissions or limit deforestation are really saying that we should risk the future of our civilization on the possibility that higher levels of greenhouse gases do not enhance the greenhouse effect.
On the cover on our book, Famine in the West, the picture of a Western child begging for food from an Arab is intended to symbolise our future dependence on the Middle East for our food, in the sense that farming cannot now function without oil, and as most remaining supplies are in that region, any interruption of supplies from there would threaten our food industry.
However, we could just as easily have used a picture of President Putin or someone representing a future Russian leader, because Russia will soon almost control the Nitrogen fertiliser market and the supply of the gas feedstock used for its manufacture.
Nitrogen fertiliser has been one of the key factors allowing the massive increase in crop yields over the last 60 years that have temporarily raised the carrying capacity of the Earth way above what it otherwise would have been. Around 40 – 45% of grain yield is now due to these fertilisers, and as farmers are careful to use only the optimum amounts, any reduction in availability would cause yield losses.
Russia and a few other smaller but equally unreliable countries have become dominant because of natural gas. Gas is the feedstock for most nitrogen fertiliser production, so for gas-rich nations, turning that gas in to fertiliser is one way to diversify, but more importantly fertiliser can be shipped around the world more easily then gas.
So, Russia has become a major producer, but so have some of the ex-Soviet nations who have built production facilities near ports at the end of a Russian gas pipeline. European manufacturers using North Sea gas have found it hard to compete and have been closing down production . As gas supplies from the North Sea are declining faster then expected, we will soon see a time when either the fertiliser or the gas comes from unreliable countries.
Russia is now taking a more unfriendly stance with the West and considers energy its trump card. In any future disagreement we could be deprived of our main yield driver with disastrous consequences.
The UK government along with governments in Europe and the U.S are at last becoming very concerned about our increasing dependence on unreliable and unfriendly energy suppliers. In many countries efforts are underway to convince the public that nuclear is the way ahead. This is understandable as it is estimated that by 2030 Europe as a whole will rely on imported gas for 82% of its supplies and oil for 93%.
In the UK, Alistair Darling made a statement to the commons that said, “The UK is also becoming increasingly dependent on imported oil and gas at a time when global demand is accelerating… With a third of our current electricity generation capacity due to close in the next 20 years, there is also a pressing need for investment in new low carbon sources…”
Unfortunately, even if nuclear is a good option we don’t yet have a way to power farming by nuclear, so if there was a severe reduction in oil and gas flowing to Europe and the U.S, the food production and distribution system would fail.
The battle to slow down the rate of climatic change by reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHGs) seems to be going badly. Climate change is bound to have a serious effect on food production just at the time when other major problems are looming.
A report in www.newKerala.com says, “Between 2000 and 2004, worldwide CO2 emissions increased threefold compared to the 1990s, and the acceleration of emissions was greatest in the exploding economies of developing regions particularly China, even though they contributed only about 40% of total emissions, according to a new study published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The rate increased from 1.1 percent per year during the 1990s to 3.1 percent per year in the early 2000s, the study said.
The study also found that the accelerating growth rate was largely due to the increasing energy intensity of economic activity and the increase in population and in per-capita gross domestic product.
“No region is decarbonising its energy supply. Despite the scientific consensus that carbon emissions are affecting the world’s climate. we are not seeing evidence of progress in managing those emissions in either the developed or developing countries,” said Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology and co-author of the study.
“In many parts of the world, we are going backwards,” he said…”
Critics of the Iraq war often say that it was all about oil, and I suppose that they are correct. However, I don’t believe the coalition ever intended to steal the oil.  What they wanted was to make sure the oil kept flowing by removing Saddam Hussain who had previously attacked two of his neighbouring countries, and install a pro-western democratic government.
This they thought, would have brought some stability to the Middle East, serve as a warning to other rogue states not to step out of line, and create a military base right in the centre of things. Unfortunately, it’s not turned out this well. Iraq must be delighted that the coalition has removed its main enemy, Hussain, and installed a Shi’ite government.
Iran and the many terrorist groups in the Middle East, while hating each other, will work towards removing all Western troops from Iraq and then the entire region. The day that the last troops pull out is the day we should fill every available tank or can with fuel and start stocking up on food.
War could quickly break out between Shi’ite and Sunny, Arab and Israeli and Al-quida and the House of Saud. For many, the destruction of the oil infrastructure to deny the West oil would be a major aim.
With the West increasingly dependent on imported oil to operate, shortages could lead to a collapse of the economic system and failure of food production.
George Bush and Tony Blair have long been aware of how disastrous it would be if oil slows or stops from the Middle East and were did what they thought was right to protect their own people.
In retrospect, a better policy would have been to introduce drastic fuel saving legislation to make us less dependent on the Middle East, but such measures would have been less popular with the electorate then a successful war.
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