Millions more trees isn’t the climate fix New Zealand thought

Expert view: as the CO2 absorption efficiency of trees declines over time “you’re going to have to keep planting more and more forests. That isn’t actually solving the problem.” Nature’s own carbon cycle isn’t easily manipulated.
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Of all the solutions for a warming world, “plant more trees” seems pretty obvious, says Bloomberg News (via Phys.org).

But in New Zealand, which tested that premise by linking incentives for forestry development with its emissions trading scheme, the results have been more controversial and less effective than climate advocates hoped.

Now, after four years of frenetic planting, a prominent government watchdog has joined international agencies, industry groups and environmental advocates in calling for a radical overhaul, one that threatens a reversal of fortunes for investors in the recent forestry boom.

The farmers’ net zero revolt has come to Britain

About time, says The Telegraph. Similar farming rules are expected to follow for England. Pursuit of impossible climate dogmas is running into the ever-pressing need to earn a living, with predictable results.
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There are demonstrations in Cardiff. Ministers are being pelted with food. And there are marchers with banners complaining that traditional livelihoods are under threat.

Welsh nationalists and the Labour establishment would probably prefer that it was the English, and the wicked Tories, who were facing a wave of popular protests.

But the action by farmers across Wales is directed at the devolved administration, and against its reckless imposition of fanatical net zero rules.

Two million animals dead as extreme winter weather hits Mongolia

The UN as usual blames ‘climate change’ (no definition available) which is synonymous with global warming to a lot of people. Snowfall in the country is reported as the heaviest since 1975.
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Bayanmunkh Sum: More than two million animals have died in Mongolia so far this winter, a government official said Monday, as the country endures extreme cold and snow, reports Gulf News.

The landlocked country is no stranger to severe weather from December to March, when temperatures plummet as low as minus 50 degrees Celsius (minus 58 Fahrenheit) in some areas.

But this winter has been more severe than usual, with lower than normal temperatures and very heavy snowfall, the United Nations said in a recent report.

As of Monday, 2.1 million head of livestock had died from starvation and exhaustion, Gantulga Batsaikhan of the country’s agriculture ministry said.

Mongolia had 64.7 million such animals, including sheep, goats, horses and cows, at the end of 2023, official statistics show.

The extreme weather is known as “dzud” and typically results in the deaths of huge numbers of livestock.

The United Nations said climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of dzuds.

Mongolia has experienced six dzuds in the past decade, including the winter of 2022-23 when 4.4 million head of livestock perished.

This year’s dzud has been exacerbated by a summer drought that prevented animals from building up enough fatty stores to survive the harsh winter.

‘Praying for warmer weather’
Seventy percent of Mongolia is experiencing “dzud or near dzud” conditions, the UN said.

That compares with 17 percent of the country at the same time in 2023.
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Snowfall this year – the heaviest since 1975 – has compounded herders’ woes, trapping them in colder areas and making them unable to buy food and hay for their animals from the nearby towns.

Full report here.
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Image: Another tough winter for Mongolian livestock [credit: eurasianet.org]

‘Our old way of life will be gone forever’: The tenant farmers targeted by solar developers

Just 0.1% of farmland is currently taken by solar panels – similar to the area claimed by Christmas trees (says Sky). But if solar developers get their way, backed by climate-obsessed politicians, tenant farmers could be facing a fate like the notorious Highland clearances when crofters were forcibly evicted from their smallholdings to make way for sheep farming. Goodbye to the bother of rent collection, hello bigger profits.
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It’s a frosty morning on Kidsley Farm in Derbyshire, a rare thing in this unusually warm winter, says Sky News.

Andrew Dakin’s beef herd is housed in the old brick barns, their breath steaming in the chill air. Alongside scuttling chickens and tractors of varying vintages, this is the very image of a traditional farmyard.

But for how long? Andrew is a tenant farmer and his landlord, who owns the land, wants to turn his pasture into a solar farm.

French farmers express net zero nausea as ‘siege of Paris’ begins

The tractors are out in force. Wrestling with onerous climate regulations, squeezed by supermarkets and pressured to give up land, many farmers have had more than enough, and not only in France.
Update: Farmergeddon! – (Daily Mail)
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Why the farmers don’t like the EU’s environmental policies – BBC News.

At the heart of the European Green Deal, which sets out how to make Europe climate-neutral by 2050, is a scheme called the Farm to Fork Strategy.

The approach aims to:

— Halve pesticide use by 2030
— Reduce fertiliser use
— Devote at least 10% of agricultural areas to non-agricultural uses (for example by turning it into fallow land, planting non-productive trees or creating ponds)
— Ensure 25% of the total EU agricultural land is used for organic farming
by 2030

These targets are seen by many farmers as unrealistic and expensive.

The Green Deal itself also includes legislation aimed at reducing emissions.

Agriculture accounts for around 11% of the EU’s total greenhouse gas emissions, so farmers will be very affected by efforts to reduce emissions.

Already in 2019, protests erupted in the Netherlands over proposals to dramatically reduce livestock farming in order to lower emissions.
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‘Just impossible’ to be a farmer in France

There’s a line of tractors behind me which is blocking one of the main motorways into Paris, near Charles de Gaulle airport.

We were driving along with one man who is here with his son-in-law, who has been driving a tractor. His son-in-law has a horse stables not too far from here.

He says things are just impossible for farmers here in France, and that it’s very hard for them to compete with other countries in the European Union, which he says have lower standards.

On top of that, he was complaining about the low cost of food being sold and the challenge that the green agenda is posing for production.

Full report here.

The Climate War On Food

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Is this really what people want in countries that claim to be democracies?

PA Pundits International

By Craig Rucker ~

Then they came for our food supply.

CFACT senior policy analyst Bonner Cohen reports at CFACT.org on “climate czar” John Kerry’s recent pronouncements at a Department of Agriculture summit.

“We can’t get to net-zero,” Kerry said, “we can’t get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution. So all of us here understand the depths of this mission.”

“Food systems themselves contribute a significant amount of emissions just in the way we do the things we’ve been doing,” he continued. “With a growing population on the planet – we’ve just crossed the threshold of 8 billion fellow citizens around the world – emissions from the food system alone are expected to cause another half a degree of warming by mid-century.”

Bonner fleshes out what Kerry’s words mean in practice:

“Though the Department of Agriculture has yet to elaborate on what…

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Claim: Global food system emissions imperil Paris climate goals

Meat under attack [image credit: farminguk.com]

Phys.org pounces on another supposed climate alarm. Once again magical powers are assigned to trace gases with no evidence offered.
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The global food system’s greenhouse gas emissions will add nearly one degree Celsius to Earth’s surface temperatures by 2100 on current trends, obliterating Paris Agreement climate goals, scientists warned Monday.

A major overhaul of the sector—from production to distribution to consumption—could reduce those emissions by more than half even as global population increases, they reported in Nature Climate Change.

Earth’s surface has warmed 1.2 C since the late 1800s, leaving only a narrow margin for staying under the 2015 treaty’s core goal of capping warming at “well under” 2 C.

Net zero is the reason we have empty supermarket shelves

Green blob [credit: storybird.com]

If officials think empty food shelves are a price worth paying for vain attempts to change the climate, they’re way out of touch with reality.
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It wasn’t meant to be like this: rationing is back, now being introduced in some supermarkets for fruits and vegetables, says farmer Jamie Blackett @ The Telegraph.

Typically, the public debate remains stuck on Brexit – or “Vegxit”. But this is much more to do with cold weather in farming regions, poor harvests in North Africa and Spain, and continued high energy costs.

If public expectations are that they should be able to eat tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers in February, something previous generations could barely imagine, it is perhaps understandable that logistics along an attenuated supply chain will play a major part.

Liz Truss to ban solar projects on farms

Image credit: BBC

Some pushback against the excesses of climate obsession.
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Liz Truss is poised to ban solar projects from most farms in England in a move that will dismay climate change campaigners and some Tory backbenchers, says Yahoo News.

The prime minister has long been opposed to solar farms on agricultural land, condemning them as “a blight on the landscape” when she was environment secretary in 2014.

And during the Tory leadership campaign this summer, she said she wanted to see farmers producing food with crops and livestock, “not filling fields with paraphernalia like solar farms”.

Friends of Science: Germany Teeters on the Brink of Energy Disaster – Global Food Crisis Looms

CALGARY, ALBERTA (PRWEB) JULY 14, 2022

The Financial Post of July 09, 2022, reported that Canada will release a sanctioned, overhauled gas turbine to Germany, for use in Russia’s Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, hopefully preventing a further collapse of Germany’s economy, says Friends of Science. Critics denounced the move as conflicting with Canada’s “Stand with Ukraine” policy. According to Canada’s international trade website: “Germany, with the largest economy in the EU and the fourth largest in the world … Germany is Canada’s largest export market in the EU…with two-way merchandise trade totaling $25.8 billion in 2021.”

Germany is heavily reliant on natural gas from Russia. DW reported on July 11, 2022, that Germany was preparing for possible total Russian gas cut-off which would mean economic collapse and social strife due to rationing of low gas reserves and a cold winter ahead.

EChemi reported in April 2022, Germany chemical giant BASF warned that it may have to shut down production: “there is no substitute for natural gas as a raw material or energy source (in Germany), and a shortage of natural gas will result in it not having enough energy for chemical production and lack of key raw materials for manufacturing products.” Many BASF products are familiar and important to the daily life of millions of people worldwide. About 39,000 people work at BASF’s Ludwigschafen chemical processing complex in Germany.

EU energy geopolitics expert Samuel Furfari explains in his July 12, 2022, Atlantico article, “Towards a gas cut: the moment of truth on our dependence on hydrocarbons has come,” oil and gas provide the ‘horse-power’ to make large scale food production possible, but they are also the source of fertilizer. Skyrocketing fertilizer costs and blocked wheat exports from Ukraine will create food shortages and famine.

New Zealand’s plan to tax cow and sheep burps

Image credit: Zelp

An own goal for NZ farming. Where is the greenhouse they’re so frightened of? From livestock to laughing stock.
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New Zealand has unveiled a plan to tax sheep and cattle burps in a bid to tackle one of the country’s biggest sources of greenhouse gases, says BBC News.

It would make it the first nation to charge farmers for the methane emissions from the animals they keep.

New Zealand is home to just over five million people, along with around 10 million cattle and 26 million sheep.

Almost half the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, mainly methane.

CLOUD discovers new way by which aerosols rapidly form and grow at high altitude

Ammonia in the upper troposphere originates from livestock and fertiliser emissions, say the researchers. CERN says “anthropogenic ammonia has a major influence on atmospheric aerosol particles”. Implications for climate models are suggested.
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Aerosol particles can form and grow in Earth’s upper troposphere in an unexpected way, reports the CLOUD collaboration in a paper published today in Nature.

The new mechanism may represent a major source of cloud and ice seed particles in areas of the upper troposphere where ammonia is efficiently transported vertically, such as over the Asian monsoon regions.

Aerosol particles are known to generally cool the climate by reflecting sunlight back into space and by making clouds more reflective. However, how new aerosol particles form in the atmosphere remains relatively poorly known.

Ireland’s climate targets problem: livestock numbers need to be reduced, say analysts

Irish farm [image credit: climatenewsnetwork.net]

Yet another climate folly induced by arbitrary targets. As usual they conveniently forget that most of their so-called ‘greenhouse’ gas is water vapour, which depends on the temperature. There’s so little methane in the atmosphere it has to be measured in parts per billion, but alarmism has taken over.
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In order for legally binding climate targets to be met, and agricultural subsidies to be granted, the number of livestock on the island needs to go down says Buzz.

The size of herds both North and South of the border is being scrutinised. It is likely both cow and sheep herds on both sides of the border will need to be cut – and soon.

Welsh family farms threatened by corporates pursuing ‘carbon offsetting’ schemes

Sheep farming in Wales [image credit: BBC]

Another example of unintended consequences caused by the irrational pursuit of climate obsessions by governments.
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A fifth of Welsh farms are running at a loss and there is a risk that farmers will be priced out of agriculture by big corporations buying up farmland for carbon offsetting schemes, according to a new report on family farms in Wales.

The findings of an inquiry by the Welsh Affairs Select Committee published today (7 April) paint a concerning picture for Welsh agriculture, an industry where the average farm size is just 48ha, compared to 87ha in England, says TW News.

From pressure on incomes and land availability to a lack of opportunity for new entrants, the report highlights some of the key concerns and sets out a series of recommendations to governments to address the issues.

French winemakers fan flames to save 2022 crop after unexpectedly sharp frosts

A winegrower lights anti-frost candles in a French vineyard [image credit: thelocal.fr]

‘Climate change’ gets the blame of course, which is code for human activities in the media, politics etc. How trace gases might cause warmth one month and frosts the next in a particular region of the world is not explained. Short video via link below.
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Climate extremes in France this spring have again made it a race against time for vineyard owners to protect their crops, reports BBC News.

March warmth and April frosts in 2021 resulted in one of the country’s lowest wine production in years. This year is proving every bit as tough.
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France experiences coldest April night since 1947
Published: 4 April 2022

The French weather forecaster Météo France recorded temperatures of -9C on Sunday night, reports Thelocal.fr.

Ukraine war, gas and the fertiliser problem

A key point here is that (quote) ‘Huge amounts of natural gas are needed to produce ammonia, the key ingredient in nitrogen fertiliser’. The boss of a major producer says: “Half the world’s population gets food as a result of fertilisers… and if that’s removed from the field for some crops, [the yield] will drop by 50%”. Climate obsessives calling for gas to be removed from the energy scene need to explain where the world’s nitrogen fertilisers would then come from.
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The war in Ukraine will deliver a shock to the global supply and cost of food, the boss of one of the world’s biggest fertiliser companies has said.

Yara International, which operates in more than 60 countries, buys considerable amounts of essential raw materials from Russia, says BBC Business News.

Fertiliser prices were already high due to soaring wholesale gas prices.

Yara’s boss, Svein Tore Holsether, has warned the situation could get even tougher.

“Things are changing by the hour,” he told the BBC.

Gargantuan solar farms threaten UK farming and food security

Image credit: MIT

Industrialising the countryside is now deemed a plus for the environment by climate obsessives, including the government. Solar power is ineffective in UK winters, when electricity demand is often at its highest during the long hours of darkness anyway.
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Drawing on new data from the solar industry the campaign group Net Zero Watch has revealed that an astonishing 37,000 MW of land based solar PV capacity is in pre-planning.

If built, this would take 150,000 acres of farmland – or 75,000 football pitches – out of production at a time when Britain has less farmland in use than at any time since 1945, and is losing such land to industrial and other uses at the rate of about 99,000 acres a year, increasing import dependency.

Solar energy should not be permitted to add to this serious problem.

Climate-friendly farming: Greenland’s melting glaciers offer an answer

Greenland drink break [image credit: leisurelylifestyle.com]

As a bonus in today’s climate obsessed times, carbon credits could come into play for farmers to sell with this discovery. Even Danish brewers can benefit. Why fear glacier melt if it makes life better?
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On a shore near Greenland’s capital Nuuk, a local scientist points to a paradox emerging as the island’s glaciers retreat: one of the most alarming consequences of global warming could deliver a way to limit its effects, says Reuters (via Yahoo News).

“It’s a kind of wonder material,” says Minik Rosing, a native Greenlander, referring to the ultra-fine silt deposited as the glaciers melt.

Known as glacial rock flour, the silt is crushed to nano-particles by the weight of the retreating ice sheet, which deposits roughly one billion tonnes of it on the world’s largest island per year.

Professor Minik Rosing and his team at the University of Copenhagen have established the nutrient-rich mud boosts agricultural output when applied to farmland and absorbs carbon dioxide from the air in the process.

COP 26: Methane Madness

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Since 1,800 parts per billion is 1.8 parts per million, let’s not waste too much time fretting about this.

PA Pundits International

By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~

The grandly aspirational announcements getting all the COP 26 press actually have nothing to do with the COP, which is basically a business meeting.

Most of these big news events are in reality trivial, such as India saying it will try to hit net zero 50 years from now. Greta Thunberg will be pushing 70 so she is right that this is not action. (As blah blah goes this is the real deal, hence her strident take on coming around the mountain, which I love. See https://www.cfact.org/2021/11/02/cop-26-greta-thunberg-sings-shove-your-climate-crisis-up-your-a/)

One grand aspiration, however, is worth a closer look, because it is worse than empty. It is dangerously stupid. This is the growing pledge to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030.

Here is how Climate Home News put it: “The US and EU got more than a hundred countries on board with a commitment to cut…

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Locals fascinated as rare heavy snow covers Brazil

Dude! What’s this cold white stuff doing here?
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Brazil has experienced rare heavy snowfall since Thursday, threatening crops and bewildering locals who don’t usually see snow, reports The Independent.

More than 40 cities in the state of Rio Grande do Sul had icy conditions and at least 33 municipalities had snow, reported the meteorology company Somar Meteorologia.

On Friday, there were warnings of cold temperatures as a polar air mass travelled toward the centre-south of the agricultural powerhouse, threatening coffee, sugarcane and orange crops with frost.

The unusually cold temperature in the country has already forced coffee prices to rise.