Senator Markey’s Climate Education Act Goes The Wrong Way
By David Wojick | Climate Etc. | September 5, 2016
The “Climate Change Education Act” (S.3074) directs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to establish a climate change education program focused on formal and informal learning for all age levels.
When it comes to beating the climate change drum, Sen. Ed Markey is the Energizer Bunny. As a Congressman, Rep. Markey was Chairman of the now defunct House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming from 2007 to 2011. This time he is drumming on the education front. Markey has dropped the “Climate Education Act” into the Senate hopper. While the bill is unlikely to pass at this time, it is still important to object to, lest it be seen to be acceptable.
Sen. Markey’s website summarizes the proposal as follows: “The “Climate Change Education Act” (S.3074) directs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to establish a climate change education program focused on formal and informal learning for all age levels. The program would explore solutions to climate change, the dangers we face in a warming world, and relatively small changes in daily routines that can have a profound global impact. The legislation also establishes a grant program to support public outreach programs that improve access to clean energy jobs and research funds so local communities can address climate mitigation and adaptation issues.”
There is a lot not to like here, beginning with the false scientific claims. The first is hyping the supposed dangers we face in a warming world, which simply do not exist. Nor are there small changes in daily routines that can have a profound global impact, because humans do not control the global climate. What is here being called Education is really just scaremongering and propaganda. Ironically, the Bill itself says one goal is to remove the fear of climate change, which it actually promotes.
What is really strange is the focus on so-called clean energy jobs and technology. The term “clean energy” is a misleading euphemism for renewable technologies. Thus the thrust of the Bill is not just on climate science education; rather it is on using the education system to promote renewables. NOAA has no expertise in this regard and no mission. They do things like running the National Weather Service. Promoting renewables and green workforce development is the Energy Department’s job.
On the science side, NOAA has long been active in so-called “climate education,” which basically means spreading the Government’s biased view of climate change as human driven and dangerous. For example, the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN) Portal was launched in 2010, co-sponsored by NOAA, NSF and the Energy Department. As of 2012, CLEAN has been syndicated to NOAA’s climate.gov portal, where they offer over 600 educational materials, most of which are biased toward the scary Federal version of climate science.
In fact NOAA has led a Federal drive to redefine “climate literacy” as accepting the Government’s biased position. According to their website, the stated Guiding Principle for climate literacy is “Humans can take actions to reduce climate change and its impacts.” The reality is that humans can do little to change climate change and a little global warming is not harmful. It is probably beneficial.
What the proposed Climate Education Act would do is give statutory authority for NOAA’s existing propaganda actions, something that is presently lacking. It also allows the agency to bribe states to use its stuff, which is pretty insidious.
It would also allow NOAA to go beyond simply providing online information, to begin writing actual curriculums to be used in the classroom. That is where the bribery really comes in. This curricular push coincides with the widespread deployment of the Next Generation Science Standards. Most states that adopt them need to develop new curriculums, because these science standards are very different from the existing state standards, especially in the area of climate change.
Beyond this, the Bill would put NOAA into the strange new business of promoting the renewable energy industry and training its workers. The Energy Department already does this, while NOAA has neither the mission nor the organization to do it.
In summary this so-called Climate Education Act does nothing that is good, for the climate or the students. It is based on false science and pushes NOAA in the wrong direction. NOAA should be trying to understand climate change, not promote renewable technologies in the name of dangerous global warming.
Press coverage is bad, buying the Bill as expected. See for example these:
Professors tell students: Drop class if you dispute man-made climate change
‘We will not, at any time, debate the science of climate change’
By Kate Hardiman | The College Fix | August 31, 2016
Three professors co-teaching an online course called “Medical Humanities in the Digital Age” at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs recently told their students via email that man-made climate change is not open for debate, and those who think otherwise have no place in their course.
“The point of departure for this course is based on the scientific premise that human induced climate change is valid and occurring. We will not, at any time, debate the science of climate change, nor will the ‘other side’ of the climate change debate be taught or discussed in this course,” states the email, a copy of which was provided to The College Fix by a student in the course.
Signed by the course’s professors Rebecca Laroche, Wendy Haggren and Eileen Skahill, it was sent after several students expressed concern for their success in the course after watching the first online lecture about the impacts of climate change.
“Opening up a debate that 98% of climate scientists unequivocally agree to be a non-debate would detract from the central concerns of environment and health addressed in this course,” the professors’ email continued.
“… If you believe this premise to be an issue for you, we respectfully ask that you do not take this course, as there are options within the Humanities program for face to face this semester and online next.”
The professors also note this ban on debate extends to discussion among students in the online forums. Moreover, students who choose to use outside sources for research during their time in the course may select only those that have been peer-reviewed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the email states.
Professors Laroche, Skahill, and Haggren did not respond to email inquiries from The College Fix seeking further comment on their email or their stance on debate in their online class.
The University Communications Director Tom Hutton told The College Fix via email that “Humanities 3990 is a special topics course with multiple choices for students to take when fulfilling requirements.”
“By clearly stating the class focus,” he continued, “the faculty are allowing students to choose if they wish to enroll in the course or seek an alternative. Additionally, the faculty who are leading the course have offered to discuss it with students who have concerns or differing opinions.”
In addition to teaching man-made climate change, the course also delves into the “health effects of fracking,” according to its syllabus.
The reading assignments in the fracking section focus on only its negative impacts and fail to present the other side of the issue, namely the possible benefits of fracking.
Assigned readings includes: “4 States Struggling to Maintain Radioactive Fracking Waste,” “EPA Study on Fracking Ignored Contamination Studies,” and “Frack Free Colorado: ‘Colorado’s Affected People.’”
An activity assigned within that section instructs students to take a test to measure their own carbon footprint. The purpose, reads the syllabus, “is not to create guilt or shame, though those emotions are entirely common.”
Kate Hardiman is a student at the University of Notre Dame majoring in the Program of Liberal Studies and minoring in the Philosophy, Political Science, and Economics (PPE) Program. She serves as campus editor of the Irish Rover and is a fellow of both the Constitutional Studies Department and Center for Ethics and Culture.
Still The BBC Gives Air Time To Peter Wadhams
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | August 31, 2016
I gather that the embarrassment to science, Peter Wadhams, was on BBC News again this week, and was naturally treated with due deference and reverence.
Wadhams has, of course, made a living out of forecasting that the Arctic would be ice free for the last decade now. Neither he, nor the BBC, ever seem to learn from the way that his predictions repeatedly turn out to be such humiliating failures.
Only in June this year, he was at it again:
The Arctic is on track to be free of sea ice this year or next for the first time in more than 100,000 years, a leading scientist has claimed.
Provisional satellite data produced by the US National Snow & Ice Data Centre shows there were just over 11.1 million square kilometres of sea ice on 1 June this year, compared to the average for the last 30 years of nearly 12.7 million square kilometres.
This difference – more than 1.5 million square kilometres – is about the same size as about six United Kingdoms.
Professor Peter Wadhams, head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at Cambridge University, told The Independent that the latest figures largely bore out a controversial prediction he made four years ago.
“My prediction remains that the Arctic ice may well disappear, that is, have an area of less than one million square kilometres for September of this year,” he said.
“Even if the ice doesn’t completely disappear, it is very likely that this will be a record low year. I’m convinced it will be less than 3.4 million square kilometres [the current record low].
“I think there’s a reasonable chance it could get down to a million this year and if it doesn’t do it this year, it will do it next year.
Yes, of course, there is always next year!
Well, with just a couple of weeks or so left before the Arctic ice hits its minimum, this is what Wadhams’ “ice free Arctic” is looking like:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icethickness/images/FullSize_CICE_combine_thick_SM_EN_20160830.png
Back in 2007, when Wadhams began to run his peddle his scare stories, the Arctic looked much different. Not only was ice extent much lower then, it was also much thinner in that area.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icethickness/thk.uk.php
Meanwhile, average ice thickness is currently running much higher than it was from 2010-13. (Average thickness is lower than 2007 because much of the new ice is, naturally, fairly new and therefore thin).
http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/
Final word goes to that BBC report from 2012:
The loss of Arctic ice is massively compounding the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, ice scientist Professor Peter Wadhams has told BBC Newsnight…….
The melting ice could have knock-on effects in the UK. Adam Scaife, from the Met Office Hadley Centre told Newsnight it could help explain this year’s miserable wet summer, by altering the course of the jet stream.
“Some studies suggest that there is increased risk of wet, low pressure summers over the UK as the ice melts.”
There may be an effect for our winters too: “Winter weather could become more easterly cold and snowy as the ice declines,” Mr Scaife said.
Or, to put it another way, summers could become warmer and drier, and winters mild and wet! (Which just so happens to be, very conveniently, the latest Met Office thinking).
There is only one certainty in climate science these days – the BBC will continue to give broadcasting time to these charlatans, without a glimmer of critical journalism, and certainly no thought of offering time to those scientists who don’t agree wholeheartedly with the alarmist narrative.
Alarm over the public loss of trust in science
By Judith Curry | Climate Etc. | August 18, 2016
A blast of fresh air from the new Editor-in-Chief of Science. “Science editor-in-chief sounds alarm over falling public trust. Jeremy Berg warns scientists are straying into policy commentator roles.”
You may recall my previous article that bemoaned what was going on with the journal Science — Editor-in-Chief Marcia McNutt’s op-ed that was published in Science : Beyond the two-degree inferno. If you read my post on this (at the link), I can’t recall much that has disturbed me more than McNutt’s overt alarmisn and advocacy in the context of her role as Editor-in-Chief of Science.
A summary of my concerns:
… my main concern is this – the editorial was published in Science and written by McNutt who is the CHIEF EDITOR for Science. Science, along with Nature, has far and away the highest impact factor of any scientific journals on the planet – Science matters. Like Nature, Science sends out for review only a small fraction of the submitted papers. Apart from the role the Chief Editor may have in selecting which papers go out for review or eventually get published, this essay sends a message to the other editors and reviewers that papers challenging the consensus are not to be published in Science. Not to mention giving favored status to papers by activist authors that sound the ‘alarm’ – pal review and all that. After all, ‘the time for debate has ended.’
Well, Marcia McNutt has moved on, she is now President of the National Academy of Sciences. I have a separate set of concerns about that one, but at least she is no longer involved in the arbitration of published scientific research in the U.S.’s premier science journal.
There is a new Editor-in-Chief at Science: Jeremy Berg. See the press release from Science [link]. Excerpts:
Jeremy Berg, a biochemist and administrator at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) in Pennsylvania, will become the next editor-in-chief of Science magazine on 1 July. A former director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) who has a longstanding interest in science policy.
Times Higher Education has a new article on this: Science Editor-in-Chief Sounds Alarm Over Falling Public Trust.
Well the title certainly caught my attention. Lets take a look at what Jeremy Berg has to say about his new position. Excerpts from the Times article:
As the new editor-in-chief of Science, a highly selective journal that still has the controversial power to make scientific careers, the biochemist and former University of Pittsburgh senior manager is worried about an apparent rejection of science by some parts of the public – and thinks that academics should look closely at how their own behaviour may have contributed.
“One of the things that drew me to this position… is there’s a crisis in public trust in science. I don’t pretend to have answers to that question but it is something that I care deeply about.”
Berg acknowledges that society’s confidence in science does “wax and wane” over time but thinks that, this time, things are different.
In the US, “scientists have been labelled as another special interest group”, he says.
Part of this is down to the polarisation of American politics and the rise of an anti-intellectual spirit, Berg thinks. His fears echo Atul Gawande, an American health writer, who earlier this year told graduating students at the California Institute of Technology that “we are experiencing a significant decline in trust in scientific authorities”.
But researchers are not entirely blameless for this rising hostility, thinks Berg. Too often they have gone beyond explaining the scientific situation and ventured into policy prescriptions, notably in the case of climate change, he thinks. “The policy issues should be informed by science, but they are separate questions,” he says. “Scientists to some degree, intentionally or otherwise, have been mashing the two together,” he adds, and urges scientists to be more “transparent” about “where the firmness of your conclusions end”.
But some in the scientific community argue that high-profile journals such as Science are partly to blame for the very overhyping of results that Berg decries.
A paper published in 2011 made waves after it found that there was a correlation between journal impact factors (JIFs) – which measure average paper citation rates over the past two years and are highest for prestigious journals such as Science, Nature and Cell – and the rate of retractions. Science had the second highest rate of retractions among the journals studied, below only the New England Journal of Medicine.
JC reflections
Wow. I haven’t been so heartened by statements from ‘establishment’ science in a long time. What is really astonishing is that Science chose Berg, who represents a marked change from the advocacy/activism of McNutt.
Berg gives me some optimism that ‘establishment’ science may move in the direction to address some of the issues raised in my recent post The Troubled Institution of Science.
I look forward to reading Jeremy Berg’s future op-eds in Science.
The Democrat’s foolish War on Climate
By David Wojick | Climate Etc. | August 17, 2016
The party platform adopted at the Democratic National Convention, on page 45, calls for a national mobilization on the scale of World War II. What enemy deserves the wrath endured by Hirohito and Hitler? Climate change! Democrats want to declare a war on climate.
Here is the amazing declaration: “We believe the United States must lead in forging a robust global solution to the climate crisis. We are committed to a national mobilization, and to leading a global effort to mobilize nations to address this threat on a scale not seen since World War II.”
This scale of mobilization is incredibly expensive and disruptive to people’s lives, something to which the Democrats seem oblivious. Great sacrifices by average Americans were required for mobilization during the Second World War, enforced by massively intrusive government authority. Is this what the Democrats want, the supreme government control that comes with a wartime effort?
To begin, there was widespread government rationing of essential products. For most families, driving was limited to just three gallons of gas a week. If the Democrat’s war on climate is designed to curtail fossil fuel use then will gasoline again be rationed, in spite of longer commutes due to massive post-war suburbanization? What about natural gas and coal-fired electric power? Meat and clothing were also rationed. Will this be repeated?
Even worse, many consumer products were simply not produced; their production prohibited in favor of war materials. These included most appliances, including refrigerators, plus cars, of course. Today’s banned appliance list might well include computers, smart phones and televisions, and again cars, as well as air conditioners and refrigerators. Will all these technologies be stopped in favor of building climate war materials like windmills, batteries and solar panels?
Not only is mobilization horrendous, there is no scientific justification for it. It is now clear that what is called “lukewarming” is probably the correct scientific view. Human activity may be causing a modest global warming that is actually beneficial. Beyond that climate change is natural and so beyond human control.
The only purpose for which a war on climate makes sense is justifying a massive increase in government power. Mobilization means controlling both production and consumption, as well as wage and price controls, all of which require detailed central planning of economic activity. This in turn requires a host of new agencies, programs, boards, etc. We have seen it all before.
Of course we have had so-called “war” policies before, such as the war on drugs. But these were mostly metaphorical policy names, typically just a shift in focus with a modest budget increase. The Democratic platform is very different because it specifies that the scale of the war on climate will be comparable to the Second World War mobilization, which entailed wrenching lifestyle changes.
If the Democrats are in fact serious, then we are talking about central economic planning on a massive scale, imposing great sacrifices on Americans, all in the futile name of stopping climate change. Sacrifice is harmful in its own right so this raises a host of moral issues. Which immediate harms will be deemed less harmful than speculative future climate change? Medical care is now a major sector of the economy, will it be curtailed? Will poverty be left to languish, or even encouraged via wage controls? Will travel be forbidden? Unfortunately the platform gives no clue, so this should be a major election issue.
In fact the specter of a WWII-scale mobilization to fight climate change dwarfs everything else proposed in the Democrats’ platform combined. It is also contrary to most of these other proposals, given the widespread restrictions that mobilization requires. Perhaps they do not understand what they are calling for, but if they do then they need to tell us what it is. Clarifying and justifying this outrageous mobilization declaration is essential to the election process.
Voting for mobilization without knowing what it means would be incredibly foolish.
David Wojick is a former consultant with the Office of Scientific and Technical Information at the U.S. Department of Energy in the area of information and communication science. He has a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science and mathematical logic from the University of Pittsburgh and a B.S. in civil engineering from Carnegie Tech. He has been on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon and the staffs of the U.S. Office of Naval Research and the Naval Research Lab.
BBC, Indian Monsoon, And More Lies
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | August 19, 2016
Welcome to the latest barrage of lies and misinformation from the BBC:
This week I went to the scene of terrible tragedy.
A river, swollen by raging monsoon floodwaters, had torn down a bridge on the main road between Mumbai and Goa.
More than 30 people are thought to have died when the great stone structure crashed into the torrent, taking with it two buses and a number of cars.
Some of the bodies were swept more than 60 miles downriver in two days.
We produced a short news report.
In the heart-wrenchingly brutal calculus of the newsroom, this isn’t a major story. But zoom out, and you begin to see the outlines of a much bigger and more worrying picture.
India, indeed the whole South Asia region, has been riding a rollercoaster of extreme weather.
The summer monsoon is the most productive rain system in the world, and this year the region is experiencing a strong one. The floods it caused have affected more than 8.5 million people; more than a million are living in temporary shelters; some 300 people have been killed.
Though what really caught people’s interest was the three baby rhinos rescued from the waters in the north Indian state of Assam.
The fact that 17 adult rhinos drowned got rather less attention.
But the important point is that the region is awash with water. Just a few months ago, it was a very different story. The previous two monsoons were unusually weak. The result was a terrible drought in northern India, and parts of Pakistan and Bangladesh.
And it was exacerbated by another extreme weather event – record heat.
India experienced its highest temperature ever this summer, a blistering 51C.
Rivers ran dry; water holes evaporated; reservoirs became dusty plains. And, once again, the statistics were staggering.
More than 300 million people were affected by water shortages – the equivalent of the entire population of the US. A city of half a million people was left completely dry. It had to rely on supplies brought in by train.
As if that weren’t bad enough, in spite of the drought, the country was hit by a series of unseasonal rain and hailstorms. They caused such terrible damage to crops that some farmers were driven to suicide.
All these examples of extreme weather were widely reported, rightly so. What tended not to be discussed was the underlying cause.
We are all interested in weather; few of us want to be told – once again – that our lifestyles are disrupting the global climate. Yet the truth is that many climatologists believe the monsoon, always fickle, is becoming even more erratic as a result of global warming.
The picture in the last couple of years is complicated by the fact that the world has been experiencing a particularly strong El Nino, the periodic weather variation caused by warming of the sea in the Pacific.
But a series of long-term studies have shown the number of extreme rainfall events in South Asia increasing while low-to-moderate events are decreasing. And increasingly erratic and extreme weather is precisely what scientists expect climate change will bring.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has predicted “rainfall patterns in peninsular India will become more and more erratic, with a possible decrease in overall rainfall, but an increase in extreme weather events”.
Since the monsoon accounts for as much as three-quarters of rainfall in some areas, any change is a huge issue. The more extreme the storms, the more likely we are to see more tragedies like the shattered bridge I visited this week.
Now, since you’ve read this far, I hope you’ll excuse me if I take a moment to ram my point home a little harder because there is growing evidence that climate change isn’t just restricted to South Asia.
Ask anyone who follows the issue and they’ll tell you that this year is already well on the way towards becoming the hottest ever. The previous record was last year; before that it was 2014. In fact, the 11 warmest years have occurred since 1998.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t talk about the weather, just that we need to talk about the climate too.
This is all too typical BBC fare – pick a weather event, hype it up as something unusual, connect it to climate change and say they are going to get worse!
So let’s do a bit deconstruction.
1) Far from the floods being a “terrible tragedy”, the Indians themselves regard heavy monsoon rainfall as being extremely benevolent. Indeed, the reporter Justin Rowlatt’s opening comment reveals the BBC’s metro liberal outlook on the world.
If he had bothered talking to the Indian authorities, he might have discovered that the Indian economy benefits in all sorts of ways, not just agricultural production, for instance here.
As Gaurav Kapur, senior economist at the RBS, Mumbai, stated earlier in the year:
The forecast of a better-than-normal monsoon is a welcome development coming after two years of drought and considering the state of the rural economy and the impact on food inflation. If indeed we end up having a better-than-normal monsoon, and spatial distribution of monsoon and production indicators point to a normal year, then RBI’s comfort for another rate cut will increase.
“Monsoon has a big linkage effect on not only rural income but overall growth and inflation and if we have another sub-par monsoon, then contribution of farm sector to GDP will be near zero.”
The Indians accept that floods are an unfortunate, but necessary evil. It is drought that they really fear.
2) You may have noticed that nowhere is there any input from the India Meteorological Dept, or for that matter any other local experts.
If Rowlatt had bothered to check with the IMD, they would have told him that, so far, this year’s monsoon has been perfectly normal:
http://www.imd.gov.in/pages/press_release_view.php?ff=20160818_pr_51
3) They might also have told him that, historically, big swings from year to year are the norm. Quite simply, there is nothing “extreme”, “erratic”, or otherwise unusual about recent monsoons, despite Rowlatt’s claims.
The consistently wettest period was from the 1930s to 50s, when the world was warming up. By contrast, global cooling after 1960, brought a succession of droughts. HH Lamb described this period:
In the first quarter of the century, there was a severe drought in N and NW India every 3rd or 4th year. Then, as the Earth warmed up and the circumpolar vortex contracted, the monsoon rains penetrated regularly into Northern India, and drought frequency declined to 2 in 36 years, from 1925-60. But since 1960, with the cooling of the Earth and the southern movement of the subtropical high pressure areas, drought frequency has been increasing again and the probability may be now more than once a decade.
4) It is well established that monsoon rainfall tends to be below normal during El Nino years, hence the the dryness of the last two years.
5) Rowlatt refers to a record temperature set earlier this year, clearly in an attempt to link this with the floods. However, long term temperature trends in India are notoriously unreliable, given the massive urban expansion across the country.
Indian monsoons are the result of land warming up faster then the sea in summer, thus drawing in moist air from the ocean.
Significantly, a study by Dr. Roxy Mathew Koll of the Centre for Climate Change Research, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology last year found that the opposite had been happening, and that the landmass has actually been cooling as The Hindu reported:
The summer monsoon has been showing a weakening trend over the past century with decreasing rainfall over large regions of the Indian subcontinent. The monsoon occurs because the land heats up much more than the ocean and the warm air over the land rises and results in low pressure. This causes the rain-bearing winds from the relatively cooler ocean to blow on to the land and cause rainfall. That is, it is the strong thermal contrast between land and ocean that results in a strong monsoon.
However, a recent study by Dr. Roxy Mathew Koll of the Centre for Climate Change Research, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune and others, and published recently in the journal Nature Communications contends that this thermal contrast has been decreasing in the past decades, i.e., the land has been cooling and the ocean warming and the monsoon has shown a decreasing trend during the past century.
Millions Spent, No One Served: Who Is to Blame for the Failure of GMO Golden Rice?
By Angelika Hilbeck and Hans Herren | Independent Science News | August 10, 2016
The recent Nobel laureates’ letter accusing Greenpeace of a “crime against humanity” for opposing genetically modified (GMO) golden rice reveals a deep division not only between civil societies and some science circles but also within the science community – a division in the visions for our common future and which path to take for our joint development. A division we see growing and escalating. A strong indication of this division is that among the Nobel laureate signatories, there seems to be hardly anybody with a solid scientific track record in agriculture, food production, development, or the socio-ecological and political causes of poverty and hunger. Others with notable competence – at least in the economic and social domains of development, poverty, and hunger – are not among the signatories. Signs of escalation also include the emotional, accusing language in the letter and the ample use of scientifically unsubstantiated claims. What is missing in the letter and among the supporters and developers of GMOs is the recognition and scientific analysis of some tough facts.
Fact no. 1: Still no functioning vitamin A rice despite unlimited resources
No functioning vitamin A rice has been produced in over 20 years of research. This is despite full support at every level: financial, institutional, political, and corporate. By ‘functioning’, we mean farmer’s rice varieties that reliably and stably express sufficient amounts of beta-carotene (pro-vitamin A, the precursor of Vitamin A) over many generations of seed saving. These seeds must continuously express beta-carotene at a level that has been documented to be efficiently convertible to Vitamin A in mammals and, most importantly, can (statistically) significantly relieve the symptoms of Vitamin A deficiency in hungry people. None of this is scientifically trivial but that’s what has been promised.
The first golden rice, GR1, was unsuccessful and is long gone. Golden rice 2 (GR2) is a patented pro-vitamin A GM rice developed from scratch by the multinational biotech firm Syngenta and still in the field trial stage at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) at least one decade after it’s creation.
The vast majority of scientists in the world will never see such comprehensively generous support for their research – yet they still deliver, and must deliver if they ever want to renew funding for their research. This is more than can be said for the golden rice project.
Fact no. 2: Lack of recognition of real reasons for failure to deliver
A quick evidence check is sufficient to reveal the simple reason why golden rice is not in farmer’s fields: it is still not ready because it is not performing agronomically. Furthermore, it is far from being medically documented to relieve symptoms of Vitamin A deficiency. Neither Greenpeace nor the destruction of a test plot in the Philippines by local activists can be held responsible for this lack of scientific achievement.
Fact no. 3: Questionable conceptual underpinning
Leaving aside its scientific aspects, the very concept of golden rice – and all other similar conceptual approaches as solutions to malnourishment – remain doomed from the start as similar approaches have failed repeatedly. The problem lies in the underlying reductionist (disembedded) approach. Combating hunger and malnutrition one vitamin and mineral at a time is a failed ideology, no matter which vitamin or mineral one starts with and which kind of delivery system one chooses. Malnourished people do not suffer from single-vitamin-deficiencies added up. They suffer from hunger, as in ‘lack of food’. This is compounded by poverty and a myriad of contributing factors working simultaneously together. That means they lack regular access to real foods containing the necessary variety of ALL essential nutrients, which, in conjunction, make up a healthy diet.
These contributing factors differ according to culture, place and time. There exists a huge amount of research and analyses to read for anybody who cares about the real causes of hunger and the real solutions (we list some old and new references at the end – or just check out the United Nations World Food Program website. For the golden rice project, we recommend for starters, the recent analysis by Stone and Glover who locate its failure in its ‘disembeddedness’ and ‘placelessness’.
Consequently, hunger and malnutrition with its complex, ‘place-based’ causes cannot be battled by a uniform, de-contextualized and placeless one-vitamin-at-a-time approach which is what GMO golden rice has to offer.
This reductionistic approach to hunger is matched by similar reductionism in the genetic engineering world where organisms are viewed as the sum of their genes and proteins. Genes are added one at a time as blueprint construction instructions for lego-like products and many more projects of this kind are underway, e.g. vitamin A banana and cassava, or iron-fortified cassava, or whatever lies within their technical reach. Stone and Glover describe this as “a preoccupation with the molecular scale” that “favors a form of reductionist thinking that conceives of traits of interest as being governed primarily by genetics rather than through interactions with the environment or management” (Stone and Glover 2016).
Supplying vitamin A or any other nutrient in isolation only works for a transitional period of time, curing a symptom at best, while work progresses on the underlying place-based causes of hunger – lack of access to food, money, education and secure living conditions. Under those circumstances, as in parts of the Philippines, cheap vitamin A pills do the job much better, in a more targeted, controlled, and effective way than any patented GM crop could ever do.
Fact no. 4: A missing roll-out plan
But even if the golden rice researchers do eventually manage to get some GM pro-Vitamin A rice varieties to perform agronomically, there seems to be no roll-out plan to ensure that it gets to those who need it. Those reasons have nothing to do with regulations and everything to do with logistics, institutions and finances.
Will the golden rice developers truck their harvest into the urban slums and remote rural areas of Asia or Africa, or at least the Philippines, every day? Will they bring with them also the fat that malnourished people need to eat along with the rice to ensure they absorb the beta-carotene and convert it to vitamin A? And if they can do that, why aren’t they bringing existing foods into those areas already? Why wait until a patented GM food is ready for delivery? There is no shortage of vitamin-rich foods on this planet and beta-carotene is one of the commonest molecules in nature.
Frequently, vitamin A-rich food exists in abundance and rots in storage or under trees not that far away from the places where people suffer from malnutrition. An alternative already in the field is, for example, a non-GMO orange sweet potato, a root crop compatible with improved crop rotations whose developers have been awarded the 2016 World Food Prize. Without a massive and expensive roll-out plan, golden rice will not even leave the field station of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), which is overseeing the golden rice project.
Epic endeavor
If their plan is to cross the pro-vitamin A trait into the rice varieties that farmers grow in hunger-stricken areas, they face an uphill logistic, financial, scientific and institutional battle. How will they get the transgenic trait reliably expressed in all of these varieties at the necessary concentrations over many generations of rice plantings and seed recycling? Who will pay for this epic endeavour?
If they decide instead to only put the pro-vitamin A trait into a handful of, say, IRRI rice varieties (which we believe is the most likely plan – if there is a plan in the first place), many will fail because they will not perform in different local conditions and they typically require fertilizers and pesticides. If the plan is to switch farmers to growing a handful of patented biofortified varieties all over Asia and Africa, how will this be implemented? Who will deliver the seeds and accompanying chemicals to farmers – year after year, everywhere where it’s needed, for free? And is this a sustainable solution?
And what will happen to the thousands of existing ecologically and culturally well adapted varieties? The genetic diversity of crops and animals is our life-support system.
Furthermore, have they asked the rice producers and consumers of Asia and Africa if they want many of their rice varieties to be yellow forever – even in times when the food shortages and nutrition deficiencies are over?
Unresolved patent and ownership issues
According to the website www.goldenrice.org., a resource-poor farmer will be allowed to grow golden rice without license fees as long as his/her income is less than $10,000 per year. But, in practice, who decides which farmers are eligible? Who decides which income limit is appropriate in what country or region, and who enforces it on what authority and criteria? What about those farmers whose incomes exceed $10,000 per year? Who will decide when to collect fees, from whom, and for how long? How will the finances be arranged between Syngenta, which owns GR2, the seed multipliers and distributors, and the government? And if all this can be settled with Syngenta – how about the next-in-line patented, biofortified GM crops? In case of dispute, will there be free access to lawyers for the resource-poor farmers?
In their weekly column Schaffer and Ray (2016) reported about a meeting with an employee of the US State Department and discussing the benefits of GM crops for farmers and consumers in the Global South and whether or not farmers would have to pay a technology fee and purchase, for example, the golden rice seed each year. The State Department representative stated that the companies that own the patents would be willing to make the golden rice (or virus-resistant cassava) available at no cost provided that the countries adopted US patent regimes to protect other GM crops. From a policy perspective, such a ‘humanitarian’ license agreement would thereby present a highly profitable transaction, a means to ‘encourage’ developing countries that often do not even have patent laws of their own to accept the US patent regime and so ensure the profits of US companies and patent holders in perpetuity. In corporate agriculture it seems, nothing is really for free.
These are just a few of the tough questions that have never been addressed or even acknowledged by promoters of golden rice or any other such projects. Shooting genes into nuclei and getting a few varieties to express a transgene is the easy part – although even that has proved elusive so far for GR2.
Fact 5: Colonial mindset
Blaming Greenpeace for the failure of not only golden rice but other patented products of genetic engineering has been an irrational (or maybe calculated) obsession of some proponents and developers since the discussion began decades ago. Yet, it also reveals more subtle issues. Farmers and indigenous people are outraged when gene technology proponents accuse them of being instructed or manipulated by big Western NGOs like Greenpeace. They say that promoters of golden rice and other techno-solutions offered by developed countries rarely ask for or listen to their views and, thereby, reveal their lack of respect and comprehension.
This attitude towards peasant farmers and indigenous peoples is typical of the still prevailing colonial, Western mindset – hidden or open. It assumes that the peasant farmers are ignorant people without the relevant knowledge entitling them to make informed decisions based on their own values and visions for their future. Sadly, the letter signed by Nobel laureates appears to be a continuation of this way of thinking. It reveals an attitude of supremacy over, and disrespect for, traditional and indigenous knowledge and peoples who want to have a say in their lives and communities and which path to take to ‘development’.
Take-home message: Hungry (and poor) people deserve better. And Nobel laureates can do better!
The Authors:
Dr Angelika Hilbeck is Chair, European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility (ENSSER). She is a researcher and lecturer on biosafety and agroecology at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) who has worked closely with farmers and civil societies in many developing countries for more than two decades, including the Philippines, the country targeted for the rollout of GM golden rice. She is a member of the Board of Directors of ‘Bread for All’. She was a lead author of the International Assessment of Agricultural Sciences, Knowledge and Technology for Development (IAASTD)
Dr. Hans R Herren, Agronomist/Entomologist (ETHZ) who worked in agricultural research and development for 27 years in Africa. Member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, President and Founder Biovision Foundation for Ecological Development www.biovision.ch, president and CEO www.Millennium-Institute.org.
Laureate: Sustainability Prize, Germany 2016, Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize 2013; One World Award 2010; World Food Prize 1995; Kilby Award 1995; Brandenberger Prize 2002; Tyler Prize 2003.
Foreign Associate of the US Academy of Sciences 1999; Member of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) 2005
Co-Chair International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), Member CGIAR Science Council (2005-2010)
[1] “On 13 August 2013, after farmers had got nowhere in their arguments with the Philippine government, they uprooted an experimental field of Golden Rice in Pili, Camarines Sur, where trials were taking place. By taking this action, they sent a clear signal that they would not tolerate the advance of GMOs. However, the Filipino farmers were outraged when the media, accusing them of ‘vandalism’, made it appear that the uprooting had been orchestrated by international NGOs which had supposedly made use of the farmers to uproot the rice. Farmers explained that it was their decision to turn to civil disobedience to defend rice, a crop that is central to their diet, their livelihood and their culture. While the funders and supporters of Golden Rice carry on with their goal of commercialising the crop in the Philippines, Indonesia and Bangladesh in the near future, Filipino farmers continue to mobilise and protest, vowing that they will go on opposing the advance of GMOs.”
Don’t Believe The Washington Post Propaganda, DC Summers Are Not Getting Hotter
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot of People Know That | July 24, 2016
More fraud from Climate Central.
The Washington Post reports:
By Jason Samenow July 14
The temperature Thursday in Washington soared to 98 degrees, the hottest so far this summer. The heat index, which factors in humidity, registered 104 degrees.
Get used to it.
An analysis released Wednesday by Climate Central, a nonprofit science communication group based in Princeton, N.J., says these kinds of brutally hot and humid days are becoming more common.
Climate Central’s States at Risk project, featuring an interactive website, not only analyzed historical heat and humidity data to document observed trends but also, using climate models, projected how hot and humid days will evolve into the future.
All data point toward steamier times ahead.
Hot and humid days up substantially since 1970
(Climate Central)The District is now sweltering in 95-degree heat on 7.5 more days per year than it did in 1970, Climate Central says. In 1970, D.C. averaged seven or eight 95-degree (or hotter) days in a typical year. Now the number is closer to 15. In the scorching summer of 2012, we had a record-tying 28 such days.
The nearest long running station to Washington is Laurel, in Maryland, just 17 miles away.
The USHCN whisker plot of daily maximum temperatures shows that daily temperatures are not increasing, and were actually highest in the 1930s.
It is easy to see why Climate Central used 1970 as their starting point.
As CDIAC show below, most daily summer temperature records in Maryland were set prior to 1960, while the cold 1970s is plainly evident. (Bear in mind, these daily records include ties, so the probability of a record should be the same in every decade, assuming an unchanged climate).
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/broker?_PROGRAM=prog.select_d9k.sas&_SERVICE=default&id=188000
This carefully constructed deception is all designed to convince us that summers will become increasingly hot in the future, as the article goes on to state:
D.C.’s summer climate to resemble South Texas?
Using projections of summer warming by 2100, Climate Central says D.C.’s climate will, by then, most resemble today’s typical summer environs in Pharr, Texas — a Mexico border town. That is, it projects D.C.’s average summer high temperature to rise from roughly 87 degrees to 97 degrees.
Of course, such projections are based on climate models which assume the emissions of greenhouse gases will continue unabated through the end of the century. If the global community finds ways to cut emissions, the warming would not be this steep. Also, if the climate is less sensitive to increases in greenhouse gases than assumed by these models, the warming would be less.
But, observed data make it clear the D.C. area is on a warming trajectory.
Climate Central’s analysis documents similar trends in hundreds of metro areas across the Lower 48. “Using several measures, our findings show that most U.S. cities have already experienced large increases in extreme summer heat and absolute humidity, which together can cause serious heat-related health problems,” the analysis states.
The Washington Post article is written by Jason Samenow, their weather editor and chief meteorologist of the Capital Weather Gang. He should be ashamed of himself for publishing such blatant propaganda from the politically motivated Climate Central.
Indeed, his failure to carry out even the most basic checks on their grossly misleading analysis surely raises questions about whether he has the ability and objectivity to do his job properly.
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From the Archives
Britain’s secret role in the brutal US war in Vietnam
By Mark Curtis | MintPress News | November 16, 2022
There is a myth the UK did not support Washington’s war against Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, Labour and Conservative governments backed every phase of US military escalation and played secret roles in the conflict, declassified files show.
- UK sent SAS team to Vietnam in 1962, flew secret RAF missions to deliver arms, and provided intelligence to US
- UK governments lied to parliament they were not providing military advice to South Vietnam’s brutal regime
- Labour government secretly gave arms to US for use in Vietnam, stressing need for “no publicity”
- It also connived with Washington to deceive UK public over its support for US
- UK governments knew of atrocities against civilians but backed US war aims
- Whitehall only started to advocate a peaceful solution, on US terms, once the war became unwinnable
During its war in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s the US dropped more bombs than in the whole of World War Two, in a conflict that killed over two million people. The wholesale destruction of villages and killing of innocent people was a permanent feature of the US war from the beginning, along with widespread indiscriminate bombing.
Britain’s role in the war has been largely buried and must be almost completely unknown to the public. When the UK media mentions the war now, reports often simply reference the refusal by Harold Wilson’s government to agree to US requests to openly deploy British troops.
Although this was certainly a public rebuff to Washington, Britain did virtually everything else to back the US war over more than a decade, the declassified documents show. … continue
Blog Roll
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- Pro-Israel neocon who promoted Iran war describes its disastrous results, By Arnaud Bertrand, reposted from X
- No Tricks Zone
- German Expert: “No Climate Crisis” …”Warming Generally Better For Humanity”
- New Paleo Research: Modern ‘Climate Change’ Has Had No Apparent Impact On Precipitation Patterns
- 90% Subsidized… Bielefeld Germany’s €7 Million Hydrogen Garbage Truck Fleet Sits Idle
- New Study: Declining Trends In 1980-2023 Tropical Cyclone Frequency, Accumulated Energy
- 46 IPCC Scientists Break Rank, Publicly Challenge Long-Standing Dogmatic Climate Claims
- Another Study Links Warming To Cloud Forcing, Shortwave Radiation, Natural Atmospheric Circulation
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
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