by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Much like a Yo-Yo going up and down or a pendulum swinging from side to side the UK government jumps from one extreme to the other.
Not so long ago they basically told us that the country should never ever attempt to become self-sufficient in food production and now they say that Britain must become more self-sufficient in food production.
One can, therefore, but wonder when precisely it may be that government an d its “scientists” manage to work out to where they actually are.
Despite the fact that we had now two successive cooler and wetter summers in a row, cooler and wetter than in many recent years and a little more like the English summers of old, the talk is still about long term computer models predicting olives in the British Isles and us not being able to import food anymore from the Mediterranean area, such as Spain, for instance, as it will have gotten too hot and dry there for most things to grow. Can someone tell me in what universe those people live. If they see olives growing in Britain in the next decades they better start planting those trees now, and I mean now.
Not only must a country be more self-sufficient in food, whether Britain or any other, it should actively strive to be as self-sufficient as at all possible.
As far as the computer models are concerned; we must remember the GIGO principle for the output is dependent on the data initially given into the machine.
Currently, in the UK at least, we have in what is now August 2009, we have had two rather cooler summer with quite a lot of precipitation with summer 2008 probably being wetter still than summer 2009, at least so far, and also a winter of the like we have not had for many a years.
The long-range weather forecast for the 2009 summer was one of a “Barbecue Summer” with sizzling temperatures to match those of the grill all the way from June to end of August but so far this has not happened and the weathermen have had to revise predictions by now. They also did a great act of back-pedaling claiming that they never said that about the hot and dry summer and that the media misinterpreted them. Looks meteorologists and politicians have been to the same spin school.
Olives in Britain? First of it takes decades before an olive tree would ever properly produce fruit to we all better star planting some olive trees right now. Only I would not give them much of a survival chance in current climes here.
Secondly while grapes for good quality wine is one thing and was the case before already in Britain under the Romans the other predictions could be a little problematic.
Why do the scientists not admit that they do not have a crystal ball and cannot predict the future. But no, they have to appear as g-ds to the world.
The climate is changing and it has happened on our planet since time immemorial and while our polluting of the Earth may not have helped it remais rather questionable as to how far human activities have anything to do with the changing of our world climate. The rise in CO2 levels is more attributable to the fact of the wholesale destructions of forests, tropical and otherwise and the loss of those trees that otherwise would absorb that CO2.
As far as food security is concerned Britain and other countries ha to attempt for more self-sufficiency in food production and we all may have to change our diets somewhat. We may have to return to a “war diet” as in WWII rather than the post-war one of wanton over-consumption of meat, especially the expensive cuts, and foreign imports.
A “War Diet” would definitely not be a bad idea and nor would be the turning over of much of the lawn and decking in gardens to food productions. Dig for Victory!
However, the Environment Secretary of Britain, Hillary Benn, says that the country needs genetically-modified (GM) foods in order to ensure food security. This, yet again, shows that ministers of this government do not appear to live in this universe, let alone this planet, and it would also appear which lobby groups are in control.
© 2009
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