Reversing Global Warming, Hunger and Poverty: Supercharging the Global Grassroots

"It is easy to forget that once upon a time all agriculture was organic, grassfed and regenerative. Seed saving, composting, fertilizing with manure, polycultures, no-till and raising livestock entirely on grass—all of which we associate today with sustainable food production—was the norm in the ‘old days’ of merely a century ago, not the exception as it is now. Somehow, back then we managed to feed ourselves and do so in a manner that followed nature’s model of regeneration.

“We all know what happened next: the plow, the tractor, fossil fuels, monocrops, nitrogen fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, feedlots, animal byproducts, e. coli, CAFOs, GMOs, erosion, despair—practices and conditions that most Americans today think of as ‘normal,’ when they think about agriculture at all.

“Fortunately, a movement to rediscover and implement ‘old’ practices of bygone days has risen rapidly, abetted by innovations in technology, breakthroughs in scientific knowledge, and tons of old-fashioned, on-the-ground problem-solving.”
—Courtney White, The Carbon Pilgrim, Nov. 16, 2014

A critical mass of climate scientists have warned us repeatedly that we must reduce the concentration of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere to 350 parts-per-million (ppm) in order to preserve life on Earth.

Unfortunately the business-as-usual behavior of out-of-control corporations, indentured politicians and hordes of mindless consumers, continues to lead to billions of tons of CO2 and greenhouse gases (GHGs) being pumped into our already (398 ppm) supersaturated atmosphere and ocean. By the time major reductions in fossil fuel use take effect—in 20 years, if we’re lucky—it could be too late. By then, we will likely have reached 450 ppm or more, approaching the point of no return, where serious climate instability morphs into climate catastrophe.

While climate scientists sound their alarms on the global warming front, agronomists and hunger experts warn of equally catastrophic events. They tell us that unless we embark on a global campaign to reduce the damages of industrial agriculture, restore soil fertility (especially on the 22 percent of potential arable lands now eroded or desertified), improve crop quality and food nutrition, and conserve water, we face increasing rural poverty, starvation, and permanent food and water wars, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America, where the majority of the world’s population live.

These looming disasters—climate catastrophe, and rural poverty, starvation, and food and water wars—are not entirely unrelated. And neither are their solutions.

We can reverse (not just mitigate) global warming. And while we’re at it, we can also restore soil fertility, eliminate rural poverty and hunger. We can do this by sequestering several hundred billion tons of excess CO2 from the atmosphere, using the traditional, time-tested tools we already have at hand: regenerative organic farming, ranching and land use.

What will it take to make this world-changing transition to a livable Earth?

Read more: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/12/05/reversing-global-warming-hunger-and-poverty-supercharging-global-grassroots

How can we stop global warming?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

When most people ask, “How can we stop global warming?” they aren’t really asking what they pretend they’re asking. They are instead asking, “How can we stop global warming without stopping the burning of oil and gas, without stopping the industrial infrastructure, without stopping this omnicidal system?”
The answer: you can’t.

We cannot continue with the status quo and an ever growing economy and nuclear power and electric cars are not going to help us one bit here either.

Nuclear power simply is not safe unless and until the day that we can use fusion instead of fission but that day is still so far off that it, more than likely, is never going to arrive.

The electric car, touted as the answer to the ICE and everyone wishing to continue with personal motoring, is also no answer at all for, in fact, it emissions may not come from the vehicle itself but from the production of both the car, the battery and the electricity used with which to charge the battery.

Governments the world over and also the green movement per se are not prepared to tell the people that the way they have been living is going to be history or they are going to be history. Mankind has but two choices, to adapt and change or to die.

Industry has to be brought down to a level of production where it but produces for what people need and not what industry produces and then wishes to sell to the people by means of advertising suggesting to people that if they have but that product they will be happy ever after.

Production needs to be localized so that the “factories” and workshops produce and sell only in a nor or less local area supplying the needs of the people. And the same goes for agriculture, for food production.

As far as personal transportation goes the age of motoring, unless we really wish to commit ecocide and thus suicide, is history and we need to use other ways of getting about, ways that are tried and tested and have been used for centuries.

It is not just carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions that are behind climate change. Other aerial and atmospheric pollution is equally a culprit and the warnings were issued already in the 1960s and early 1970s by those people wrote off as hippies and new agers. However, they were right after all. However, governments and others love to play with CO2 as almost the only kind that may be the causal agent of climate change because they have invented this lovely system of indulgences call carbon credits and carbon certificates and even a stock exchange for them.

The soot that is causing the glacial melt in the Himalayas and other mountain ranges has been renamed to “brown carbon” so that they can still play with those indulgences. It is soot, people, and it comes out of the chimneys of the factories, settles on the glaciers and thus causing them to melt by absorbing rather than reflecting the rays of the sun, thus causing the melt.

Mankind has to change and adapt or will, invariably, die as the Earth will no longer be able to support life. Thus, if we want to survive and give future generations of people and other life a chance then we must change our ways and do so pronto. Ideally yesterday or the day before even.

Those of us who advocate this are hated by the people and especially the governments, and first and foremost by those in the developed world. The former don't want to hear it because they want to believe their governments that life will go on as it is and the governments don't want us to tell the truth because the don not want the populace to be stirred. The mere advocating of the need to change can, to some extent, get one branded as a “domestic terrorist”.

But we must continue to warn for, unless the people do wake up and understand that stopping climate change cannot be done by retaining the constant-growth economy and the personal motoring and all that, we all will be in serious problems and, in the end, the Planet will no longer able to support life, at least not human life.

In order so that the people do not realize how critical the situation has become with oil many governments in the developed world have brought strategic reserves of oil (and gas) on stream to keep the prices artificially at a lower level than they would be in reality.

In 2011 the world used 40% more oil than it produced and forecast, though amended later, was for 2012 to be 60% more than production. The recession saw to it though that it was ONLY 50% above production. Now it does not take a mathematical genius to work out that that – somehow – does not compute and that reserves were brought into play. But, reserves are just that... reserves... and they will run out sooner or later.

The hope is now being placed on tar sands oil and shale oil and -gas with claims of enough oil for the next 50 to 100 years... That would mean another 50 to 100 years of emissions of various poisons killing the Earth entirely. All in the name of progress or what?

I guess that governments also believe, like Professor Hawkins, that we have to abandon the Earth and find another inhabitable Planet (to destroy). Reality check! There is no other planet that can sustain life in our solar system. None. Maybe they believe that in the next 50 to 100 years they can find one, eh?

We need to change and should have done so already yesterday and that means that we have to get used to a different way of living than that that we have been used to – well the majority of people in the developed world – for a rather long time already.

We have to go back to ways of our ancestors and not just as regards to personal transportation but also as regards to production of goods and food and their distribution. The way we live and work and much more.

That does not, necessarily, mean that we will no longer have electricity or such as renewables can provide that for us, and also cooking gas via methane digestion, but it has to be brought down to a local level of the home and the current and voltage used must change. And we first and foremost must also reduce our energy consumption, as we must reduce consumption as a whole.

Personal transportation will no longer be the motorcar but Shank's pony and the bicycle and, for longer distance, the likes of public transport, in the form of buses and trains.

When we bring everything down to a local level, or almost local level, then commuting long distances will be a thing of the past as will be the out-of-town super- and hypermarkets and shopping malls, then there will be no need for all this traveling about.

We also cannot stop climate change by geo-engineering, by spraying chemicals into the atmosphere and creating artificial clouds. Those may stop the rays of the sun reaching the Earth and heating it up but they also change photosynthesis and thus reduce food production. Hello! Is everyone stupid? It would appear so. Stop playing G-d! We need to change, period! And we need to do that NOW!

© 2013

Severe winters and climate change

Whatever happened to global warming?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Severe winter storms and cold snaps in the US, with temps then going up again well above winter temps, and frost even in southern California and New Mexico, threatening, in southern CA the citrus crop.

Rain, rain, and still more rain, for most of last year, followed by snow, in the UK and also the coldest winter – on record, almost – predicted for Syria with temps of -10C.

So, what exactly happened to the global warming that they were talking about – and still do – that was going to end all snowy and cold winters in (southern) Britain and which would the UK, especially the south, to have a climate much like southern Italy?

Britain was going to be, so it was said, the next wine growing region of Europe but, I guess, we will just have to wait and see, don't we.

The world's climate is changing, that much appears to be the case, but in which way and direction is still a question and while a great percentage of it is due with man's activity and pollution – please not I say pollution and not CO2 emissions as they are not the be all and end all here – some of it is also due to other causes. But we must not talk about those things. The Church of Global Warming will not permit it.

The world's climate is, definitely, in a total mess and in an upheaval and this is also evident by the recent very hot spell in Australian with devastating wild fires followed storms with tons of rain. OK, that put out the fires but also caused serious flooding everywhere where it hit.

In North America during the winter of 2012/2013 for about two weeks a cold area was moving down and then up and then down the country again, and it is this cold front that caused the serious frosts even as far south as southern California.

2012 and the beginning of 2013 certainly have shown that the climate all around the world is going, more or less, haywire.

The wettest drought in history, as the spin doctors of the British government called it (don't ask me how you can have a wet drought, but hey, I am no spin doctor) has caused serious and severe crop failures and farmers are still not even in a position to drill in the next season's seeds into their fields as they are so water logged that they cannot even get onto them.

The same goes for woods and forests and it is hard to do work in those environments in the first months of 2013 also. Everything is just a bog wherever one goes.

Farmers and growers were told, only a year or two ago, that they would to adapt to global warming and to very dry summers and thus should be looking to plant and sow drought-resistant varieties and foods that have, until now, been grown in the warmer areas of Europe and such. Now it would appear that farmers and growers may have to find some water-resistant crops instead.

The wet weather of the so-called summer of 2012 had the potato blight run rampant and the blame was given to people growing food at home in their gardens or in allotment. That some of the blight-resistant varieties of potatoes were the first to succumb no one wants to know. It was not so much the blight escaping from home gardens and allotments to the farmers' fields but the other way round.

In the beginning of February 2013 the umpteenth violent blizzard, this one called Nemo, hit the United States, and dumped many feet of snow on New York, Boston and other places on the East Coast. And in Britain, while no real extreme winter weather materialized as in the last couple of years, at least not at the time of writing, the fact that everything is waterlogged is causing problems.

Glacial melting, once directly blamed on rising temperatures the world over and thus global warming has now been found to be caused by what they call black carbon which, in fact, is nothing more that soot from our industries. But the word carbon sounds so much better since we have now developed a way of trading in carbon credits, those modern indulgences.

The climate around the globe is throwing a wobbly and, methinks, Mother Earth is trying to tell us something and that something is that we need to change our ways and live with Nature and not fight Nature. Man is a part of Nature and cannot be apart of Nature.

© 2013

Dissent not allowed

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The Church of Global Warming does not permit dissent in any way, shape or form, and from whatever quarter. Anyone who disagrees is hounded and pilloried as a heretic.

University and other kinds of scientific research that point to global warming having plateaued and/or being on the vane is being rejected out of hand as being “not representative”, etc. Why? Because it disagrees and does not fit into the agenda. Simple!

Climate change is real and human activity, such as general pollution from burning coal, oil, and even natural gas, is to blame, as is the deforestation of our Planet, which has been rampant ever since the very beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

However, the CO2 people lead the charge and every bit of ice melting, glacier receding, etc., is being blamed on CO2 and global warming and this mantra is held to firmly even in the face of evidence to the contrary such as, in the case of Himalayan glacial melt (and others), that is caused by soot, referred to nowadays by some as “brown” or “black” carbon. It's soot, period! And this points, once again, to the problem of general pollution that the Hippies of the 1960s and 1970s already warned about.

But, as general pollution and soot cannot be traded and they have designed this nice system of carbon credits, carbon certificates and carbon trading exchanges, no one is permitted to upset the applecart of this nice source of income for carbon traders and those that get a cut from this trade in modern-day indulgences.

It seems that the truth does not count in this case, as in the far number of others, simply because there is lots of profit to be made and the truth would interfere in this endeavor.

Our Planet's climate is indeed changing and the Earth is throwing a serious wobbly but it appears that there are many other man-made, and also natural, factors at play that are the cause of this and not just CO2 emissions. Many other emissions and pollution is much more of a problem, especially also to human and animal health and the health of the Planet.

We all will have to make some serious changes to our lives and not just in the way of reducing fossil fuel use. A total rethink is required of how we use and abuse our Planet and Her resources.

However, trading in indulgences is not one of those changes and is going to do nothing for the Planet nor to stop any kind of climate change. Carbon trading certificates are just a get out that has no benefits bar for the traders and issuers.

A real change in the way we live and work is what is needed and that everywhere. That includes working closer to where we live or living closer to where we work, conserving energy and water, driving less and walking and cycling more, reducing waste including and especially food waste, consuming less, etc. and not carbon trading.

© 2013

2008 – the coolest year in decades

by Michael Smith

According to reports the year 2008 is turning out to be the coolest year for at least a decade or more, and that on a glob a scale.

Nevertheless, the run-of-the-mill, go-with-the-flow, climate scientists claim that this is in no way an indication that “global warming” has slowed. It is just a fluke year, they say. I guess in the same way as the summer of 2007 which, in the UK, was one of the wettest in decades, while we had been told, the year before only that we should be expecting severe droughts for the next years and decades to come. Oh dear!

This is despite the findings by climatologists at an Australian university that indicate that “global warming” has plateaued out about 6 to 7 years ago and that the global temperatures have not risen, not even by the smallest of a fraction, ever since. Even the IPCC of the United Nations had to admit, more or less in secrecy though, that those finding from Australia are, indeed, correct.

Someone, please, please tell us what is behind the “global warming” agenda. Or should we rather ask as to who is behind it?

Yes, we have been and are going through a cyclic climate change but this is more likely than not one of the cycles the Earth goes through every thousand or so years..

This does not mean that we do NOT have to do all those things in order top reduce the pollution, to reduce waste, to reduce, reuse, re-purpose and recycle rather than filling up holes in the ground, often leading to further pollution of the environment.

We also must – and that is all of us in every country of the developed world for starters – live a much simpler lifestyle once again. We must get away from all that air travel on vacation, for instance, from which you then need a vacation to recover from the rigors of the travel and all that. But, then my readers will by now know that I am somewhat of an advocate of staycations rather.

While such a simpler lifestyle does not, necessarily, mean being a Luddite and refusing all things modern or such like, or to live like the Amish – not that there is something wrong with horse and buggy, rather the opposite. But we must try to make do with less and get away from the “I wan, I want, I want” attitude and also we must insist that products are repairable rather than throwaway.

A good and perfect example here is computer printers.. I personally have had the experience with an Epson ink jet printer that while less than a year old had done more than it alloted amount of pages (for some reason they are only laid out for a certain number of x-thousand pages and that's it) and its waste ink reservoir had become full. I contacted the company and was told that it would cost about £70 for a new waste ink reservoir and another £75 to fit it. Upon getting this quote I mentioned that the printer was new only £30 and that I could buy more that 4 printers for that amount they wanted to repair it and the gentleman on the other end then said “oh, well, I suggest you buy a new printer then.” Is it not silly when it is more expensive for the spares and the repair than buying new? I think it is. But I digressed somewhat.

The “go-with-the-flow” climatologists are trying to tell us that 2008 being the coolest in a decade or more is but a fluke. Well, I guess we shall see. It will not be if the other groups of scientists that no one wants to hear from, however, are correct. For we are then, in due course, headed for a cooling period, which is also being predicted by the Old Farmer's Almanac. While I know that some will say that the Old Farmer's Almanac is not science the fact is also that many of its predictions, the majority, so I understand, have, over the years, come true.

As I said before, it does not matter as to whether or not the warming is slowing or has stopped and is going into a cooling; the arctic ice will still, I should think, continue to melt for some time as it is now warmer, in general, than it was before and pollution has a great deal to do with that, we still have to learn to live with “climate change” and especially so if it is going to go the other way as well. We also must to increase our efforts to get away from polluting fuels, such as coal and oil, for or electricity, for instance and we must, and I am going to say that again, reduce, reuse, re-purpose and recycle our waste and get away from being a throwaway society.

As to generating of electricity we must get away from non-renewable fossil fuels and go for fuels that are renewable, but I am also not advocating the use of bio-fuels; far the opposite. As regards to transportation the ICE (internal combustion engine) has no future unless it is fueled by what it was originally intended to be run on, namely methane gas.

Other forms of transportation, especially when it comes to short distances, for instance, should be considered. There is no need to get the car out just to go down the road to get the newspaper and a pint of milk or for the kids to go to school. Cycling or walking will do nicely there.

But, that theoretically, is another matter and subject.

Whether or not the planet is cooling down again and whether or not climate change is bought about by human activities, e.g. the motor vehicles and all that – this still must mean that the Vikings were releasing lots of CO2 into the air as well, as in their time there too was a very warm period which was followed by a mini ice age, we must reduce our negative impact on the environment. We must stop living as if tomorrow did not matter. It does. It does for us and for our children and their children and the rest of the entire Earth.

We must continue with our struggle to reduce, reuse, re-purpose and recycle regardless of what is happening and we should have started a long, long time ago. Problem is that everyone seems to have been thinking that everything will just be OK for ever, regardless of what we do. Oil is running out and we should have never used it for what we have been using it, namely burning it in cars and furnaces. But, alas, it has happened and we are reaping the harvest now.

Food for thought!

© M Smith (Veshengro), December 2008
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Rising Fuel Prices... Who is behind it?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Yes, I asked who and not what...

What we are seeing here, in my opinion, is nothing but a repeat of the Oil Crisis in the 1970's, the one that never was, only with different means.

This is another way for the governments continue the anti-car agenda?

While I cannot prove this, obviously, for even the powers that be do not leave a trail of evidence in this matter, it has, however, all the hallmarks of yet, like the Oil Crisis of the 1970's, another attempt of people control.

The “Oil Crisis” in the 1970's, the one that was about as real as Alice in Wonderland, happened just a very short time, something like a week or so, after the great speech by Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State of the USA, in which he stated, and I paraphrase “if you want to control nations you have to (be able to) control fuel, and if you want to (be able to) control people you have to control food (and water)”.

If you want to be able to control, however, where people live and work you have to control fuel and have to get them off their personal means of transport, namely the motorcar.

Enter the global warming myth.

The fact is that the powers that be have been trying to get us out of cars – and I am saying this while I am not even a car owner and/or driver but a cyclist. First they try to scare us with “global warming” being the result, so they claim, and they use all manner of science and scientists to back this up, of car emissions primarily and, as this does not seem to work we now – surprise – have oil prices going through the roof.

High prices may just be one way that might stop people using their cars (as much) and where the global warming threat has not worked the bite in the pocketbook will more likely work.

In addition the fuel costs are driving up the other household costs, be this energy or food and this has a knock-on effect on how much people can spend on fuel.

I know that I am a cynic when it comes to this getting people out of cars agenda of the governments, not only that of the UK. This seems to be leading all the way back to whoever really runs the (Western) world.

Personally, I do think that we do use cars far too much and far too unnecessarily for does one really have to jump into the car to go to the newsagents for a paper – then again do you really have to buy a paper still? - or to the shops, which are less that five or ten minutes walk away? I do not think so.

Does little Johnny or little Jenny, whose school is only a few minutes walk away from their homes, have to be driven to school by Mom (or Dad) and that, more often than not, in a gas-guzzling SUV? Certainly not and it is also no wonder that little Johnny and little Jenny look like little beaches whales. Thinking of that: I have to apologize as that is an insult – to whales.

There are so many other example of unnecessary car use that could be given, where walking, cycling or the use of mass transit of one way or the other would be the answer and often also much cheaper (though with the costs of British rail fares this is not so in many cases).

However, while I am all for getting out of the car (more) I am against forcing people out of their cars by such covert backhanded operations, such as fuel price hikes or supposed oil shortages as the earlier cited “Oil Crisis” in the 1970's or the claim that the climate change that our Planet is experiencing is the result of car emissions.

What this appears to me is nothing but yet another blatant attempt of people control. An attempt to see what it will take for people to “abandon” the use of their cars. It is obvious that the threat of global warming, now rephrased to “climate change”, a much more correct term than “global warming”, as the actual warming of the Earth has stopped and even the head of the IPCC has to admit that this is so and that the temperature has not risen since about the year 2000 and is on a plateau currently without any signs of rising, not even fractionally, has not – at least not as yet – worked people away from their car use.

As, as it would appear there is a timetable to the “getting people out of their personal cars” agenda, the time seems to be getting close and a new set of guns had to be rolled out; enter “oil shortage” and “fuel price hike”.

Now let's see what is next?

I shall keep watching and analyzing and reporting.

© M Smith (Veshengro), May 2008

Climate Change - What if it is not man-made?

The whole world and everyone in it is by now, probably, aware of Climate Change, aka Global Warming, and seems to take it as read and as gospel truth that human activity is to blame.

But what if, and let us just consider this for a moment, it has nothing – or little – to do with cars, the use of fossil fuels, and such?
What is it is a natural cycle which the earth goes through every 1000 or so years? What then?
For it will then make no difference whether or not we cut any emissions, as we will then not be able to do anything about it.

When we look at the history of our planet we can, in fact, if we are not blinkered by whatever agendas, see that there have always been periods of warm and periods of cold and they seem to appear in a more or less 1000 year cycle; the high points that is. We are, in all appearance, heading for such a point again in our planet's history.
If this is the case than there is very little, I am afraid, that we can do against it and we must rather prepare for this change. We can hardly turn off a natural cycle, should it be one.
That does not mean that we should not do everything in our power, each one of us, to lessen our impact whether in carbon emissions or in waste generation, just in case that this change in global climate and the weird and extreme weather that we are experiencing around the globe is, even partially, due to human activity. We must indeed do both, and that NOW and not next week, next month or next year, God forbid.
We all know what we should do and must do to lessen our impact on the environment; so let's go and do it NOW.

However, we must also remain serious: I saw a graph recently where someone tried to claim that one PC was using 1500 KW per hour. That is totally wrong. Even an electric fire does often not use more than 1500 watts but 1500 kilowatts; no way.
Some groups, we know, try to scare people into action, but to use untruths to do that is counterproductive. If, however, we, who care about and for the planet, remain in the realm of truth and reality we can, maybe, get the people to follow.

Even if, as I said, Global Warming/Climate Change is not due to human activity and the use of fossil fuels and such reducing our (carbon) footprint on the environment and Mother Earth will certainly be no bad thing.

We must, however, at the same time prepare for the worst case scenario, which is to say that it be the described natural cycle of our planet and we can do little or nothing to bring about a change.

- Be prepared for the worst and hope for the best! -

© M V Smith, May 2007