rabcbroon

Crops under stress as temperatures fall

For the second time in little over a year, it looks as though the world may be heading for a serious food crisis, thanks to our old friend "climate change". In many parts of the world recently the weather has not been too brilliant for farmers. After a fearsomely cold winter, June brought heavy snowfall across large parts of western Canada and the northern states of the American Midwest. In Manitoba last week, it was -4�C. North Dakota had its first June snow for 60 years.

There was midsummer snow not just in Norway and the Cairngorms, but even in Saudi Arabia. At least in the southern hemisphere it is winter, but snowfalls in New Zealand and Australia have been abnormal. There have been frosts in Brazil, elsewhere in South America they have had prolonged droughts, while in China they have had to cope with abnormal rain and freak hailstorms, which in one province killed 20 people.

None of this has given much cheer to farmers. In Canada and northern America summer planting of corn and soybeans has been way behind schedule, with the prospect of reduced yields and lower quality. Grain stocks are predicted to be down 15 per cent next year. US reserves of soya � used in animal feed and in many processed foods � are expected to fall to a 32-year low.

In China, the world's largest wheat grower, they have been battling against the atrocious weather to bring in the harvest. (In one province they even fired chemical shells into the clouds to turn freezing hailstones into rain.) In north-west China drought has devastated crops with a plague of pests and blight. In countries such as Argentina and Brazil droughts have caused such havoc that a veteran US grain expert said last week: "In 43 years I've never seen anything like the decline we're looking at in South America."

In Europe, the weather has been a factor in well-below average predicted crop yields in eastern Europe and Ukraine. In Britain this year's oilseed rape crop is likely to be 30 per cent below its 2008 level. And although it may be too early to predict a repeat of last year's food shortage, which provoked riots from west Africa to Egypt and Yemen, it seems possible that world food stocks may next year again be under severe strain, threatening to repeat the steep rises which, in 2008, saw prices double what they had been two years before.

There are obviously various reasons for this concern as to whether the world can continue to feed itself, but one of them is undoubtedly the downturn in world temperatures, which has brought more cold and snow since 2007 than we have known for decades.

Three factors are vital to crops: the light and warmth of the sun, adequate rainfall and the carbon dioxide they need for photosynthesis. As we are constantly reminded, we still have plenty of that nasty, polluting CO2, which the politicians are so keen to get rid of. But there is not much they can do about the sunshine or the rainfall.

It is now more than 200 years since the great astronomer William Herschel observed a correlation between wheat prices and sunspots. When the latter were few in number, he noted, the climate turned colder and drier, crop yields fell and wheat prices rose. In the past two years, sunspot activity has dropped to its lowest point for a century. One of our biggest worries is that our politicians are so fixated on the idea that CO2 is causing global warming that most of them haven't noticed that the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling, with all the implications that has for whether we get enough to eat.

It is appropriate that another contributory factor to the world's food shortage should be the millions of acres of farmland now being switched from food crops to biofuels, to stop the world warming, Last year even the experts of the European Commission admitted that, to meet the EU's biofuel targets, we will eventually need almost all the food-growing land in Europe. But that didn't persuade them to change their policy. They would rather we starved than did that. And the EU, we must always remember, is now our government � the one most of us didn't vote for last week.

The new UK passport - that is the so called bumper 48 page version - has actually only 41 useable pages. The new standard Thai pasport - valid for only 5 years - has 47 useable pages.

One wonders why the british government have slimmed down and slimmed down the useable pages

I think the hole has been repaired already. I noticed there was a hole in the sand on the beach thismorning - approx the same size

did they keep it a secret from the emergency teams they were testing?

of course not,as with all these fake exercises evryone is fully prepared and notified what gonne happen.Never understand the usefulness of those simulations.When the thing realy happens also everyone will be informed upfront??

So how does that work then? How do they inform everyone up front when a real accident happens?

Global warming is a scam. The truth is out so let not be bullied by the shills and liberal nutters anymore

Wyoming!

more proof that surveys are absoulute and utter worthless <deleted>

something has to be done

[when did the UK have a general election to put Gordon Brown in the driving seat?

did i miss that?

We all missed it!

As I recall, on becoming PM Brown and Labour considered a general election then specifically ruled it out. Given public opinion surveys at the time (including to the present) it was a politically wise decision (or a desperate one) but no one is questioning Brown's legitimacy as PM or the legitimacy of Labour to continue to govern. If there's any similarity between LOS and UK this would have to be one.

Gordon is a super fit cool guy http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-...ging-pants.html

The present parliament in Thailand is elected and really must continue to its full term as the sociopolitical situation continues to be tenuous at best. Today Abhisit can't campaign in Chiang Mai, so where next will he be unable to campaign? More time is necessary before a new election can be called.

My post above, quoted by 'rabcbroon' has been modified in violation of forum rules (a link and new sentence were inserted) so I have reported the violation. The link in the above post is not in my original post.

I think we have a glitch in the Matrix

It is about time the relevant government agency took a hardcore look at road building in Thailand

To observers it looks like the government doesn't have the power to govern. What, with the PMs security not being gauranteed on an internal trip, and the governments inability to have the radio host whom openly threatened to kill the PM arrested - looks bad!

strange -my poo smells of roses

At 8 years your junior approx how old might she be?

Makes me wonder if more roads in Thailand could be suspect due to poor construction work

Yes, yes i know that. But if a dog is born in a stable then does that make it a horse

Demeaning and racist inuendos.... very sad indeed

Analogy - not inuendo.

If you asked someone to identify a person by their appearance and they guessed accordingly then by your definition everyone would be racist.

When sitting at a cafe in Pattaya watching the world go by i often guess at peoples nationailty by their appearance. I think : 'that white girl is a Russian, that asian looking guy is a Singaporean, he looks like a German. ah, a couple of Indian guys', etc. etc. Now i could be wrong - but if this makes me a racist by guessing someones nationality then i a am a racist. but the word has gone PC mad.

Keep looking deeper mate.... yes inward

Now you see - i guess your an Australian by the use of the word mate. And i must admit i can't stand people who use the term mate.

PS are those holding nationalistic views racists. You live in a world full of racists mate but you would need to look deeper to actually allow yourself to be truthfull - mate!

Yes, yes i know that. But if a dog is born in a stable then does that make it a horse

Demeaning and racist inuendos.... very sad indeed

Analogy - not inuendo.

If you asked someone to identify a person by their appearance and they guessed accordingly then by your definition everyone would be racist.

When sitting at a cafe in Pattaya watching the world go by i often guess at peoples nationailty by their appearance. I think : 'that white girl is a Russian, that asian looking guy is a Singaporean, he looks like a German. ah, a couple of Indian guys', etc. etc. Now i could be wrong - but if this makes me a racist by guessing someones nationality then i a am a racist. but the word has gone PC mad.

How current must proof of address from immigration and med cert be when applying for a driving licence?

Makes a lot of sense. Ovbiously why HomePro is so expensive. In the Uk (eg.) a similar store would have possibly 10 staff - Homepro looks to have a hundred or more. Why - who knows?

The guy looks to be more African that French

Why? Just becasue he is a black guy? so, in your estimation, every black in France is an african, what about the blacks in America? Cant be american right as they are black so must all be african!? What about all the blacks in UK, must all be illegal immigrants form Africa right? Same thing go for all of the pakistani and Indian people in the uK now, ALL of them cant be English can they?? What about the white population in Africa who were born there through many generations? Obviously cant be African eh! as they arent black!

People like you should get out more and see the world as it really is now, did you know that there are now planes that only take a few hours for people to travel to different countries these days? What about people moving to different countries and then having children and then they have children in them same countries? Open your eyes and lose the rascist comments and, yes! its a rascist comment that you made about a french guy looking more like an african just because of his color.

As i said above: if a dog is born in a stable then it is still a dog - not a horse.

If a person is born of african parents in France (eg.) then their birth may register them French - but are they not still african?

The silence from the pro global warming mob is remarkable

The guy looks to be more African that French

It may come as a surprise to you that countries like France, and Britain, had colonies in Africa.

It may also be a bit of a shock that such countries have many citizens from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds.

There are even Thais living in England as British citizens and Thailand was not even a British colony.

Yes, yes i know that. But if a dog is born in a stable then does that make it a horse

repost

Marc Morano

Climate Depot

Fri Nov 27, 2009

UK astrophysicist Piers Corbyn, of the long range solar forecast group Weather Action, declared that the ClimateGate revelations have rendered man-made global warming fears “false.”

“The case is blown to smithereens and this whole theory should be destroyed and discarded and Copenhagen conference should be closed,” Corbyn said in a contentious on air television exchange with an environmental activist with Russia’s WWF. The

with Corbyn appeared on Moscow’s RT TV on November 25, 2009. The RT TV’s segment was titled “Heating Cheating.” See Full Video of Debate .

“The world is cooling and has been cooling for 7 years and the leading scientists, so-called ’scientists’ have been trying to hide that evidence,” Corbyn said in reference to hacked emails showing top UN IPCC scientists apparently conspiring to manipulate temperature data and exclude scientific studies from peer-review that they did not agree with.

“We should end this anti-scientific nonsense now,” Corbyn said.

“The data, real data, over the last one thousand, ten thousand or million years, shows there is no relationship between carbon dioxide and world temperatures or climate extremes. Now we can see that actually the people in charge of data have been fiddling it, and they have been hiding the real decline in world temperatures in an attempt to keep their so called moral high ground,” Corbyn told host Bill Dod and Aleksey Kokorin, the Climate Program Coordinator for WWF in Russia.

The upcoming UN global warming summit in Copenhagen is a “complete waste of time,”

The guy looks to be more African that French