3 thoughts on “The Eternal And Elemental Foe”

1. I would note, though, that one can believe that manmade climate change is real, and still recognize that all of the plans to try to prevent it are economically insane, and disastrous for civilization.

   Count me as such. A glaring example of the failure of climate change mitigation was the fad of agricultural ethanol. It resulted in a huge transfer of agricultural activity from food to ethanol production (much of which consumed more equivalent barrels of oil than they produced!).

   That lead to consequences such as two big hikes in global food prices, a large number of people pushed into extreme poverty (0.5% of the world’s population in the lesser of the two spikes) and a one time spike in fertilizer prices. World Bank which described the above, places a large part of the blame on biofuels:

   The rapid rise in food prices has been a burden on the poor in developing countries, who spend roughly half of their household incomes on food. This paper examines the factors behind the rapid increase in internationally traded food prices since 2002 and estimates the contribution of various factors such as the increased production of biofuels from food grains and oilseeds, the weak dollar, and the increase in food production costs due to higher energy prices. It concludes that the most important factor was the large increase in biofuels production in the U.S. and the EU. Without these increases, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably, oilseed prices would not have tripled, and price increases due to other factors, such as droughts, would have been more moderate. Recent export bans and speculative activities would probably not have occurred because they were largely responses to rising prices. While it is difficult to compare the results of this study with those of other studies due to differences in methodologies, time periods and prices considered, many other studies have also recognized biofuels production as a major driver of food prices. The contribution of biofuels to the rise in food prices raises an important policy issue, since much of the increase was due to EU and U.S. government policies that provided incentives to biofuels production, and biofuels policies which subsidize production need to be reconsidered in light of their impact on food prices.

   This is documented. Biofuels put at least 44 million people in poverty (from the weaker of two price spikes in food). And the timing is such that this is the trigger for the Arab Spring unrest which in turn makes it a trigger for the Syrian Civil War which has killed more than a million people.

   Terrible mitigation strategy is no longer a theoretical harm at the global level.

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   1. In rebuttal, I’d like to note that farmers as a group are financially much better off than they were in the pre-ethanol days of say, the 1980s where gain embargoes that allowed US competitors to gain an advantage in international markets, preceded by speculative expansion plans thanks to abundant loan money from the late 70s strapped farmers with un-payable debts when interest rates skyrocketed in the early 80s. This also helped induced the ‘farm crisis’ that led in popular culture to the “Farm Aid” rock concerts. Such things would be considered ludicrous by the Left these days.

      I will not debate the idea that the ethanol economy was just another government hand-out. I think that is true, at least in the beginning. But now it’s so deeply woven into our economy it would be hard to replace.

      We need lower energy prices not higher. It’s not clear at this point getting rid of ethanol would achieve that. I’m all for removing subsidies where they exist. But the end game now, is to get energy prices down not up.

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2. I’ve been told the 1.5C limit to average global temperature increase as an existence threat is a made-up number out of the Paris Climate Accords and has no basis in Science. Nor did the prior 2.0C limit popularized by an economist prior to that time.

   I have an open mind. Prove the above assertions wrong, but you must show your work and provide falsifiable experimental or observational evidence, not computer models.

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