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Tag Archives: CGFI
CITY FARMING—PIGS IN THE SKY?, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY
Green visionary, Dixon Despommier, of Columbia University has proposed growing our food in city high-rises, to cut food transport energy use. The bad news is that city farming would be impossibly expensive—as it always has been. The good news: the high-rise farms will never be built. Continue reading
Posted in Latest News
Tagged Avery, CGFI, city farming, columbia, corn yields, despommier, environment, farming, farms, Food, fruit, grow lights, vegetables
1 Comment
LESSONS LEARNED FROM SWEDISH TEMPERATURE RECORDS, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY
The ten coldest winter-spring temperatures out of the last 500 in Stockholm, Sweden, were almost all during the Little Ice Age. No surprise there. The coldest was 1569, followed by 1573. Continue reading
Posted in Latest News
Tagged Avery, celsius, CGFI, climate, degrees, environment, environmental, ice age, national climate data center, temperature
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UN MILLENNIUM GOALS FLUNK REALITY CHECK, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY
On the10th birthday of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, officials are lamenting that the world has made little progress in meeting them. No one should be surprised.
Goal # 1 is to cut greenhouse emissions by 50 percent. The UN says this clearly within reach if there’s the “political will.” “Economic death-wish” would be a better term. The UN wants us to give up 85 percent of our energy system, and use expensive, erratic solar and wind that would do little to reduce greenhouse emissions. Continue reading
Posted in Latest News
Tagged agriculture, Avery, CGFI, crops, energy, farming, la nina, organic, power, solar, UN, united nations, wind power
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3 BILLION & COUNTING: THE COST OF BANNING DDT, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY
3Billion and Counting is a new documentary film on the awful human cost of banning DDT. The film’s producer, medical doctor Rutledge Taylor, circled the tropical world, finding that malaria has claimed some three billion human lives throughout history—and the toll of needless deaths is continuing to mount by perhaps 1.5 million per year. Moreover, it permanently debilitates millions more. Taylor says malaria treatment is a “tangle of red tape, misguided prevention policies and treatment that is ineffective in the face of continual re-infection.” Above all, he found “willful deafness to the pleas of local populations to help them eradicate the mosquitoes that deliver the deadly cargo.” Continue reading
Posted in Latest News
Tagged CGFI, climate, DDT, enivoronmental, environment, malaria, mosquito, mosquitos, population, rachel carson, Rutledge Taylor, tropic, tropical
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“EXTREME WEATHER”? NOT YET!, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY
The death toll from recent “extreme weather events” has been sharply declining since the 1920s, as my valued colleague Indur Goklany has valorously pointed out. Air conditioning, flood control, earthquake proofing and better weather forecasting have all helped. Despite vast media coverage, extreme weather now causes only a half-percent of global deaths. A large part of the gains came through crop production increases using fossil-fueled industrial fertilizers and irrigation pumps. This meant the world had fossil-fueled food to share with countries suddenly caught by devastating (but short- term) drought or flood. Continue reading
Posted in Latest News
Tagged Avery, CGFI, drought, earthquake, environment, environmental, extreme weather, farm, farming, flood, fossil fuel, Global, ice age, Indur Goklany, weather
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PROBABLY NOT THE “HOTTEST YEAR”, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY
James Hansen of NASA, an ardent believer in man-made warming, announced recently that “The 12-month running mean global temperature in the Goddard Space Institute analysis has reached a new record in 2010 . . . NASA, June 3, 2010. The main factor is our estimated temperature change for the Arctic region.” The GISS figures show that recent temperatures in the Arctic have been up to four degrees C warmer than the long-term mean. Continue reading
Posted in Latest News
Tagged artic, Avery, CGFI, climate, CO2, earth, electric, electricity, energy, giss, Global Warming, harvard, nasa, obama, sea, sunspot, temperature
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CALIFORNIA SNOWFALL UNCHANGED OVER PAST CENTURY, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY
California’s southern Sierra snowfall has not changed over the past century, according to John Christy, a native Californian and atmospheric researcher who’s now in charge of the global temperature-measuring satellites. Christy reconstructed snowfall records at Huntington Lake, CA, from 1916–2009. The station’s data since 1972 had been missing, but Christy found two nearby stations had very high correlations with Huntington Lake. That allowed him to assess southern Sierra snowfall over nearly the past century. Continue reading
Posted in Latest News
Tagged atmosphere, CGFI, climate, cooling, earth, environment, Global Warming, obama, Sierra, snowfall, temperature, weather
1 Comment
CONFINED LIVESTOCK BETTER FOR THE PLANET, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY
Stanford University recently startled the world with its conclusion that conventional high-yield farming is far better for the planet than low-yield farming. And this includes the First World’s current icon, organic farming. We know that high-yield farms need less land to produce the same amount of food, protecting the huge amounts of soil carbon that would be gassed off if we plowed more land for low-yield crops. However, the Stanford study says that high-yield farming may have saved 600 billion tons of CO2 emissions. That’s equal to one-third of the greenhouses gasses emitted from the whole industrial revolution since 1850! Continue reading
Posted in Latest News
Tagged animals, Avery, cattle, CGFI, CO2, crops, dairy, environment, farm, farming, Global Warming, pesticides, stanford
7 Comments
MAKING GOOD SCIENCE DECISIONS, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY
I can’t help but praise Michael Specter’s new book: Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives. Specter warns that we live in a world where the leaders of African nations prefer to let their citizens starve to death rather than import genetically-modified food grains. Childhood vaccines have proven to be the most effective public health measure in history, yet people march on Washington to protest their use. Fifty years ago pharmaceutical companies were regarded as vital supports for our good health and lengthening life spans; now they are seen as callous corporate enemies of health and the environment. Continue reading
Posted in Latest News
Tagged african, Avery, CGFI, climate, crops, environment, farming, farms, first world, Food, foods, science, scientific, specter, third world
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PAY ATTENTION TO SUNSPOT FORECASTS, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY
The sun is currently producing fewer sunspots than it has in more than a century. Florida State researchers tell us this may predict bad U.S. hurricane seasons. They say that when the sunspot numbers peak, within the (roughly) 11-year sunspot cycle, the U.S. has less than a 25 percent chance of being hit with a hurricane. The odds of a hurricane rise to 64 percent in the lowest-sunspot years. Even more important, the probability of three or more hurricanes hitting the U.S. in a season increases dramatically during low-sunspot periods. Continue reading
Posted in Latest News
Tagged Avery, CGFI, CO2, cooling, environment, environmental, Global, hurricane, ice age, ocean, ozone, sunspot, sunspots, temperature, UV light, warming
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