GWPF Newsletter 06/09/17

GWPF newsletter – republished by permission

The Global Warming Policy Foundation is chaired by Lord Lawson and managed by Dr Benny Peiser, a man of seemingly boundless energy. They have a long list of scientists and other experts to call on for advice. The GWPF newsletter is a high-quality round-up of the mos significant climate-related news and a dependable source of scientific information with informed, level-headed analysis on a range of climate change topics covering science, policy, energy and economics.

Like many readers, I find the GWPF newsletter tremendously informative and often read it from cover to cover. It deserves the widest possible distribution. Here is the latest edition: the longer extracts have been shortened but the links retained, including one where you can sign up for your own copy.

Republishing should introduce it to even more New Zealanders and encourage discussion. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. — RT

 

Pacific Ocean Cools Rapidly

La Nina Threatens Early Return

 

South Africa Set For Biggest Maize Crop Harvest On Record

Forecasts for an El Nino this winter have given way to the prospect of more La Nina-like conditions as sea surface temperatures in the central-eastern Pacific cool rapidly. Surface temperatures in the critical area of the Pacific have fallen to 0.2 degrees Celsius below average, down from 0.7 degrees above average in the week centred on June 28. The rapid cooling has forced meteorologists to reassess the outlook for the northern hemisphere winter.John Kemp, Reuters, 5 September 2017

 

South Africa is set for its biggest maize crop harvest on record following improved weather conditions. At least 16.4 million tonnes of maize can be expected from the maize belt this season. Almost 60 percent of the yield will be white maize, which is the regional staple used for human consumption. —The South Africa, 1 September 2017

 

In 2015, a vicious El Niño weather pattern swept across southern Africa. When it intensified the following year, it caused severe droughts and threatened the food security of millions. But in 2017, that trend is set to reverse. South Africa is expecting a 15.63m tonne maize harvest, the highest yield of the crop ever. Now 85 percent of South Africa’s crop is genetically modified, with even Malawian and Zambian farmers taking up higher-yield seeds at a rapid rate. With the surplus, maize prices have dropped some 60 percent since last year. While this is good news for some consumers, for farmers it is making it hard to balance accounts. The solution: look to export the bumper crop. –Charlie Mitchell, This Is Africa, 27 June 2017

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Why James Lovelock changed his mind on climate change

Only two years after The Revenge of Gaia

From a sparkling interview by James Delingpole in the Spectator. Do read it.

Climate change was so serious a threat, he told the Guardian in 2010, that democracy might have to be ‘put on hold’.

Within two years he’d had a remarkable change of heart. ‘All right, I made a mistake,’ he told the cable channel MSNBC. He still believed —and continues to believe — that manmade carbon dioxide is a problem that needs addressing. But we’ve plenty of time to do something about it before any dangerous effects are felt, and in any case, the cures being advanced by green zealots are often worse than the disease itself.

One of his main bugbears is biomass, such as the woodchips from old oak forests in the US, which are shipped across the Atlantic to be burned for electricity at the Drax power station: ‘This is one of the most monstrous examples of green absurdity that I know of. It’s wicked!’

He said, by the way, the answer’s nuclear.

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