Tag: fertiliser

Net Zero Lunatics Set to Empty Your Medicine Cabinet

Prioritizing reliable energy and raw materials (including North Sea/gas) makes sense for medical security—fossil fuels enable modern medicine at scale. Blanket Net Zero timelines that ignore trade-offs risk higher costs and fragility without proportional climate benefits (given global emissions and adaptation options). Better balance: pragmatic emissions cuts via tech/innovation, not ideological restrictions that hobble critical supply chains.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Chris Morrison

Windy entrepreneur Dale Vince thinks there is “no single reason for us to drill more oil and gas in the North Sea”, former UK Green leader Caroline Lucas comments on BP’s recent cyclical profits rise by claiming, “such blatant profiteering from human misery is sickening”, while the headbangers’ headbanger George Monbiot likens Norway’s exports of hydrocarbons to “a curse to be dumped on other countries”. One can only pray that these twaddle transmitting twits do not become ill and have to call on modern, sophisticated, hydrocarbon-rich medicines.

Up to 20% of drilled oil and gas is turned into petrochemicals and these are used to make famine-reducing fertiliser, uber-useful plastics and life-saving medicines. Yet around 200 members of the British Parliament were prepared last year to vote for the demented, anti-human private legislation that would have cut all hydrocarbon use in the country, whether it arose domestically or abroad, to just 10% within a decade. Food starvation and painful lingering deaths are just a few thoughts and words that spring to mind.

Treason is another. What other word can possibly describe the wilful political decisions currently being made in countries like the UK to stop future extractions of hydrocarbons? How can politicians like the sinister Ed Miliband claim international leadership of the Net Zero fantasy and expect others to provide future food, fertiliser and medicines? Who will tend to an ailing G. Monbiot when the medicine cabinet is empty and Norway sells its ‘curses’ elsewhere.

Modern medicine depends heavily on hydrocarbons, both as raw material and chemical building blocks. Without them, the production of many essential drugs – from painkillers and antibiotics to cancer therapies – would be significantly more difficult, much more expensive, and in some cases impossible to produce at the required scale. Many pharmaceuticals are organic molecules and hydrocarbons form the backbone of the complex manufacturing chemistry. For example, hydrocarbon-derived benzene can be converted through controlled reactions into compounds such as phenol and aniline to synthesise drugs such as paracetamol. Treating propylene provides vital solvents and other manufacturing intermediaries.

Inactive substances made from hydrocarbons such as paraffin wax and certain emulsifiers help stabilise drugs, control their release in the body and improve their shelf life. Ointments and gels provide a stable way that active ingredients can be applied to the skin. Hydrocarbons are also widely used in drug delivery systems such as syringes and are widespread in the manufacture of protective clothing, IV bags, pill bottles and sterile packaging.

The current problems in the Gulf with the 20% reduction in the global supply of oil and gas are a dress rehearsal for absolute Net Zero. Within weeks of the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, prices of both medicines and fertilisers are soaring. Fertiliser prices are up 50%, and those countries with Net Zero ambitions and related high energy costs such as the UK and Australia face heavy food inflation as crop yields inevitably fall. Prices of medicines are reported by some pharmacies in the UK to have increased by 20-30%, partly due to disruptions in the supply chain, but also the rising cost of hydrocarbons. Even the Guardian seems to be catching on with an April 26th headline: ‘From syringes to stents: Iran war exposes NHS dependency on petrochemicals.’ The newspaper reports that the NHS spent £21.6 billion on medicines in 2024-25, so a touch of Net Zero-style inflation from the Gulf is likely to blow further massive holes in the budget of bankrupt Britain.

It is difficult to put a global figure on the amount of oil and gas used by the pharmaceutical business, but it is clear that many millions of tonnes of hydrocarbon-derived chemicals are consumed every year. Some drugs such as cancer treatments with highly complex molecules use large quantities of hydrocarbons and derivates such as solvents, reagents and processing aids. Inevitably, there have been suggested ‘green’ replacements but they face major, likely impossible, challenges in matching the performance, scalability and cost of traditional hydrocarbon-based processes. The existing infrastructure for petrochemical production is proven, cost-effective and capable of supplying global demand at the scale needed.

The sooner Net Zero is kicked into touch the better. This is getting serious. Entire generations, pampered and protected from hardship in ways unimaginable to their ancestors, have been brainwashed into accepting that carbon dioxide, the gas of life, somehow controls the climate thermostat. This despite a lack of proof from actual observations going back at least 600 million years. Cutting North Sea drilling and failing to frack the vast, easily extracted gas that could be sitting under our feet takes away our energy security. But even worse, it could spread hunger and once-controllable diseases across the land. It is the ultimate luxury belief from neo-Malthusian, Marxist-inspired ideologues who seek political control, seemingly at whatever cost.

History shows that this type of commanding collectivisation often ends in tears – witness the gulags and starvation of Stalin’s Soviet Union, the deliberate famines in Mao’s China, and not forgetting the mountains of human skulls that arose from Pol Pot’s Cambodian Ground Zero experiment.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.

Matthew Parris Calls for Ban on Smelly Hydrocarbons Whether Climate Emergency is Real or Not

God In Heaven save us from the dripping wets who want to remove hydrocarbon use from modern society because they are a bit smelly and not very nice, don’t you understand. The same type of naïve people who think that society can do without hydrocarbons but they will still be able to pick up a soy latte on their way to buy organic humous at Waitrose. Step forward Matthew Parris writing in last week’s Spectator. He thinks that the scare over the claimed climate emergency is worth the cost and anxiety to rid ourselves of hydrocarbons because they are bad for health, domestic politics and the West’s future security.

An illuminated offshore oil rig at twilight, featuring a long walkway extending towards the structure against a deep blue sky and tranquil waters.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Chris Morrison

A smiling older man in a gray suit and patterned tie walking outdoors.

God In Heaven save us from the dripping wets who want to remove hydrocarbon use from modern society because they are a bit smelly and not very nice, don’t you understand. The same type of naïve people who think that society can do without hydrocarbons but they will still be able to pick up a soy latte on their way to buy organic humous at Waitrose. Step forward Matthew Parris writing in last week’s Spectator. He thinks that the scare over the claimed climate emergency is worth the cost and anxiety to rid ourselves of hydrocarbons because they are bad for health, domestic politics and the West’s future security.

It sems not to have occurred to luxury belief-laden Parris that life without hydrocarbons will cause mass starvation, death, societal collapse and no external security. Come on down the Caliphate, Boris the Bear, or even the French.

Parris appears far too grand to have actually consulted the science of climate and the mechanics of energy provision. He “distrusts” both sets of arguing people he obviously regards as climate nutters, although he admits that he lacks both scientific expertise and new information. Basic climate science is not that difficult to understand, but despite his admitted lack of information he rushes to print to promote an extremist Net Zero fantasy. “Well even if the climate emergency does not exist, it will prove useful to have invented it,” is his considered contribution to one of the great political and scientific issues of our time.

The soy latte/Waitrose shoppers were much in evidence early last year when around 200 members of the British Parliament were prepared to vote for a ‘climate and nature’ bill that would have cut hydrocarbon use across the entire UK economy, including imports, by around 90% within a decade. All the Lib Dems, the Greens, 80 Labour MPs and Heavenly Father help us again, two particularly dim Conservatives. Just 10% hydrocarbon use would be barely enough to sustain the emergency services. Under this regime, food would disappear in the shops (yes, Waitrose included) since hydrocarbon-produced fertiliser doubles crop yields, there would be no transport, all building and most maintenance work would stop, people would freeze to death in their homes, and the only available meat would be Fido in the corner. I could go on at some length about the catastrophic consequences. Sinister or stupid are the two choices to make of people who in any event should not be anywhere near the levers of political power.

Zealots or boobies – difficult in many cases to decide. Or perhaps both in the case of renamed Zack Polanski, the exciting new leader outside Parliament of the UK Green Party.

On energy policy, Parris is clueless. Solar and wind, he notes, are not the whole answer to the UK’s electricity needs, but with nuclear power “we shall one day be able to turn our backs completely on carbon”, he claims. Solar and wind’s contribution can fall on a very cold winter’s day to almost nothing, while nuclear provides only base load and cannot quickly be adjusted up and down. Back in the real world, the electricity grid’s requirements vary widely over a 24-hour period and only natural gas can provide an on-demand supply. Forget large-scale battery storage – progress has been minimal since the invention of lithium-ion technology. These basic immutable facts, widely ignored by Net Zero fanatics, explain why Britain has some of the highest industrial and domestic electricity prices in the world.

Parris’s down on hydrocarbons is summed up with his claim that burning them “is a filthy and unhealthy business, always was, always will be”. It causes traffic pollution near where he lives next to a road tunnel in East London. In his second home in the Peak District, he seems upset that an old railway closed over 50 years ago exhibits signs of ancient soot deposits.

In fact, the air in London is cleaner and healthier than it has ever been in the modern industrial age. Blanket, choking smogs are a thing of the past. Potentially unhealthy levels of particulates can still be found, mostly underground in the all-electric train subway system.  The food is better, if not healthier, produced using hydrocarbons and trucked in by hydrocarbon-burning lorries. The water is cleaner, and sewage is disposed of quickly and efficiently by hydrocarbon-powered systems. Life expectancy has soared since Victorian times. If you think vans are unhealthy, try living in a city where non-refrigerated food is dragged along summer streets slathered with steaming animal shit.

Needless to say, Parris is full of praise for his electric car which has a small, honestly declared range of 160 miles (make that barely 100 when the temperature drops below freezing). Along with the wind turbines and solar panels, he seems unaware of the horrendous ecological damage they cause. There are not enough children in the Congo to mine all the battery cobalt for dinky town runabouts. Those seeking a longer-range EV need to ignore the Indonesian rainforests being dug up for battery-enhancing nickel. Wind turbines kill millions of bats a year and help decimate slow-growing raptor populations. But who cares when luxury beliefs need burnishing. Who cares that 50% of the balsa wood used as a core for increasingly large wind turbine blades is now illegally logged in the Amazon rainforest.

On the strength of his Spectator article, Parris has very little understanding of the crucial role hydrocarbons play in a modern industrial society. Their presence is everywhere from medicine to plastic, from fertiliser to a still dominant 80% global contribution to energy. Their by-product, carbon dioxide, ‘greens’ the planet, diminishing food shortages and combating drought in marginal areas on Earth. Net Zero is dead almost everywhere, with billions of people seeking to enjoy the life-enhancing benefits that hydrocarbons bring. The same life-enhancing benefits that Parris and all his fellow zealots/boobies have enjoyed during their own long-lived lives.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.

The climate scaremongers: Pass the locusts and I’m starving

A GREAT global food transformation! Nothing less will address the issues of climate change, sustainability and social justice, according to a report published by the Lancet. It demands ‘concerted global action and unprecedented levels of transformative change’.

A globe composed of various fruits and vegetables, symbolizing a global focus on healthy, plant-based diets.

From The Conservative Woman

ByPaul Homewood

A vintage-style propaganda poster depicting a smiling Mao Zedong with an outstretched arm, surrounded by a crowd of supporters holding placards, set against a backdrop of red and green colors.

A GREAT global food transformation! Nothing less will address the issues of climate change, sustainability and social justice, according to a report published by the Lancet. It demands ‘concerted global action and unprecedented levels of transformative change’.

Meat production must be drastically cut, to be replaced by fruit and vegetables. Agricultural land must be reduced by a third, handed over to reforestation and rewilding. Fertiliser use must be halved along with water used for irrigation.

The report proposes a ‘planetary health diet’ or PHD, to which we must all adhere whether we live in rich or poor countries; the authors say it is the cornerstone of their recommendations and a framework for what must be done.

A typical PHD would limit your red meat ration to one chipolata a day; you would be allowed half a glass of milk or a small piece of cheese, virtually no sugar and definitely no sweets. No mention is made of alcohol, but knowing the busybodies at the Lancet, this will be banned outright – all in our best interests, of course.

But rest assured – there will be plenty of bread, fruit and vegetables to fill you up! Quite how the world will be fed on an almost wholly plant-based diet remains to be seen, given that arable production will be hit hard by any ban on fertilisers.

Ostensibly this is all supposed to be about climate, sustainability and biodiversity. But delve into the report and it is clear that the real agenda is ‘social justice’. According to the Lancet, a proper diet is a human right. The report’s authors complain that half the world struggles to access a healthy diet. They talk about a ‘fair distribution of resources, such as the rights to food’ and object that the richest 30 per cent contribute to 70 per cent of the environmental pressures from food systems. Translation: we in the West are eating too much. In short, under their global food transformation, everyone in the world will have the same amount to eat.

The big question, of course, is how all of this will be enforced. The British public are not going to accept willingly what amounts to something even worse than wartime rationing. Even if the government shut down all beef and lamb farming in the country tomorrow, we would simply resort to importing it instead, along with all the other foods denied to us.

Nor are peasant farmers in Africa going to give up the few cows and goats they rely on for their living.

The only way to enforce such a system would be world communism, a Soviet-style collectivisation of farms and a state-run rationing system. Somehow food production and distribution would have to be co-ordinated globally. Rich countries would have to subsidise food for the poorer ones. And what about those countries whose agricultural land is unsuited to growing crops?

The Lancet says this transformation will save lives. Yes, many of us are too fat, but at least we can eat less if we choose. The Lancet‘s cure would be worse than the disease.

And while, in theory, people in poorer countries might be better fed, the facts of life suggest the opposite would result. Most people in the world are much better fed than ever before; the exception is usually in war-torn and terrorist-affected regions; a planetary health diet will not make the slightest difference there.

Farmers in third world countries are benefiting from higher crop yields thanks to mechanisation, fertilisers and irrigation. So much so that they are no longer tied down to subsistence farming and can sell crops for cash. Take away these modern benefits and the incentive to work and food production will plummet, just as it did in Soviet Russia.

Far from saving 15million lives, hundreds of millions could end up dying if the Lancet’s plans come to fruition.

It is easy to see the hand of Bill Gates and his chums behind this. How long will it be before we are all eating his industrial sludge, fake meat and insect burgers?

It all sounds like fantasy – except that cities such as London have already signed up to achieving the PHD for all by 2030.

Still, at least when we have given up our freedoms and our money, when we are nibbling our locust burger in the cold and dark, we can take comfort from the fact that the rest of the world is just as badly off as ourselves!

Below, by the way, is what the diet gestapo will allow you to eat:

Table showing per capita recommended daily intake of plant and animal-sourced foods in grams and calories.

You can read the full report here.

EAT-LancetHerunterladen

A graphic design featuring the phrase 'MAKE ORWELL FICTION AGAIN' with stylized eyes above and below the text, set against a red and gold background.

ECB / Potsdam: Global Warming will Drive Up Food Inflation, Unless Farmers Adapt

The problems being experienced by Europe are because of EU incompetence, not climate change.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

“… in a low emission-scenario most impacts could be removed by adjustment once global temperatures stabilise …”

Global warming and heat extremes to enhance inflationary pressures

Maximilian Kotz, Friderike Kuik, Eliza Lis & Christiane Nickel 

Abstract

Climate impacts on economic productivity indicate that climate change may threaten price stability. Here we apply fixed-effects regressions to over 27,000 observations of monthly consumer price indices worldwide to quantify the impacts of climate conditions on inflation. Higher temperatures increase food and headline inflation persistently over 12 months in both higher- and lower-income countries. Effects vary across seasons and regions depending on climatic norms, with further impacts from daily temperature variability and extreme precipitation. Evaluating these results under temperature increases projected for 2035 implies upwards pressures on food and headline inflation of 0.92-3.23 and 0.32-1.18 percentage-points per-year respectively on average globally (uncertainty range across emission scenarios, climate models and empirical specifications). Pressures are largest at low latitudes and show strong seasonality at high latitudes, peaking in summer. Finally, the 2022 extreme summer heat increased food inflation in Europe by 0.43-0.93 percentage-points which warming projected for 2035 would amplify by 30-50%.

Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-01173-x

But farmers will apparently be able to adapt to these upheavals, “once temperatures stabilise”;

… Although the empirical evidence indicates that adaptation to temperature shocks has been limited historically, we explore the potential of adaptation via adjustment to changing temperatures to reduce these future impacts. We do so by using empirical models in which temperature shocks are defined relative to a 30-year moving average rather than a constant baseline (Fig. S6k–t), and by evaluating potential impacts using future temperatures defined in this way. This method indicates that adaptation via adjustment could substantially reduce future impacts (Supplementary Fig. S14). In particular, in a low emission-scenario most impacts could be removed by adjustment once global temperatures stabilise (Supplementary Fig. S14c, d). However, in scenarios of un-mitigated warming, persistent impacts of considerable size remain despite introducing adjustment of this type which has not been observed historically (Supplementary Fig. S14). …

Read more: same link as above

The study authors also admit renewables may be increasing sensitivity to adverse weather.

… Second, our empirical results refer predominantly to food and headline inflation, whereas we find a limited response of other price aggregates to weather changes. However, the strong response of electricity demand to temperature5,6 suggests that impacts on electricity prices are plausible. Indeed, we find that electricity prices show some consistent and persistent response to temperature increases (Supplementary Fig. S1k), but with much larger uncertainty which precludes statements of significance at conventional levels. Lesser data availability for this more detailed price aggregate as well as complex and heterogeneous electricity price-setting practices may contribute to these large errors. However, as electricity supply is increasingly met with renewable sources, the price sensitivity to weather may change. A detailed analysis of electricity and other price aggregates may be a fruitful avenue of future work. …Read more: same link as above

Naturally the study makes heavy use of RCP 8.5.

In my opinion, citing 2022 in Europe as an example of climate disruption caused food inflation is absurd. The problems being experienced by Europe are because of EU incompetence, not climate change.

Food inflation in Europe is a problem, because European farmers are under attack by radical greens. Ongoing demands farmers restrict use of fertiliser and chemicals, and insane attempts to cut the number of farmers, by coercing farmers to sign agreements to never farm again, are probably not encouraging farmers to invest in upgrading their land. Dutch police shot live ammo at farmers protesting climate rules in 2022.

In 2022, in response to fertiliser shortages triggered by the war in Ukraine, there were crazy policy responses to the looming food shortages. The Scottish Agriculture Minister refused to release more land for agriculture to help farmers maintain food supply. “We are still in a nature emergency that hasn’t gone away… so it’s a no“

Europe experienced fertiliser shortages in 2022, because of their reliance on Ukraine and Russia. Ukraine and Russia are (were?) major suppliers of fertiliser, because they have lots of cheap energy. Producing fertiliser is energy intensive.

Europe’s disastrous green energy policies have made it uneconomical to produce fertiliser in Europe, which made Europe vulnerable to the supply shock caused by the Ukraine war.

In addition the EU operates a strict tariff regime, The European Common Agricultural Policy, which taxes imports of food, and restricts Europe’s ability to combat weather shocks by importing more food from outside the EU.

I’m not disputing that in 2022 Europe suffered adverse weather conditions, but there were confounding factors. If Europe hadn’t made such a mess of their agriculture, climate and energy policies, there would have been a lot less food inflation.

As for adaption, why would a regime of continuous warming be so different to stabilisation at a higher temperature?

Are the researchers suggesting farmers are too dumb to pick up the phone? Why would persistent impacts remain in scenarios of unmitigated warming? Can’t farmers talk to their friends down South, to discover what crops and techniques work in warmer climates?

Farmers all over the world adapt the same crops to radically different temperatures. Subtropical Bundaberg can grow Maine potatoes at 25 degrees South of the Equator, a few hours drive from the 23.4 degree tropic of Capricorn, the boundary of the Southern tropics, because they plant the potatoes in Fall, then harvest them in Spring before the Summer heat kills them.

If temperature rose significantly every year, farmers would adapt by borrowing last year’s planting practices from their friends 50-100 miles South, or switch to new crops.

The Potsdam researchers are wrong about farmers not adapting to a warmer climate. Canadian Geographic admitted in 2020 that global warming is opening millions of square kilometres of new agricultural land. This is a continuation of the process which begun with the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850. Farmers will move into these lands the moment they become viable, unless agriculture hating politicians prevent them from doing so. Similar land openings would occur in Greenland and far Northern Europe, were global warming to continue.

As for drought and flood, there is no evidence extreme weather is getting worse. Upgraded water infrastructure could capture and store floodwater, and transport water to where it was needed. If Western governments spent a fraction of the cash they squander on useless renewables, on building infrastructure which is actually needed, floods and droughts would be much less of a problem.