This page was last updated on May 30, 2012.
A win-win solution; Charles Forner; Beaver County Times; May 24, 2012. Along with others, this letter appeared on the BCT website on May 24, 2012, but did not appear in the print edition until May 30, 2012.
Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.
“With the climate changing, it has brought weird weather to different areas of the world. As a Pittsburgh native, I know weird weather when I see it because in one day we can have each of the four seasons.
“Climate change does not seem to have real effects on us Pittsburgh natives because we are used to weird weather, but in Africa prolonged droughts are causing widespread famines. Climate change is making this worse by shortening rainy seasons and killing agriculture.”
[RWC] Please read my paper “Manmade Global Warming.” Mr. Forner didn’t provide the source of his climate-change info. In case you’re not up to date, the terminology “manmade global warming” changed to “climate change” to make it easier to blame any weather – “normal” or otherwise – on U.S. consumption of so-called “fossil fuels.” Climate is not a constant and never has been.
Droughts are nothing new for parts of Africa and other parts of the world. Blaming drought, floods, etc. for famine is SOP, however, because it’s easy and allows a faux tie-in with the religion of manmade global warming. While drought can be a contributing factor, history tends to indicate famines are largely tied to the political and social environment. The 1998 Nobel Prize-winner for economics, Amartya Sen, once wrote, “In the terrible history of famines round the world, no substantial famine has ever occurred in a democracy.”
“The U.S. has attempted to help these countries with food aid, but it has been denied by these countries because it may contain genetically modified foods. I believe African governments need to start to rethink their ideas on genetically modified foods. These governments fear that accepting the aid will contaminate their agriculture and they will not be able to sell their crop to the European Union, which is strictly against genetically modified foods.”
[RWC] Usually, manmade-global-warming believers oppose “genetically modified foods” (GMFs) and refer to them as Frankenfood.
“The African governments have nothing to fear, though. They can accept some aid from the U.S. that has been milled so that it cannot be used to create new plants. This solves some famine problems, while keeping their agriculture genetically modified organism free. A win-win.”
[RWC] Fear of contaminated agriculture is only one of the concerns. Some of these countries also believe GMFs can reduce a person’s immunity to disease and/or make a person antibiotic resistant. Milling grain does nothing to allay that second concern.
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