Killing 20+ MIllion people per year

[Tim the plumber]

I have just seen my MP. I don't expect to have much effect he was unaware that there was any sort of trouble with biofuel causing mass starvation, but for what it is worth I have tried. I have followed up this with this email.

If you have any chance of influencing things please hassel your politicians to stop the starving of the world to make richwestern farmers richer.

To

Paul BLOMFIELD

Message body
Hi Paul,

Further to our chat today here is my outline of the issue of the evil of using food as fuel;

Today there are a vast number of people who live on very little. World hunger is at the level of 11% of humanity being serriously effected to the extent of stunted growth or worse. Malnutrition is very present today in the world's poor. 7 billion people in the world, 800 Million malnourished.

https://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats

We are using vast amounts of food as fule.

Fueling hunger? Biofuel grain ?could feed 330 million? | OECD Insights Blog

There is a little over 2 billion tonnes of cerial grain produce per year. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=c...#imgdii=ZnLyX_Mj4lyEUM:&imgrc=CicEWxZ0HkAHSM:

Of this loads is diverted away from feeding people to make biofuel. One quarter of US grain crops fed to cars - not people, new figures show https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=c...#imgdii=ZnLyX_Mj4lyEUM:&imgrc=CicEWxZ0HkAHSM:


Of this loads is diverted away from feeding people to make biofuel
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jan/22/quarter-us-grain-biofuels-food


https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jul/08/biofuels-plant-wheat-vivergo-hull

Biofuels plant opens to become UK's biggest buyer of wheat
By Fiona Harvey
Vivergo plant near Hull will take 1.1m tonnes of wheat a year to turn into ethanol and animal feed

I have seen estimates that the price of basic food stuff is 30% to 70% more than it would be without this.

In places where the income level is of the order of $2 a day making the locals pay 50c more than they should do for food is taking vast amounts of capital out of that economy to make rich western farmers richer. If these poor places were allowed to develope without this economic rape they would see a huge boom in thier wealth leves.

The Arab spring and the Syrian collapse conicided with spikes in the food price. The flood of desperate people fleeing Africa is driven by the economic fucking that these places are having.

There is an argument the this situation is getting better. It is, there are less starving people today than 10 years ago. So? This is still no justification to kill faster than WWII ever did.

Surely this situation can be an open goal politically and will only cause the farming community to hate you more than they do already. They will never vote Labour.

The repeal of the corn laws in the 19th century caused dancing in the streets. I know that that will not happen in the UK, these poor are over seas, but the incentive of having all those newly richer 3rd world people wanting to buy British goods and services will make the whole world economy grow. The only people to lose will be the farmers.

As part of this it would be nice to apply the idea to a new law making it automatic that if you call something science it has the same implications as being on oath. That would stop the misuse of science. Making a lie seem to be science is the most powerfully damaging thing that can be done.

You know that I am on the skeptical side of the argument in global warming. Well, if those who believe it to be a real threat to the world are confident in their view they should welcome this law. No longer would there be a place for science deniers.

Yours hopefully, but not holding my breath


Tim G, a plumber

 

[ocean515]

The biofuel mess is a classic example of activism leading to unintended consequences.

Convinced by environmentalist groups to view carbon based energy as the personification of evil, they sought to believe energy could be planted by seed and harvested infinitum.

I applaud you for placing the spotlight on this issue so many are desperate to deny.

 

[joG]

I have just seen my MP. I don't expect to have much effect he was unaware that there was any sort of trouble with biofuel causing mass starvation, but for what it is worth I have tried. I have followed up this with this email.

If you have any chance of influencing things please hassel your politicians to stop the starving of the world to make richwestern farmers richer.

There are a laws in place in Eu member countries requiring a minimum and growing content of biofuel in gasoline and diesel sold. This is to reduce climate gases and warming. The hungry are only collateral damage.

 

[LowDown]

The diversion of food grains into the production of fuel alcohol is an obscenity. Kudos for pointing this out.

 

[jmotivator]

There are a laws in place in Eu member countries requiring a minimum and growing content of biofuel in gasoline and diesel sold. This is to reduce climate gases and warming. The hungry are only collateral damage.

Knowing many of the enviro-crazies I think for some of them the starvation is a bonus.

 

[DaveFagan]

It is a reflection of Corporatism. The biofuels create windfall profits for USA Chemical Corporations with political influence. We have the best politicians that money can buy/rent. Big Agro Corporations benefit from increased prices for grains. You don't really think that Corporatism is going to let the starvation of 20+million interfere with profits, do you? That's why Global Warming deniers exist. To maintain the profits as long as possible, even if it turns a preventable disaster into an Apocalyptic event.
/

 

[Tim the plumber]

It is a reflection of Corporatism. The biofuels create windfall profits for USA Chemical Corporations with political influence. We have the best politicians that money can buy/rent. Big Agro Corporations benefit from increased prices for grains. You don't really think that Corporatism is going to let the starvation of 20+million interfere with profits, do you? That's why Global Warming deniers exist. To maintain the profits as long as possible, even if it turns a preventable disaster into an Apocalyptic event.
/

It is the green/communist idiots who have created this evil.

 

[Deuce]

The diversion of food grains into the production of fuel alcohol is an obscenity. Kudos for pointing this out.

Going to take away points for his blatantly false number?

 

[Deuce]

It is the green/communist idiots who have created this evil.

Sure, sure. Nobody profits off lobbying for taxpayer-subsidized biofuels :lamo

 

[LowDown]

Going to take away points for his blatantly false number?

If you have something to say then spit it out.

 

[Deuce]

If you have something to say then spit it out.

Tim the Plumber is claiming 20 million people die per year because of biofuels.

However, this is impossible because there simply aren't that many nutrition-related deaths per year. Even if you attribute every single malnourishment-related death solely to biofuels (which would obviously be ludicrous), you can't come up with 20 million per year. Not even close.

And every time I point this out, Tim the Plumber claims I am personally complicit in 20 million deaths per year.

The best part is that I'm opposed to biofuel subsidies, ethanol in particular. So, my opposition to biofuels makes me personally complicit in an imaginary number of deaths attributable to biofuels. Some people just can't be helped.

 

[Mithrae]

The biofuel mess is a classic example of activism leading to unintended consequences.

Convinced by environmentalist groups to view carbon based energy as the personification of evil, they sought to believe energy could be planted by seed and harvested infinitum.

I applaud you for placing the spotlight on this issue so many are desperate to deny.

Tim has made similar accusations in the past, including personal slander against myself and others. [Edit: I see that in the time it took to research and write this, Deuce has already mentioned his own experiences in this regard.] But when asked, he has failed to provide any evidence of major environmental groups pushing for widespread commercialization of biofuel crops. Environmentalists have usually if not always pushed first and foremost for reductions in energy consumption - less wastefulness, higher efficiency standards, better urban planning and support for alternatives such as cycling or mass transit - and greater transition to electric or hybrid vehicles which could benefit from renewable electricity generation.

But public subsidies for biofuel crops certainly benefit the hugely influential agricultural lobbies. They certainly take the heat off politicians, who want to be seen to be "doing something" but have no desire to make any tough calls on regulation or taxation. And conveniently - as we're seeing - they then provide any politicians, lobbyists and propagandists so inclined with this dishonest slur against environmentalism and even more absurd non sequitur against climate science generally (as Tim insinuated in his letter).

As far as I can find from a half hour's glance, of the three major environmental groups which first spring to mind - Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and WWF - only the third seems to offer any support, albeit for "sustainable" biofuels. WWF explicitly notes four key challenges to meeting sustainability requirements, including biofuel crops' potential impacts on food prices, and has been somewhat critical of EU biofuel policies.

By contrast Friends of the Earth have been vocal critics of the EU's biofuel targets on the basis of the impact on food supply from at least as early as 2010: "European Union countries must drop their biofuels targets or else risk plunging more Africans into hunger and raising carbon emissions, according to Friends of the Earth (FoE)."

I haven't yet found any earlier reference from Friends of the Earth which explicitly mention the impact on food supply, but their opposition to biofuels as implemented goes back at least to 2007:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19716-biofuels-will-up-euro-greenhouse-emissions
The European Union decided in 2007 to cut greenhouse emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, partly by replacing 10 per cent of transport fuel with biofuel. Environmental groups protested that this calculation did not include the indirect effects of needing land to grow crops for fuel as well as food. “Conventional” biofuels are made from food crops and so compete with food for land, yet efforts to limit the use of conventional biofuels did not make it into the 2009 directive.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13218-europe-unveils-ambitious-energy-plan/
The production of many biofuels generates more greenhouse gas emissions than burning gasoline and recent increases in food prices have been blamed on the biofuels market. . . .

Environmental groups say this threshold is insufficient because the knock-on effects of boosting biofuels have not been given sufficient consideration by the EC. Using food crops to make biofuels will require importing replacement food crops, many of which degrade the environment, for instance by encouraging deforestation.

Adrian Bebb from Friends of the Earth says a 50% threshold should have been the minimum.

Another contentious aspect of the biofuels proposal is how it defines degraded land. Under the current text, biofuels production must not change the use of land from how it stands in January 2008.

“This means you could have been chopping rainforest a few weeks ago and planting biofuels now and calling it sustainable,” says Bebb.​

To be continued...

 

[Mithrae]

Continued from above...


Similarly Greenpeace around the same time were abundantly clear in their concerns not only of the environmental and carbon impacts of commercial biofuel production, but explicitly about the impact on food prices.

Biofuels under (belated) scrutiny | Greenpeace International
Over the last few years biofuels seem to have enchanted governments, car manufacturers and many others who must cut emissions to prevent dangerous climate change. US President Bush, hardly a fan of climate solutions, suddenly started promoting biofuels to make it appear he was taking action to cut emissions. Car manufactures have seized on biofuels as the perfect get-out-of-jail free card. Under pressure, especially in Europe, to meet efficiency targets they have consistently missed for the last 8 years, the manufacturers lobby convinced EU politicians that biofuels were the answer.

Many biofuels targets have been hastily proposed in the last two years for political expediency or to deflect attention from the efficiency targets car manufacturers fight tooth and nail against. But behind the hype, evidence has been mounting that many biofuels might even be worse than fossil fuels.

Put very simply biofuel problems fall in to 3 areas:
- Biofuels made from industrial food crops can produce more emissions due to large fossil fuel use in their production.
- Biofuels from other crops such as palm oil are often grown on land which has been cleared of tropical rainforest, generating huge amounts of carbon emissions.
- Increasing demand for biofuels means land used for food production is taken over driving up the price of basic foods.​

That was over nine years ago, and Greenpeace is probably the most internationally recognizable environmental group of all. It was the second result from simply googling 'greenpeace support biofuels.'

I suspect a person would have to be intentionally ignorant to pretend that commercialized biofuel crops are (or ever were) an environmentalist agenda. As far back as 2004, prominent British environmentalist George Monbiot was highlighting this issue in The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/nov/23/greenpolitics.uk
If biofuels take off, they will cause a global humanitarian disaster. Used as they are today, on a very small scale, they do no harm. A few thousand greens in the United Kingdom are running their cars on used chip fat. But recycled cooking oils could supply only 100,000 tonnes of diesel a year in this country, equivalent to one 380th of our road transport fuel.

It might also be possible to turn crop wastes such as wheat stubble into alcohol for use in cars - the Observer ran an article about this on Sunday. I'd like to see the figures, but I find it hard to believe that we will be able to extract more energy than we use in transporting and processing straw. But the EU's plans, like those of all the enthusiasts for biolocomotion, depend on growing crops specifically for fuel. As soon as you examine the implications, you discover that the cure is as bad as the disease. . . .

To run our cars and buses and lorries on biodiesel, in other words, would require 25.9m hectares. There are 5.7m in the UK. Even the EU's more modest target of 20% by 2020 would consume almost all our cropland.

If the same thing is to happen all over Europe, the impact on global food supply will be catastrophic​

It has been pointed out to Tim innumerable times that global poverty and hunger rates have generally declined since 2000, long before biofuels were on the political agenda, and that total global hunger-related deaths are in the order of 9 or 10 million per year of which only a fraction can be attributed to food price fluctuations/inflation (and only a fraction of that to biofuel crops; probably less than can be attributed to the inefficiencies of meat and especially beef production, for example).

Thus his claim of 20+ million deaths per year from biofuels can really only be considered an intentional, malicious lie, consistent with his personal slandering of forum members on this issue in the past (citation available on request).

Nevertheless, the underlying fact that commercialized biofuel crops are an ultimately harmful business money-grab and political cop-out is valid, and has been recognized by many if not most environmentalists since before their widespread implementation. To his credit, in this thread our friendly neighbourhood Plumber hasn't even mentioned environmentalists.

It's just a shame that he has still chosen to continue his ridiculous attempts to tie it in to climate science.

 

[radioman]

Tim the Plumber is claiming 20 million people die per year because of biofuels.

Could be true. There was no worldwide starvation until the advent of biofuels.

However, this is impossible because there simply aren't that many nutrition-related deaths per year. Even if you attribute every single malnourishment-related death solely to biofuels (which would obviously be ludicrous), you can't come up with 20 million per year. Not even close.

WFP, an UN agency claims +/- 7.5 million people die per year of hunger.
Still too many, but far short of 20 million.

And every time I point this out, Tim the Plumber claims I am personally complicit in 20 million deaths per year.

Seems reasonable.

The best part is that I'm opposed to biofuel subsidies, ethanol in particular. So, my opposition to biofuels makes me personally complicit in an imaginary number of deaths attributable to biofuels. Some people just can't be helped.

I am holding Tim the Plumber personally responsible for the 3.4 million people who die annually due to poor sanitation.
He's a plumber.....he should be doing something about this.

 

[Tim the plumber]

Sure, sure. Nobody profits off lobbying for taxpayer-subsidized biofuels :lamo

As the OP points out the already rich western farmers are hugely profeting from this artificial demand for food.

The poor of the world are dying. 330 million people's worth of food use in the US alone.

 

[Tim the plumber]

Tim the Plumber is claiming 20 million people die per year because of biofuels.

However, this is impossible because there simply aren't that many nutrition-related deaths per year. Even if you attribute every single malnourishment-related death solely to biofuels (which would obviously be ludicrous), you can't come up with 20 million per year. Not even close.

And every time I point this out, Tim the Plumber claims I am personally complicit in 20 million deaths per year.

The best part is that I'm opposed to biofuel subsidies, ethanol in particular. So, my opposition to biofuels makes me personally complicit in an imaginary number of deaths attributable to biofuels. Some people just can't be helped.

11% of the world's population is undernoruished.

Whilst the number dying from direct starvation may well be less than 20 million per year that does not stop being stunted from lack of food a major contributor to early death. When 800 MILLION or so people are in this state a 3% reduction in life expectancy is, in my view, very, very conservative in the estimate of deaths caused.

It further does not take into account the effect that the impoverishment of the world's poorer economise has. If places like Nigeria had an effective 25% increase in income from not having to pay so much for their food the growth rate there would be lots higher than it is.

 

[joG]

Tim the Plumber is claiming 20 million people die per year because of biofuels.

However, this is impossible because there simply aren't that many nutrition-related deaths per year. Even if you attribute every single malnourishment-related death solely to biofuels (which would obviously be ludicrous), you can't come up with 20 million per year. Not even close.

And every time I point this out, Tim the Plumber claims I am personally complicit in 20 million deaths per year.

The best part is that I'm opposed to biofuel subsidies, ethanol in particular. So, my opposition to biofuels makes me personally complicit in an imaginary number of deaths attributable to biofuels. Some people just can't be helped.

I thought this quite illustrative of the problem. Does a child die of hunger every 10 seconds? - BBC News

 

[Tim the plumber]

Tim has made similar accusations in the past, including personal slander against myself and others. [Edit: I see that in the time it took to research and write this, Deuce has already mentioned his own experiences in this regard.] But when asked, he has failed to provide any evidence of major environmental groups pushing for widespread commercialization of biofuel crops. Environmentalists have usually if not always pushed first and foremost for reductions in energy consumption - less wastefulness, higher efficiency standards, better urban planning and support for alternatives such as cycling or mass transit - and greater transition to electric or hybrid vehicles which could benefit from renewable electricity generation.

When science is abused for political ends the result is always catastrophic.

The insane focus on the none problem of CO2 has given the opportunity for all maner of self interests groups to use this badwagon.

The MP (Meber of Parliament) I spoke to yesterday had not heard of this issue before. He is closely connected to milking the green agenda for all the votes he can. Not speaking about such a mass murder policy is the same as giving it support. He defended it on the grounds of CO2 reduction.

 

[Tim the plumber]

But public subsidies for biofuel crops certainly benefit the hugely influential agricultural lobbies. They certainly take the heat off politicians, who want to be seen to be "doing something" but have no desire to make any tough calls on regulation or taxation. And conveniently - as we're seeing - they then provide any politicians, lobbyists and propagandists so inclined with this dishonest slur against environmentalism and even more absurd non sequitur against climate science generally (as Tim insinuated in his letter).

As far as I can find from a half hour's glance, of the three major environmental groups which first spring to mind - Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and WWF - only the third seems to offer any support, albeit for "sustainable" biofuels. WWF explicitly notes four key challenges to meeting sustainability requirements, including biofuel crops' potential impacts on food prices, and has been somewhat critical of EU biofuel policies.

By contrast Friends of the Earth have been vocal critics of the EU's biofuel targets on the basis of the impact on food supply from at least as early as 2010: "European Union countries must drop their biofuels targets or else risk plunging more Africans into hunger and raising carbon emissions, according to Friends of the Earth (FoE)."

I haven't yet found any earlier reference from Friends of the Earth which explicitly mention the impact on food supply, but their opposition to biofuels as implemented goes back at least to 2007:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19716-biofuels-will-up-euro-greenhouse-emissions
The European Union decided in 2007 to cut greenhouse emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, partly by replacing 10 per cent of transport fuel with biofuel. Environmental groups protested that this calculation did not include the indirect effects of needing land to grow crops for fuel as well as food. “Conventional” biofuels are made from food crops and so compete with food for land, yet efforts to limit the use of conventional biofuels did not make it into the 2009 directive.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13218-europe-unveils-ambitious-energy-plan/
The production of many biofuels generates more greenhouse gas emissions than burning gasoline and recent increases in food prices have been blamed on the biofuels market. . . .

Environmental groups say this threshold is insufficient because the knock-on effects of boosting biofuels have not been given sufficient consideration by the EC. Using food crops to make biofuels will require importing replacement food crops, many of which degrade the environment, for instance by encouraging deforestation.

Adrian Bebb from Friends of the Earth says a 50% threshold should have been the minimum.

Another contentious aspect of the biofuels proposal is how it defines degraded land. Under the current text, biofuels production must not change the use of land from how it stands in January 2008.

“This means you could have been chopping rainforest a few weeks ago and planting biofuels now and calling it sustainable,” says Bebb.​

To be continued...

So FoE think that demanding a 50% use of biofuels is the right thing to do??? And that is opposition????????????????????????

Friends of the Earth et al are happy to have media friendly protests with people being arrested against all maner of wealth creating advances in human civilization. From roads to new houses.

Where the hell are the protests outside of the food elimiation biofuel plants?

 

[Bergslagstroll]

Yes biofuel can probably have negative effect depending on how it grows and how much it compete with food production for humans.

While at the same time it's strange to only blame starvation and food shortage on biofuel then you have a also have had a huge increase in meat consumption.

Thanks to all of this meat eating, at any given point in the year, there are 19 billion chickens, 1.5 billion cows, 1 billion pigs and 1 billion sheep on the planet — more than three times the number of people. And these numbers are set to rise as the human population grows and more people shift toward a meat-based diet. The number of cattle, sheep, goats and buffalo — animals that require quite a bit of land for feed production and grazing — alone is increasing by 25 million annually, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.

https://ensia.com/articles/these-ma...t-consumption-by-2024-heres-why-that-matters/

Friends of the Earth Europe have also produced the Meat atlas.

The report presents a global perspective on the impacts of industrial meat and dairy production, and illustrates its increasingly devastating impact on society and the environment. The way we produce and consume meat and dairy needs a radical rethink.

The Meat Atlas aims to catalyse the debate over the need for better, safer and more sustainable food and farming and advocates clear individual and political solutions.

Meat Atlas: facts and figures about the animals we eat | Friends of the Earth Europe

That it possible to eat a lot less meat and still eat good and nutritious meals. Especially you Americans that live in such diversited country with so many culturals that have a long history of making both vegetarians dishes and meat dishes with less meat and instead combine meat with other protein sources. That of course everyone doesn't have to be vegetarian and some agricultural land is only suitable for grazing but today you have a masssive industrial meat production their for example western meat consumption is depended on soya production in Brazil and other countries to feed the animals.

 

[Tim the plumber]

Continued from above...It has been pointed out to Tim innumerable times that global poverty and hunger rates have generally declined since 2000, long before biofuels were on the political agenda, and that total global hunger-related deaths are in the order of 9 or 10 million per year of which only a fraction can be attributed to food price fluctuations/inflation (and only a fraction of that to biofuel crops; probably less than can be attributed to the inefficiencies of meat and especially beef production, for example).

Thus his claim of 20+ million deaths per year from biofuels can really only be considered an intentional, malicious lie, consistent with his personal slandering of forum members on this issue in the past (citation available on request).

Nevertheless, the underlying fact that commercialized biofuel crops are an ultimately harmful business money-grab and political cop-out is valid, and has been recognized by many if not most environmentalists since before their widespread implementation. To his credit, in this thread our friendly neighbourhood Plumber hasn't even mentioned environmentalists.

It's just a shame that he has still chosen to continue his ridiculous attempts to tie it in to climate science.

When science is misrepresented or the word used to support a lie bad things happen.

Please tell your politican that you see biofuesl as an act of murder. It does not matter what you think of me but it does matter what the world does with it's food.

Farmers like starvation. The MP had never heard of this issue. OK he is lying shit but they all are.

 

[Tim the plumber]

Yes biofuel can probably have negative effect depending on how it grows and how much it compete with food production for humans.

While at the same time it's strange to only blame starvation and food shortage on biofuel then you have a also have had a huge increase in meat consumption.



https://ensia.com/articles/these-ma...t-consumption-by-2024-heres-why-that-matters/

Friends of the Earth Europe have also produced the Meat atlas.



Meat Atlas: facts and figures about the animals we eat | Friends of the Earth Europe

That it possible to eat a lot less meat and still eat good and nutritious meals. Ecpecially you Americans that live in such diversited country with so many cultural that have a long history of making both vegetarians dishes and meat dishes with less meat and instead combined with other protein sources. That of course everyone doesn't have to be vegetarian and some agricultural land is only suitable grassing but today you have a masssive industrial meat production their for example western meat consumption is depended on soya production in Brazil and other countries to feed the animals.

Sure the world is eating better than it used to.

But the US use of biofuel is 330 MILLION peoples worth of food.

It does no good except to make rich farmers richer.

Can we stop this please?

 

[Bergslagstroll]

Sure the world is eating better than it used to.

But the US use of biofuel is 330 MILLION peoples worth of food.

It does no good except to make rich farmers richer.

Can we stop this please?

Do you have the sources for the number 330 million people?

I quickly searched and find this figuers that I found was intersting. (Yes it's Wikipedia but is seeem to be based on reliable sources).

That on one acre of land you get 263 lb useable proteins from soyabeans but only 15,6 lb useable protein from beef.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_protein_per_unit_area_of_land

So even if you figure of 330 millions is correct the question is what it mean and what the land will be used for. That even that the land can be used for soya production that could have feed 330 millions the land could maybee instead have been used for meat production that would have been able to feed a lot less people.

 

[Mithrae]

So FoE think that demanding a 50% use of biofuels is the right thing to do??? And that is opposition????????????????????????

Maybe you should actually read the article before leaping to ridiculous conclusions? I know, I know, you much prefer to make things up in your head and attribute them to everyone under the sun :roll: When you are driven by such obvious malice and dishonesty, your professions of concern for the world's poor ring just a little hollow.

 

[Lord of Planar]

The biofuel mess is a classic example of activism leading to unintended consequences.

That's my biggest problem with liberals.

They have these noble ideals, that I would love to see become reality. They problem is, the side effects from implementing measures to get there.

They only see what they have their tunnel vision agenda set to. They ignore the side effects.