Global warming: Bio-fuels are not the answer

The United States is seeking a huge shift towards Bio-fuels (fuel-oil derived from agricultural products rather than oil and coal). This shift is being spun as environmentally friendly, but its motivation is more to reduce the USA's dependence on oil.

In an important contribution to the debate Fidel Castro argues that this will have a disastrous impact on the world's poor. Pushing up the price of food, increasing rural unemployment and the increased mechanisation of agriculture will increase CO2 emissions.


In an article written for May day, CASTRO WRITES :

At the end of World War II, fought by the peoples against fascism, a new power emerged that took over the world and imposed the absolutist and cruel order under which we live today.

Before Bush’s trip to Brazil, the leader of the empire decided that corn and other foodstuffs would be suitable raw material for the production of biofuels. For his part, Lula stated that Brazil could supply as much biofuel as necessary from sugar cane; he saw in this formula a possibility for the future of the Third World, and the only problem left to solve would be to improve the living conditions of the sugarcane workers. He was well aware – and he said it – that the United States should in turn lift the custom tariffs and the subsidies affecting ethanol exports to that country.

Bush replied that custom tariffs and subsidies to growers were untouchable in a country such as the United States, which is the first world producer of ethanol from corn.

The large U.S. transnational producers of this biofuel, which are investing tens of billions of dollars at an accelerated pace, had demanded from the imperial leader the distribution in the U.S. market of no less than 35 billions (35,000,000,000) of gallons of this fuel every year. The combination of protective tariffs and real subsidies would raise that figure to almost one hundred billion dollars every year.
Insatiable in its demand, the empire had launched into the world the slogan of producing biofuels in order to free the United States, the world’s supreme energy consumer, from all external dependency on hydrocarbons.

History shows that sugar as a mono-crop was closely associated with the enslavement of Africans, forcibly uprooted from their natural communities and brought to Cuba, Haiti and other Caribbean islands. In Brazil, the exact same thing happened with sugarcane cultivation.

Today, in that country, almost 80% of sugar cane is cut by hand. Sources and studies contributed by Brazilian researchers affirm that one sugarcane cutter, a piece-work laborer, must produce no less than12 tons in order to meet basic needs. This one worker needs to perform 36,630 flexing movements with his legs, make small trips 800 times carrying 15 kilos of cane in his arms and walk 8,800 meters in his task. He loses an average of 8 liters of water every day. Only by burning cane can that productivity per person be achieved. Cane cut by hand or by machines is usually burned to protect people from nasty bites and especially to increase productivity. Even though the established norm for a working day is from 8 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon, this type of piece-work cane cutting tends to go on for a 12-hour working day. The temperature sometimes rises to 45 degrees centigrade by noon.

The great agricultural yields of the United States were achieved by rotating gramineae (corn, wheat, oats, millet and other similar grains) with legumes (soy, alfalfa, beans, etc.). These contribute nitrogen and organic material to the soil. The corn crop yield in the United States in 2005, according to UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) data, was 9.3 tons per hectare.

In Brazil they only obtain 3 tons of this same grain over a similar area of land. The total production registered by this sister nation that year was 34,600,000 tons, consumed internally as food. It cannot contribute corn to the world market.
Prices for this grain, the staple diet in numerous countries of the region, have almost doubled. What will happen when hundreds of millions of tons of corn are redirected toward the production of biofuel? And I would rather not mention the volumes of wheat, millet, oats, barley, sorghum and other cereals that industrialized countries will use as a source of fuel for its engines.

Add to this that it is very difficult for Brazil to rotate corn and legumes. Of the Brazilian states traditionally producing corn, eight are responsible for 90% of production: Paraná, Minas Gerais, Sao Paulo, Goiás, Mato Grosso, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina y Mato Grosso do Sul. On the other hand, 60% of sugarcane, a grain that cannot be rotated with other crops, is cultivated in four states: Sao Paulo, Paraná, Pernambuco and Alagoas.

The engines of tractors, harvesters and the heavy machinery required to mechanize the harvest would use growing amounts of hydrocarbons. The increase of mechanization would not help in the prevention of global warming, something that has been proven by experts who have measured annual temperatures for the last 150 years.

Brazil does produce an excellent food that is especially rich in protein: soy, 50,115,000 tons. It consumes almost 23 million tons and exports 27,300,000 tons. Could it be that a large part of this soy will be converted to biofuel?
As it is, the producers of beef cattle are beginning to complain that grazing land is being transformed into sugarcane fields.

The former agriculture minister of Brazil, Roberto Rodrigues, an important advocate of the current government position – and presently a co-president of the Inter-American Ethanol Commission created in 2006 following an agreement with the state of Florida and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to promote the use of biofuel on the American continent – announced that the program to mechanize the sugarcane harvest will not create more jobs but, on the contrary, would produce a surplus of non-qualified manpower.

We know that the poorest workers from various states are the ones who gravitate toward cane cutting out of necessity. Sometimes, they have to spend many months away from their families.

Added to this is the latest report by the United Nations on climate change, which affirms what would happen in South America with water from the glaciers and the Amazon water basin as the temperature of the atmosphere continue to rise.

It is imperative to have an immediate energy revolution that consists not only of replacing all the incandescent light bulbs, but also of massively recycling all domestic, commercial, industrial, transport and social electric appliances that require two and three times more energy with their earlier technologies.

It hurts to think that 10 billion tons of fossil fuel is consumed every year. This means that each year we waste what it took nature one million years to create. National industries are faced with enormous challenges, including the reduction of unemployment. In that way, we could gain a little time.

Tolpuddle Green Camp

Every year the Tolpuddle festival in Dorset gets better. This year the TUC and National Union of Students are organising a course of Trade Unions and the environment between 11th July and 15th July. The course has been developed by the TUC with the support of the Trade Unions Sustainable Advisory Committee.

The course will address how as trade unionists we can promote sustainable policies at work. Workplaces burn energy, use resources and generate waste, and are one of the most obvious places where energy saving can make a big impact. This also has the strength of building upon people’s individual attempts to reduce their carbon footprint, and direct the same approach in a more collective way.

Of course the big day of the Festival will by Sunday 15th when thousands of trade unionists from round the country will gather to pay tribute to the martyrs, and speakers include comedian Mark Thomas, Tony Benn, and they will be joined by entertainment including (of course) Billy Bragg, and Chumbawumba.

To attend the course contact South West TUC on 0117 947 9521.

Even if you don't go on the course, come to Tolpuddle, it is a fantastic day out for any labour movement activist, even better come and camp for the whole weekend.

Stories we missed

One aspect of writing a blog is that there are lots of issues which we don’t get to cover, for reasons of time, and also because perhaps we don’t have anything unique or particularly insightful to say.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t important.

Obviously the French election is extremely significant, including the remarkable 1.8 million votes for the LCR. Olivier Besancenot’s declaration
is published at Liam’s blog.

The excellent progress towards a united socialist party in Venezuela is analysed very clearly by Korakious over at the Squirrel’s lair.

Finally, it is good news that Fidel is seemingly back to good health and making public engagements again. His credentials on green issues are probably better than any other world leader, so his recent attack on biofuels. is a significant contribution to debate.

As Castro argues “reducing and moreover recycling all motors that run on electricity and fuel is an elemental and urgent need for all humanity. The tragedy does not lie in reducing those energy costs but in the idea of converting food into fuel”. He believes that growing fuel to be converted into fuel will further distort the market against the interests of the poor, and increase famine.

It is also worth drawing attention to the fact that Des Warren’s book about his experiences as one of the Shrewsbury Two (along with Ricky Tomlinson) is back in print. There is more background over at Charlie Pottin’s blog .

More on the intellectual laziness of the RCP

In a rather mendacious article, Spiked editor Brendan O’Neill, has defended Martin Durkin, the producer of “The Great global Warming Swindle”, including an attack on the criticism I wrote on this blog.

O’Neill’s argument is essentially that:
i) it is irrelevant that Durkin has no background in science as neither do most of his critics
ii) criticisms of Channel 4 for showing the film are about enforcing ideological conformity – and there is no questioning of the “orthodoxy” of global warming in the mainstream media.
iii) exposing Durkin’s links to the underground RCP is a form of red baiting
iv) environmentalism promotes poverty in the developing world

Ok. So what is my personal standing to comment on this. I have a first class degree in engineering, and an MSc from Oxford University. I am a chartered engineer. I worked for 8 years in the environmental monitoring instrumentation sector, and I have published peer reviewed technical papers on the reliability and provenance of data used in assessing air quality. I have also studied the philosophy of science as I have a keen interest in the process by which we judge the truth-likeness of scientific theories. In short, while Brendan o’Neill singles out Guardian TV reviewer Zoë Williams as a “ditzy la-la columnist”, I am a professional with a background in this specific field. Not particularly eminent perhaps, but not ill-informed either.

It is probably also worth mentiooning that I used to be a climate change sceptic myself, but have become utterly convinced by the wieght of evidence and scientific debate, which I have followed as a professional.

Durkin’s lack of a scientific background is only relevant because he adopts an approach to scientific debate which is outwith the established practice of working scientists, and contrary to a philosophically defensible method of judging whether theories are sound or not. Implicit in Durkin’s approach is that theories are accepted as approximating truth likeness when they achieve consensus.

Working scientists adopt a much more sophisticated approach, and theories become established not only because they provide the best explanation of the evidence, but also when they are theoretically virtuous in the sense of their inherent consistency and that they tie in with other established theories. Over the last few years the theory that human agency causes increase in CO2 levels that is in turn causing global warming has become a mature and establish theory because of its persuasive power plus its consistency with the rest of our scientific understanding; and it is overwhelmingly accepted as correct by professional scientists.

Most theories are incomplete in the degree to which they provide a good approximation to underlying reality, which is revealed by inconsistencies with the evidence, or incompatibilities with other theories. This is not a problem with the scientific method, but rather a recognition of the way superior theories supersede inferior ones. Therefore we of course accept that the current theories could be superseded, but in order to establish the credibility of any alternate theories it would be necessary to establish that they resolve problems with the accepted theories, or provide a “progressive problem shift” by being more theoretically virtuous in the technical sense of also providing the solution to an unrelated issue. This is the scientific approach.

However, it is not Durkin’s approach to criticism of global warming theory, which is journalistic not scientific. His approach is to find controversialists who will say something shocking. My criticism, and the criticism of others, to Durkin is that it is bad science, being passed as good coin.

But his response reveals he is not interested in science, as quoted in Spiked:
“It is soft censorship’, Durkin insists. ‘If there is a huge response to a programme, then the ITC and now Ofcom feel the need to do something. So they end up censuring seriously controversial work. … The end result is phoney controversialism on TV but not much real controversialist. Ofcom is supposed to uphold standards but it does the opposite.’”

Durkin believes that controversy is inherently virtuous. But this is a facile and juvenile approach to the serious question of establishing what is true and what is not.

Similarly Durkin’s claim that we are seeking to produce ideological conformity is false. What we want to see is informed political debate, based upon the actually existing scientific consensus. There is plenty of argument to the contrary in the media, from the likes of Jeremy Clarkson, and the car lobby. What is distinctly wrong about Durkin is that he seeks to undermine the informed political debate by misrepresenting the balance of scientific opinion, so as to give exaggerated weight to eccentrics.

This is also why it is not “red baiting” to expose the way Durkin is linked to the secretive libertarian pressure group formerly known as the RCP. When he made the series “Against Nature”, leading RCP ideologist Frank Furudi, and other RCP members John Gillott (aka John Gibson) and Juliet Tizzard, were passed off as “independent experts”. The passing off of RCP members as “experts” in a self referencing world of front orgsniations is part of the RCP’s modern method, as exposed by GM watch.

Brendan O’Neill says: “In fact, a few people who contributed articles to LM appeared as talking heads on Against Nature. That’s all. Not as exciting as the crazed and wide-eyed web conspiracy theories make it sound, I know. Sorry. Durkin laughs about the fact that many environmentalists fancy themselves as leftists, yet ‘they are always exposing me…as a leftist!’ ”
But in what is ostensibly a science programme is it not wholly unrepresentative for there to be several members of the RCP presented as experts, who are not in fact experts in this field.

Again, we have the problem that Durkin does not have a scientific approach, and here more specifically he has a Lysenkoist approach that objective reality must conform to ideology.
There would be no conspiracy if the people involved were genuinely scientists working in the field who also happened to be members of the RCP, but the opposite was the case, they were only there because they were members of the RCP.

Those of us on the left are not exposing Durkin for being a “leftist”, but pointing out that he is being apparently dishonest and manipulative in promoting the peculiar libertarian and laissez faire views of the RCP/LM under false colours.

There is also genuine and legitimate concern about what the agenda of the former RCP members is now with their bewildering array of front organisations, and the effort they are making to influence science policy in the direction of deregulation. The only element of “exposure” is that there clearly is a shadowy hidden agenda, and it is correct to bring that fact into the light of day.
Finally, Brendon o’Neill argues that environmentalism is condemning the developing world to poverty. “Many of the talking heads argued that our obsession with restraining development in order to ‘save the planet’ will consign the world’s poorest to a life of grime and squalor.” Firstly this displays an ignorance of the actual dynamic of capitalism which is technology neutral – economic growth can still be sustained on less carbon based technologies, but secondly it is not the expense of sustainable power generation that is inhibiting the growth of the developing world, but rather the changes in world capitalism that have subordinated developing nations into the role of raw material providers.

Sustainability does not mean an acceptance of poverty, nor does it mean a halt to economic development, but it means asserting conscious human control over the economic processes so that our industrial and agricultural activity serves humanity rather than destroying it. It means defining “development” not as economic growth for its own sake, but as focussing economic activity on improving our lives and environment.

Again there is a feeling that Brendon o’Neill has not moved beyond the juvenilia of Marinetti and the Futurists: “We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.”

What I find distasteful and repugnant about the RCP in their new guises is the elitist contempt by which they operate as a post-modern freemasonry, peddling their self serving but shallow commentary and controversialism. These are people who have never really gone beyond not tidying their bedroom as a from of teenage rebellion.

The great RCP swindle

UPDATE: Brendan O’Neill, has criticised this post in Spiked, I reply to him here.

UPDATE - to complain AFTER the programme has been transmitted, you should send the complaints to OFCOM here. Please do complain, and please do publicise this link and ask others to complain.

I was going to write something about the film Channel 4 are showing on Thursday called “The Great Climate Warming Swindle”, because this is made by Martin Durkin, who was behind the critically and scientifically mauled series “Against Nature”, also shown on Channel 4. Not only is Durkin's point of view totally unrepresentative of any serious scientific opinion, but his previous programmes have been manipulative, and distorted the views of eminent scientists.

You can complain to Channel 4 by filling in this form, it is well worth doing so if they get a number of complaints then they will find it harder to commission future programmes from Durkin.

When I started to write I found that the topic had already been covered brilliantly over at the Irish blog, Cedar Lounge. So I will just quote from them!

In particular Cedar Lounge highlights the link with the secret British libertarian sect, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). The story has also been picked up by Green blogger, Paul Kingsnorth, who amusingly imagines what the Channel 4 commissioning meeting was like.

As Cedar Lounge reports:

“Martin Durkin has quite a track record in this kind of programme. George Monbiot writes about him here, pointing to his some of his previous output including a report on how silicone implants reduce the risk of breast cancer (initially proposed to the BBC’s Horizon but dropped when the commissioned researcher contradicted the claims, then shown by Channel 4), a series (again for Channel 4) called Against Nature, which essentially argued that environmentalists were proto-Nazis out to control the world (which misrepresented the views of many of those interviewed, for which Channel 4 was forced to apologise) and a programme (once again, Channel 4) on genetically-modified foodstuffs which one of the participants described as having “rendered great disservice to science generally and to the scientific debate on GM-food particularly“. For someone with no scientific background, one has to wonder how Martin Durkin keeps being commissioned for programmes like these. Or, as Private Eye wrote at the time “What does Channel 4 do with programme makers condemned by the TV watchdog,the Independent Television Commission (ITC), for using underhand editing techniques? The answer is, er, hire them to make another programme.”

“One intriguing element to the whole affair is the link to the Revolutionary Communist Party, also known as the Living Marxism group, also known as the Institute of Ideas, also known as Spiked Online, also known as Sense About Science. Phew! It’s hard to keep up, even for an ex-DL member, so for an introduction to the bizarre and murky world of this sect which went so far left it came out the other side, check out George Monbiot’s pieces and ‘The Revolution has been Televised‘ and ‘Invasion of the Entryists‘, as well as Nick Cohen’s ‘The rebels who changd their tune to be pundits‘. All of these pieces highlight the role played by RCP members and friends in Durkin’s films and, while it isn’t claimed that Durkin is a member of the RCP, an article on the group by What Next states that “The day after (a piece on Against Nature appeared in The Guardian), the paper reported Martin Durkin, the Against Nature producer, saying that the RCP had been dissolved a year previously. Not known as an RCP member or supporter, it’s not clear how he was privy to such information”.

“It’s hard to do justice to the sheer strangeness of the ideology behind this group in its various guises. Essentially, it presents an uber-libertarian view of the world, where everything suggestive of state intervention in private lives, or which might limit scientific exploration or experimentation to any degree is charged with being ‘politically-correct’ or totalitarian, part of a creeping statism which aims to control the actions of everyone on the planet. Whatever you’re for, these professional controversialists will be against it.”

The most worrying thing for me is how the now underground RCP have managed to insinuate themselves into the establishment scientific debates, promoting an entirely ideologically driven agenda overriding the scientific evidence, like modern day Lysenkoists. There is an expose of their methods on the GM watch site. They have even received funds from the ESPRC government research funding body, and RCP idealogist Frank Furedi, allegedly advertised for funding from supermarkets so that he could promote Genetically Modified products to their customers!

As I have argued before, there is a warning for the left here. We must of course accept that our current scientific understanding is incomplete and only an approximation to truth-likeness, but we must also have a philosophical acceptance that the actually existing physical world has its dynamic independent of our understanding of it. We must not impose our ideologiocal preferences onto what truth we will and will not accept. The RCP, as modern day Lysenkoists, are the worst culprits, however I have met comrades from many traditions who for example rule out a priori any evidence of genetic infleunce on human behaviour - whereas while socialists are correctly predisposed towards social explanations we can accept that both biological and social factors are at play - let's see what the evidence tells us.

An Inconvenient Truth

Some 80+ people packed the pub back room last night for our Socialist Film Club, who had joined up with the Swindon Climate Action Network (SCAN) to screen “An Inconvenient Truth”. Interestingly, it was our socialist group who organised this, with the help of SCAN, and not the Green Party, who in my experience are an entirely electoral organisation.

The film was much better than I was expecting, and quite alarming to learn that if the Greenland ice sheet melts sea levels will go up 20 feet, flooding the homes of over 100 million people world wide, and goodbye London.

I was also surprised at how likeable Al Gore came over, he has a patrician charm about him, and it is easy to see that he is related to Gore Vidal.

What I thought was excellent was the way the film set up a compelling case for urgent and immediate action, but carefully explained that there was no need for panic. The technology and measures to halt climate change already exist, and what is missing is the political will. It also showed that the cumulative effect of small individual actions (such as unplugging your phone charger when not in use, and turning of your PC overnight) do actually make a difference.

About 20 people stayed behind afterwards for a discussion, and there was an interesting exchange of views about lifestylism, and a healthy recognition that for many working people using cars is essential. There were some very optimistic young people who confident that over the next ten years we can totally change common sense views about energy use, and make a neutral carbon footprint a completely normal expectation.

Action Against Global Warming

Calvin Jones recently asked us to advertise the global day of action for Climat change on 4th November. Pleased to oblige:

10.00am Cycle protest assembles at Lincoln's Inn Fields, South side (Holborn/Temple tube). Goes via ExxonMobil offices, Australian Embassy and Downing Street to arrive at US embassy at 11.30 am.

11.00am Rally opens : Messages from around the world, performance poetry & musical protest with "Seize the Day" and others.

12 noon Main Rally at US Embassy, Grovsenor Square. Speakers include George Monbiot, Colin Challen MP, Caroline Lucas MEP, Norman Baker MP, Zac Goldsmith.

1.00 pm March for Global Climate Justice from US embassy to Trafalgar Square

1.45 - 2.00 pm March joins i-Count's.. Mass Gathering in Trafalgar Square

1.00 - 3.00pm i-Count Mass Gathering in Trafalgar Square.

Stop climate chaos are limiting their activities to the UK but the march organizers, CCC, are keen on international solidarity, more on: http://www.campaigncc.org/.