Man Made Global Hunger, The Real Crisis

As more and more of our food stocks are converted to bio-fuels, the latest craze to fight the fallacy of man-made Global Warming, hunger and starvation worldwide is being reported along with riots over short supplies of staples needed to survive.

The New York Sun recently published an article, “Food Crisis Starts Eclipsing Climate Change Worries,” telling us “An estimated 30% of America’s corn crop now goes to fuel, not food.”

While the switch to bio-fuels is not 100% accountable for the current high price in foods or the growing shortage, it does account for a good portion of the responsibility. Al Gore, Democrat guru of the man-made Global Warming charge, has been unavailable for comment on this aspect of his efforts. However, Rajendra Pachauri of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change and who shared the Nobel Prize with Mr. Gore warns it is “unwise to promote bio-fuels in a way that risks food supplies.”

Mr. Pachauri said,

“We should be very, very careful about coming up with bio-fuel solutions that have major impact on production of food grains and may have an implication for overall food security. Questions do arise about what is being done in North America, for instance, to convert corn into sugar then into bio-fuels, into ethanol.”

In an interview last year, Gore expressed his support for ethanol fuel made from corn but added he favors moving to the “third generation” of so-called cellulosic ethanol production, which is still in laboratory research.

Michael McElroy, professor of environmental studies at Harvard, warned in a 2006 article, The Ethanol Illusion,

“We must recognize also that the production of ethanol from either corn or sugar cane presents a new dilemma: whether the feedstock should be devoted to food or fuel. With increasing use of corn and sugar cane for fuel, a rise in related food prices would seem inevitable.”

In contrast, Matthew Hartwig of the Renewable Fuels Association claims,

“The people who seek to solely blame ethanol for the food crisis and the rising price of food that we see across the globe are taking a terribly simplistic look at this very complex issue. There is a concerted misinformation campaign being put out there by those people who are threatened by ethanol’s growing prominence in the marketplace,” as he sought to draw the picture that oil companies and food manufacturers are attempting to undercut ethanol.

Deroy Murdock, contributing Editor for National Review Online, lists many disadvantages to converting food into fuel in his article, Global Food Riots. He cites,

According to the Hoover Institution’s Henry Miller and University of California Davis professor Colin Carter, “ethanol yields about 30 percent less energy per gallon than gasoline, so miles per gallon in internal combustion engines drops significantly.”

It takes three to six gallons of water to grow the corn for one gallon of ethanol, thus draining rivers and reservoirs.

As farmers turn forests into corn fields, they expend energy uprooting trees that produce oxygen, absorb CO2, and store carbon. Princeton University researchers calculate that this ethanol-driven arboricide has spawned a “carbon debt” that already will take 167 years to reverse.

As Princeton’s Tim Searchinger said in the February 8 Washington Post, “We can’t get to a result, no matter how heroically we make assumptions on behalf of corn ethanol, where it will actually generate greenhouse-gas benefits.”

Meanwhile, tree killing consumes wildlife habitat. Orangutans now are in jeopardy as their surroundings fall to new, ethanol-inspired palm-oil plantations.

Nitrogen fertilizer, common in corn cultivation, yields nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas, which is no laughing matter. As Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen and his scientific team concluded in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics last August 1, “the relatively large emission of N2O exacerbates the already huge challenge of getting global warming under control.”

Unless superior substitutes emerge, obeying Congress’ 2022 diktat will require a corn crop equal to 115 percent of 2007’s U.S. output, with every kernel going to ethanol, none for food. The consequences would be calamitous — from movies without popcorn, to over-farmed and under-rotated fields, to growing global starvation.

More and more, people are realizing that Alarmist global warming claims melt under scientific scrutiny. Even the Arctic Sea Ice Is Re-Freezing at A Record Pace, indicating Polar bears are not threatened.

While alarmists show excessive concern for animal species that are not even threatened, potential health hazards to humans remain ignored in the headlong rush towards bio-fuels.

As stated above, it takes three to six gallons of water to grow the corn for one gallon of ethanol. Warnings of a looming water shortage worldwide are ignored as land is deforested to make room for more and more crops of food stocks to be converted to fuel, removing an important source of oxygen producing trees.

Pope Benedict XVI added his voice as he suggested that “fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.”

In the cries to combat world hunger, it cannot be ignored that food production is being diverted to fuel production while scores of untapped oil reserves remain idle.

Scientists that refute global warming claims are ridiculed or marginalized as we are told by the alarmists, “the Debate is OVER!”

Yet, Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse The Man-Made Global Warming Theory.

In the meantime, world hunger grows, food prices skyrocket and congressional Democrats call for yet another wasteful investigation into gasoline prices.

This writer feels the Pope said it best when he said the world needed to care for the environment but not to the point where the welfare of animals and plants was given a greater priority than that of mankind.

The quest for alternative fuel sources is worthy and necessary. In the meantime, as they are being perfected and made affordable, oil remains the most efficient and cost effective energy source available. It should be used and food stocks returned to feeding humans, not feeding cars.