Academics “bewildered” that UN drops bugs, crickets and fake meat for weather-repair

Cigarette style warnings on meat, UN.

By Jo Nova

Winning? For the moment the UN has quietly packed away plans to tell everyone to give up meat to stop bad weather

Back in November the UN was all set to boss the citizens of wealthy nations around. The plan was to badger them into giving up meat so their grandchildren would have slightly nicer weather.

Possibly, after thousands of farmers stormed across the EU in their tractors this winter, the idea has lost its appeal.  Not that the UN has the honesty to explain why they changed their minds, or even to admit they did. But the first installment of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) food systems roadmap has left the activists reeling.

 

The omission of meat-eating reduction from proposals in a UN roadmap to tackle the climate crisis and end hunger is “bewildering”, according to academic experts.

The group also criticised the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s report for “dismissing” the potential of alternative proteins, such as plant-based meat, to reduce the impact of livestock on the environment.

For the first time ever, some activists even called for “transparency”:

In a commentary published in the journal Nature Food, experts said the FAO’s failure to include a methodology on how the 120 actions it did support were chosen, or a list of authors, was “concerning and surprising”. They called for the next instalments of the roadmap to be more transparent …

A group of academics has written a paper in Nature criticizing the UN group. They can’t believe the UN would miss an opportunity to promote vegetarian lifestyles and fake meat. The head of the FAO group defended himself, saying “Dietary change is mentioned eight times in the 50-page summary report” which sounds like nothing at all, especially when they don’t even mention “reducing meat”.

It may not last, but looks acts and smells like a win. Score 1 for the farmers…. the UN is being badgered by The People.

9.9 out of 10 based on 92 ratings

84 comments to Academics “bewildered” that UN drops bugs, crickets and fake meat for weather-repair

  • #
    Steve4192

    EU farmers gave the FAO a lesson in FAFO

    260

  • #
    Philc

    A win in a battle doesn’t mean the end of the war. The evil scheming U.N. will just go back to the drawing board, have a little break and try another tactic.

    I believe the CHICOMS have their hooks in too many of the small to medium country’s and thus controls the U.N.

    The only way we can really win is to defund and withdraw from the U.N. and boot out the hard leftist in both political parties. Until that happens we are screwed.

    610

    • #
      Graham Richards

      Tell the UN to move out of the USA. They can move to Timbuktu or Beijing. Without the USA & one or two others $$$$ contributions they’ll be dead in the water immediately!

      390

      • #
        Old Goat

        Graham,
        The UN and the WEF sleep in the same bed and share the same goals . They will always have plenty of money for their plans . They control the hedge funds and the media but their narrative is slowly crumbling . Slowly at first and then all of a sudden….

        210

    • #
      Paul Siebert

      Might have to look further afield than China.
      The sooner we get a focused fix on our puppeteers – the sooner we can grow up.

      50

  • #
    David Maddison

    Assuming the lie that CO2 and CH4 are a problem were true, where is the evidence that meat is bad for the environment?

    In most cases native herbivores have just been replaced with purpose bred ones such as in the US or Europe replacing bison or aurochs with cows. Even in Australia, cattle and sheep replaced kangaroos (to some extent, they still feed on farmlands and take feed from farm animals).

    And even if people go on a vegan diet, either the vegan f@rts or if the human is a carnivore, the cow f@rts on their behalf. There is no Net Zero f@rting.

    And insects are not as efficient at producing protein as claimed, even if it were acceptable to eat them. And you still have to grow food to feed the insects.

    https://entomologytoday.org/2015/04/15/crickets-are-not-a-free-lunch-protein-conversion-rates-may-be-overestimated/

    Crickets Are Not a Free Lunch, Protein Conversion Rates May Be Overestimated

    But I am happy for Leftists to go woke and eat insects or a vegan diet. (Many already do.)

    Somehow, I don’t think all those private jets flying to Davos or Klimate Krisis Konferences will be serving vegan or insect meals en route. Rather, they will be serving the finest steaks.

    400

    • #
      Murray Shaw

      Cannot see what the problem with meat is, my meat is plant based,

      It comes from a meat packing plant.

      280

      • #
        GlenM

        I’m happy to see and note the “Tomahawk” rib-eye with extra long bone is becoming more available in the 800g size. My blue cattle dog just loves crunching on them after my wife and I have finished .

        60

      • #
        Gerry, England

        Meat is meat – the flesh of animals. ‘Plant based meat’ is obviously NOT meat as you can’t cut a steak from a cauliflower. It should be forcibly labelled ‘fake meat’ or maybe use the German word ‘ersatz’. And as for ‘vegan sausages’ and ‘vegetarian sausages’ – surely the labelling means they should be made of minced vegans or vegetarians? I know, a horrible thought and we would not even think of giving them to our dogs.

        00

    • #
      TdeF

      Human front teeth, incisors and canines show that we are carnivores and the back teeth show we are omnivores.

      But what people miss is that until the discovery of agriculture, there was very little to eat other than meat.

      Sure, we can eat seeds. We can plant seeds and harvest seeds. And nuts. But we cannot eat leaves or grasses which are most of what this planet grows. So we eat animals which can digest leaves and grasses. It’s a symbiotic relationship!

      Otherwise we die. In fact the cost of growing and harvesting seeds was so great that almost all people were involved in agriculture.

      What the sneering sheltered city types do not realise as they sit at their desks with their airconditioners, their manufactured clothes and shoes in the purpose built dwellings in their cities and their sewage systems and water delivered to their houses is that this was all impossible before fossil fuels.

      Everything was done by hand. Often without wheelbarrows. Or metal implements. The burned stick was the foundation invention of humanity after fire itself. Then the scythe. Threshing was by hand.

      The slaves were freed by machinery, by fossil fuels. All hail fossil fuels.

      So these paragons of virtue tell us what to eat and that we should not use old leaves to power our luxury society. In Australian legislation we have identified even the sewage companies like the MMBW as Major Polluters for their generation of methane. The only way they can reduce 35% in 7 years is to stop people eating at all.

      It’s all insane. Methane is what you get when animals or insects digest grasses and they in turn provide food for us. That’s how life works. Or we fire everyone in Canberra and get them out in the fields planting and harvesting and living on porridge, which is how people existed for the last 10,000 years. And no meat. That’s only for government ministers.

      The whole business of banning meat for heating the planet is an invention of the bureaucrats who dine on fillet steak in the best restaurants and decide that we mortals should go back to porridge. Which is where we started.

      420

      • #
        David Maddison

        Methane is what you get when animals or insects digest grasses and they in turn provide food for us.

        E.g.: C6H12O6 → 3CO2 + 3CH4

        110

        • #
          TdeF

          Ultimately every living thing is powered by the sun through the miracle of photosynthesis and the hydration of carbon dioxide. Which we call carbohydrate. This is done in plants.

          So you have two choices, eat the plants or eat the animals which eat the plants, especially plants you cannot eat. Like trees and grasses and leaves. Root vegetables are also good.

          And every living thing has our genes to some extent. We have a 60% overlap with a carrot, which must give pause to vegetarians. Can carrots think or feel? And lobsters respond to the same seratonin inhibitors as humans, which still amazes Jordan Peterson.

          His other source of amazement is a tiny spider with an even tinier brain which will spy prey on the next plant, run down the plant and up the other side to get lunch. And it’s not intelligent?

          Which raises moral questions about eating meat but where do you stop? Are insects intelligent?

          As for methane, what is amazing is that considering that 99% of all plants are inedible for humans and therefore going to end up as methane, why is methane so small in the atmosphere? That has to be explained before cows and camels are convicted and executed for causing global warming.

          And once again, methane like CO2 is going up and therefore it is causing Global Warming. Can’t anyone see the equally valid conclusion that Global Warming increases atmospheric gases? But then there would be no carbon taxes? And people would eat hamburgers without guilt! That’s not acceptable.

          171

          • #
            melbourne+resident

            The reason that methane is not significant in the atmosphere is that it oxidises over a period of time – I dont know how long that is but have seen widely divergent estimates of between 6 weeks and 10 years. That is an experiment I would like to run but have yet to work out the details.

            50

            • #
              TdeF

              I have read 20 years and it is converted to CO2.

              In which case there is no possible build up of methane over a period longer than 20 years.

              But the real puzzle is that CO2 generation by plants and animals is huge but the body of the plants and animals converts to methane in rotting. So why isn’t there much more Methane in the atmosphere or even comparable to CO2?

              It is odd because CO2 is massively soluble at 3.5g/1kg of water. And methane is 1/100th of the solubility at 0.035g/1kg.

              Ideas are welcome. Does something live on methane?

              “The main mechanism for removal of methane from the earth’s atmosphere is oxidation within the troposphere by the hydroxyl radical (OH). A hydroxyl radical is a negatively charged oxygen atom bonded to a hydrogen atom (OH).”

              So a base will destroy CO2. But why then isn’t Methane more soluble? Or is it that the world’s oceans convert methane into CO2 so dissolved methane is near impossible except in neutral or acid water? No that’s starting to make sense.

              70

              • #
                melbourne+resident

                Thanks TdeF – I think you have to consider it in terms of its half life in the atmosphere – – so for example – the time to oxidise half of the volume may be only 6 weeks, then nother 6 weeks for the next half and so on – until there is virtually nothing left – but the residence time for the final few molecules might be as long as 20 years – it doesnt mean that it all lasts for 20 years or is all gone in 6 weeks. We use biofilters to decompose methane from landfills so that it is primarily CO2 by the time it gets through the filter to the atmosphere. Again – not 100% efficient, but sufficient to get down to minimal concentrations. I agree about the solubility – as it often confuses people that the concentration of methane in landfill gas can apparently rise from the 60% or so that you get from the bugs to 80 or 90 percent after passing through groundwater – it is not the methane that is increasing but the solution out of the CO2.

                10

            • #
              Mike Jonas

              My understanding is that methane has a half-life in the atmosphere of about 7 years. Wikipedia goes to great lengths to try to avoid admitting this, and says “As of 2001, the mean lifespan of methane in the atmosphere was estimated at 9.6 years” and then goes on to say that this period is getting longer.

              It would be reasonable for rough calculation purposes to assume that most methane would last about 10 years in the atmosphere.

              00

              • #
                melbourne+resident

                I wouldn’t trust anything that is written in Wikipedia – particularly in relation to climate.

                20

      • #
        Gee Aye

        Have you heard of fruit TdeF?

        More seriously. What you are describing is that agriculture was the beginning of civilisation. Instead of cooperative small social groups we got powerful people dominating the means of production. Hard work for many so that a few can live it easy.

        [TdeF said no such thing. But go ahead. This should be interesting. – LVA]

        114

        • #
          TdeF

          Yes, fruit precluded agriculture. I was amazed in my first visit to Thailand that all the trees were fruit trees and there was plenty of water, a veritable garden of Eden. And in a tropical area, heat and fresh food all year round. No wonder you could have huge human populations. Why didn’t civilization start there?

          But move into temperate lands, the grasslands, the steppe and the prairies, often vast semi desert lands which cover the temperate to cold zones. Australia has no (almost zero) fruit trees. Nuts at best. You can tell by the beaks on the birds, say parrots. No monkeys, no symbiosis.

          So the development of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent gave many things. One of them was the need to cooperate for planting and harvests. Then storage. It enabled villages in areas without trees. Water remained a problem but canals and dams and cisterns. And we had the start of cities. And the Romans invented sewage, which allowed a city of a million people.

          Yes, I’ve heard of fruit.

          One of the major problems for aborigines who missed out on the agricultural revolution was that they had plenty of food as top predator. So no need for cities or goods or even cups or water storage. What we know as civilization started with cities and roles and storage for hard times and defensive walls against tigers and wolves and bears and others.

          130

          • #
            TdeF

            And because Aborigines never had grain or fruit or storage of rotting grain or natural sources of sugar, fermentation, they never experienced alcohol, unlike almost all other peoples. I believe that if tested they would lack the enzyme to digest alcohol, which means it is really poisonous. This modern idea that all people are the same ignores the many medical differences. I woke up to this decades ago when I read that 20% of Japanese, another island people, lack the enzyme. It was a scandal as new university students died in great numbers in initiation, simply by say drinking a bottle of whiskey.

            It would change aboriginal politics if it was demonstrated that there is a serious inherited medical problem with alcohol. And then perhaps we could save a lot of lives and a lot of social upheaval. But we just let it all happen. Which is genocide by neglect.

            110

            • #
              John Connor II

              And because Aborigines never had grain or fruit or storage of rotting grain or natural sources of sugar, fermentation, they never experienced alcohol

              Not actually true. The Cider Gum tree, known for exuding a sap which pools at its base and ferments, was a favourite with aborigines back in the day.
              Now it’s top shelf grog.

              10

          • #
            John Connor II

            It all started with one pesky apple and a naughty talking snake, according to some.
            Should have started it all with a snake burger instead.😁

            20

          • #
            John Connor II

            Australia has no (almost zero) fruit trees.

            Perhaps you meant “had”?
            Even so, fruit consumption and propagation was an established part of historical aboriginal life.
            Granted, a lot of fruits were introduced in the late 1800’s, and a lot brought by ocean currents and birds from PNG and Indonesia. Fruit by way of currants and berries were also plentiful, and widespread across Australia, naturally and deliberately.

            00

            • #
              TdeF

              I meant native, most of the last 50,000 years. This is about human evolution by selection.

              Even for Europeans fruit like citrus and many more came from their travels. Oranges and lemons were Chinese. And yes, they ate honey ants occasionally for their sugar. But my point is that fruit was rare, low volume and not commonly part of the diet.

              Lack of edible fruit is likely a major reason Australia had almost no people when the British came where neighbouring Indonesia had tens of millions of people. Unless you knew what you would doing, you would starve in an Australian forest. In Thailand you could survive in a small area with food on the trees.

              Even today, the tiny neighbour country which is Papua New Guinea has a population of 11 million people, nearly half of all of Australia.

              20

  • #
    David Maddison

    In Australia the woke political, former scientific organisation, CSIRO, promotes insect eating.

    https://research.csiro.au/edibleinsects/

    To develop resilient food systems, we need to diversify global food supply chains. With more than 2,100 insect species currently eaten by two billion people from 130 countries, edible insects present an important opportunity. Insects have high-value nutritional profiles and commercial insect farming is considered to have a low environmental footprint. The global edible insect industry is growing fast with Europe and the United States of America the leading edible insect markets in the West. This report identifies the challenges and opportunities for the Australian edible insect industry providing a useful framework for First Nations initiatives, start-ups, insect businesses, researchers, policy makers, and members of the general public who are considering engaging with the emerging industry.

    130

    • #
      CO2 Lover

      Be careful of which insects you eat

      Insect species are not listed on
      the CITES list of endangered
      species http://checklist.cites.org/

      https://www.foodauthority.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-10/edible-insects.pdf

      Also do not confuse insects with arachnids

      In fact, Cambodia’s Mecca for devouring spiders is as popular as ever. Skuon, a nondescript dusty town about 90 km north of Phnom Penh is the center of this extreme cuisine and continues to grow in popularity with more and more people visiting from the capital to dine on its arachnids.

      So what does deep-fried tarantula taste like? The legs, which you usually eat first, are nice and crunchy on the outside with a little bit of flesh on the inside, while the head and body have a delicate white-colored meat – a cross between chicken and fish, both in taste and texture. However, the large round, hairy abdomen, which is where all the spider’s organs are, has a rather gamey taste – not for the faint hearted.

      https://cardamomtentedcamp.com/why-the-locals-eat-spiders-in-cambodia/#:

      70

      • #
        CO2 Lover

        And do not overlook snakes

        The Australian Brown Snake may be a bit of a challenge though.

        Let them eat–snake?! Python farming could offer one of the most sustainable sources of meat in the world – ‘Much less carbon intensive’

        Pythons have an “extreme biology and evolutionary slant toward extreme resource and energy efficiency,” Patrick Aust, conservation specialist at nonprofit People for Wildlife and co-author of the paper, told ABC News. Since pythons are an “ambush predator” that chooses prey up to 100% their own weight, they can survive for prolonged periods of time between meals, Aust said.

        “These animals are extremely good converters of food and particularly protein,” he said. “Literally, they are specialists and making the most of very little.”

        https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/03/16/let-them-eat-snake-python-farming-could-offer-one-of-the-most-sustainable-sources-of-meat-in-the-world-much-less-carbon-intensive/

        20

        • #
          TdeF

          With nine of the ten most poisonous snakes on the planet, not a casual meal.

          30

        • #
          markx

          Nah.

          Pretty slow growth rates of 46grams/day.
          And they need to eat …. Meat!!

          Compared to pigs: 700 grams/day birth to market at 110 kg liveweight. Grain based diet with added protein usually from soya bean and / or meatmeal.

          And the pythons have a pretty ordinary feed conversion (FCR) ratio of 4.1:1 (ie 4.1 kg of food (meat!) to make 1 Kg of carcass (meat with bone in):

          Pigs run at about 2.5:1. (ie 2.5 kg of food to make 1 Kg of carcass (meat with bone in)

          Chickens outperform pigs with an FCR of 1.5:1.

          00

    • #
      Dave of Gold Coast

      Maybe if the insectivores at CSIRO publicly and regularly showed us their meals and the camera was on them to make sure they ate it every day we might believe them. The old quote “talk is cheap” may well apply to all these advocates.

      60

  • #
    Ed Zuiderwijk

    The real idiocy is the notion that meat consumption has anything to do with weather. That aberration goes back to the estimation of ‘forcing’ by Methane or Carbon-dioxide by rank amateurs who got it totally and utterly wrong. However, the ones who did it right were Happer and van Wijngaarden who show that forcing by Methane is piffle.

    Perhaps someone at the UN has realised that H&W got it right and quietly dropped the stupid policy without giving it too much explanation. Because if they do that they implicitly also admit that the forcing by CO2 is much smaller than they believed. And that would mean the abolition of the IPCC.

    300

    • #
      Robert Swan

      Ed Zuiderwijk,

      Happer and van Wijngaarden who show that forcing by Methane is piffle.

      That’s a step in the right direction, but I’m still waiting for a clear explanation why this whole notion of “forcing” isn’t piffle.

      150

      • #
        TdeF

        Forcing is an odd technical term used by atmospheric types. You cannot just say heating because everything is both heating and cooling at the same time. And a ball/planet in a vacuum can only heat and cool by radiation. So forcing is overall heating of the surface by an excess of incoming energy over outgoing energy. Negative forcing is cooling.

        The amount of ‘forcing’ by methane is trivial.

        What everyone ignores and which is over 99% of all forcing is by water vapour which is invisible, not clouds, just humidity. As humidity it is the third biggest gas in the atmosphere on this water planet and a much wider range of absorption frequencies than CO2.

        So the proposition that CO2 causes heating is to say that a less than 1% effect increased by 50% is a significant effect. And Happer goes further to say that the effect of CO2 was saturated before the 50% increase. In his words, just another lick of paint on the barn. Or as Prof Plimer explains, a second (half as thick) blind on a window. Negligible.

        And then you get clouds which everyone knows means warmer nights. Most models I have seen just pretend clouds do not exist when they have a great warming effect and of course very common. That is liquid water and often reflects all light, incoming and outgoing. Between humidity and clouds, additional and significant CO2 warming is almost a ridiculous idea, grasping at straws. There might be a tiny effect in some circumstances, but Armageddon? No.

        But it was good enough for Al Gore’s Presidential run in 1988 when he and the UN and the WMO got together to create a political body, the IPCC. And unbelievably he’s still milking it. The Inconvenient Truth is that he made it up.

        220

        • #
          Robert Swan

          TdeF,

          It appears to be simple heating by an excess of incoming energy over outgoing energy…

          That might be reasonable if they counted the whole atmosphere, but their story is about *surface* atmospheric temperature, and the surface atmosphere is not a closed system at all; wind and convection change it continually.

          My own it appears to be story for forcing is that that it appears to be a name they’ve come up with for a coefficient in a regression model fitting numbers, but with no physical meaning.

          In other words, it’s numerology.

          In other other words, it’s piffle.

          100

          • #
            TdeF

            I understand your idea and have changed my explanation.

            Heat can only transfer by convection, conduction and radiation. That’s it. For a planet it’s only (nett) radiation or forcing.

            The Earth is really a ball in a vacuum and its temperature which by definition is its surface temperature. The fact that the surface is as you say a complex, chaotic, mobile mixtures of gases and water and some dirt doesn’t change the fact that total heating = energy in – energy out. What this means for the temperature in say Broken Hill on a Saturday afternoon outside the pub is something else we call the weather.

            What matters in the long term is the difference between radiative energy in and radiative out. Assuming the ball of molten metal underneath does not get involved.

            60

            • #
              TdeF

              And there is no doubt that if energy in exceeds energy out, the ‘surface’ will get hotter. Forcing is radiative energy in less radiative energy out. What is your reasonable concern is the detail of our surface environment, the weather.

              My concern is that the oceans are 380x as heavy as the air and 4x the specific heat so 1600x the energy storage and cannot easily radiate the heat away, so likely 99.99% of surface heat. And the 3D behaviour of currents both horizintal and vertical actually determines what we humans call weather or in the historic sense climate. It is therefore amazing to me that most models appear to leave out the 99.99% oceans completely when making climate predictions. And despite the massive computer models, they leave out two extraordinary things, the water and often the clouds. They CANNOT predict say EL Nino. So rain is beyond them. And rain comes from the oceans.

              This happened in Australia over this summer when the BOM ignored their models and punted that El Nino would bring drought to most of Southern Australia and the government acted to buy up water rights and get farmers to dump flocks. I would love to see the cost to the country of the most egregious and costly error in weather forecasting in the history of the BOM. Now that they are in the Climate business.

              And it is so obviously because no one models or can model the water. They track and model the air flow, which is an effect not a cause. And the massive rains still falling across Australia have still not been explained. Lake Eyre is still filling in what was predicted to be the dryest summer in recent history.

              Will no one in the BOM admit they were completely wrong and apologise? And explain why we should believe them and their silly models?
              I’m not saying sack the lot of them, but at how wrong they were and stop this pretence that they understand what drives climate. Otherwise we will get our weather predictions from overseas, given that all the data collection is automated anyway.

              I do not understand why the BOM is not held accountable and have to justify their existence like everyone else.

              140

              • #
                Ross

                “stop this pretence that they understand what drives climate.”

                Wednesday 19 June, 2019, Sydney Environment Institute (SEI), University of Sydney.
                At 1:11:20
                Professor Andy Pitman UNSW:
                “…this may not be what you expect to hear. but as far as the climate scientists know there is no link between climate change and drought.
                That may not be what you read in the newspapers and sometimes hear commented, but there is no reason a priori why climate change should make the landscape more arid.
                If you look at the Bureau of Meteorology data over the whole of the last one hundred years there’s no trend in data. There is no drying trend.  There’s been a trend in the last twenty years, but there’s been no trend in the last hundred years, and that’s an expression on how variable Australian rainfall climate is.
                There are in some regions but not in other regions.
                So the fundamental problem we have is that we don’t understand what causes droughts.
                Much more interesting, We don’t know what stops a drought. We know it’s rain, but we don’t know what lines up to create drought breaking rains.”

                100

              • #
                Robert Swan

                … its temperature which by definition is its surface temperature

                Really? By whose definition?

                What is the temperature of a car engine? A physicist would tell you to add up the kinetic energies of all the molecules in block and pistons and coolant and so on, then average them. That gets you the engine’s temperature. But the engineer says that this would miss the point. The temperature you usually want to know is the hottest temperature in the coolant, typically as it leaves the cylinder head. The rest just muddies the picture.

                And for my money, the “by definitiion” temperature of the Earth is that physicist’s picture: average kinetic energy through core, mantle, crust and atmosphere. Completely useless. And I am thoroughly unconvinced that the “mean surface temperature” is one scrap more useful (except politically).

                The car engine has critical places for temperature because it’s a complex system, but the system is well understood. We know how the heat is used, how it moves and when it becomes a problem. One or two well-placed sensors is all that’s needed to keep things within safe limits.

                I think it’s very likely that the world’s “surface” (crust and atmosphere) also has places where the temperature at that place reflects some driver of the weather. Unlike the car engine, we don’t know how it works. All that is achieved by averaging temperatures over the whole surface and/or the mystical 30 year period is to *hide* the things that actually drive the weather.

                Let’s have more meteorologists trying to understand the weather, and abolish the climatologists. I mean, what is the point of them?

                What matters in the long term is the difference between radiative energy in and radiative out.

                Yes, that sounds reasonable, but what do you make of whoever decided to combine what is obviously two factors into one and call it a “forcing”?

                40

        • #
          melbourne+resident

          You dont have to look far for the increase in humidity since January 2022 when Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha-apia erupted increasing atmospheric water vapour by 10%. The warming effect from all that increased humidity is the reason global temperatures (as measured by the UAH satellite) did increase significantly in 2023 and probably resulted in the BoM mistaken idea that we would automatically get drought with El Nino. They have to understand that there are many more factors that influence our “local” climate than just El Nino, La Nina etc

          40

  • #
    Lawrie

    Why the change of heart? Pretty simple. There are a number of elections happening around the world this year and in each one the incumbent socialist, UN loving lefty is likely to lose to a conservative who doesn’t buy the UN rubbish. The great reset is taking place and in not the way the socialists thought it would. The middle class which they are trying to destroy is having a say and it rejects the bugs and other proposed restrictions being imposed by the never-worked-a-day-in-their-lives elites. The UN figures we have short memories so drop the idea in the hope we will vote for their man so the idea will come back when all is well again. News coming for the UN and it is not good.

    310

    • #
      Ross

      Yes, you are right Lawrie. The 2024 European Parliament election in Germany is scheduled to be held on June 9, 2024 with the more conservative AfP party likely to show a strong following. This is after huge immigration numbers into that country and a feeling from your Herman/ Fraulein in the street that their country’s culture is being eroded. Plus, destroying farmers livelihoods with neo- marxist type policies doesn’t resonate well with the public either. But, you know the proponents of these policies ( EU/UN/ NATO) are just biding their time and preparing for the next installment of the mad green fantasy.

      200

  • #
    Neville

    Yet this morning their ABC is promoting the idiot UN SEC Gen yapping that 2023 weather was off the charts and is the hottest since records began.
    This should give the leftie extremists and the silly kiddies something more to worry about. As if they needed any encouragement?

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-20/wmo-climate-records-broken-global-temperature/103604076

    160

    • #
      Ronin

      I was half asleep when the 5am news came on, but I heard ‘the planet is teetering on the brink’, of what, I know not.

      30

  • #
    David Maddison

    Even though Leftists don’t or didn’t want hunter-gatherers to progress by adopting the ways of “the evil white man”, what’s the first thing they do or did when introduced to modern Western food production techniques?

    They decided not to hunt all day, but could make a short trip to a shop to buy meat or other mass produced food, allowing them to spend the rest of the day working or learning.

    For sure, aspects of a Western diet are bad for native peoples, but they are bad for everyone. Both native peoples AND modern peoples need to massively reduce carbs, especially sugars and seed oils and go on a more natural high meat and animal fat diet.

    Also, often not recognised, and certainly not a woke concept, is that people who have evolved by competitive natural selection in hunter-gatherer societies tend not to process alcohol well. Such people should avoid alcohol (or possibly tolerance can be developed, I’m not sure). There are certainly metabolic differences between people evolved as hunter-gatherers with irregular meals and those evolved as settled farmers with regular meals.

    Due to woke Leftist scientific censorship it’s not so easy to find references for this on Goolag and not much research is done, because all people are exact clones with no differences, right Lefties?

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9547508/

    The alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) family of genes encodes enzymes that catalyze the metabolism of ethanol into acetaldehyde. Nucleotide variation in ADH genes can affect the catalytic properties of these enzymes and is associated with a variety of traits, including alcoholism and cancer. Some ADH variants, including the ADH1B*48His (rs1229984) mutation in the ADH1B gene, reduce the risk of alcoholism and are under positive selection in multiple human populations. The advent of Neolithic agriculture and associated increase in fermented foods and beverages is hypothesized to have been a selective force acting on such variants. However, this hypothesis has not been tested in populations outside of Asia. Here, we use genome-wide selection scans to show that the ADH gene region is enriched for variants showing strong signals of positive selection in multiple Afroasiatic-speaking, agriculturalist populations from Ethiopia, and that this signal is unique among sub-Saharan Africans. We also observe strong selection signals at putatively functional variants in nearby lipid metabolism genes, which may influence evolutionary dynamics at the ADH region. Finally, we show that haplotypes carrying these selected variants were introduced into Northeast Africa from a West-Eurasian source within the last ∼2,000 years and experienced positive selection following admixture. These selection signals are not evident in nearby, genetically similar populations that practice hunting/gathering or pastoralist subsistence lifestyles, supporting the hypothesis that the emergence of agriculture shapes patterns of selection at ADH genes. Together, these results enhance our understanding of how adaptations to diverse environments and diets have influenced the African genomic landscape.

    200

    • #
      Maptram

      “They decided not to hunt all day, but could make a short trip to a shop to buy meat or other mass produced food, allowing them to spend the rest of the day working or learning.”

      Or have the meat or other mass produced food transported to them, allowing them to spend the rest of the day doing whatever.

      An episode of Outback Truckers a few months ago says it all. In the episode, a store in a remote community in Northern WA had run out of food and a refrigerated truck, only half full, was transporting frozen food to the store.

      90

    • #
      Curious George

      We also observe strong selection signals
      How exactly do we observe them?

      20

    • #
      Bruce

      Magatte Wade offers a different view from the “standardm, true” one:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH63RABGK6w

      20

  • #
    Neville

    Gosh even the Guardian is correct sometimes and they even quoted the Lancet report of 2015.
    Most people around the world die from moderate cold weather, not from heatwaves.
    But this was from 8 years ago and the pressure has surely increased for them to be more extreme.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/21/moderately-cold-weather-more-deadly-than-heatwaves-or-extreme-cold#:~:text=Extreme%20heat%20or%20cold%20was,respiratory%20infections%2C%20says%20the%20studyheatwaves.

    120

  • #
    another ian

    FWIW

    “Academics “bewildered” that UN drops bugs, crickets and fake meat for weather-repair”

    Drops or just moves underground?

    100

    • #
      Environment Sceptic

      Ian, it is increasingly easy to suspect the bacterian’s who predominantly eat fermented foods will displace all this nonsense,

      30

  • #
    Environment Sceptic

    The missing elephant burger in the room

    “Fermentation of Feed Ingredients as Potential
    Strategy to Improve Health Status and Reduce
    Opportunistic Pathogens in Fish Farming ”

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335752289_Fermentation_of_Feed_Ingredients_as_Potential_Strategy_to_Improve_Health_Status_and_Reduce_Opportunistic_Pathogens_in_Fish_Farming

    30

  • #
    Philip

    Thanks to the Euro farmers are in order I suppose. Australian farmers would never do such action.

    All farmers have to do to end all this childish minded nonsense that the city dwelling UN goes on about, is refuse to grow food. Massive power is in their hands. Should they not grow food people will quickly realise what nonsense this all is. Too many people think food just comes from the store.

    Problem is modern farming is a high finance game, and it is easier said than done to just stop. Other problem is Australian farmers, or many of them, have no idea what this climate action policy stuff even is.

    The farmer I work for is utterly clueless. He’s just a cow nerd who likes playing with his cows. Doesn’t follow politics in any form whatsoever. IF you have a conversation about it you have about 10 seconds before the mind switches off. He’s not the only one either.

    130

    • #
      Mike Jonas

      Australian farmers made a reasonable start with The National Rally Against Reckless Renewables in February. OK, they are a bit behind European farmers when it comes to putting tractors on the streets, but at least they have made a start.

      60

  • #
    Gee Aye

    I thought the UN was part of the insect protein cartel? The good thing is that less blog space will be wasted on comments about global insect conspiracies.

    Or they will just continue with “secret” placed in front of “agenda”

    39

    • #
      MP

      Are you getting your conspiracy theories mixed up with coincidence theory, because they have been telling you this for years?

      https://earth.org/insect-farming/
      https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00290-z
      https://agrifutures.com.au/rural-industries/insects/

      And a thousand more articles available.

      You have commented previously that you won’t be partaking in the bugs, you prefer the food the bugs eat.

      That really is a stupid comment from you.

      40

    • #
      David Maddison

      From the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations:

      https://www.fao.org/edible-insects/en/

      Edible insects contain high quality protein, vitamins and amino acids for humans. Insects have a high food conversion rate, e.g. crickets need six times less feed than cattle, four times less than sheep, and twice less than pigs and broiler chickens to produce the same amount of protein. Besides, they emit less greenhouse gases and ammonia than conventional livestock. Insects can be grown on organic waste. Therefore, insects are a potential source for conventional production (mini-livestock) of protein, either for direct human consumption, or indirectly in recomposed foods (with extracted protein from insects); and as a protein source into feedstock mixtures.

      Since 2003, FAO has been working on topics pertaining to edible insects in many countries worldwide. FAO’s contributions cover the following thematic areas:

      – the generation and sharing of knowledge through publications, expert meetings and a web portal on edible insects;

      – awareness-raising on the role of insects through media collaboration (e.g. newspapers, magazines and TV);

      – the provision of support to member countries through field projects (e.g. the Laos Technical Cooperation Project);

      – networking and multidisciplinary interactions (e.g. stakeholders working with nutrition, feed and legislation-related issues) with various sectors within and outside FAO .

      41

    • #
      David Maddison

      https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/07/why-we-need-to-give-insects-the-role-they-deserve-in-our-food-systems/

      FOOD SECURITY

      Why we need to give insects the role they deserve in our food systems

      Jul 12, 2021

      -By 2050, the world’s food supply will need to feed another 2 billion people;

      -Insect farming for food and animal feed could offer an environmentally friendly solution to the impending food crisis;

      -A source of protein and fertilizer, emerging technologies could help bring insects back into the food system at scale.

      21

    • #
      David Maddison

      https://intelligence.weforum.org/monitor/latest-knowledge/e911935e7d604f7ca92c8a8f40abe12d

      The Economist

      Jan 26, 2022

      Will you be eating insects soon?

      By 2050 there could be 10 billion human mouths to feed. Eating insects could help solve the global food-supply problem.

      https://youtu.be/O8-uCob-_XE

      31

      • #
        Leo G

        Eating insects could help solve the global food-supply problem.

        In the meantime, all the UN and its donor groups really feed us is a nothing-burger diet.

        20

  • #
    CO2 Lover

    Bans of eating meat have a long history and are important to many religions

    In Abrahamic religions, eating pig flesh is clearly forbidden by Jewish (kashrut), Islamic (halal) and Adventist (kosher animals) dietary laws. The pig is considered an unclean animal as food in Judaism and Islam, and parts of Christianity

    Pigs require water and shady woods with seeds, but those conditions are scarce in the Middle East. Unlike many other forms of livestock, pigs are omnivorous scavengers, eating virtually anything they come across, including carrion and refuse, which was deemed unclean.

    Plant-based eating is deeply rooted in three of the prominent religions practiced in India – Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. All these religions believe in the concept of Ahimsa, which means kindness and non-violence towards all living things.

    If you are a fan of beef vidaloo like me you can thank the Muslims in Pakistan.

    The Vidaloo song – Fat Les:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va6nPu-1auE

    No one should be surprised that Climate Cultists have adopted their own bans on the eating of meat.

    61

    • #
      CO2 Lover

      More on Vindaloo

      The song was originally written as a parody of football chants, but was adopted as one in its own right and became a classic.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CcU085tGwE

      21

    • #
      CO2 Lover

      I stand corrected – we can thank Portuguese Catholics for Vindaloo

      The Vindaloo curry’s backstory is as intriguing as its flavour. While the cuisine’s origins are linked to European colonial conquest and appropriation, the dish is a poster child for global integration. It combines ingredients such as Indian curry spices and culinary cultures from three continents to produce an exuberant mix of flavours. The Vindaloo is a classic food from Goa, an Indian state on the country’s southwestern coast, where the Catholic community thrives. However, it comes from Portugal, 5,500 miles to the west, when an older version of the dish was brought to Goa by Portuguese explorers in the early 15th century.

      “Vindaloo” is derived from the Portuguese word “Vinha De Alhos,” which refers to the dish’s two key ingredients, “Vinho” and “Alhos”. Initially, it was a watery stew in Portugal cooked with pork or beef and vinegar and garlic. However, after the Portuguese moved to India, it was entirely transformed with the inclusion of spices and chillies, and it has since become one of the world’s spiciest and most popular curry meals.

      81

  • #
    John Connor II

    The UN weather agency has issued a ‘red alert’ on climate change after 2023 temperatures broke records ‘by a clear margin’.

    https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1770080092389069076

    What to ban next is the question.

    40

  • #
    RickWill

    Academics “bewildered” that UN drops bugs, crickets and fake meat for weather-repair

    Bewildered is probably not the best word. I suspect they are far more concerned about their funding drying up. Who will want research into real food alternatives if real food is no longer demonised.

    I await the day when the IPCC COP gabfest only offers insects on the menu.

    60

  • #
    Ronin

    “It may not last, but looks acts and smells like a win. Score 1 for the farmers…. the UN is being badgered by The People.”

    About time, shows they can be beat.

    60

  • #
    Dennis

    Their plan bugged too many people so they changed dirrection, again.

    60

  • #
    Jon Rattin

    In Allantown, capital city of Vicdanistan, we’ve been inundated with crickets the last 6 weeks (conditions must have been especially good for their proliferation). At my workplace they’ve been in the bathrooms, the kitchen and throughout the warehouse. I’m surprised Bill Gates and his cohort haven’t visited to indulge in a food safari. It’s been been a veritable smorgasbord down here

    50

  • #
    David Maddison

    Insects are poverty food.

    Modern agricultural practices mean we don’t have to eat insects but can eat a variety of delicious tasty animals such as chickens, cows, sheep and their products like milk and eggs etc..

    I will not be eating ze bugs. My ration can go to woke Leftists. Second thoughts, I won’t be feeding Leftists, my insect ration will be used to fertilise the garden.

    31

    • #
      old cocky

      Chooks love them

      30

    • #
      Environment Sceptic

      David, do not despair… with just a little bit of extra effort, scientists could design high speed micro robots to remove the crusty exoskelton of the insect desired and reveal the tender leg muscles and also to robotically remove the guts and the like which might taint the flavour of the leg muscles and so on.

      If we could do that, i suspect the gutted and de-exoskeletonised insect leg muscles could then be glued together to make a very lean insect leg muscle burger or nanno burgers for fasst food burger chains. All we need is some creativity 🙂

      10

  • #
    Cynic

    Perhaps, the “educated” luvies in the UN, just learned a hard lesson that there were people – millions of the buggers – living outside the UN bubble.
    Just like the those in the Canberra bubble, and the Washington bubble and the London, Berlin and other bubbles. They aren’t nearly as smart as they think they are.
    It seems to them that the hoi polloi are suddenly revolting, with a vastly different meaning to their understanding of the term “revolting” as it applies to the commoners.
    So, self preservation has kicked in.
    All of a sudden, it seems that their safe spaces in the UN Building, might not be so safe after all.
    Actually, I think it might hit them a bit harder when food isn’t delivered by those unwashed truck drivers, and similarly coffee, and the AC stops because there’s no power, and horrors of horrors, there’s no power to charge up their UN funded electric vee-hickle!
    Ah, now that would be really something for Jo to write about!

    40

  • #
    exsteelworker

    If these do called “academics ” are so concerned about our meat eating, all UN, government institutions, universities must cease eating everything meat related and be placed on “eat ze bugs” diet only, effective immediately. Let’s see how long they last.

    40

  • #
    David Maddison

    The Left write articles such as the following to try and convince non-Elites to eat insects:

    https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2217537119

    How to convince people to eat insects

    Carolyn Beans
    November 4, 2022

    ….

    Sanchez encourages people to eat insects, in part, to lighten environmental footprints. Farmed insects produce far less greenhouse gas and require much less land and water than conventional livestock (1). Insects also generate more biomass with less input. Crickets, for example, are 12 times more efficient than cows at converting feed into edible weight (1).

    And don’t forget, insects are being fed to children in 1000 Australian “schools”, probably more now..

    https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/09/1000-australian-schools-are-fed-insects/

    1,000 Australian schools are fed insects

    Are you keen to chow down on micro livestock?

    Joel Agius

    A teacher from one of the 1,000 Australian schools feeding kids chips made out of powdered crickets asks, ‘Do crickets taste good?’ The student nods and the teacher adds, ‘Yeah. Let’s eat some more crickets…!’

    Bugs are on the menu again… Why does the World Economic Forum have such a weird obsession with making our kids eat them?

    First, let me make something very clear: Bugs are not food.

    ….

    21