Guest essay by Eric Worrall
You would think in a country where poverty leads to thousands of deaths every winter, where far too many people go hungry every night, government advisory bodies would have the sense to avoid suggestions which could put pressure on food supplies.
‘Cut lamb and beef’ to fight climate change
By Roger Harrabin
BBC environment analystThe number of sheep and cattle in the UK should be reduced by between a fifth and a half to help combat climate change, a report says.
The shift is needed, the government’s advisory Committee on Climate Change (CCC) maintains, because beef and lamb produce most farm greenhouse gases.
The report foresees an increase in the number of pigs and chickens because these produce less methane.
The farm union NFU said it supported more diverse land use.But environmentalists say the recommendations are too timid.
The CCC says a 20-50% reduction in beef and lamb pasture could release 3-7m hectares of grassland from the current 12m hectares in the UK.
The un-needed grassland could instead grow forests and biofuels that would help to soak up CO2.
…
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46214864
The CCC report is available here.
The report authors claim that reduced production due to farmland lost to “afforestation” could be compensated by increased consumption of fruit and vegetables, indoor agriculture under grow lights, and improvements to agricultural practices, though they admit using grow lights is expensive.
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I am not saying these people are stupid, but they’re stupid.
Bonkers, stark raving mad, are the polite British phrases.
Canadians are starting to catch up.
Robert of Ottawa
[Snip] insane is the correct polite British phrase.
Of course it’s relative to the proposition. ‘Bonkers’ and ‘stark staring mad*’ are reserved for stupidity like our PM’s attempt at negotiating Brexit.
“‘Stark staring mad’ was an earlier variant and this was first recorded in John Dryden’s Persius Flaccus, 1693: “Art thou of Bethlem’s Noble College free? Stark, staring mad.””
Every days a schoolday on WUWT. 🙂
I.e., ‘Have you escaped from Bedlam?’
Bethlem/Bedlam was the site of an English nut house.
Are you sure that the PM has been attempting to negotiate Brexit? If she has it is difficult to see what she has gained. On the contrary the EU appear to be getting most of what they want and, if I were a Remainer, I’d be congratulating May for giving up virtually nothing of the EU’s control over the UK. So while May may have been giving the appearance of negotiation it rather looks like she wasn’t really trying very hard. Which would be hardly surprising as Mrs May opposed Brexit during the Referendum campaign.
“Radio Rental” is another traditional UK slang description.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Radio%20Rental
It’s becoming boring how often the BBC repeats claims by vegetarians, vegans, and various assorted green-shirts telling us to eat less meat and more cockroaches. On the other hand they do say it’s a good thing to never interrupt your opponent when the are making a mistake: Telling most people to stop eating meat probably comes about third after telling them to not have sex.
And they are so out of touch with economic reality. Much UK sheep farming takes place on marginal upland which has no other agricultural uses. It is also the sheep that help keep the Lake District looking the way it does for tourists and hill walkers. They would not be the same if forested.
Perhaps they might actually consider getting the populace to eat more venison. Deer are plentiful in upland Scotland. I’ve read they often improve pastureland because, more than sheep and Tiggers, they will also eat things like thistles (which Scotland also has in abundance). I guess that currently most of their value comes from allowing vacationing German hunters to shoot them.
TV rental was also an illustration of the way in which many people can’t see things in the long term perspective, and opt for the solution that seems cheaper in the sort term but which actually costs more. A factor which no doubt applies here.
It gets worse in industry though. Some of the oil companies hired AV equipment at a silly money rate from specialist hire companies, where it would have been cheaper to buy the items wholesale if they were used twice.
michael hart
You might want to read George Monbiot on sheep, he hates the woolly blighter’s. They crop the grass too short, compact the earth with their hooves and eat seedlings. Flash floods are frequently caused by the rainwater flowing over the compacted ground at high speed carrying everything with it into waterways and bursting banks etc. Trees are needed in these areas to slow the waters progress and of course the earth wouldn’t be compacted so rain would soak into the ground as well.
I hate Monbiot when he starts on politics and climate change but when it comes to practical issues relevant to his qualification, he’s a Zoologist, he’s really quite good.
Sorry, but Moonbat Monbot is an idiot all the way round. Claiming sheep are the cause of flooding because of compaction is simply silly. Silly.
I grew up in a house on stilts on the floodplain of a creek in the middle of forests just outside Washington DC. Several times per year that creek flooded like hell despite the forest and the uncompacted ground. And no, it wasn’t because of urban paved area. In my childhood there was not much of that in Fairfax VA.
Creeks, streams and rivers flood. They just do. That’s why they have flood plains and why streams and rivers constantly evolve (snakier and snakier until they get snaky enough to cut through and straighten out again)
Sheep cause soil compaction?
Nope!
Sheep and many other critters have cloven hooves, which allow them to splay their foot wider when encountering soft ground.
Nor have I seen cattle compact the ground, unless they stomp the same damp ground repeatedly. e.g. around a water hole or watering trough.
I love venison but it’s a bit on the deer side 😂 ……… I’ll get my coat!
I much prefer ‘barmy in the crumpet.’
The stupid never stops!
Stupid? No. Malcious? Yes.
They want the Deplorables to die. They want to impoverish and demoralize the hoi poli, lest the rabble become a threat to their rule.
Jack the Ripper’s descendants are running amok.
I must say this about Hillary, she finally let the cat out of the bag, for which we can thank her, when she expressed her and the elite’s opinion about the rest of us.
The Committee On Climate Changes is an outsourced Green Blobbette. It is not ‘the government’s advisor’
It’s a sinecure for political has-beans, It is jointly sponsored by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the Northern Ireland Executive, the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government – a safe place to park senile windfarm protagonists and overweight baronesses trying to be relevant.
It can safely be completely ignored.
beyond stupid and moving to malicious and venal in my opinion
Two things need to said about UK countryside:
1. Get rid of the green belts.
2. Stop massive subsidies to farmers.
Roger Harrabin is professional green activist whom the BBC employ as an “analyst”. I guess his job title of analyst excuses him form proper journalistic standards. E.g. a few months ago he interviewed Governor Brown of California on BBC Radio 4. Nothing was said about Brown’s long-standing fossil fuel interests.
Don’t agree about 1. In the the village I amd from in Hampshire, just north of Portsmouth, it’s a concrete jungle now all the way up and down the old A3. 2? Oh yes, stop those.
No agriculture in the UK is as profitable as building cheap housing. There would be no green spaces at all if the green belts were abolished.
Exactly how profitable is it to build more housing than you have people?
EU policy ensures there will be plenty of people in the UK. Rotherham is full of them.
If they are there, shouldn’t someone build houses for them?
Some people, and they are a growing number, have the ability to afford more than one house. One result of this is the phenomenon of large numbers of houses being bought up in attractive parts of the country to rent out as holiday homes. Another factor leading to house-building is the break-up of families. Where once the family used one house they now need two. And there are people campaigning to make divorce even easier so look out for more family break-up. Then there is the increasing number of younger people who decide to stay single and the increasing number of elderly people. Near where I live there have been lots of new houses being built in recent years and there are more being byuilt right now. As to where the people come from who move into these houses I have no idea but it would be interesting to find out. And also to know where the people came from who moved into their former houses. But they all get occupied almost as soon as they are built. Meanwhile the local roads are getting busier and busier and car parking near to the local railway stations is becoming more and more difficult.
Stay on the road. Keep clear of the moors.
“Keep clear of the moors.”
Agree, and both Sir Thomas and his wife, Mary Tyler.
And don’t forget…
I guess that’s what you meant, Tom?
Ja, Oui, Si, Tak, Sim, Da
and in the American South: sho ‘nough.
Apologies. I’m a bit slow sometimes.
The British Govn’t should focus on Brexit.
Patrick MJD
As of today they have comprehensively screwed that up.
Four Cabinet resignations over it within 24 hours.
May is in deep Doo Doo.
Yeah saw reports of cabinet disapproval, the possibility May may lose her job and the resignations. Yes, comprehensively screwed up alright!
Of course! We will make ourselves better off by producing less food! How could we have missed such an obvious solution? /sarc/
Once they stop growing cows and sheep,
They will be able to import more.
So China will supply the cows and sheep, along with the steel and cement. Sounds good to me, good thing China don’t produce any CO2.
china doesnt do sheep and few cattle
you need Aus n NZ for that preferably frozen boxed not live exported
the carbon that cattle transfer from vegetation to the atmosphere is not a
“perturbation of the carbon cycle with external carbon dug up from under the ground where it had been sequestered for millions of years”
but the carbon cycle itself.
The anti cattle anti meat drive is inconsistent with the theory of anthropogenic global warming.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/06/25/a-greenhouse-effect-of-atmospheric-co2/
The carbon that cattle transfer from vegetation to the atmosphere is not “external carbon dug up from under the ground where it had been sequestered for millions of years” but the carbon cycle itself. The anti-cattle anti-mean climate movement is not consistent with the theory of AGW
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/06/25/a-greenhouse-effect-of-atmospheric-co2/
anti meat
The reason beef and lamb are grown in the UK is that they are profitable. If fruit trees were more profitable they would be grown instead.
The only fair way to over rule the landowners on how they farm is to nationalise the farmland. If we are now prioritising demands other than those decided by the market then the new prioirities ought to be decided by the will of the people – determined in another way.
The argument can be made that the market is too short-term for control of vital national resources. But fear of computer modelled weather is not that argument.
The market is the will of the people.
Politics is never anything more than the will of the politicians and the powerful.
The best way to ruin anything, is let government take it over.
sheep farming in Britain is only profitable because of EU subsidies. The average farmer gets over
a third of their income from the EU (and yet they voted for Brexit). On top of that there are tariffs to
ensure that cheap meat from overseas becomes uncompetitive. In addition to which the removal of upland forests for sheep farming results in floods the costs of which sheep farmers don’t have to pay.
dont feed trolls
The argument that farming is driven by state intervention and therefore the state should take full responsibility is worth considering.
Don’t assume that every view you disagree with is being put out to troll or taunt you.
The state taking full responsibility for anything is an idea that should never be considered.
Beyond that, using state intervention as an excuse for more state intervention is the kind of logic that no sane person should be willing to entertain.
O.K., go ahead and feed ’em.
But only feed ’em fruit and vegetable … no meat.
(Thanks M, that was pretty easy)
The only subsidies that Percy objects to are those he isn’t benefiting from.
Sheep farming? Is the UK still banned from selling sheep/lamb since Chernobyl?
“Let them eat trees.”
Will not the massive immigrant population in the UK be launching a protest to prevent said?
Because growing plants indoors magically fails to release CO2. Second law of thermodynamics fail.
A stupid idea. However, it is NOT British government policy as the poster claims. It’s from an advisory group and has about as much chance of becoming policy, as I have of becoming Pope.
True. It’s Gummer again, Lord Deben.
He of mad cow burger fame.
Correct. But the BBC do so love to report all the latest insane pontifications of the commitee and their “reports” as if they were both real science and going to be taken up by the government. I suspect many of the (few) vegans in the Couse of Commons want to sit on this committee, alongside the MPs with their snouts in the windmill trough, who are as likely to give up meat as a Eurocrat is likely to give up Claret.
What name would you like to reserve for your election as pontiff?
Wouldn’t it be simpler to eat vegetarians? (No, it’s a joke, I’m not being serious)
Moderately Cross of East Anglia
So that’s what they mean by vegetarian burgers. 🙂
Reminds me of the Spitting Image sketch (something like this):
Margaret Thatcher is having dinner with her cabinet. The waiter asks Maggie what she would like to eat.
Maggie replies, “Steak, 18 ounces, raw”.
The waiter replies, “And the vegetables?”
Maggie: “Oh, they’ll have the same.”
Almost all cows ARE vegetarian.
Switching from eating one type of vegetarian to eating another type of vegetarian would include less variable change that switching to a completely different food source; so, yes.
(and I think “Pope Guy-Johnson the First” be a winner)
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
“what do humanitarians eat?”
Soylent Green
I never said it was policy. But I’m watching the UK parliament on TV right now, so I don’t share your confidence that lunatic plans have no chance of becoming policy.
… yes, but it is a *statutory* advisory group, and no major party would dare to go against BBC-approved Planet Saving policies, so maybe prepare for Pope Guy-Johnson.
Don’t you believe it David. This policy will filter down through the myriad of rules and designed to make production of these meats more and more expensive. It will have a softy softy but inevitable effect. All under the radar.
Of course, all that will happen is that we will wind up eating expensive and inferior imported meat.
There is weird logic here; as if the Drax wood pellets are deemed to be biomass zero emission products, then so too should animal emissions. However as this “deeming “ business is a total nonsense we are all left in despair.
Well if you actually get your Brexit organised there is plenty of lamb & beef available to buy from your old friends in Australia, Argentina & New Zealand..After all we used to sell it to you until joined the EEC and then we were tarifed out of your market…And meat got very expensive then didn’t it ?
As for your ‘official’ advisery committee recommendations, maybe you should put them to a referendum and have the British people piss on them directly….Real democracy !
Bill In Oz
‘Brexit’, ‘organised’.
Two terms that bear no relation to one another.
And I voted for Brexit!
I did say “If”.
What find interesting is that the UK joined the European Common Market (EEC ) in 1973 after a referendum. But joining the “European Community” in the 1990’s was done without any referendum….Just a unilateral act by the Conservative government of the day…And now it’s a Conservative government which is dodging and weaving to negate the Brexit referendum of 2016..
But we in Oz still have lots of chilled lamb & beef for you there in the UK…But the price has gone up because the Chinese, Koreans & Japanese want it now as well.
“Bill In Oz November 15, 2018 at 2:19 pm
I did say “If”.
What find interesting is that the UK joined the European Common Market (EEC ) in 1973 after a referendum.”
No it didn’t. Heath took the UK in to the CM in 1973, effective Jan 1st 1974. No vote, no referendum, no mandate. It was put to a vote in 1975 but the damage was done.
Bill
It would be better and more satisfactory to piss directly on the committee.
I thought I saw your name on the shortlist for the next pope when Francis gets forced out over the pedophilia scandal. 😉
Does anyone know of the best methane (myth debunking) summary abailable?
We must disarm the armies of climate justice warriors out there while we can.
The world wide growing of rice produces 11% of all global methane emissions. Our vegan friends will have to forego their rice in future ! It’s warming the planet ! sarc/
The issue of methane CH4 is tied to how it oxidizes as it rises to water H2O & then water in the atmosphere is involved in “warming”. The calculation used to determine how much methane contributes to “global warming” is based on the cipher that for every 1 molecule of CH4 methane released 2 molecules of H2O water are created, & that amount of water is added to a formula modeling “warming”.
In journal (2018) “Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics” the team of Frank, Jockel, Gronov & Daneris researched the old assumption 1 CH4 –> 2 H2O. Their data shows there are as low as 1.5 to 1.7 H2O derived from 1 CH4; meaning climate models have been using about 10-25% more water due to methane emissions as a “warming” driver.
See free full text of title below available on-line. For easier reading skip 1st to text section titled “Discussion” for the explanation of results in cited authors’ “Investigating the yield of H2O and H2 from methane oxidation in the stratophere.”)
More vegans & vegetarians = more rice eaters = more rice production = more methane.
A global warming tragedy ! sarc/
The climate obsessed extremists have no shame.
Eric,
I don’t wish the following to in any way seem to be supporting the UK Climate Change Committee’s and Mr Harrabin’s delusion, nor do I wish to impune your own very fine work and that of WUWT in general. However, I would wish to comment on your opening statement “You would think in a country where poverty leads to thousands of deaths every winter, where far too many people go hungry every night….”
Whilst this is a complex subject with many variations and its own nomenclature, the UK “basic” state and “new” state pensions (which are heavily inflation protected) are around £130 and £170 per person, per week, respectively. Basic unemployment benefit, which may, in some circumstances, be topped-up with significant other benefits, is around £75 per week.
So, I really think that the idea that “thousands” die in poverty each winter in Britain is a gross exaggeration and unfair on the people’s of the world who really do live in poverty. Some undoubtedly do die due to cold weather- related issues in the UK and indeed the ludicrous CCC is hell-bent on making matters much worse by imposing much higher energy costs on UK citizens. Nevertheless, up until the full financial horrors of renewable energy sources are imposed on the population, our welfare state will pay for people to feed and warm themselves if people choose to prioritise such in their spending. This is not to suggest that there are not some cases of real hardship – that is inevitable among a population of 60 million – but even then there are charities to help the most needy.
I hope that you can see my point.
£800 / month is not a lot of money in Britain, especially for people who don’t own their own homes.
Food is expensive. Electricity is expensive. Old people get sick – medicine and transport is expensive, especially if you live in an area with poor public transport.
I don’t think you can separate fuel poverty from general poverty. If many people can’t afford to heat their homes, to the extent that thousands of people die each year from exposure or starvation, depending on what expense they decided to trim, I can’t see how it is unreasonable to describe that as “dying of poverty”.
Thousands of people in the U.K. cannot both eat properly AND heat their homes properly in winter cold and the numbers of excess deaths rise with severe weather precisely because of the rapidly increasing cost of energy. This is because of the absurd ever-inflating increase in green subsidies for wind farms and other lucrative eco-scams.
It is that straightforward and Eric is spot on with his posting.
“Thousands of people in the U.K. cannot both eat properly AND heat their homes properly…”
And doubtless many hundreds of thousands cannot drink properly on that low a pension and eat and heat, as well.
Eric is right, in that many people have to make a choice between food and heating.
Growing up through the 70s/80s, one of the biggest things that struck me about the difference in living standards between UK residents and my US friends, was that people from the States regarded having a copious hot shower, and having ice NOT form on the inside of your bedroom window in winter months was normal, not a luxury.
Green-shirts seem to think that everyone else should be made to continually suffer winter conditions that they were maybe able to manage more comfortably in their student teens and twenties, and that any other attitude is destroying the planet. They probably also think that food rationing along the lines of WW2 allowances is the best treatment for diabetes. Unless it affects them, of course.
It is a metabolism problem.
If one is between the age of say, 12 to 60, they are mostly quite comfortable with their indoor temperatures, during wintertime, ….. averaging around 70 to 72 degrees F.
But senior citizens, greater than 60 years of age, will be constantly “chilled-to-the-bone” if their indoor winter temperatures are not maintained above 72 degrees F.
So, iffen one is a senior citizen with limited (poverty level) income, then it’s a choice between “food or heating”.
I assumed Eric was being sarcastic.
Eric, please tell me I am correct.
Ian Magness,
My basic state pension in the UK is £152.50 per week.
The UK govt has stolen my wife’s pension, though she’s been working & paying her Nat. Insurance stamp since the age of 15. Originally promised at the age of 60, her pension is now promised at 65 years plus 8 months, as of now. She is 64.
There are millions more women in this predicament, yet the Brit govt can afford to fund the war on Syria, & The White Helmets terrorist propaganda arm, in particular. It’a a wonderful world.
Search Engine: WASPI pensions campaign UK if you are at all interested in educating yourself on this scandal.
John Doran
My second reply disappeared. Que?
JD.
John Doran – November 16, 2018 at 2:07 am
Same here in the US.
Social Security retirement money originally promised at the age of 65 …. is now at age 67. People were supposed to die before their 65th birthday, but now they are living into their 70’s.
The US’s Social Security Trust Fund, where all the SS monies were to be held in an interest bearing account, …… is nothing more than a “lockbox” that is stuffed full of IOUs …. because the politicians have per se, stolen the money and spent it.
I believe in its early days, US Social Security fund made a PROFIT on its investments. But that was totally contrary to the politicians’ ideas at the time, so they just appropriated the cash, and made it like all other State ‘safety nets’ – i.e. tax the workers to fund the retired and other non-workers. Standard Socialism, but Maggie was right – they DO eventually run out of other peoples’ money! For ‘orrible examples, see Zimbabwe, Venezuela and (coming soon) South Africa!
I believe that was done during the Nixion Administration to make the federal deficit appear not to be as bad as it was.
Two of the main aims of the lunatic “environmentalists” pushing the moronic strategy of generating ultra expensive electricity via bird & bat chopping windmills, are Depopulation & One World Govt.
Excess deaths in winter suits this Satanic agenda perfectly.
These two aims are clearly revealed in climatologist Dr. Tim Ball’s great new book: “Human Caused Global Warming, The Biggest Deception In History. In only 121 pages he reveals the Rockefeller Banksters funding their sidekick thief Maurice Strong in setting up the fraud factory UN IPCC, the false science, the faux “scientists”, the profiteering politicians like Al Gore, etc etc.
Written in plain English for the general public, this is a must read.
http://www.wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/06/winter-kills-excess-deaths-in-the-winter-months/
John Doran.
The un-needed grassland could instead grow forests and biofuels that would help to soak up CO2.
Grass “soaks up” more CO2 than forest.
Some forests emit CO2 net – more so than cities.
That is what the CO2 satellites show and why news from them has gone dark.
and grassland becomes bushy scrubland and then a nice place for fires….without it being grazed or cleared/lopped regularly.
Do these people even know what day it is, how do they feed themselves, who changes their nappies?
Great government thinking. Just eliminate a few traditional industries that provide honest jobs and good products.
How are the going to compensate those in an eliminated business?
This is beyond stupid. It is criminal.
The one thing that the green urbanites have overlooked is that most farmers in the UK still have shotguns.
careful … the 350.org wacko will write a follow up opinion story about you and this nasty blog.
Britain hasn’t just been hijacked by the climate lobby, now it’s being hijacked by the vegan lobby.
Let them go back to live on potatoes like the Irish once had to, and see how far that gets them.
Oddly enough living on a diet consisting mainly of potatoes works just fine. But ironically enough you have to add milk to make it work.
How things have changed – I recall growing up in the ’50s, ’60s and eating lamb and beef regularly, and where chicken was an expensive luxury. Now retired, we find we eat less beef etc mainly because it appears to be so much more expensive compared to chicken. Not to mention all the health scares about eating red meat. I am always a bit surprised any farmer still grows the stuff. When its on sale, we do enjoy a bit of New Zealand lamb though.
New Zealand Lamb has to many Moari genes in it, a friend of mine says.
You’re funny! I’m surprised that comment made it past CTM. Not a criticism of CTM, but that comment made me laugh on several levels, because I sometimes enjoy low humor.
He is an Aussie friend.
Rachel Carson Syndrome comes to climate change.
What drives this “Let’s move the problem elsewhere” approach? I mean, really. Just because the UK cuts domestic production doesn’t mean the demand goes away. The supply will just shift elsewhere, increasing the UK trade deficit further and increasing end price to consumers. Oh, let’s not forget, making zero difference along the way. Other countries are likely not so overly concerned about animal welfare, either.