Archives par mot-clé : Ecology

better to know...?, climate-debate

Nigeria’s Water Crisis: Why Poor Management, Not Climate Change, Is Drying Up Farms

by L. Lueken, May 21, 2025 in WUWT

AfricaNews (AN), in collaboration with the Associated Press, recently posted an article claiming that recent drought in Nigeria is due to climate change. This is unlikely to be the full story. Although data is sparse for the region, human activities are just as likely to be contributing to desertification as cycles of drought are.

The article, “Nigerian farmers struggle as climate change dries up water sources,” claims that climate change is the cause of recent drought in Nigeria, leading to crop declines. Surface water is becoming scarce during the dry seasons, so some farmers are forced to dig wells to irrigate their crops. AN writes that “[r]iverbeds have started to run dry,” and so the blame “is pointed firmly at climate change, with conservationists warning that food could become scarce if measures are not urgently put in place to help the farmers irrigate their land.”

While it is true that Nigeria has been suffering from extended drought, particularly in the northern part of the country, it is not clear that this is all or even mostly because of any human-caused climate change due to changing temperatures. Natural drought, combined with human error in land and water management, seems to be the more likely culprit.

According to the article, over 80 percent of Nigeria’s farmers are smallholder farmers, and they make up 90 percent of the nation’s crop production. The article points at maize (corn) as a sample crop that is suffering due to the water shortage, it “saw a decline in cultivated land from 6.2 million hectares in 2021 to 5.8 million hectares in 2022.”

Crop production data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) show that Nigeria’s corn production has been increasing over time. It actually shot upwards the most in recent decades, after remaining relatively flat through the 1980s. Between just 1990 and 2023, Nigerian corn production increased 91 percent, while yields increased 71 percent. (See figure below)

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better to know...?

The Top Ten Environmentalist Myths

by E. Ring, Apr 11, 2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch 

Here are ten issues where environmentalism has been misused and even caused harm.

earth wind crops
The first Earth Day was organized in 1970 in response to growing public concern for the environment. Many of these concerns were entirely justified. [emphasis, links added]

In 1969, for example, an oil slick along an industrialized stretch of the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire, generating national awareness of the need to reduce water pollution.

Similarly, in coastal cities in California, most notably in Los Angeles, the exhaust from unleaded gasoline created air pollution so dense you couldn’t see the hills a few miles away.

We’ve come a long way in 51 years.

This month, as Americans celebrate Earth Day on April 22, we are challenged to differentiate between legitimate environmental priorities and those priorities chosen for us by special interests with ulterior motives for whom environmentalism is a sentiment to be manipulated.

Here are ten issues where environmentalism has been misused, with consequences that have either been of no benefit whatsoever to the environment or have even caused harm.

(1) We are in a climate crisis

We may as well begin with the most controversial environmentalist claim, that our planet is at imminent risk of catastrophic climate change. The problem with this claim is two-fold.

First, there remains vigorous—if suppressed—debate over whether the data actually supports this claim. There is ample evidence that average global temperatures are not rapidly increasing, if they are even increasing at all.

There is also strong evidence that extreme weather events are not increasing but rather that our ability to detect them has improved and that population increases have led more people to live in places that are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather.

Second, even if there is some truth to the claims of climate catastrophists, it is not possible to precipitously transform our entire energy infrastructure. The technology isn’t ready, the funding isn’t available, and most nations will not participate.

Adaptation is our only rational course of action.

(2) There are too many people

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climate-debate

The Toxic Truth: The Impact Of Green Energy On Wildlife And The Environment

by L. Balzer, Nov 9, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

We’ve been told repeatedly by the media that electricity produced by renewables is clean, essentially free energy, better for the environment than traditional sources such as coal and natural gas.

But is that true? Maybe we should look at the facts.

Wind turbines injure, maim, and kill hundreds of thousands of birds and bats each year in clear violation of federal law.

The Golden Gate Audubon Society in California reported that the wind farm at Altamont was killing about 10,000 birds, including over 1,100 birds of prey, each year.

Strangely, wind farm enthusiasts ignore the numbers and types of birds killed by wind turbines, even those who call themselves “environmentalists”.

Offshore wind turbines have similar impacts on marine birds, and, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, offshore wind farms also impact fish and other marine wildlife.

Currently, the construction of an offshore wind farm about 15 miles off the coast of Massachusetts is underway. The foundation pieces for the huge wind turbines, called monopiles, are being driven into the seafloor by pile drivers.

Pile-driving noise can deafen, injure, or even kill marine mammals. At least fourteen dying humpback whaleswere recently washed up on beaches in this area. The people building these projects are fully aware of the damage to marine life that they are causing and will cause.

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climate-debate

Climate Fear Mongering Bad Analyses Cause Bad Remedies

by J. Steele, Oct 28, 2022 in WUWT

A review of how the media has been fear mongering a fabricated climate crisis which is only misdirecting and obscuring the best remedies needed to address environmental issues, and instead promoting solutions that are ultimately dangerous.

Jim Steele is Director emeritus of San Francisco State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus, authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism, and proud member of the CO2 Coalition.

Thanks for having me here. First, I am not a climate scientist. I am an ecologist, and I humbly note ecology requires a higher degree of thinking to untangle the many contributing causes of complex problems.

While director of San Francisco State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus, I was monitored 6 meadow systems in the Sierra Nevada for the Forest Service. One meadow began to dry, vegetation withered, and wildlife began disappearing. When I showed students and colleagues this meadow’s deterioration, I was struck by their knee jerk response. Despite just a half-hour visit, most declared this was just what global warming theory predicted. Rising CO2 was making the land warmer, drier and causing animals to go extinct.

In contrast, as an ecologist I had to consider landscape changes, geological history, changes to hydrology, biological interactions, as well as weather and natural climate changes. And I had been observing those effects for 15 years.

Historical temperatures revealed maximum temperatures were warmer in the 1930s. I eventually determined it was the disruption of stream flows and the water table that caused all the problems.

We restored the streams, raised the water table and the meadow became more resilient during droughts and wildlife became more abundant. Lowering CO2 emissions would have had no impact.

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climate-debate

Why Earth Overshoot Day And The Ecological Footprint Are Pseudoscientific Nonsense

by M. Schellenberger, August 23, 2020 in Forbes

Pour lire cet article en français, cliquez ici

Starting today through the end of the year, humankind will start consuming more resources than our planet can sustainably produce, according to the Global Footprint Network (GFN), which has been organizing such days since 1986.

“Humanity is using nature 1.75 times faster than our planet’s ecosystems can regenerate,” says the group. “This is akin to using 1.75 Earths.”

Rich nations “overshoot” their resources before poorer ones, according to GFN. The US, Australia, Denmark and Canada overshoot before the end of March, while Cuba, Nicaragua, Iraq, and Ecuador don’t overshoot until December.

“Earth Overshoot Day” is based on something called the “Ecological Footprint,” which is used by the World Wildlife Fund, the United Nations Environment Program, the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Report, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

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The Ecological Footprint has as much scientific merit as astrology, phrenology, and flat-earth theories. It’s time to treat the Ecological Footprint as the pseudoscientific theory it is.

unclassified

L’écologie politique sera scientifique ou ne sera plus (partie 2)

by JP Riou, 9 octobre 2018 in EuropeanScientist

L’ écologie a renoué avec l’environnement le lien fondamental et sacré qui le relie à l’homme. Par cette communion, elle remplit le vide laissé par les religions dans un contexte d’explosion technologique. Mais elle fait semblant d’ignorer que le fossé s’élargit de toutes parts entre la déclinaison politique de ses principes et le bilan de ses résultats.

La dimension mondiale du phénomène et les sommes inédites qui lui sont consacrées justifient une tentative d’analyse de son origine et de sa démarche, ainsi que de ses ressorts cachés et des conséquences géopolitiques qu’on peut en attendre.

Ces 2 faces de l’écologie politique sont l’objet des 2 parties du présent article.

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Pour la première parie voir ici