Note to readers: Keep in mind that the warming projected for 2100 is based on computer simulation models which are little better than crystal balls. Yes, policymakers and scientists believe the hocus-pocus.
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Expansion of energy plants is as damaging to nature as is (modeled) climate change
Frankfurt am Main, 7 December 2018. Nature actually benefits from climate protection, for which bioenergy has long been regarded as a savior. However, in order to achieve the 1.5 degree Celsius target, it is assumed that bioenergy plants must be cultivated extensively.
Expanding biofuels are major threat to species such as the Star, Bird of the Year, Photo by Christian Hof
Yet, according to new models, this will cause more harm to vertebrate habitats than the mitigated climate change, researchers from the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, the Technical University of Munich and Durham University reported this week in the journal “PNAS”.
The supposed advantage of such climate protection would therefore not benefit the species.
One way to limit global warming (seen in the models) is to burn renewable biofuels such as corn, rapeseed and palm oil instead of fossil fuels. But with regards to biological diversity, this is probably replacing one evil (in models) with another.
“Seriously damaging the biological diversity”
“In order to effectively limit climate change, by 2100 we will have to cultivate bioenergy plants on about 4.3 percent of the global land area – almost 1.5 times the combined area of all EU countries. We are thus seriously damaging the biological diversity that is at home in these areas to date. The negative effects of climate change, which could be prevented with maximum use of bioenergy, will not make up for these losses,” says Dr. Christian Hof, who conducted the study at Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre Frankfurt.
Bioenergy has long been controversial among scientists. For the first time, Hof and his team have globally investigated how amphibians, birds and mammals will feel the effects of climate and land use change by 2100. They compared two scenarios: a scenario with maximum bioenergy use, which corresponds to limiting warming to about 1.5 degrees, and a scenario with minimum bioenergy use and a temperature increase of about 3 degrees compared to the pre-industrial period by 2100.
“Surprising results”
The results are surprising: “Whether the temperature increases by 1.5 or 3 degrees by 2100: around 36% of vertebrate habitats are massively endangered either by climate change or by new land use as a result of the cultivation of bioenergy crops. The effects on biological diversity are therefore comparable. The only difference is who is responsible for them,” explains Dr. Alke Voskamp from the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre.
Moreover, slower climate change through the use of bioenergy plants is likely to harm significantly more vertebrate species with a small distribution area than a temperature increase of 3 degrees. Most of these vertebrate species – especially amphibians – live in the tropics and neotropics. However, these are the places where plantations for bioenergy plants will increase most.
Biofuels the “wrong way”
For Hof and his team, the study allows only one conclusion: “Climate change remains one of the greatest threats to biodiversity and must be limited to a temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius if possible. As our study shows, however, bioenergy and the massive expansion of farmland is the wrong way to do this. Instead, we must work harder to save energy.”
The study was part of the BioSzen1punkt5 project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research under the program “Promotion of Extended and Improved Scientific Foundations for the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 °C Global Warming (SR1.5)”.
Contact:
Dr. Christian Hof
Technische Universität München & Senckenberg Biodiversität und Klima Forschungszentrum
Tel. (+49) 8161 712489
Christian.hof@tum.de
Dr. Alke Voskamp
Senckenberg Biodiversität und Klima Forschungszentrum
Tel. (+49) 69 7542 1871
alke.voskamp@senckenberg.de
Colour me unsurprised🤮
Another green “solution” (scam) to a nonexistent problem.
Merry Xmas😁
That bird in the picture appears to be what we in the US call a European Starling. https://www.falconforce.com/problem-birds.html
Considered here to be an invasive species.
Yup, that’s a Starling. “Considered here to be an invasive species” It’s on the endangered list in the UK, but I consider them to be a nuisance. They barge into feeding areas and eat everything they can find. They also make a hell of a mess in the water tray…
This is what the UK considers “endangered?”
https://youtu.be/IJrI77N3OYE?t=25
It is to laugh.
That’s probably the entire UK population in one spot!
“Starling numbers have fallen by 66 per cent in Britain since the mid-1970s”
https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/starling/population-trends-conservation/
“The cause of the starling decline in the UK is unknown”
Surprisingly, they don’t blame Climate Change”
@Dave Ward
“Starling numbers have fallen by 66 per cent in Britain since the mid-1970s”
Seriously?! I find that hard to believe. Wait… here we are…
https://www.diy-pest-control.co.uk/pick-your-pest/birds/starling/
OK, yeah, down 66% (how can they tell, when so many allegedly come from the continent?) And if, as the article says, reduced farming keeps them from finding food, maybe they’ve just relocated? Finally, they are still a pest, apparently, despite being “at risk.”
And they can make one heck of a ruckus in the tree outside one’s window, dozens (so it seems) chirping at and before dawn.
“Surprisingly, they don’t blame Climate Change”
Yes, that is a surprise. How about house cats? That’s the excuse warmists give for why it’s ok for windfarms to kill raptors; because house cats kill more little birds than turbines do. But seriously, I doubt a house cat could get one without having to tangle with it’s many palls, or as the Brits say, it’s mates.
@Yonason: if starlings are now endangered in the UK, which I don’t believe for a moment, it is because the brits have poisoned them as a pest species. Brit maundering about their pathetic remnant of wildlife is irritating to say the least, since they are the ones who have destroyed it through development and habitat destruction. Not to mention conservative politicians like May who want to bring back horse-borne fox-hunting to destroy one of the few relatively successful wild species they have. The last time I was at Trafalgar square at sunset you would not have believed that starlings are endangered. Ah perfidious Albion when will we ever be able to trust you?
@chris moffatt
Where I used to live in New England, starlings were also notorious for being pests. I don’t think they’ll get wiped out. The truly annoying things are always the hardest to rid ourselves of, you know, like Socialists (and fake Conservatives).
Speaking of fake Conservatives…
Are you serious?! May wants to bring back the fox hunt?! Not my kind of “Conservative.” Not a lot of Brits’ kind, either, from what I gather.
Well they’re thriving in the US. Suckers come down on my feed blocks in hordes and dominate. Only the larger Blue Jays and the Red Bellied woodpeckers will take them on force them off the blocks. That is unless a Red Tail Hawk happens to pass by. Then any of the birds hanging out at my feeders are a potential snack.
I keep to cages with seed blocks in them and an 8 lb (3.6 Kg.) feeder stocked. During deep winter I will have to refill both every 2 1/2 days.
One of the biggest tragedies today is loss of Orangutan habitat to make way for palm oil plantations. 40% of the product is for biofuels.
[…] blog of the day is No Tricks Zone, with a post on biofuels causing more harm than (modeled) […]
“around 36% of vertebrate habitats are massively endangered either by climate change or by new land use …”
This seems unlikely with “climate change” but very likely any place a natural area is converted to row crops, whether they be corn, seeds, or palms.
Climate change (regardless of cause) will open new habitats as well as (maybe) make existing ones less suitable for some critters. Unless a proper cost/benefits analysis is done we learn only half of what we need to know.
We should be burning all the material now going into land fills (as a kid, these were known as ‘dumps’, and not cutting forests, making pellets, and shipping these to places that want to feel good about their green credentials. A CO2 molecule looks the same regardless of source — although it doesn’t matter as far as global warming is concerned.
“We should be burning all the material now going into land fills” – J.F.H.
Ah, yes. There was a dump some distance form where I lived, but on a road we used to take semi regularly. At night you could see where it was burning, which was pretty extensively. Not everything burned, of course, but there must have been a lot of combustible material there for it to remain alight for months at a time.
And I might as well throw this in here. Speaking of bad science, this is part III of a series on just what garbage is being foisted on us based on the junk-science of cAGW.
https://www.masterresource.org/debate-issues/bad-science-iii/
So, yes, bad science can and does cause considerable harm.
“Whether the temperature increases by 1.5 or 3 degrees by 2100: around 36% of vertebrate habitats are massively endangered either by climate change or by new land use as a result of the cultivation of bioenergy crops.” –
The segment from Dr. Moore’s lecture that deals with temperature and CO2 is very informative. (from where it starts at 11:31 through 14:14)
https://youtu.be/dCrkqLaYjnc?t=691
What it tells me is that we can throw out Hof’s model. IF it predicts harm at temperatures and [CO2]’s that are barely above the minimum that have prevailed on earth for most of it’s history, it is WRONG! There can be no threat to species that have adapted before and will adapt again to conditions far more extreme than we can realistically expect to contribute to. Said another way, when the “cure” is worse than the disease, do not take it!
“in order to achieve the 1.5 degree Celsius target”
According to Berkeley Earth, we are already there and the sky hasn’t fallen in.
https://judithcurry.com/2018/10/08/1-5-degrees/
“Over land, we have already blown through the 1.5C threshold if measured since 1890. Temperatures around 1820 were more than 2C cooler. There has been a great deal natural variability in temperatures prior to 1975 when human caused global warming kicked in any meaningful way. (I would take issue with “human caused global warming)
Who would prefer the climate of the 18th or 19th century relative to the climate of the early 21st century?
Apart from warmer temperatures, what evidence is there of potential catastrophes? An observed increase in extreme weather events is not well justified, if you correctly account for the influence of multi-decadal ocean oscillations. So, what is the possible worst cast impact for 1.5 or 2.0 C warming on the timescale of the 21st century?”
The thing is, eco activists believe that man should be barely existing on the same level as animals. Same intelligence, same progress, living in shared space in a sustainable manner. Man should not have discovered and learned to exploit natural resources for heat and light, the use of which has now been deemed by the memtal environmentalists as being “unnatural”.
They believe man (aka “other people) are imposters on the earth, and that environmentalists are the only ones with the moral authority to decide and control how others should live, how many children they should have, what they should eat, what they should live in, how they should heat and light it, what they should drive, the list is endless.
Environmentalists themselves ignore the advice they give to others and instead are on a bandwagon of preaching to cult members at various circuit gatherings like COP24.
It’s all about control. Controlling others outside of their group think climate cult and deciding which are the morally deserving countries that can use the natural resources.
“The thing is, eco activists believe that man should be barely existing on the same level as animals”
It’s worse than that:
“Mankind is a cancer; we’re the biggest blight on the face of the earth.” “If you haven’t given voluntary human extinction much thought before, the idea of a world with no people in it may seem strange. But, if you give it a chance, I think you might agree that the extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival for millions if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.”
Says Ingrid Newkirk, (PETA) here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/23/humans-are-the-superior-species-with-every-right-to-be-on-earth-we-are-not-unnatural-as-environmentalists-claim-and-the-ipcc-assumes/
There are other Biofuels as well. An example is the finnish Metsä biomill in Aanekoski. It creates biofuel from the bark of wood that is cut for pulp and lumber.
So “not all biofuel” I guess. These conversations shouldn’t be black and white, make sure you know what exact plans your government is suggesting.