Sheep Thefts in Britain Likely Connected to Rising Global Food Prices

Stephan:  This is an early sign of a trend that I think will be increasing as the food crisis increases and climate change makes some traditional agricultural areas unproductive because of either temperature or lack of water.

WINDERMERE, ENGLAND — The rolling hills of the English Lake District, home to the stories of Peter Rabbit and endless acres of misty farms, seem the last place on Earth for a crime wave. But farmer, beware: Thieves are stalking the puffy white gold of the British countryside.

‘They want our sheep,’ said Andrew Allen, 46, surveying his flock, now thinned after the recent theft of 45 head.

Allen is one of 19 farmers to fall prey to sheep rustlers in the majestic lake region over the past 12 months, with the thefts here only one part of a bizarre surge in rural crime that has seen incidents of sheep rustling skyrocket across Britain.

The culprit? Globalization.

The ovine crime wave began, insurance company and farm union officials say, after global food prices started jumping again. With bouts of bad weather in major producers such as Russia, Argentina and Australia and increasing demand in Asia, the price for many grains is now busting through the record highs they set in 2008. But meat prices have also surged, particularly for lamb.

Because of escalating world demand and scaled-back production in such nations as New Zealand, a farmer’s price per pound for lamb here is now about […]

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For EPA, Climate Tough in Senate

Stephan:  The saga of the EPA is Climate Change Denierism playing out as public policy. Here is a hard truth for each of us to consider: If you voted for a climate denier Representative or Senator you signed a death warrant for life as we have known it. You will watch it happen and will have to learn to live with the choice you have made, and be haunted by what it is going to do to your children and grandchildren. The debate will go on for a few more years until the changes are so devastating and obvious they cannot be ignored. By then it will be too late to do much about any of it.

The Environmental Protection Agency is desperate for some friends in the Senate.

Republicans have made unraveling the Obama administration’s climate rules one of their top priorities this year, and with the GOP-led House expected to easily pass a measure to handcuff EPA’s authority, the rules’ fate may be determined by how hard the agency’s champions in the Senate will fight.

At least 56 senators - just four short of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster - will most likely support measures to hamstring climate rules, and an additional eight votes may be in play this Congress, a POLITICO analysis shows.

Any congressional attempt to limit regulatory authority is always difficult to achieve, an industry lobbyist told POLITICO. But given the sluggish economy and the long list of moderate Senate Democrats up for reelection in 2012, ‘the chances are better than ever

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Unilever Chief Warns Over Global Crisis in Food Output

Stephan:  Because I have said many harsh things about corporate manipulations I am always on the lookout for positive counter examples. Here's one.

Paul Polman, the chief executive of Unilever (150m customers a day, products available in 170 countries), likes to quote Viktor Frankl, the famous psychiatrist and survivor of the Holocaust. In Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning, he says of the development of the West: ‘I recommend that the Statue of Liberty [on the east coast] be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.’

Unilever

Mr Polman, formerly of Procter & Gamble and Nestlé, is a man on something of a mission. Sitting in an open-necked shirt in his office overlooking the Thames in London, the Unilever chief executive ranges widely – from criticisms of short-term speculators in the commodity markets, to the need to tackle rampant food inflation; from proposing that climate change is one of the major challenges facing global businesses to revealing that he wouldn’t mind being a cow on the Ben and Jerry’s ‘caring dairy’ programme.

‘Those animals have massage and scrubbing machines,’ he says. ‘Man, I wish I was a cow.’ Unilever owns Ben and Jerry’s.

At its most basic, he argues, consumer-facing businesses need to rip up their business models and start again – working in partnership with local producers, NGOs and governments in ways that […]

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2010 Is Officially the Hottest Year on Record

Stephan:  You'll want to click through to see the graphs on this report.

Well, it’s a tie actually. The final tallies are in and 2010 is even with 2005 as the warmest year on record. NASA and NOAA independently released their own reports yesterday, confirming the improbable and remarkable statistical tie. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies explains:

The two years differed by less than 0.018 degrees Fahrenheit. The difference is smaller than the uncertainty in comparing the temperatures of recent years, putting them into a statistical tie.

2010, climate central, NOAA, warmest year ever, climate change, global warmingSurface temperature records go back to 1880, and while both NASA and NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center use the average global surface temperature as their variable, they use different methodologies (as Climate Central explained nicely here). Two methodologies producing the same result only further cements the point.

Also, keep in mind that these records are being set during ‘the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century,’ which totally refutes one common argument of the climate skeptic. What’s more, the second half of 2010 was unique for its strong La Niña conditions, ‘which bring cool sea surface temperatures to the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean,’ as James Hansen, director of GISS noted:

[…]

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Life Expectancy for Today’s Youth Cut Short by Obesity

Stephan: 

CHICAGO — For the first time in history, the next generation will not live longer, or even as long, as their parents.

‘Diseases such as Type II diabetes, high blood pressure, heart conditions and joint deterioration – what were once considered ‘adult’ diseases – are regularly being diagnosed in children, due to the prevalence of obesity,

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