By Josh Gerstein, New York Sun

The campaign against climate change could be set back by the global food crisis, as foreign populations turn against measures to use foodstuffs as substitutes for fossil fuels. With prices for rice, wheat, and corn soaring, food-related unrest has broken out in places such as Haiti, Indonesia, and Afghanistan. Several countries have blocked the export of grain. There is even talk that governments could fall if they cannot bring food costs down.

One factor being blamed for the price hikes is the use of government subsidies to promote the use of corn for ethanol production. An estimated 30% of America’s corn crop now goes to fuel, not food. “I don’t think anybody knows precisely how much ethanol contributes to the run-up in food prices, but the contribution is clearly substantial,” a professor of applied economics and law at the University of Minnesota, C. Ford Runge, said. A study by a Washington think tank, the International Food Policy Research Institute, indicated that between a quarter and a third of the recent hike in commodities prices is attributable to biofuels.

Last year, Mr. Runge and a colleague, Benjamin Senauer, wrote an article in Foreign Affairs, “How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor.” “We were criticized for being alarmist at the time,” Mr. Runge said. “I think our views, looking back a year, were probably too conservative.” Mr. Senauer said climate change advocates, such as Vice President Gore, need to distance themselves from ethanol to avoid tarnishing the effort against global warming. “Crop-based biofuels are not part of the solution. They, in fact, add to the problem.”

Mr. Gore was not available for an interview yesterday on the food crisis, according to his spokeswoman. A spokesman for Mr. Gore’s public campaign to address climate change, the Alliance for Climate Protection, declined to comment for this article. However, the scientist who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Gore, Rajendra Pachauri of the United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, has warned that climate campaigners are unwise to promote biofuels in a way that risks food supplies. “We should be very, very careful about coming up with biofuel solutions that have major impact on production of food grains and may have an implication for overall food security,” Mr. Pachauri told reporters last month, according to Reuters. “Questions do arise about what is being done in North America, for instance, to convert corn into sugar then into biofuels, into ethanol.” Read more here.

International Climate Science Coalition

The International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) today released the names of over 500 endorsers of the Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change that calls on world leaders to “reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as well as popular, but misguided works such as “An Inconvenient Truth"." All taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) should “be abandoned forthwith”, declaration signatories conclude.

Included in the endorser list are world leading climate scientists, economists, policymakers, engineers, business leaders, medical doctors, as well as other professionals and concerned citizens from two dozen countries.  The complete declaration text, endorser lists and international media contacts for expert commentary, may be viewed at here.

Perhaps most significant among the declaration’s assertions:

> “there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity have in the past, are now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.”

> “attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change.  Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so reduce the ability of societies to adapt to inevitable climate change, thereby increasing, not decreasing human suffering.”

Just as the Manhattan Project was key to finally ending the Second World War, the Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change may one day be regarded as a critical catalyst that helped end today’s climate hysteria,” said ICSC Science Advisory Board member, Professor Bob Carter of James Cook University in Australia.  “Protecting the natural world is crucially important and so environmental policy must be based on our best understanding of science and technology coupled with a realistic appreciation of the relevant economics and policy options.  This is not happening in the climate debate.”

ICSC Chair, Professor Tim Patterson of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada concludes, “Instead of wasting billions restricting emissions of CO2, a vitally important gas on which all life depends, governments must concentrate on solving known environmental problems over which we have influence - air, land and water pollution being obvious examples.”

The ICSC is an association of scientists, economists and energy and policy experts (advisors listed here) working to promote better public understanding of climate change. ICSC provides an analysis of climate science and policy issues which, being independent of lobby groups and vested political interests, is an alternative to advice from the IPCC. ICSC thereby fosters rational, evidence-based, open discussion about all climate, and climate-related, issues. See full release and the multiple lists of endorsers here.

Icecap Note: If you go to the site and agree with the declaration, please consider adding your endorsement no matter whether you are a scientist or concerned citizen (there are separate lists). There is strength in numbers.

By Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun

RAIN sure is falling this week on the parade of our global warming alarmists. Wettest of all is Tim Flannery, who was made Australian of the Year last year for wailing the world was doomed.  We were making the planet heat so fast with our filthy gases, Flannery insisted, that the ice caps were vanishing and we had to “picture an eight-storey building by a beach, then imagine waves lapping its roof”.

No scare seemed too absurd for this Alarmist of the Year. “I think there is a fair chance Perth will be the 21st century’s first ghost metropolis,” he groaned. But buy his The Weather Makers before you flee. Reporters solemnly reported even this: “He (Flannery) also predicts that the ongoing drought could leave Sydney’s dams dry in just two years.” And when did he say that? Oh, three years ago? Yet what do I read in my papers yesterday but this: “Sydney’s run of rainy days in a row - 11 - is the most in April for 77 years.” And Sydney’s dams? Above 65 per cent capacity now, and rising. How embarrassing for Flannery and others in the scary weather business. No wonder the NSW Bureau of Meteorology yesterday complained “the rain was getting people down”.

I bet. So it was probably no surprise Flannery didn’t turn up at the Rudd Government’s ideas summit last weekend to talk more about how warming was dooming Sydney, despite being issued a gold-edged invitation. He flew to Canada instead to tell their yokels to cut gases like the ones he just blew out the back of his jet, and talked warming with British Columbia’s Premier and businessmen. But once again Flannery picked the wrong time and place to preach his warming gospel. A local paper reports: “In some regions of usually balmy British Columbia, many were caught by surprise by a storm that moved in late Friday and set snowfall records in Nanaimo, Victoria and Vancouver.” How the weather mocks Flannery. He’s flooded in Sydney, where he predicted drought, and snowed in in Canada when he predicted heat. Read more here.