Bzzzzz

[pjclarke]

DEFRA performed its own peer review and decided there was insufficient evidence to instigate a complete ban, they had a temporary ban while they conducted their review. The conclusion was that the evidence was very low quality

180 degrees from the facts again..... DEFRA have temporarily allowed the pesticides to be used in limited circumstances, apparently based on evidence submitted by the NFU, however they have declined to publish that evidence and, in an unprecedented step have not released the minutes of discussion meetings. So much for openness. Maybe they are 'hiding the decline' :

The European Food Safety Agency reviewed the evidence and concluded that neonicotinoids use is 'an unacceptable risk' to pollinators. They identified several serious flaws in the DEFRA review.

The House of Commons Audit Committee report on pollinators and pesticides concluded that

Neonicotinoid pesticides are not fundamental to the general economic or agricultural viability of UK farming.

They are however, very profitable to Synagro and Bayer. In contrast to claims from the NFU and Big Agrichemical yields have actually risen during the ban.

The trial that DEFRA point to in support of their position (Thompson H et al. (2013)) was described by Dave Goulson of the University of Sussex as a 'cockup' because the single control nest was itself contaminated with the pesticides. It was never peer-reviewed and only ever published on the internet, in contrast to the published studies on which the EFSA based their ban.

Neonicotinoids do demonstrable harm and little demonstrable good, other than to the bottom line of agrichemical companies, for whom our elected representatives seem to be acting as unpaid advocates.

[EternalOptimist]

Hmmm , who to believe ?
The greenies , who stand to make a fortune out of scare mongering, or proper scientists ?


it's a tricky one. maybe if all the arctic ice disappears this year, as promised, I will think again

[BrilloPad]

Hmmm , who to believe ?
The greenies , who stand to make a fortune out of scare mongering, or proper scientists ?


it's a tricky one. maybe if all the arctic ice disappears this year, as promised, I will think again

proper scientists is like getting a proper religious person.

Scientists love scare mongering - to secure their grants.

[pjclarke]

Hmmm , who to believe ?
The greenies , who stand to make a fortune out of scare mongering, or proper scientists ?

it's a tricky one. maybe if all the arctic ice disappears this year, as promised, I will think again

We'll have to guess the source of that, but if its the prediction I think it is, it was never anything approaching a 'promise' and was withdrawn long ago. Try the IPCC and try to stay current.

On pesticides, the scientific and green positions are aligned on this one, as usual. You'd be hard-pressed to find a scientist with more relevant expertise than Dave Goulson, here's an extract from his blog, in response from some twaddle from Chris Booker:

This all sounds like a great tale of dodgy doings, but let’s look at the actual facts for a minute. There is a group of scientists, linked to IUCN, who published a series of peer-reviewed scientific review papers on the impacts of neonics on the environment in summer 2014. These papers are all available for anyone to read at Systemic insecticides (neonicotinoids and fipronil): trends, uses, mode of action and metabolites - Springer. They are simply a review of the existing evidence – if you are really interested, read them yourself, and you can decide whether they are any good. I was asked to join this group in summer 2012, with a view to helping to write these papers, and it seemed like a good idea – the group contains many well-respected scientists from all over the world, bringing together diverse expertise. Scientists commonly come together in this way to write lengthy reviews of important topics. It is wildly inaccurate to say, as Booker does, that we relied “only on highly artificial laboratory experiments” – our reviews examined and describe hundreds of studies, many of them conducted in the field. The Defra field trial to which Booker attaches such weight was a total cock-up since all the ‘control’ bees became exposed to pesticides, so it was never published.

You might wonder whether I received a share of the £350,000 for my contribution. So far as I know, there never was £350,000. I received nothing – in fact on the one occasion when I attended a meeting of this group I had to pay my own travel expenses. The whole thing was done on a shoestring, as meetings of scientists usually are. I did get a free cup of coffee.

So what about the central claim that this group somehow engineered the neonic ban? The ban was proposed in January 2013, as a direct result of the European Food Standards Agency publishing three reports on neonics which concluded that they posed an “unacceptable risk” to bees. This was voted through in April 2013, and began in December 2013. Our reviews were not published until the summer of 2014, 16 months AFTER the ban was agreed in the European Parliament. So unless members of the European Parliament are able to see into the future, it is hard to see how their decision could have been influenced in any way by a group that had not at the time published anything whatsoever.

Finally, what about the “huge damage” that the neonic ban has done, and this figure of £640 million in crop losses in the UK alone? I follow this topic closely, but have not heard of any such report. £640 million would represent the loss of about 12% of Britain’s entire agricultural output (including arable, dairy, horticulture etc.). Since the moratorium really only applies to oilseed rape, this would require the entire crop to have been wiped out (the total annual value of this crop varies between about £400 million and £700 million). However, the first sowing of oilseed rape without neonics in the UK was august 2014. About 1.5% was lost to flea beetle, according to the Home Grown Cereal Authority. Yes, that is correct - so 98.5% of the crop is fine. The crop won’t be harvest until summer 2015, so we have no way of knowing what the yield will be, or what losses, if there are any, might be due to the absence of neonics. So where on earth does this figure come from? Perhaps Booker also possesses the gift of foresight, and has foreseen a biblical plague of locusts in the spring?

Given all these wild inaccuracies, the claim that climate-sceptic Owen Patterson was “easily the best-informed and most effective Defra secretary of state we’ve ever had” starts to seem quite reasonable by comparison. Why do newspapers publish such twaddle?

[EternalOptimist]

'Wait until September '


who made that famous quote ?

[MicrosoftBob]

Hmmm , who to believe ?
The greenies , who stand to make a fortune out of scare mongering, or proper scientists ?


it's a tricky one. maybe if all the arctic ice disappears this year, as promised, I will think again

I'm still waiting for the global cooling that was promised in the 70s, still you just know the next mini ice age is going to be blamed on climate change

[MicrosoftBob]

'Wait until September '


who made that famous quote ?

Osama ?

[EternalOptimist]

Osama ?

The grand Mufti of CUK , pj ('madrassa') clarke

[pjclarke]

'Wait until September '


who made that famous quote ?

That would be me, in response to some Blaster nonsense about arctic ice 'returning to normal' (if you squinted, turned around three times, spat and looked at no more than 5 years of data).

The point being that the ice reaches a minimum each year, in September, which provides a useful comparison point. It is unlikely that this year will be another record breaker, though it will be on the trend line. In denierland, any year in which the ice does not reach a new low is of course heralded as a 'recovery'.

The arctic ice cap has been a feature of our planet for millenia and is disappearing in what in context is the blink of an eye, much of that loss occurring during what has been misnamed 'the pause'.

Regardless of whether the arctic becomes ice free in 2015, 2025 or 2045, it is now pretty much locked in and we have literally no idea what the effect of such a state will have on the climate of the northern hemisphere. Not alarmism, just facts.